Bella

THE DAY BEFORE THE SOLSTICE

I'M SHIVERY AND NAUSEOUS WITH spent adrenaline by the time I reach my Hutch. I stab my key into the lock, stumble through the door. The Birds are real. I did see one in the woods, all those years ago. I knew it.

Two questions rattle through my mind: did they see us? Why are they here?

I pace, my mind full of looming shadows and flaming torches, and it takes me a few moments to notice the changes in my Hutch. The bedside lamps either side of the four-poster have been switched on. I'm almost certain I didn't do that. The curtains have been pulled closed across the windows, the bedclothes folded down. I think someone has even sprayed scent in here. I don't really stay in hotels where they offer this kind of thing, but it gradually occurs to me that this is a turndown service. Which is a little overzealous of housekeeping at this time of night. Especially as I hung a Do Not Disturb sign on the door.

Now, with a crackle of foreboding, I see that something has been placed on my pillow.

Stepping closer I see it's a piece of the hotel's headed notepaper. There's something on top of the note: an expensive-looking chocolate. Fuck that. I pick it up and toss it into the bin as though it's radioactive. Then, scalp prickling and heart beginning to thump in earnest, I read the note, written in carelessly flamboyant posh-girl handwriting:

Hi Sparrow!

Look at us writing to each other like the pen pals we never were. I'm so sorry I missed the reunion. It's been so long! And there's so much to catch up on. Especially considering how involved you were in everything here.

Don't worry. I'll make it up to you tomorrow.

xox

Fear and anger fight for dominance. The whole note is one elegantly veiled threat. But it's that middle part that gets me the most: "how involved you were in everything..." She's trying to frighten me into staying silent. Well, that worked once. But it won't now.

If she had any remorse she never would have created this place. She'd have sold up when she inherited the house and run in the other direction.

This summer marks fifteen years. A horrible little anniversary. And it's the year I have become a mother, which has forced a reckoning. I'm all Grace has. I have to be everything for her. But how can I be if I'm not whole myself? Something broke in me on a summer's night fifteen years ago. Maybe it can never be fully mended. It's the burden I'll carry with me for a lifetime. But I want to be able to look my own daughter in the eye. I need something—naff though the word may be—like closure.

There's still so much I need to understand about what happened. I've been living with the guilt of it ever since. It has been the thing that has defined my life. My career prospects, because I flunked out of my final year at college. My relationship with Grace's dad, because there was this huge thing I could never share with him. Every relationship I've ever had, really. My bond with my parents, even—I've kept them at arm's length ever since. I've had to. It's not an exaggeration to say what happened ruined my life. And yet I'm not sure it was even a stumbling block in hers. It took every ounce of courage I had to come back here. But I am back, like the Ghost of Christmas Past. I'm not going to let her forget. And I know what I have to do.

A scrabble of branches against the windows. I tiptoe to the door and double lock it, then loop the safety chain across. Then, after a moment's thought, I drag the heavy velvet armchair in front of the door. They're out there, in the woods. And she's been here tonight, in my room. Worse, she wants me to know it.