Chapter Five

CHAPTER FIVE

Glasgow

May 2024

CLEM

It is a wrench to leave the hospital, but Freya is growing fractious, and Clem knows there are people she needs to call and share the terrible news with.

Clem sits for a moment in her car outside the hospital, listening to Freya wail in her car seat.

“It’s all right, darling,” she tells her, reaching back to hold her hand. Freya is due to have lunch. She will take her to nursery, that’s what she’ll do. It will give her headspace to think about whom to call. She’ll need to take time off both her jobs, the one at the school and the other at the café. She’ll inform Erin’s employers, her friends, find out whatever she can from them. And the police, she’ll need to speak to the police. The nurse at the hospital wasn’t able to get Entresto, so she needs to go home. She’s already feeling faint.

She drops Freya off at nursery, apologizing for her lateness. She sees the smiling faces of the nursery staff, the other children playing in ball pits and at the sand table, and decides she must lie. No mention of Erin, not now. She’ll fall apart, and these poor people won’t know what to do with her.

Clem was with Erin when she delivered Freya, holding her hand and whispering words of comfort. Her focus had been entirely on Erin, but as soon as Freya came into the world, she felt it, the heat of a different element.

As though a new color had been introduced to the world.

She waves goodbye to Freya, blowing kisses through the window, her heart lifting a little when she sees Freya running to join in at the sand table.

Clem knows she should call Quinn. Quinn is Erin’s father, living happily with his wife and sons in West Yorkshire. Her marriage to Quinn lasted just eighteen months, falling apart while Erin was just beginning to wean. His efforts to be a father to her have been a study in ineptitude. Watching Erin teaching herself to be content with the crumbs of Quinn’s affection has been a protracted explosion of any feeling Clem once had for her ex-husband. She wanted Erin to cut him out of her life, had to hold herself back from urging her to do so. But Erin has craved her father, has moved through her own cycle of hatred and love and bitter disappointment, and all Clem has been able to do is watch and despair.

She sits in her car and stares at Quinn’s number on her contact list, trying to summon the strength to call him and let him know what has happened to his only daughter. But just then, the phone rings in her hand. A number she doesn’t recognize flashes on the screen.

“Hello?”

“Yes. Hi, this is Senna’s mum, Elizabeth. Is that Clementine?”

She gasps. “Hi, yes. Have the police contacted you about Senna?”

On the other end, Elizabeth begins to cry, and Clem waits, a hand to her mouth, for Elizabeth to speak. She’s never met Senna’s mother, has met Senna only a few times, and always in passing. She and Erin first met a few years ago. But now she feels connected to this woman, both of them sharing the same nightmare.

“There are police with sniffer dogs in Orkney,” Elizabeth says, her voice shaking. “They can’t find Senna.”

Clem’s mouth falls open. “What do you mean, they can’t find Senna?”

“Does Erin know where Senna is?” Elizabeth asks.

“N…no. She’s…she hasn’t woken up…”

“I’m so sorry,” Elizabeth says. “This is all such…such a shock. I don’t know what to do…”

“Do you have any idea what happened?” Clem asks.

“I’ve no idea,” Elizabeth says, her voice thick with emotion. “They went to Orkney for their trip. Senna said they were camping.” She trails off, her voice breaking. “I’m just so worried.”

“You must be. God, Elizabeth. I’m so sorry.”

“I gave my phone to the police with all the texts. She texted me on Tuesday.”

“What did she say?”

“Senna said she wanted to come home.”

The back of Clem’s neck prickles. “Oh? Did they have an argument or something?”

“Yes, the girls did. But, you know, three teenagers on a hiking trip…I thought nothing of it. That was the last message I got.” She takes a breath. “And Arlo is dead. I never even met him. His poor parents…”

“Elizabeth, do you know why Senna wanted to come home?” Clem asks, her mind flinging to an imagined scene of the girls, and Arlo, on a beach in Orkney. Why would they have argued? The weather was glorious, a balmy twenty degrees, and the photographs Erin had sent were of postcard-pretty landscapes.

“I can’t remember,” Elizabeth says, her voice catching. “I’m going out of my mind. I’ve been ringing her phone nonstop, and it just goes to voicemail. I mean, where could she have gone?”

Clem bites back a reply. She imagines Senna caught up in the fire that claimed Arlo, and rushing into the sea. Perhaps she drowned. It’s a harrowing thought.

“Please tell me if Erin tells you anything.”

“I will,” Clem tells her, and hangs up.

The clenching in her chest starts up again, the frightening stall between heartbeats. She needs to take her medication, and quickly.

She drives home, parks up, rushes blindly into her flat. She swallows her pills with a glass of water, holding firmly to the side of the sink in case her knees give. She feels faint, but bats the thought of it away. She can’t faint. She has a daughter in the hospital and a granddaughter in the nursery, and they need her.

Once she feels strong enough, she heads into Erin’s bedroom, a sob in her throat. Elizabeth’s voice echoes in her ears. The girls had an argument . She tries to push away the idea that an argument had something to do with this terrible tragedy, but it scratches at her mind, like a cat wanting to come inside from the cold.

And so she stands in Erin’s bedroom, looking over the baby ephemera, clothes scattered on the floor, endless Shein bags. A pile of tarot cards, crystals arranged in a cabinet. Runes in a jar. Erin has always been into all things mystical and pagan.

Her eyes are drawn to Erin’s mixed media canvas hanging above the cot, the one she made for Freya a few months after she was born. It’s a meter long by a half meter wide, spelling out protect me from what i want in large, wobbly letters. Such a curious thing to put above a cot.

Clem hadn’t thought much of it when Erin hung it on the wall last year; her mind, obviously, was consumed by the prospect of the baby, the insanity of becoming a grandmother in her midforties. But now, as she steps closer, she sees that the mixed media is in fact bits of nature, dead leaves and feathers stitched into the canvas and sitting outward from the letters. The final letter t is a fine animal bone stitched into the canvas.

Clem shudders. Why hadn’t she noticed that before?

There is nothing in the room to ease her mind on the matter of Senna, and the argument. She finds Quinn’s number on her phone, and when it starts to ring she feels a familiar twist in her gut, preparing her for a fight.

The call doesn’t go through; a message pings up on her phone, a virtual slap in the face.

I’m sorry, I can’t talk right now.

She rings again, and when the same message flings up she types a message.

Erin’s in intensive care. Answer.

Quinn phones her straight back.

“What?” he barks. “Erin’s in hospital?”

“I got a phone call this morning,” she says, and tells him everything she knows.

“I’ll drive up this afternoon,” he says, and her heart lifts a little at the relief of this. Even someone as hapless as Erin’s father is better than dealing with this alone.