Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

Glasgow

May 2024

CLEM

It happens early the next morning, right after Bee wheels Erin into surgery to begin her withdrawal from sedation.

Clem hears voices outside the family room, notices that Quinn’s bed is empty. The voices grow louder, the pitch telling her that the cacophony isn’t nurses. It’s an argument.

In the corridor, she finds Quinn in a confrontation with a man and a woman. They look familiar, and yet Clem is certain she has never seen them before. They are both in their late forties, dressed in joggers and T-shirts that look slept in, their hair disheveled, and their eyelids swollen from crying. The woman is gesticulating, her hands stretching out to Quinn, while the man stands behind her with his hands on his hips.

Quinn hears the door open and turns to Clem. “Allow me to introduce Arlo’s mum and dad, Jim and Tracy,” he says, and she sees Arlo’s face in the woman’s, his build in the man’s.

“Oh,” she says, stepping forward, a hand extended before she realizes how awkward, how awful this is. How their appearance and the emotion ringing in the air makes sense, given that they’ve just lost their son.

“I’m Clem,” she says. “Erin’s mother. I’m so sorry for your loss.”

The man scowls at her, his eyes wet. His sorrow is so raw, so explosive, that she can feel it beating off him like a living entity. He doesn’t speak, and she sees it is because he can’t.

“Shall we take this to the family room?” Quinn says, and for a moment Clem is glad he is here, the air in the corridor crackling with frantic, chaotic grief.

“I’m not here for a chitchat, you understand?” Jim snarls. “My son has been murdered. I didn’t even know he had a fucking girlfriend until two days ago, when two detectives showed up at my flat to tell me he’d died in a fire.”

“I think we can all just calm down,” Quinn says, but Jim is having none of it.

“We’ve seen the text messages on Arlo’s phone,” he snaps, hoarsely. “We know that girl talked him into it. She had something to do with all of this.”

“That girl is my daughter,” Quinn says, his own voice simmering with fury. “Now you’ve got a choice. You can either talk respectfully with Erin’s mother and me in the family room, or you can leave.”

Suddenly, Tracy sprints past them, down the corridor, her trainers squealing on the linoleum. She has spotted Constable Byers going into Erin’s room, has worked out where she is. As the door swings shut after Constable Byers she dashes inside, screaming at Erin.

“What did you do to him? Tell me!”

Constable Byers seizes her by the shoulders and begins to move her to the door, only to be confronted by Jim.

“Madam, you can’t interfere with the patient,” Constable Byers says, struggling to remove her.

“You have to gown up!” Clem shouts at him. “You’ll infect her!”

But Jim pushes past, shouting at Erin.

“You know what happened to Arlo,” he says. “Why won’t you tell us?”

“Because she’s in a coma, you moron!” Clem yells at him. She is in the room now, and none of them are wearing protective clothing.

Jim looks at her angrily, as though he’s about to lash out. But suddenly the anger on his face melts and he sinks to the ground, sobbing and holding his head in his hands.

Clem looks on in shock, pity slowly replacing her outrage as another thought slips into her head: this man has had to identify his son’s body, is having to talk about him in the past tense, is planning his funeral.

Bee bursts into the room.

“Right,” she says. “Out, all of you. This is a burns unit, my loves, and Erin is at a very vulnerable stage in her healing journey. Not a soul steps inside this room until they’re properly gowned up, got it?”

Constable Byers lets go of Tracy and moves toward Jim, helping him to his feet.

Slowly, they all move to the family room, Bee returning a few minutes later with some cups of tea and a box of fresh tissues.

“We’re sorry for your loss,” Quinn says after a few minutes. He is sitting next to Clem and opposite Jim and Tracy, tea growing cold on the table between them.

“We just want answers,” Jim says quietly. “Arlo was at university. He wasn’t living at home. We knew nothing about his relationship with Erin.”

“What about the trip to Orkney?” Clem says, her mind turning to what she saw written in Erin’s notebook. Arlo’s hands need to be bound. “He must have told you he was going.”

“He said he was going hiking with a couple of friends,” Tracy says. “He didn’t mention which friends. The police showed us the messages they managed to recover from his phone.”

“What did they say?” Quinn says, sitting forward.

“One of them said he was nervous,” Tracy says.

“Nervous about what?” Clem says.

“He was nervous about going to Fynhallow,” Jim says. “Erin talked him into it.”

“That doesn’t make her guilty of anything,” Quinn says archly. “Most likely they lit a campfire, and it got out of control.”

“Why’s Senna missing, then?” Tracy says, and just then the door opens, a nurse stepping inside, a woman following behind her.

“Here we are,” the nurse says gently to the woman, and Clem sees she is sallow-faced and hollow-eyed.

“Elizabeth?” Clem says, recognizing Senna in her face. Same brown skin and wavy black hair, the same deep-set eyes. She stands and hugs her. “This is Senna’s mother, Elizabeth,” she tells the others in the room. “Elizabeth, this is Jim and Tracy, Arlo’s parents. And this is Quinn, Erin’s father.”

Elizabeth looks as shattered as the rest of them, mascara stains on her face, black hair askew. Silently, she moves to each of them in turn, wrapping an arm around them, before bringing a chair from the corner and pulling it close.

“Any word on Senna?” Clem asks her.

Elizabeth shakes her head, her eyes wet.

“What about her phone?” Quinn says. “Have they tracked her calls? Her bank cards?”

“Her backpack was found at Fynhallow,” Elizabeth says, dabbing her eyes with a well-used hankie. “Her wallet’s still there, her bank card and money inside. Her phone is gone but it’s turned off, or the battery’s dead.” She fixes Clem in a desperate stare. “I want to know where she is, and what happened. Why she’s gone. Why she hasn’t called me.”

“I know as much as you,” Clem says apologetically. She wishes she could help, that she had answers to give. But she doesn’t.

“I want to speak with Erin,” Elizabeth says.

“We all want to ask Erin questions,” Jim says gravely. “Like how our son died.”

“I think it’s plain to see that Erin’s going to be out of action for a while,” Quinn says. “And I’m not liking the suggestion that Erin’s at fault, here.”

“Who said Erin’s at fault?” Jim says.

“She’s the only one who got out of there,” Tracy mutters bitterly.

“Well, that’s not true, is it?” Quinn says. “Erin’s in a coma, with her eyelids sewn shut. Strikes me that if anyone’s a suspect here, it’s Senna.”

“Quinn,” Clem says, warningly.

“Are you joking?” Elizabeth says, her voice brittle. “Senna? A suspect?”

Quinn shrugs. “All I’m saying is, how odd that a boy has died and a girl is at death’s door and Senna goes on the run.”

Elizabeth gets to her feet, trembling with fury.

“I have a text message from Senna that she sent the same day as the fire, okay? And in that message, she said she and Erin had a fight, that Erin got violent with her.”

“Oh my God,” Tracy says.

Clem’s mouth falls open. “Violent? You never said this before.”

“Senna was fed up of being the third wheel,” Elizabeth says. “She told Erin she was going home, and the next thing she knows Erin is grabbing her by the arm to stop her.”

“Erin grabbed her?” Clem repeats.

“Not exactly an act of violence, is it?” Quinn says. “Grabbing her by the arm?”

“It depends on how she did it,” Jim says. “Could have dislocated the girl’s shoulder.”

“Was that it?” Clem asks Elizabeth.

“I don’t think it’s anything to make light of,” Elizabeth tells Quinn. “It’s clear that whatever went on between the three of them that day resulted in Arlo’s death and Senna’s disappearance.”

Jim and Tracy make noises of agreement. Clem can feel her heart pounding in her chest, and she eyes the door. She wants to escape this room before Elizabeth, Jim, and Tracy decide that Erin is to blame for what happened to their children. She wants to take her medicine.

But Quinn is standing now, yelling at Elizabeth. “So far, all you’ve said is that Erin grabbed Senna. That’s hardly reason to fling accusations when Erin’s in a coma, for God’s sake.”

Elizabeth pulls her lips tight, her nostrils flaring. “Well, I’ve shared the messages with the police. I should imagine they’ll interview Erin as soon as she’s awake.” She narrows her eyes at Quinn. “Convenient, isn’t it, that the only person found alive is still unconscious.”

···

Clem excuses herself and makes for the toilet farther along the corridor. Outside the sky is darkening, storm clouds gathering—after a fortnight of unusually hot temperatures, heavy rain is forecast to sweep across the country.

Her stomach is churning, and she realizes she has left her medication in her handbag. She kneels down next to the toilet bowl.

The images that formed in her mind when Elizabeth told them of the girls fighting are vivid. She tries to imagine Erin grabbing Senna. Why would she do that? Was it a casual grab, or something more violent?

She thinks of that moment a month earlier, just before Easter. Waking at dawn to find Erin standing by her bed.

The memory is fragmented, dreamlike. She remembers thinking that Erin was there because Freya was crying and she needed help. But Freya was asleep beside Clem, and she remembered faintly waking at midnight to the sound of crying and fetching Freya from her crib in Erin’s room to allow her a chance to catch up on sleep.

Erin stood, silent, her breathing labored. A pair of scissors held in her hand like a weapon.

The sight of the scissors in Erin’s hand woke Clem up a little.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Erin?”

Erin’s face crumpled then, and she turned sharply and walked out of the room. Clem rose to check on her, but her bedroom door was locked. Later, she found Erin in the garden. She was sitting in one of the deck chairs, though it was raining. Clem pulled on a coat and headed out to sit next to her.

“What was all that about this morning?” Clem asked. “When you came into my room?”

“I was sleepwalking,” Erin said. “I woke up and scared myself.”

Clem nodded. That made sense. Erin had sleepwalked as a child, usually as a response to something stressful. Her father bailing on her, or conflict with her friends.

“I think I need to go away,” Erin said. Her pink hair was soaking wet and stuck to her head. She was shaking from the cold.

“Go away? What do you mean?” Clem asked. “Where to?”

“Orkney,” she said. “I’ve asked Senna and Arlo to come with me. I need to clear my head.”

“I think that’s a good idea,” Clem said. She could see how worn out Erin was, juggling a baby and a part-time job. She had recently started a design course at night school, had mentioned that she wanted to reapply to university. A different degree pathway, this time. She wanted to go to Glasgow Art School to study interior design.

“I can look after Freya,” Clem said.

Erin smiled at that.

“Thanks, Mum,” she said. “Love you.”

Clem reached out and squeezed her hand. “Love you, too.”

In the toilet stall, Clem gets to her feet, simultaneously glad and disappointed that she can’t be sick. Her stomach roils with hot liquid, sourness blooming in her mouth. The image of Erin standing by her bed with a furtive expression and a pair of scissors in her hand feels imprinted behind her eyes.

Until now it was such an out-of-character moment that she hadn’t given it much thought. Erin was sleepwalking, and there was nothing more to be considered.

But Elizabeth’s revelation has brought the moment back to her mind with a fresh layer of possibility. And Clem is forced to acknowledge the thing that has continued to nag at her since then, the thing that now blossoms into a warning: when Erin told her she had been sleepwalking, Clem read the microscopic flick of her eyes, the tilt of her jaw.

She had been lying.

···

She steps out of the cubicle, catching sight of herself in the small mirror opposite. But something else draws her eye, and she starts.

On the tiled floor of the bathroom by her feet is a strange object—some kind of book. It’s large, about the size of an A4 sheet of paper, and the binding is old, like brown leather that is cracked and coming apart. She’s alarmed at the sight of it. How did it get there?

Her eyes track to the cubicle next to the one she has just left, in case someone has entered the toilets silently and left their book on the ground. But no, she’s alone. And she’s certain that the book wasn’t there before.

She bends to inspect it, noticing at once that the binding is not leather at all but a very good bark replica. Or perhaps it is indeed tree bark that has been pieced together, the ridges and gnarls of bark a disconcerting texture beneath her fingertips. A small green shoot pokes up strangely from the top corner, a seed that has found purchase. There is no evidence of stitching in the spine.

Gingerly, she reaches down and opens it, finding that the pages are completely black, the texture somewhere between fabric and paper. No writing. But then, as she stares down, something stirs on the page, like ripples on water. She suspects it’s the bathroom lighting, a bulb flickering overhead. But then an image appears, and she steps back, alarmed.

She sees a woman, her mouth open and her head tilted back, the lines of her face shining in firelight. And then the scene expands, and Clem sees the woman is surrounded by kindling, her hands bound to a stake, a fire growing stealthily around her.

Her heart hammering, she reaches for her phone, glancing at the screen to open the camera. Then she points it at the object on the floor, her thumb hovering over the red button to take a picture.

But the floor is empty. The book is gone.

She takes a step back, startled. Did she have a blackout, a fainting episode? It was right there, the strange book with the cover made of tree bark with a tiny green shoot poking up, the delicate black pages.

The door bursts open, making her jump with a shout. It’s Bee, and she’s grinning.

“They managed to bring Erin round. She’s awake!”

Clem bolts through the door and races along the corridor, her breaths ragged. Outside, the sky has darkened, rain lashing the windows and glossing the streets. A distant rumble of thunder rolls beneath the nurses’ chatter.

Quinn is already gowning up in the small storeroom. He passes Clem a gown and ties it at the back of her neck. “The withdrawal went well,” Bee tells them as they make for Erin’s room. “She’ll be a little woozy for a while and the conversation may not be in full swing, but it’ll be good for her to see you both. Oh, and one thing you should know.”

“What’s that?” Quinn asks.

“They’ve left one eye sutured shut,” Bee says. “The ophthalmic surgeon wasn’t persuaded that it was ready to be opened. Just in case you’re alarmed. It’s not as bad as it looks.”

“I think we’re long past the point of alarm,” Quinn says.

Constable Byers steps outside the room to allow them a chance to reunite. “Good luck,” he says.

Inside, Clem sees that Erin is awake, though the wires and the machines are still in place. The stitches of her right eye have been removed, revealing a bloodshot but healthy eye. Clem is relieved at this, but despite Quinn’s words earlier she can tell he’s as alarmed as she is by the strangeness of Erin’s appearance, one eye wide open, the other fastened shut.

A flash of lightning brightens the room, followed a moment later by what sounds like kettledrums.

“This weather ,” Bee exclaims, closing the rectangular window along the top of the room. “You’d never think it was May.”

“Hello, love,” Clem says, her voice trembling. She moves close, emotion overcoming her. “Oh, my sweetheart. How are you feeling?”

Erin turns to her and looks at her blankly. She doesn’t answer.

“Can she see us?” Quinn asks, and Bee looks closely at Erin.

“Can you tell me what color my eyes are, darling?” Bee asks her.

“B…brown.”

Her voice is hoarse and faint, but even so, it’s Erin’s voice. The sound of it breaks something in Clem, a metal plate she had carried inside her in the form of a thought—that she might never hear Erin’s voice again. She presses her hands to her mouth to cover a sob of relief.

Bee turns to Clem and smiles. “I’d say she can see fine.”

“Thank you,” Clem says, overwhelmed by relief and helplessness. She is at once excited that Erin’s awake and nervous about how she’ll react when she realizes how injured she is. And when she hears about Arlo and Senna.

“Erin,” Quinn says, a tremor of emotion in his voice. “It’s Dad. I’m so glad you’re awake now. Are you feeling all right? You’re not in any pain?”

Clem registers that Erin isn’t looking at Quinn, her eye swiveling around the room in a look of panic. The heart monitor begins to race. Erin makes a guttural sound in her throat, as if she’s about to throw up. Clem steps closer, fighting the urge to hold her daughter, to touch her.

“Is she okay?” Clem asks Bee, who is busy with a tube of ointment. Her eyes rest on the heart monitor. Ninety-eight.

“I think she’s just coming round,” Bee says, nodding. “It’s important that we keep her eye lubricated. Though the consistency of this stuff is always a menace. So hard to squeeze out…Ah, here we go.”

She and Quinn watch patiently as the nurse applies a drop of gel to Erin’s right eye. Erin gasps as it hits her pupil.

“Well done,” Bee soothes. “It does sting a bit. But your right eye is doing well. I’m sure we’ll have the other one open and working in no time.”

Erin’s face scrunches up, and she hisses something at Bee. Something in a different language.

“What was that, lovely?” Bee says, but Erin shrinks back, as if she’s terrified. Bee smiles at Clem and Quinn. “It can take a few days for the reality of what’s happened to register,” she says. “Just be patient, yeah? This bit can be tricky. Let’s start small. Ten minutes, okay?”

“Why ten minutes?” Clem says, sadly. She can’t bear the thought of leaving Erin alone in here.

“Oh, love, I know it’s disappointing,” Bee says. “But her body needs lots and lots of rest to heal those wounds properly. You don’t realize how much exertion a simple conversation takes for someone so badly injured.”

“Come on,” Quinn urges, patting Clem on the shoulder. “This is a good thing. Ten minutes will be fine.”

The heart monitor begins to slow, but Clem can hear that Erin is whimpering, the same, strange nonsense-words that she heard before. She feels nervous, and as Bee shuts the door behind her Clem thinks about racing after her and asking her to come back in.

Quinn sits down next to Erin and smiles up at her.

“Hi, Erin,” he says, his voice breaking with emotion. “It’s Dad. I’m sure this must all feel very strange, and probably very frightening. I want you to know that I’m here, and your mother’s here, and we’re going to make sure you come out of this place as soon as you can and as well as you can.”

Erin is breathing very quickly, as though she’s having a panic attack. Clem moves to the other side of the bed.

“Sweetheart,” she says, leaning close to her. “Can you see me?”

“Who are you?”

“It’s Mum and Dad,” Clem says, glancing at Quinn. Erin stares at her in a look that resembles horror. “Do you recognize us, love?” she says. What if Erin has amnesia? Or brain trauma?

“Where am I?” she whispers.

“You’re in hospital,” Quinn says evenly. “I know that might seem frightening. But you’re in a very good hospital with excellent nurses and doctors.”

Erin is still breathing in short, rapid pants, and Clem murmurs soothing words of comfort to her, wishing she could hold Erin, or wrap her arms around her.

“I saw her,” Erin says faintly. “I saw the fire.”

Clem throws a sharp look at Quinn, and he returns it. Erin remembers what happened.

“Okay,” Clem says gently. “Let’s just take it really slow. We’re here for you, darling—”

She trails off, noticing that Erin is growing upset, her good eye tracing the heart monitor and the wires. It must be utterly disorienting for Erin, waking to find herself in such a state. She turns to Quinn. “Maybe we should call Bee back in.”

“No,” he says. “Just give her a chance to adjust.” He turns to Erin. “Erin, we’re right here, and it’s all over. But if you can talk to us first before the police get here…”

“The fire was burning her,” Erin whimpers. “And I couldn’t stop it.”

Clem is racked as she watches Erin’s face crumple, all her relief shattered by witnessing her so frightened, so traumatized.

“I know you’ve gone through something utterly horrendous,” Clem says. “But there’s no pressure to go into it all, okay? We just want you to get better.”

She pulls her chair closer and reaches out to place her hand on top of Erin’s knee, the flesh there undamaged.

“Get away from me!” Erin hisses, flinching. She says something then, the same arrangement of sounds or words that Clem doesn’t understand.

“Erin,” Clem says soothingly. “It’s all right. I promise.”

“Who is Erin?” Erin says.

Quinn looks puzzled. “Erin’s your name.”

“My name isn’t Erin,” Erin says, in a tone so clear that Clem starts. She feels it then, a prickle at the back of her neck. Something about Erin isn’t right. It’s not the injuries, or her shock.

Erin tilts her jaw defiantly, her good eye fixed on Clem. “I am Nyx,” she says.