Francesca

I STEP OUT INTO THE boiling air. I smell burned wood and scorched feathers. Guests are pouring down the steps to the beach now, capering around the monstrous bonfire like demons in a medieval fresco, screeching and whooping. Some of them are tearing off their clothes and rushing into the sea, the waves lit up by the flames, the water seething around the naked bodies. Some are crawling and dancing and weeping and almost certainly copulating on the lawns.

But for the moment I don't care. I'm feeling almost triumphant. I reach for a glass of cider on an abandoned tray and drink the whole thing in one go. I have dealt with Sparrow. I have extinguished her toxic energy. I can't believe how easy it was in the end, no matter the broken bottle—found in her tote—that I suppose she'd brought as a makeshift weapon. That's the problem with some people, you see. They just lack the clarity and focus, the self-belief, to really see something through.

Now I feel equal to almost anything. There may be gatecrashers and saboteurs here this evening, but I refuse to be intimidated. They have no idea who they are dealing with. I'm no frail, weak-hearted old man. Sorry Grandfa, but it's true. I have darkness within me, a violent darkness I have kept at bay for so long: an inky bottomless well of it like crude oil buried deep, deep beneath the ground. I close my eyes and inhale the smell of burning wood and feathers from the beach and I smile.

Owen is calling me again. This time, I answer.

"Darling?" I say. "Sorry I couldn't pick up before. It's been... manic. Where on earth are you? I've been wondering and wondering ..."

"Fran." Owen's voice sounds odd. "I found—" His voice is muffled on the third word, almost as though he's holding a hand over his mouth. Or perhaps the line's just bad.

"I didn't catch that, darling. What did you find?"

He repeats himself.

I laugh lightly, to show how foolish I know my next words will sound. "This connection must be truly terrible, darling. Because it really sounded like you just said ‘a body.'"

Again his voice is oddly muffled, incoherent. But this time I'm sure I catch the word bones. And then a series of strange noises that again—if it wasn't Owen—I would say sounded like someone sobbing.

I feel a tiny dart of unease. Sparrow spoke of a body. But no. Grandfa would never have been that careless. He promised to take care of it, that he would make it all go away. "It's done," he said. "I have taken care of it."

And yet... I think of a time I overheard Granmama on the phone to a friend about one of his affairs. "Of course he always thought he covered his tracks. That was the most insulting thing. I nearly divorced him on that basis alone. Men are so sloppy about these things, aren't they? They're lazy, that's the problem. Like a dog always burying a favorite bone in the same bloody flowerbed."

I feel an electric thrill of panic. I try to do my breathing. It's not working. It just makes me feel like I'm suffocating.

"I'm sure whatever you've found is very old, darling," I say. "You know, there's lots of ancient stuff around here." I almost convince myself. I'm so good at this. You'd never know I was struggling to breathe.

"No," he says. He takes a shaky breath. "No—fuck. Fran, it's not old. It was wrapped in tarpaulin. And... oh Christ. I think... no, I know. There in the ground all this time... it's my mother, Fran."

"Your mother was Cora the cleaner?"

It's out before I realize what I've done. That I've actually uttered the words aloud. I was just so thrown. Because it would mean that everything I thought I knew about Owen is completely false. The enigmatic glamour, the urbane polish—everything that attracted me to him. And it turns out he's a... local? The son of Cora Deeker, the skank from the pub?

It's only now, in the silence that follows, that I understand the significance of what I have revealed. A chill spreads from my scalp to my fingertips.

There's still silence on the other end of the phone. Perhaps he's hung up. I hope wildly that the line cut out before I said it. That perhaps he simply didn't hear. Six little words. They could have been blotted out by a drop in signal, couldn't they?

But no, now I can hear him breathing. "Where are you Francesca?" His voice is changed. Hard and cold. He never calls me Francesca.

He heard it all.