‘We sell it,’ says Vanessa.
The piping runs around Moira’s feet, like manacles, and seems to come from inside the rock, just below her knees. There is a sense of wrongness to it. I have to fight the urge to attempt to rip it from her.
‘Like a spring?’ says Rebecca. ‘A natural spring, on the island?’
Vanessa doesn’t bother to reply. She pulls something from her pocket and a moment later there is a pinpoint of light in her hands – a miniature torch. She puts it between her teeth so she can open the folder she brought in from the pile by the door. Then she shifts the torch to her left hand, holds the folder in her right, and begins to read aloud.
I’m not a good mother, so how can I raise a good son? I shout when I should be reasonable. I can’t help it. It’s so much easier to let it out, all the frustration, that I’ve had a bad day. I’m annoyed at everyone, including him. Kyle should have a bad day too, he should suffer too, that’s how I feel. I’m suffering so he should too. But I’d swear it doesn’t bother him, and that makes it worse. He looks at me like he’s meant to be shouted at, like that’s what life is about. Like I’m teaching him something he needs to know. He’s only eight and I’ve already taught him how to be horrible. How to take it, and how to dish it out.
Maybe this is what all men are, deep inside. They are here for us to fight, so we make each other suffer. Being on this island makes me wonder if we could really do without them. Aren’t they responsible for all the crime, anyway? All the violence? People say – oh, he must have had a violent father. But maybe their mothers taught them to be that way. I’m teaching Kyle to hate me already.
Vanessa stops reading.
When she spoke those words, they made a different sound. Resonant. Deeper and stronger. Not like it sounds when Vanessa says, ‘She’s feeding off them now. Off Kyle. The idea of him. What he could have been. All these declarations, and so many women find themselves writing about what men want, what men need from them.’
Flat words; they have no substance. I don’t believe them, and Moira is disinterested in them. But when Vanessa read to her, there was avidity. The ugly face was intent. Now it is serene and heavy with age.
‘This is elaborate, isn’t it?’ says Rebecca. ‘This act. All the things you’re doing to make Marianne believe you.’
‘Rebecca, can you really not feel it?’ says Kay.
‘Feel what?’
Kay flips her hand at the statue, at Moira, and in response Rebecca’s tone hardens into belligerent, obstinate belief: ‘You’re seeing a carefully prepared room. You know that, right? Lighting, effects, like a film. It works on you, just like a film does, standing here in the dark. But it’s not real. It will do you no good to believe in this. If it was genuine, don’t you think Vanessa would turn on all the lights, show it to you properly? Everything always looks different in the light, doesn’t it?’
‘Women never mattered, did they?’ Vanessa says. She is warming to her subject. She gestures with the folder and the torch, and throws back her head as her voice gets louder. ‘Not in the great tales of heroes and villains. Women were the prizes and the punishments. Moira isn’t interested in us, you see. Men feed her, make her stronger, so that the entire world gets caught up in her.’
‘Let’s go back upstairs,’ says Rebecca.
‘Don’t you see? She’s real. She’s real. I had to be here. Don’t you understand, Marianne?’
‘There’s a crack,’ says Kay. Vanessa drops her hands.
‘What?’
‘A crack. In her neck.’
Vanessa puts her face next to the curve in Moira’s throat. When she shines the torch upon it, I can clearly see the crack that runs through the stone, from below the left ear to the clavicle. There’s a soft sound, like a ripe fruit hitting a hard floor, and as I watch the crack widens, deepens, approaching the breastbone.
‘What’s happening?’ says Rebecca.
‘I don’t know.’ Vanessa switches off the torch. There is a tremor of movement under my feet. The ground is trembling. A noise is building, a low roaring. The piping behind Moira groans and begins to rattle against the rock. ‘I don’t know. This is wrong. There must be a man nearby. Amelia said she would only change if there was—’ She pauses, head tilted to one side, and then she turns around and looks straight at me.
‘Run!’
The ground splits apart.
There is no time to react, to think of what should be said or done. I push backwards with my legs as the floor begins to give, and my head hits something hard as I fall. I scrabble behind me, touch the door, grab the handle – how did I get so close to the door? It can’t be real. But it is solid, it stays solid, as the rest of the room sags, drops away, screaming, grinding, shouting so loud at its disappearance. I can’t see Kay or Rebecca, but I can see Vanessa. She is holding on to Moira, who remains upright, an island in the centre of the moving ground. Vanessa’s terror is palpable, and so is Moira’s amusement, written on her face, and through the fretwork of cracks that now cover her, life pulses, reaches out: more than life, more than flesh. She glows. Vanessa is shouting something at her; I can’t hear. Moira’s hands are golden, and they move, they move, so slowly, up to Vanessa’s open mouth, and they close around her lips and pull apart, stretching, stretching the skin until they are ripped free of Vanessa’s face, and there is so much blood, and then the door swings back, into the corridor, and snaps from its hinges, so that I am shaken free of the handle to land on something cold and hard underneath me.
I realise I’m shouting the word no, no, no, over and over. I can’t hear myself but my own lips are saying it. I’m in the corridor, the lines of the walls are angular, sloping inwards to meet just above my head, and the stairs at the far end have formed a concertina, squashing, shrinking, and then I can’t see them any more as the air thickens with dust, and breathing becomes so hard that my mouth stops moving and my chest hardens into a stone of pain.
CHAPTER TEN
He watched Inger knock on the door of the wooden chalet, wait, then knock again. She moved to a darkened window, cupped her hands to the glass, and looked inside. Then turned, and saw him. She pulled a face: a caricature of the disapproving mother. He couldn’t help but laugh.
She stamped up to him. ‘I don’t find this funny.’
‘Sorry.’ But David couldn’t stop smiling at her. The night was so clean, making his skin tingle with its freshness. He had never felt so well. Maybe this was a by-product of all he had gone through in the last few days. Catharsis had taken place, and he was now a better version of himself. He felt it.
‘She’s not there, anyway,’ said Inger, putting her hands on her hips. ‘Nobody’s there. She was sharing with two other ladies. The only organised activity on a Monday night is massage therapy with Janet. Could she have gone to that?’
‘She’s not a massage person.’ He’d tried to rub her feet when they first got married, and she’d clenched them up into birdish claws and told him she was far too ticklish to enjoy it. Could that have been a lie?
‘I don’t know, then,’ said Inger. She puffed out her cheeks, then said, ‘We should go back.’
David looked around. Something was building. He felt it in the darkening sky, the curves of the ground. He remembered the round, white house, visible in the distance. It had struck him as the hub of the island, around which all things rotated. He’d felt the pull of it. It would sound ridiculous to Inger, so instead he said, ‘Come on,’ and set off back the way they came, following his instincts, wondering where this new confidence in them sprang from.