The Girl on the Cliff: A Novel - Softcover

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Lucinda Riley was the New York Times bestselling author of over twenty novels, including The Orchid House, The Girl on the Cliff, and the Seven Sisters series. Her books have sold twenty million copies in thirty-five languages globally. She was born in Ireland and divided her time between England and West Cork with her husband and four children. Visit her website at LucindaRiley.com.

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The Girl on the Cliff

1

Dunworley Bay, West Cork, Ireland

The small figure was standing perilously close to the edge of the cliff. Her luxuriant, long red hair had been caught by the strong breeze and was flying out behind her. A thin white cotton dress reached to her ankles and exposed her small, bare feet. Her arms were held taut, palms facing out toward the foaming mass of gray sea beneath her, her pale face looking upward, as if she were offering herself as a sacrifice to the elements.

Grania Ryan stood watching her, hypnotized by the wraithlike vision. Her senses were too jumbled to tell her whether what she was seeing before her was real or imagined. She closed her eyes for a split second, then reopened them, and saw that the figure was still there. With the appropriate messages sent to her brain, she took a couple of tentative steps forward.

As she drew nearer, Grania realized the figure was no more than a child; that the white cotton she was wearing was a nightdress. Grania could see the black storm clouds hovering out over the sea and the first saltwater droplets of impending rain stung her cheeks. The frailty of the small human against the wildness of her surroundings made her steps toward the child more urgent in pace.

The wind was whipping around her ears now and had started to voice its rage. Grania stopped ten yards from the girl, who was still unmoving. She saw the tiny blue toes holding her stoically to the rock, as the rising wind whipped and swayed her thin body like a willow sapling. She moved closer to the girl, stopping just behind her, uncertain of what to do next. Grania’s instinct was to run forward and grab her, but if the girl was startled and turned around, one missed footfall could result in unthinkable tragedy, taking the child to certain death on the foam-covered rocks a hundred feet below.

Grania stood, panic gripping her as she desperately tried to think of the best way to remove her from danger. But before she could reach a decision, the girl slowly turned around and stared at her with unseeing eyes.

Instinctively Grania held out her arms. “I won’t hurt you, I promise. Walk toward me and you’ll be safe.”

Still the girl stared at her, not moving from her spot on the edge of the cliff.

“I can take you home if you tell me where you live. You’ll catch your death out here. Please, let me help you,” Grania begged.

She took another step toward the child, and then, as if the girl had woken up from a dream, a look of fear crossed her face. Instantly, she turned to her right and began to run away from Grania along the cliff’s edge, disappearing from view.

• • •

“I was just about to be sending out the search party for you. That storm’s blowing up well and good, so it is.”

“Mam, I’m thirty-one years old, and I’ve lived in Manhattan for the past ten of those,” replied Grania drily as she entered the kitchen and hung her wet jacket over the AGA stove. “You don’t have to mind me. I’m a big girl now, remember?” She smiled as she walked toward her mother, who was setting the table for supper, and kissed her on the cheek. “Really.”

“That’s as may be, but I’ve known stronger men by far blown off the cliff in a gale like this.” Kathleen Ryan indicated the wildness of the wind outside the kitchen window, which was causing the flowerless wisteria bush to tap its twiggy brown deadness monotonously against the pane. “I’ve just made a brew.” Kathleen wiped her hands on her apron and walked toward the AGA. “Would you be wanting a cup?”

“That would be grand, Mam. Why don’t you sit down and take the weight off your feet for a few minutes, and I’ll pour it for both of us?” Grania steered her mother to a kitchen chair, pulled it back from the table and sat her gently onto it.

“Only five minutes, mind, the boys will be back at six for their tea.”

As Grania poured the strong liquid into two cups, she raised a silent eyebrow at her mother’s domestic dedication to her husband and her son. Not that anything had changed in the past ten years since she’d been away—Kathleen had always pandered to her men, putting their needs and desires first. But the contrast of her mother’s life to her own, where emancipation and equality of the sexes was standard, made Grania feel uncomfortable.

And yet . . . for all her own freedom from what many modern women would consider outdated male tyranny, who was currently the most content out of mother and daughter? Grania sighed sadly as she added milk to her mother’s tea. She knew the answer to that.

“There you go, Mam. Would you like a biscuit?” Grania put the tin in front of Kathleen and opened it. As usual, it was full to the brim with custard creams, bourbons and shortbread rounds. Another relic of childhood, and one that would be looked on with the same horror as a small nuclear device by her figure-conscious New York contemporaries.

Kathleen took two and said, “Go on, have one yourself to keep me company. To be sure, you don’t eat enough to keep a mouse alive.”

Grania nibbled dutifully at a biscuit, thinking how, ever since she’d arrived home ten days ago, she’d felt stuffed to bursting with her mother’s copious home cooking. Yet Grania would say that she had the healthiest appetite out of most of the women she knew in New York. And she actually used her oven as it was designed for, not as a convenient place to store plates.

“The walk cleared your head a little, did it?” ventured Kathleen, making her way through her third biscuit. “Whenever I have a problem in my mind to be sorted, I’ll be off walking and come back knowing the answer.”

“Actually . . .” Grania took a sip of tea. “I saw something strange, Mam, when I was out. A little girl, maybe eight or nine, standing in her nightie right up on the cliff’s edge. She had beautiful long, curly red hair . . . it was as if she was sleepwalking, because she turned to look at me when I walked toward her and her eyes were”—she searched for the right description—“blank. Like she wasn’t seeing me. Then she seemed to wake up and scampered off like a startled rabbit up the cliff path. Do you know who she might have been?”

Grania watched the color drain from Kathleen’s face. “Are you OK, Mam?”

Kathleen visibly shook herself. She stared at her daughter. “You say you saw her just a few minutes ago on your walk?”

“Yes.”

“Mary, Mother of God.” Kathleen crossed herself. “They’re back.”

“Who’s ‘back,’ Mam?” asked Grania, concerned by how shaken her mother seemed to be.

“Why have they returned?” Kathleen stared off through the window and into the night. “Why would they be wanting to? I thought . . . I thought it was finally over, that they’d be gone for good.” Kathleen grabbed Grania’s hand. “Are you sure it was a little girl you saw, not a grown woman?”

“Positive, Mam. As I said, she was aged about eight or nine. I was concerned for her; she had nothing on her feet and looked frozen. To be honest, I wondered whether I was seeing a ghost.”

“You were of a fashion, Grania,” Kathleen muttered....