Puppet Master

Chapter One

It probably started on the night that she lost her parents.

She couldn’t be sure, because it felt like he’d always been there, tucked away in her heart, like a jigsaw puzzle that she was just waiting to come to fruition, long before that dusky, windswept evening a few weeks after her seventeenth birthday. But it seemed like the most appropriate start to the story, as far as she could see.

Her father’s house was set back almost a mile from even the county road that ran across the mountains: High above the small fishing village, the river, and the bridge that connected it all to the next town. Secluded as she was, almost nestled within a cradle of trees when you looked towards the grand, three-storey cottage, with its lead piped windows, and mauve slated roof, from the road, she’d known the second she heard the rap at the door at eight o’clock, on a Wednesday evening in the middle of November, that there would be bad news at the other side of it. Good news on a Wednesday would constitute a phone call, a text message, but nobody would visit with it.

Opening that front door, she had felt for the two middle-aged police officers in their full uniforms, but still freezing. She’d pitied them their drive off the beaten track, the flush in their cheeks belying the chill in the air. She recognised the pity in their sombre faces. She knew that awkward feeling in their eyes, of an empathy that they couldn’t quite muster, and she broke down in tears, crumbling to the floor like a toddler, before they could even get their words out. Clinging to the wooden door frame, as though it would take away their words, take away all of the actions that had preceded this moment, and fix it all for her.

Six months earlier, the visitor had been younger, healthier, wearing a military uniform and carrying a letter, written by her beloved older brother, to his family, in the event that he should be injured or killed: A letter that they would keep safe, and deliver on his behalf, if the need arose. She’d been locked out of the lounge area, while her parents spoke quietly with their guest, and she didn’t hear a thing except her mother’s sobbing, and the heart wrenching wails of despair. For the first time in Vittoria’s young life, her mother hadn’t offered her guest a cup of tea, or drawn his attention to the priceless, beloved artworks that adorned her entrance hall, she had, in fact, not even greeted the man. She had opened the door, her eyes filling with tears at the sight of him, and turned to call Tori’s father to her side, in a small, pitiful voice that somehow carried through the empty corridors to his study.

And then her beloved father, such a calm, unassuming, old world gentleman, had gently shepherded the three of them onto the chesterfield leather sofas in their family area, built for comfort as it was, closed the door on his youngest daughter, and watched quietly as a tragedy ripped it apart.

But she’d seen the look in the military man’s eyes then, and it was exactly the same as these two pairs at her front door.

Six months earlier, that visitor came with news of the death of her eldest brother Caleb, in Afghanistan, following a gunshot wound in the centre of his mammoth chest, that had killed him instantly.

She didn’t need to hear the details from these strangers, she needed only to know that this was one more heartbreaking grief ridden six months to follow the last.

Her parents, they gently informed her, had been involved in a tragic accident on their way to a second honeymoon in Scotland. They’d planned the trip to recuperate, to heal, as they were beginning to, following their tragedy. Unfortunately, as the roads were so wet with the sleet and the rain, her father had lost control of their pale blue Saab, a car ironically renowned for its safety provisions, and it had overturned into the central barrier. They never suffered, she was assured, the coroner was almost certain that they’d both died almost instantly.