Chapter 22

22

October 31, 2:30 a.m.

less than four hours until low tide

Rose crawls inside the cupboard and gently pulls Trixie out. Nobody speaks, and the house is eerily silent. It seems strange to me that Lily doesn’t rush to her daughter’s side, but I think she must be in shock. We all are. Except for Rose, who takes charge of the situation again. She carefully lays Trixie on the parquet floor in the hall.

“Hold the flashlight steady,” she barks at Conor, leaning down over my niece and feeling for a pulse. It seems to take the longest time, but finally Rose nods.

“She’s alive.”

“Oh, thank god!” Lily says, but the smile soon slides off her face. “Who did this?” Nobody answers. “Which one of you did this? She didn’t lock herself in the bloody cupboard.”

“Wait,” says Rose. “She’s alive, but something isn’t right.”

We watch as she examines Trixie from head to toe. She’s unconscious, deathly pale, and I notice that one of her socks is missing. Rose sees it too, and stares down at her bare foot.

“There is a small amount of dried blood between her toes,” Rose says, almost to herself.

“What does that mean?” asks Lily.

“I … can’t be sure. But my best guess is that someone has injected her with something.”

“What? Who?”

“I don’t know,” Rose replies. “But we can’t find Nancy. Your diabetic kit was in her bedroom, and your insulin pen is now missing from it—”

Lily shakes her head. “You can’t seriously be suggesting that our mother did this to Trixie? She loves her grandchild, far more than she ever loved us.”

Rose sighs and seems to visibly deflate. “Then where is Nancy now? We don’t have time for this. I need your diabetic kit.”

Lily hands it to her, and Rose takes a small device from the bag. Nobody dares to ask what she is doing, and I feel as though we are all holding our breath. Rose pricks Trixie’s finger and squeezes a tiny drop of blood onto the machine.

“I think she’s been injected with insulin. If I’m right, we have to act quickly or—”

“Just do whatever you need to do,” Lily says in a quiet voice, and it is so strange to see her crying and vulnerable. She was always the indestructible sister.

Rose runs to the library where she slept and returns with a bag of her own. It looks like an old-fashioned brown leather doctor’s bag. A gift from Nana when Rose got a place at Cambridge to study veterinary science. She opens it, takes out a large needle and a small vial.

“What is that?” asks Conor.

“Glucagon. There should be some in Lily’s kit, but that’s missing too. It’s the same treatment for dogs, so if I’m right, then…”

“What if you’re wrong?” Lily whispers.

Rose ignores her and injects the drug into Trixie’s arm.

We wait for what feels like forever. Time seems impossible to tell. Then Trixie opens her eyes. They blink a few times before finding Lily.

“Mum?”

“Oh, thank god. Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Lily says, sweeping Trixie up in her arms and kissing her. I’m crying tears of joy, and relief, and love. Looking around, I see that we all are. Nobody who is here now would ever have hurt this child.

---

A short while later we are all back in the lounge, with a chair up against the door to prevent anyone coming into—or out of—the room. We have barricaded ourselves inside and are huddled around the fire for heat. Rose has lit some old candles for light. Even in the darkness, I can see that Lily is trembling. Trixie is by her side, wrapped in a blanket, staring at the flames. We don’t have anything to eat or drink, but I doubt any of us have an appetite. It feels as though none of us want to acknowledge what is happening here tonight, as if maybe by not talking about it, we can pretend it isn’t. Nana and Dad are dead, and Nancy is missing. Either she did something very bad, or I fear something very bad has happened to her.

The last thing Trixie remembers is drinking a cup of tea—which we all know contained one of my mother’s sleeping pills—and Lily placing a blanket over her on the window seat.

She doesn’t remember being in the cupboard.

Or how she got there.

Or who locked her inside.

Or who she was in there with.

All Trixie knows is that she went to sleep on the window seat, then woke up in the hall. I know that being completely oblivious about everything that happened in between is best for her, but it’s frustrating and frightening for the rest of us. I think back to last night, when we were all sitting around Nana’s kitchen table, joking about how we would murder someone if we wanted to get away with it. Rose was the one who said insulin between the toes. Seems like someone had the same idea as her, and tried using it to kill my niece.

I can’t believe any of this is really happening, and can’t think of anyone who would hate my family enough to do this to us. I look around the room. Everyone in it had a reason to be upset with Nana because of the will. My mother and Lily both hated my father for a long time after the divorce, but nobody here would want to hurt Trixie. Surely I must be right about that?

The power comes back on, making us all jump, and light floods the room.

“Well, that’s a good sign,” says Lily.

“Is it?” replies Rose, before examining Trixie again to make sure she is really okay.

I can’t help noticing the handgun in Rose’s leather bag as she packs her things away, and I’m not the only one. Trixie’s eyes are wide as saucers, and her face writes a question mark on itself.

“Why do you have a gun, Aunty Rose?” she asks.

“I thought you said that was somewhere safe?” Lily says.

Rose sighs at Lily. “It was, but after everything that has happened, I feel safer having it with me.” She turns back to Trixie. “Sometimes vets need guns. They probably look a lot like the guns you see on TV—because they are—but vets use them for different reasons. It’s very sad, but if an animal is seriously poorly, then—”

“You shoot it?” Trixie asks.

“Sometimes. But only if that’s the only option … if the animal is in lots of pain.”

“Would you shoot one of us if we were in pain?” my niece asks without a hint of irony.

“You should try to get some rest. We’ll all leave as soon as the tide lets us. You’re going to be okay, I promise.”

Trixie’s face attempts a smile, but it doesn’t take. She’s old enough, and clever enough, to know that we haven’t told her everything about what has happened here tonight.

Rose goes to leave the lounge.

“Where are you going?” Lily asks, sounding afraid.

“I’ll be back in less than a minute. I just want to check something.”

“Do you want me to come with you?” Conor offers.

Rose stares at him for a long time, but leaves without giving a reply, which I suppose is an answer in itself. The rest of us sit in silence as the fire spits and crackles. Shadows dance around the walls and across our faces, the thoughts inside our individual heads so loud that I can almost hear them. Conor gets up to leave the room a few minutes later. I follow him, watch from the doorway, and see him standing too close to Rose out in the hall.

“Are you okay?” he asks her.

“No. Of course not,” Rose whispers back. “I came to get the key from the cupboard door,” she says, patting the pocket on her jeans. “I think it’s a master key. If I’m right, we can lock ourselves in the lounge until the tide goes out. Someone here tried to kill Trixie, and I don’t think this is over.”

“I think you’re right. But who? And why?”

“I don’t know. But until we figure this out, we’re all in danger,” Rose says.

“It started with Nana, so it has to have been someone who was upset with her. I don’t think it was just about the will either. Somebody trashed her studio looking for something, so my guess is it’s someone who didn’t like the idea of her writing one last novel about this family. Someone with a secret.”

“We all have secrets,” says Rose.

“Yes, but we don’t all go around killing people in order to keep them.”

Rose stares at him when he says that, but Conor is too lost in thought to notice.

“Who had a motive to kill Frank?” he continues. “And why would someone try to kill Trixie? Did she see something she shouldn’t have last night when she came downstairs and discovered Nana’s body? Something which might identify the killer?”

“Whoever it is, they’re someone who likes to tidy things away, out of sight,” Rose says, staring at the cupboard under the stairs.

Conor opens the cupboard door a little wider. It still has all of our names, and ages, and a ladder of a line with our heights written inside it. I read the top three.

Daisy, age 13—5 feet, 1 inch

Rose, age 10—4 feet, 10 inches

Lily, age 9—4 feet, 3 inches

It’s the only place in space and time where I was ever taller than them.

“At least we know where the missing bodies are,” Conor says. “And that explains why Poppins was scratching at the cupboard door. That dog could never bear to be away from Nana for more than a minute.”

Rose closes the cupboard door and locks it. “I don’t want to see what’s in there anymore. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

They start walking back toward the lounge, and I retreat inside the room. I’m not sure why, but I’m glad they didn’t see me. I feel like I’m missing a piece of the puzzle, and it’s increasingly difficult to know who to trust.

Everyone is afraid now and they are right to be.

Someoneis killing members of the Darker family one by one.

And I fear it’s only a matter of time until it happens again.