Page 70 of The Clifftop Cottage

And now, here they were.

Steven was saying something else to the nurse now. Erica could barely focus on the words.

She wanted to tell him she was fine. That she’d rest. That she’d fix herself.

But then, his fingers squeezed hers.

This wasn’t up for debate.

Her throat closed up.

She glanced at him – at his calm expression, the slight crease between his brows that made him look worried. He looked the part.

He knew how this would appear.

He knew she wouldn’t fight him here.

And so Erica let herself be led forward, deeper inside, as the doors whispered shut behind her.

Sealing her in.

Leaving him on the other side.

Again.

24

Leah had spent the morning wrestling with black satin, cutting, pleating, acting as if she knew exactly what she was doing. She didn’t. She lacked creative flair of any kind, and yet she’d promised Maisie a cape – a beautiful one, with a flash of red that would billow when she spun.

Why had she said she’d do it?

Especially now, when things with Dylan felt … off.

Maybe because it felt like something she could get right.

She remembered the moment clearly now. Maisie, eyes wide with excitement, her little fingers trailing over a picture in a book. A special cape, the kind a real witch would wear. “You’ll make it, won’t you, Mummy?” she had asked, so earnestly, so sure of Leah’s ability to make anything happen.

And Leah had nodded. Smiled. Said, “Of course.”

Because Maisie asked for very little. Because Halloween – or guising, as Leah kept reminding her – was the event of the year in her daughter’s world.

“Not trick-or-treating,” Leah had corrected her more times than she could count. “Guising.”

It wasn’t just knocking on doors and holding out a bag the way they did in American films. Here, you had to earn your sweets – a joke, a poem, a wee song if you were brave enough. Half the village still took it very seriously.

Leah liked that. There was something old-fashioned about it. Something rooted.

And still, even now, something about it warmed her. Maybe because guising was one of the few bright, vivid memories she had from those two fleeting years her family had lived in Rock Cove when she was a child. Erica had been too young to remember it, of course, but for Leah, it had lodged somewhere deep, like a quiet landmark. Something stable.

They had moved so often because of their father’s military postings, it all blurred together. But not Rock Cove. Not the autumn mist rolling in from the sea, or the sound of kids’ voices echoing off the cobbled streets on Halloween night. Leah had carried the memory with her all these years, tucked into her chest like a pressed leaf.

When Dylan’s job brought them back to Scotland, it was the only place she wanted to be. As though this place might finally let them put down roots.

Maisie had loved guising from the moment she was old enough to join in, but this year was different. This year Auntie Eri would be there.

Ever the little performer, she'd clapped her hands together.

“Oh! Should I sing a song this time? Maybe Auntie Eri will sing with me?”