For Rye Gavin Gardiner (best book club books for discussion TXT) 📖

‘I’m sorry,’ Sandie frantically begged. ‘I didn’t mean…I didn’t—’

The telephone rang upstairs. Renata whipped her head towards the door, then back to the sobbing girl. She grabbed the insulation tape and began wrapping it around the girl’s jaw. Sandie wrestled against her restraints as Renata stormed up the stairs and into the living room.

She picked up the receiver.

‘Hello? Miss Wakefield? I’m sorry to disturb you again. It’s Hector O’Connell.’

She swallowed.

‘I wanted to apologise for my last visit.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Staying in Millbury Peak to care for your father, that’s noble. It’s not my place to tell you to leave.’

Renata switched hands, staring at the bookcase. ‘Will there be anything else, Detective?’

‘Yes,’ said Hector. ‘I needed to reiterate that finding your mother’s killer is still all that matters to me. I won’t rest until they’re brought to justice. Sylvia’s murder, the truck explosion, this exhumed grave, and now the disappearance of Sandie Rye. It’s all linked, and I promise I’ll uncover the truth.’ He paused. ‘I’ll visit again soon, and I’m afraid I won’t take no for an answer. Your father and I go way back, and I consider it my duty to assist in his care. You’re not in this alone, Miss Wakefield.’

Renata opened her mouth, but it was too late. The dialling tone hummed in her ear. She let go of the receiver, letting it clatter against the sideboard as she went to the cellar door.

She stood staring through the narrow gap between the bookcase and the doorway. This girl wasn’t the only moth in her world. The detective, everyone like him: all moths. They fluttered and fought for their share of the light, and, like the insect’s obsession, knew evil only from within the narrowest realms of understanding. To them, evil was the extinguishing of that light. Yes, that was it. The light goes out, you step up and find the switch. Bring it back so the fluttering may continue.

But for Renata Wakefield, the veil had been lifted. She saw evil for what it was: evil was good, and good was evil. Yes, one and the same, an arbitrary human construct. Men like Detective O’Connell, blinded by a preconceived notion of duality, were unable to see past a single face of the coin.

I’ll visit again soon.

The detective had left her no choice. If he ever stepped into this house again, she would show him the truth. Evil is good, good is evil. The coin spins on.

But first she would see if she could stop it coming to that.

She slipped through the gap into the cellar, leaving the bookcase partially covering the door. Her eyes followed the fluorescent strips across the ceiling to the end of the chamber and down to the trembling girl. She edged towards the teenager.

‘You speak of God in your diary entries,’ said Renata, taking the VapoRub from her apron and dabbing it under her own nose. ‘He left me, abandoned me. Just like everyone else. I was discarded, forgotten, left to rot in a purgatory of white corridors. What do you think he makes of your plight, child? What would be the sense of him helping you but not me all those years ago?’ The girl gazed at Renata, her stare hollow. ‘Truth,’ she continued, ‘it can be a killer. No one’s out there for you, least of all God. You apologised for whatever’s happened to me. The truth happened to me, little moth.’ She reached for the bloodstained scissors. ‘Would you mind if I told you a story?’ Renata asked with a smile, snipping the air.

‘Pain…killers. Please, more…painkillers.’

‘There was a woman,’ Renata continued, ignoring the girl’s pleas. ‘Ballet dancer. This woman gave everything for her art, the only thing that made sense to her. She bled for it.’ Sandie cringed at the slicing blades. ‘Then a double-decker ploughed through her. She splattered on the front like a fly, was mangled like a ragdoll – but she lived.’ She looked at the girl. ‘And although she never danced again, she came to feel more alive than she thought possible. Now that she couldn’t dance, time opened up before her. She read, she loved, she travelled. That bus ripped her apart, but it also freed her.’

Renata held the scissors by the closed blades and inspected their orange handles.

‘You see, I was ripped apart,’ she continued. ‘I was torn to pieces by the truth, but then it put me back together. And now, well…I, too, am more alive than I thought possible.’ She moved behind Sandie’s chair and ran her fingers through the girl’s hair, swaying and gazing into the light above. ‘My dear, all I want is for the truth to put you back together, as well.’ She lowered her mouth to Sandie’s ear, wrapping the blonde hair around her closed fist, then whispered, ‘There was no ballet dancer.’ Tears streamed down the teenager’s face. ‘It’s not as easy as that. The only truth that can put you back together is within yourself.’ She ran her tongue up Sandie’s trembling cheek, tasting the tears and mascara. ‘But first,’ she breathed, ‘you have to let it rip you apart.’

Renata yanked the girl’s head back and stared into her eyes from above. ‘Tell me you see.’

She slammed the handles of the scissors into Sandie’s mouth. The sound of dislodging teeth filled the cellar as the butt of the blades smashed a second time, the shock of the sudden onslaught rendering the girl silent until the third blow. She attempted to scream but instead gagged on blood.

In her delirium of pain, she may have thought of all those funfairs, those damned funfairs to which she must have been taken as a child. Maybe she remembered waiting at the popcorn cart while her bucket was filled, staring into the machine, the corn thrown