Page 27 of Beautiful Ugly

I lie awake thinking about Abby, as always.

What if she was scared that someone was going to hurt her, so she decided to disappear and find somewhere to hide? Somewhere remote like the Isle of Amberly, where she would be safe? Where nobody would think to look?

Hope can be just as devastating as despair.

I worry that not sleeping properly for months has done permanent damage to my mind. Nothing has been the same since thatnight. Even when I do sleep it is rarely for long. The first few doctors I saw about my insomnia were sympathetic but useless. Saying things likepills are a last resortand suggesting I make a list of my worries before bedtime. Another told me to try meditation. Surprisingly, to me, that worked for a while until it didn’t. They all told me to cut down on screen time and avoid alcohol. Both of which are things I can’t do, and besides, alcohol is the only thing thatdoessometimes quiet my mind when life is too loud.

I think there are just too many questions rattling around inside my broken brain:

What happened to my wife that night?

Where is she?

Is she alive?

Questions that nobody has answers for.

I remember showing our joint bank statements to Kitty, pointing out the large sums of money Abby had withdrawn in the months before she disappeared. Kitty was as baffled as I was about her goddaughter’s behavior, and too polite to say out loud what so many others I’m sure were thinking: that Abby had staged her own disappearance. I didn’t blame them because that’s what I would have thought too. But they didn’t know her like I did; she would never do something like that. And now, just like all those other nights, she is all I can think of. Wondering how well I really knew my wife and whether I’ll ever know the truth.

The last doctor I saw took pity on my sorry story and reluctantly prescribed sleeping pills, but they don’t really help. Not unless I double the recommended dose. Even if I manage to get a few hours rest, I’m so deeply tired after all these months that my head feels fuzzy. Like there is permanent white noise all around me. My memory is noticeably affected too, and some days I barely have enough energy to function. Sometimes I can’t form proper sentences anymore; I literally can’t find the words, which is a bit of a problem for a writer. I’ve read that long-term insomnia cancause hallucinations and paranoia, and I’m starting to wonder if that’s what is happening to me now. But I find the newspaper article and it’s real. I didn’t imagine that.Someoneis trying to tell mesomething.

Writing a book can mean long periods of isolation filled with intense self-doubt and sustained self-loathing. If the books are not well behaved it feels like doing daily battle with myself for months, and I fight dirty when cornered. Not all varieties of self-harm are possible to see. The people who tried to support me when Abby first disappeared soon stopped calling. I didn’t have the energy to see or even talk to people and they didn’t seem to understand. How could they? My whole world imploded the day she disappeared. I couldn’t eat. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t write, and sometimes it felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was too tired to see anyone, too tired to do anything much at all. I told everyone I was busy, that the best cure for heartbreak was hard work, but really all I was doing was staring at a blank page on a screen and drinking myself to oblivion. Lost inside myself. Reliving the night she disappeared over and over again, thinking she’d still be there if I had done something differently. It felt like the end of my world, but I soon learned that the rest of the world goes on spinning with or without you.

Abby made me happy. And writing used to make me happy too. It was something I truly loved; I lived to write and I wrote to live. But all of that has changed for me now. Writing is like being beaten to death by your own dream. It began with not being able to write, but these past few months I’ve been so tired I can’t even read. When I try, the words seem to move sideways across the page, like the view out of a fast-moving train. I know I need to rest but I can’t, not until I know what happened to the woman I loved.

I see her everywhere but I thought it was just my tired mind playing tricks on me. After what Midge and Sandy told me tonightabout a mystery woman coming to Amberly last year, and the newspaper article slipped beneath the door, I’m not so sure.

What if my wife really was here on this island?

What if she still is?

Unable to switch off the thoughts and fears that are always too loud, I lie awake in the darkness. I long for sleep but it doesn’t find me. I open my eyes and am grateful for the beautiful view at least. The glass doors at the back of the cabin really do bring the outside inside and I am living on the edge in more ways than one. From my bed, I can see the almost full moon reflected in the ocean beneath a star-stained sky. The sound of the sea in the distance, a sound Abby hated, calms me like a watery lullaby.

Until I see a face in the window.

SILENT SCREAM

Anumber of characters in my books have emitted a silent scream when something terrifying happens to them. In real life, I do not scream silently. In real life, the sound that comes out of my mouth when I see a face outside the window in the middle of the night is surprisingly high pitched and very loud.

The dog leaps off the bed looking terrified, but only because he has been woken from a deep sleep by a sound his owner has never made before. I jump up too, but when I look back at the window there is nobody there.

Fear is a shape-shifter. Mine soon turns into anger.Someonecame in here and took those bones from beneath the floorboards,someoneleft an old article written by my wife for me to find, andsomeonewas outside just now, in the middle of the night, watching me. I instinctively reach for my phone, forgetting that it doesn’t work, but who would I call if it did? There are no police, only Sandy. There might not be any crime on this island butsomeoneis up to no good.

I’m not imagining it.

I look around the cabin for something I can use as a weapon todefend myself should I need to, and settle on the iron poker next to the wood-burning stove. Then I unlock the huge glass doors, sliding them open, adrenaline pumping through me.

“I know you’re out there. Show yourself!” I say, trying not to sound afraid.

I close the doors behind me to prevent Columbo from following, and step out onto the decked area, the roar of the sea suddenly loud in my ears. The temperature has dropped dramatically and the cool night air stops me in my tracks. Coming out here in just my pajamas wasn’t terribly smart. I spin around, like some wild, untamed creature—careful not to get too close to the edge or the steep drop it hides in the dark—but I can’t see anything. Or anyone. All I can see at first are clouds of my own breath. My eyes adjust to the light as I look up at the darkest of skies and then down at the unforgiving black ocean. The night sky here is so clear and the stars are so much brighter than I have ever seen them anywhere else. It’s strange to think that this spectacular night sky is always above us, wherever we are. We’re all just too busy looking down to remember to look up. The tide is in now and the sea, like my mind, is not calm tonight. I can hear the waves smashing into the cliff below, and a sentinel of trees swaying, creaking, and groaning in the distance behind me as though I have disturbed them. Woken them from their slumber.

I glimpse something move out of the corner of my eye.

A shadow darts through the trees to the side of the cabin.

I turn just in time to see that it is a large stag with huge antlers. It stops, then twists its head to look back at me from the safety of the forest, two enormous brown eyes staring in my direction. Maybe that is what I saw in the window?

Then I hear something else, something unfamiliar at first.