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Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The End of the World
The car smelled like old leather and rain.
Corinne Bellamy pressed her forehead against the window and watched Scotland blur past in streaks of grey and green. Hills rolled on forever, dotted with sheep that looked like cotton balls someone had dropped and forgotten about. The road narrowed as they drove north, and the sky grew heavier, as if it were slowly sitting down on the land.
"Nearly there," said the driver, a quiet man named Douglas who'd picked her up at Inverness station. He'd tried to make conversation twice and given up both times.
Corinne didn't feel like talking. She didn't feel like doing much of anything, except maybe turning the car around and driving all the way back to London, where her parents were probably finishing their last round of packing. In three days they'd fly to South Sudan for their humanitarian posting. Two years. They'd be gone for two whole years, and instead of taking her along, they'd arranged for her to live with Great-Uncle Phillip—a man she'd met exactly once, at a funeral, when she was six.
"He has plenty of room," her mother had said gently. "And the school in the village is lovely."
"You'll have an adventure," her father had added, squeezing her shoulder.
Corinne hadn't wanted an adventure. She'd wanted to stay home.
The car turned off the main road onto a gravel lane lined with wind-bent trees. The branches reached over like a tunnel, and then suddenly the trees ended and Corinne saw it: Halflight House.
It was enormous and grey, perched on a cliff above the North Sea. Three stories of dark stone with tall, narrow windows, a slate roof patched in places with newer tiles, and chimneys that leaned at odd angles. The garden—if you could call it that—was a tangle of overgrown hedges and wild grass that went right up to the cliff's edge. Below, the sea crashed and churned, white foam spraying against black rocks.
"Cheerful," Corinne muttered.
Douglas carried her suitcase to the front door, which opened before he could knock. A woman stood in the doorway—short, broad-shouldered, with silver hair pulled back in a tight bun and sharp blue eyes that looked Corinne up and down like she was checking a delivery.
"Corinne Bellamy," the woman said. It wasn't a question. "I'm Bette Louden. I keep the house. Come in before the wind takes you."
The entrance hall was dim and cold. A staircase curved upward into shadow. Paintings of stormy seascapes hung on the walls, and the whole place smelled of wood polish and salt air.
"Your great-uncle is in his study," Bette said, leading her down a corridor. "He works in the mornings and is not to be disturbed. Lunch is at twelve-thirty. Your room is on the second floor, east wing. I've put fresh towels out."
"Will I—can I meet him?" Corinne asked.
Bette paused. "He'll join you for supper. Perhaps."
The "perhaps" hung in the air like a cobweb.
Corinne's room was large but bare—a brass bed, a wardrobe, a desk by the window. The window looked out over the sea, which was the color of iron. She sat on the bed and listened to the wind moan around the corners of the house. Somewhere far below, waves boomed against the cliffs.
She unpacked slowly. Her mother had tucked a photograph into her suitcase: the three of them at the beach in Cornwall last summer, all sunburned and laughing. Corinne set it on the desk, face down.
Supper was in a dining room big enough for twenty people. Corinne sat at one end of a long table, and Great-Uncle Phillip sat at the other. He was tall and thin, with a white beard and deep-set eyes that seemed to be looking at something very far away. He wore a wool cardigan with a hole in the elbow.
"Welcome," he said, and then ate his soup without another word.
Corinne ate hers too. The soup was good—Bette was a fine cook—but the silence was so thick she could almost chew on it. When she finished, Phillip nodded once, stood, and left the room.
That was it. That was her welcome to Halflight House.
Lying in bed that night, listening to the wind and the sea and the creaking of a house that seemed to breathe around her, Corinne made a decision. She would survive this. She would count the days until her parents came back, and she would not cry, and she would not care about this cold house or the cold man who lived in it.
Then, just as she was drifting off, she heard it.
Someone was crying.
It was faint—muffled, as if it came from behind walls—but it was unmistakable. A child's voice, sobbing in the dark.
Corinne sat up, her heart hammering. She listened hard. The crying rose and fell, then stopped. The house settled back into silence.
In the morning, she told Bette what she'd heard.
Bette didn't look up from the dishes. "Old houses make all sorts of noises. Wind in the pipes. You'll get used to it."
"It wasn't pipes," Corinne said. "It sounded like a person."
"You were dreaming," Bette said firmly, and that was the end of it.
