The Folly

by Gemma Amor

Genres: Psychological Thrillers; Gothic

Synopsis

An ex-con, wrongly convicted of his wife’s murder and subsequently acquitted, and his daughter move into an abandoned decorative folly on the cornish coastline to escape their past, but a stranger bearing secrets—and an important message—soon catches up with them.

Morgan always knew her father, Owen, never murdered her mother, and has spent the last six years campaigning for his release from prison. After a retrial, a fresh jury acquits him, and he is set free into an uncertain world. A pandemic is sweeping across the nation, Morgan is broke, and both of them have the heavy stench of a highly publicized trial. Both need a change of scene, as Morgan can no longer live in the house that was last decorated by her Mother’s blood after she fell down the stairs - the accident her father was wrongly accused of orchestrating. Or was he?

Salvation comes in the form of a tall, dark and somewhat notorious decorative granite tower on the Cornish coastline known only as ‘The Folly’. The owner is used to rehabilitating ex-cons, and offers them new life, in exchange for taking care of The Folly. It’s an offer that is too good to refuse.

At first, the Folly is idyllic, but soon a stranger arrives who seems obsessed with Morgan’s dead mother. The stranger acts like her mother, talks like her mother, and wears her dead mother’s clothes. It quickly becomes apparent that he has a message, but with each new encounter, Morgan becomes increasingly unsure as to what that message is, and worse, who it is she is dealing with, exactly: a deranged stranger hell-bent on vengeance, or her restless Mother’s spirit itself?

As a strained father and daughter become increasingly uncomfortable in the Folly, the stranger continues to haunt and taunt them. Questions pile up: who exactly is this stranger? Why must he speak, act and dress like her deceased mother? Is her father as innocent as she always thought? And, most importantly, what happened the night her mother died?

Release date: November 12, 2024

Publisher: Datura Books

Print pages: 160

Sample

ONE

He shuffled out of the prison door in a daze, a small bag of belongings clutched to his chest. I saw him pause as the early light of day embraced him. He closed his eyes briefly, and dragged in a deep, full breath, up through his nostrils, out through his mouth. I had haggled for his release to be set at five in the morning, to help us avoid attention from the press. I had not accounted for how surreal exiting into an empty, quiet street must have felt for him. Like exiting onto the moon after a long flight.

The sky overhead was drenched in pink fire that morning, bright streaks of blue raking through. The prison walls, tall, thick, built of Victorian red brick, caught the weird dawn glow and hung on to it. It gave the complex a surreal, artificially lit aspect, as if it were a movie set or a paint and canvas creation, not the brutal bricks-and-mortar structure that had stolen my father for six and a half long years.

Prison had not been kind to Dad. That release day, I could not believe how much older than his true age he looked. Of course, I had visited him every week while he was inside, but now he was out, I could see clearly how diminished he was. White-haired, he stooped, which didn’t suit him. My father had always been a straight-backed sort of man, a man who had once been proud of his height. Now he moved as if he were an inconvenience, as if he were actively trying to lessen the amount of space he took up in the world. He was thin, too, cheeks saggy. I was glad I had a shepherd’s pie waiting for him at home, calorie-dense, smothered in cheese. I had made an apple tart for dessert, which I would serve with custard or clotted cream, or both, depending on how hungry he was.

Dad took a few more hesitant steps across the carpark. I went to him. We had been apart for a long time. I didn’t want to waste another second.

“Hello, Dad,” I said, gently taking his bag. It wasn’t heavy, but he was having a difficult time with it. His arms shook. I swallowed back tears. My heart was pounding. I was determined not to cry in front of him. He had enough to deal with. He didn’t need my sentimentality on top of everything else.

“Hello, love,” he replied in a gravelly voice. “You didn’t have to come get me. I could have got a taxi.”

I shook my head, wondering when he would hug me. “With what money?” I scolded. “Come here.” I could see he wasn’t going to make a move, so I made it for him, wrapping him in a tight embrace. He stiffened at first, then slowly returned it. I drank in his smell, which I had nearly forgotten. Bones dug into me through his clothes. I estimated he’d lost at least thirty pounds, maybe more. He didn’t feel like my dad, not yet, but he would soon enough. I would make sure of it.

We leaned into each other for a minute, then broke apart.

“Right then,” I said, clearing my throat. “Let’s get out of here, shall we? Before the media shows up.”

“Yes, please,” he replied, and I could see ghosts in his eyes.

 

TWO

Dad’s sentence had originally been a fifteen-year sentence. He served just over six of that, give or take thirteen months, which we both begrudged. I had hoped the furious media interest in his appeal and retrial would expedite his release, but, if anything, it had slowed things down. Bureaucracy, paperwork, logistics… the system wanted to hang on to him, an innocent man. A victim of a miscarriage of justice, although the press wouldn’t communicate it that way. Dad’s trial had been a trial of public opinion. It had not taken me long to learn that the truth, the real truth, as far as anyone could ever know it without having been present, was nowhere near sensational enough to drive clicks and sell papers. Accidents didn’t make money, murder did. The best I could hope for now was a version of events that meant we could live our lives together again in peace, lives that had been disrupted beyond all belief after a simple trip, a split-second tumble. I tried not to feel angry about how things had gone, although I was. I was angrier than I knew how to cope with, but I squashed it down. Anger wasn’t useful. Patience, I had found, was the only useful virtue. And acceptance. True, my family life had imploded in the space of an hour, but now…I had my dad back. That was all that mattered. Now was the time to look forward, not back. I could change none of the past.

I could change our future, though, for the better.

“There are still a lot of forms to fill out,” I told him, putting the car into reverse and awkwardly three-point turning in the narrow street outside the prison. An approaching car barreling in the opposite direction jerked to a halt and honked, the driver motioning for me to hurry up. I waved back calmly. City drivers were all bluster, nothing more. The trick was not to back down, not to show that they had gotten to you.

“And we have a lot to discuss,” I continued, eventually pointing us in the right direction and letting the other car squeeze past aggressively. Our wing mirrors clipped. Dirty looks were exchanged. The other car’s exhaust belched and roared, and the vehicle sped off. Just another encounter in a world full of aggravation and stress, par for the course for the times. The pandemic had brought out the very worst in people, I thought, but I didn’t say so to my father.

I pulled away from the prison for what I hoped would be the very last time. I felt as if I knew every aspect and contour of the place, every brick and slab. I hated it.

Dad, meanwhile, watched the building grow smaller in the rearview mirror.

“You know,” he said quietly, “I’ve waited so long for this moment, and now it’s here, I’m afraid.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Everything. All of it.” He waved a hand at the world passing slowly by: shuttered shops covered in graffiti, cafes, bakeries, vomit-splattered bus stops,

greengrocers, pubs with tables and chairs stacked atop each other on the path outside, a church, a supermarket, pound stores, designer boutiques, estate agent offices, second-hand furniture stores—a relentless commercial jumble, a chaotic urban kaleidoscope that must have been a lot to absorb after the sparse and spartan world of prison. Even if it was all closed doors, now. To me, it felt like a zombie town. The city had been in lockdown for so long it was hard to remember what life had been like before. For Dad, though, it must have been a siege upon the senses.

“Want me to put you back in?” I joked, although the joke hurt my heart. “I could drop you off in time for lunch.”

He chuckled, just one short burst of hard-won mirth, then hung his head as if he did not deserve to laugh. I could almost see the hefty mantle of guilt sitting heavily on his shoulders as he began to process his freedom. He didn’t feel he deserved it, even if it had been granted by law. He had been so conditioned to his own worthlessness inside, it would take time to reprogram him as a blameless man, I knew. Patience would be necessary. We would have to rebuild him, brick by brick, from the ground up. It wouldn’t be quick or easy, but time would play its part. And space to breathe. Peace. Fresh air. A change of scene.

I had a plan for all of that.

He could sense my mood, in that intuitive way he’d always been able to with me.

“You don’t have to do all this, you know,” he said, patting my hand as it rested on the gear stick. “You don’t have to put me up. I can find my own way. My own place.”

“I’m not so sure about that.”

He shook his head. “A parent should look after his child, not the other way around. Not at your age.”

I shook my own head in mild exasperation. “At my age? I’m pretty sure most people my age are looking after at least one parent, if not both. You aren’t a spring chicken anymore, Dad. This is how it works, isn’t it? It’s why people have children.”

He sighed. “That cynical brain came straight from your mother, didn’t it.” 

I pursed my lips. “Don’t. I can’t, not today.”

“You know what I mean. I should be able to look after myself.”

“And you would live where exactly? You know how difficult it will be to get a job. Especially at the moment. People are losing their jobs left, right, and centre. And it’ll be a nightmare trying to get insurance. And you don’t have the money to rent, you lost all your savings.”

“Jobseeker’s allowance,” he muttered, a little cowed. “Universal Credit.”

“Those will only get you so far in this city. Do you know how expensive it is to rent these days? You want to live in some mouldy old hovel with a bunch of addicts? Or a tent in the centre of town? Camp out in the Bearpit? Stop being silly. You’re my dad. Of course you’re going to live with me. ...