Original subtitles

From the first, I loved the cottage.

This was the one I wanted, and I disregarded all suggestions that I might

feel lonely here, with Andrew, my husband, away at sea one month out of

every two.

The whitewashed walls, irregular windows, and thatched roof were as

different as possible from the suburban house we'd left behind.

I thought I should never tire of looking out of the windows at the Cornish

countryside.

Beyond it, less than a mile away, The Great Atlantic.

I'd be solitary here, I thought, but not lonely.

And of course I'd have Kelly, our three-year-old daughter, to keep me

company. And Andy, the cross-eyed pregnant collie that Andrew bought me

before he went away.

To protect me, he said.

How good those first days were.

I left my car in the garage and made up my mind to become a walker again.

Most mornings, I went up to the village, Kelly in her pushchair.

I'd expected the villagers to treat us with reserve.

We were foreigners from London, after all.

But a three-year-old was a great breaker down the barriers.

Soon they knew her name and her Teddy's name she would be greeted with a smile

and sometimes the offer of goodies at the village shop

In

the

afternoons We went further afield, making the most of a spell of fine

autumn weather.

We walked through leafy woodland paths that smelt of wet moss.

Kelly called them green tunnels.

She saw her first seagull, and I shared her delight in discovering beaches

emptied of holidaymakers where we picked our way among the smooth, sea-washed

stones.

In the evenings, I would light a fire in my small sitting room, and with Kelly

asleep upstairs and the dog in her place on the hearth rug, I would sit down to

write to Andrew a daily chronicle of small events.

And always I would be looking ahead in my letters to the time when he would be

home to share it all with me.

Writing to him was so easy then.

Peaceful, ordinary days.

A little too peaceful, I began to think.

Without adult company, my life had shrunk to the scope and focus of a three

-year-old.

I was growing a bit restless and began to look round for a babysitter I could

trust.

Eventually, I asked a widow from down the road if she could do a bit of

cleaning and sitting in for me.

She and Kelly had taken to each other and I could confidently leave Kelly in

her charge some afternoons while I explored further afield.

One day, picking my usual way along the cliff top, I noticed a track half

overgrown with grass.

A narrow path, but definitely a path.

Come on, Andy. Come on.

Come on, you silly dog.

Come on.

Andy's a good girl. I followed its gradual descent.

Andy bounded ahead, excited by the country smells.

In the distance, I could hear waves breaking on the shore.

Suddenly, I found myself standing at the entrance to a secret cave.

The rocky cliffs rearing up on each side seemed to cut it off from the rest of

the world.

The waves made lace ruffles along the edge of the beach, peppered with large

stones.

With a wonderful sense of freedom, as though I had re-entered my own

childhood, I strode and ran about the beach, glorying in the great expanse of

firm sand.

I felt a child's delight in seeing my shadow stretched ahead of me, knife

sharp, as I followed Andy to the edge of the sea.

Full of energy, I began to climb the rocks, trying to possess myself of the

whole place.

I clambered up and was soon looking down on my cove as I thought of it from a

rocky platform.

I decided to bring Andrew here as soon as he came home.

I could just see him climbing up onto the ledge with Kelly on his shoulders.

An hour or so must have passed as I sat thinking about his leave and watching

the blue sea break into the foam below me.

Then, for no reason at all, I began to feel inexplicably uneasy.

I found myself thinking longingly of my cosy sitting room.

Carefully, we made our way down to the beach again.

As I stumbled across the rocks, I thought I heard something in the wind.

It had seemed to come from the rocks, but when I looked back... There was no

sign of anyone.

Then again, that sound.

This time, unmistakably, the cry of a child.

I set off again, half walking, half running, trying not to give way to fear.

It must have been a gull, I told myself.

Gulls can sound extraordinarily human, but I was fighting a sense of terror.

It was a relief to reach the road again and feel I was back in the world of

people and familiar places.

By the time I got to the front door, I was almost ready to laugh at my own

imaginings.

As soon as I walked in, I smelt cigarette smoke of a particular kind.

Then I saw the carpet bag on the hall floor.

And I knew with a sinking heart that Fran had come.

After parting on bad terms, I'd thought, I'd hoped, I might not see her again.

But Fran always turns up.

I looked through the window and saw her in the garden with Kelly.

There was no sign of Mrs. Kim's.

I assumed, with annoyance, that Fran had sent her home.

I steeled myself to seem welcoming as I went out to join them.

I suppose I've always slightly resented the way my daughter abandons me as soon

as Fran appears.

Fran cares nothing for children, I know, but she has quite a way with them when

she sets out to please, and she was certainly sparing no pains to please

Kelly.

Later, she told me she had just come back from wandering around India and

thought she would come down and see how I was making out in Cornwall.

It occurred to me, not for the first time, that I knew very little about her

past life, though mine is an open book to her.

She seemed amused at the idea of my living in an isolated cottage, but then

she's always taken a slightly mocking attitude to me.

When I came in with the tea, she was already settled in my chair.

Her presence, though she'd gone into one of her silent moods, changed the

normally happy atmosphere of the room.

I offered tea and conventional conversation, but then I'm a

conventional person.

Her reticence made me chatter on about the first things that came into my head.

All the time I was wondering, why has she come?

What did she want?

Andy obviously distrusted her.

Fran has no real place in my life.

I met her first when I was in London doing physiotherapy at one of the big

hospitals.

She introduced herself as a friend's cousin, or a cousin's friend, some such

tenuous connection.

After our first unremembered meeting, she was always dropping in.

I rather hoped that after my marriage, these visits would stop.

But Fran continued to drop in, and Andrew didn't seem to mind.

He said she interested him.

I used to tease him about it. She was just not his type.

It was soon obvious that Fran was here to stay for a while.

She had quickly made my pretty spare room her own.

It was filled with her clutter, including some strange clothing and

ornaments she had bought back from India.

But nothing gave a clue to her real background.

She remained the most remote and secret person I have ever known, in my house,

but not of it.

For all that I've seen so much of her over the years, I've never for a moment

felt comfortable with Fran.

There's something alien about her.

I wanted her out of my cottage.

Yet, as always, I couldn't even bring myself to ask how long she was staying.

So the days went by.

The rhythms of her life were quite different from mine.

She would still be asleep when we went to the village in the mornings.

Later in the day, she would go wandering off on her own.

I never knew where.

At night, long after I was in bed, the melancholy, haunting chords of her

guitar kept me awake.

Often I was on the point of getting up to tell her to stop it.

But something more than laziness kept me back.

It was though she held me in some sort of thrall.

Oh, no.

One day I came back from the village to find Andrew's photograph smashed to

pieces on the floor.

Must have been the wind, Fran had suggested.

But the windows were all shut.

More than ever, I wanted to be rid of her.

A few days later, I got a letter from Andrew.

Taking it to my favourite seat in the garden, I felt light-hearted for the

first time for days.

Andrew had a wonderful sense of humour.

His letters always make me laugh.

But in a moment, I found myself trying to keep back tears.

His leave had been postponed.

We must now wait seven weeks to see each other.

I felt unaccountably desolate, as though I were never going to see him again.

About to call Fran, I saw her moving away from a window.

And I was sure that somehow...

my news was known to her already.

disturbed and depressed, i decided to pack a picnic and get away from the

cottage for a long afternoon.

When Fran unexpectedly said she'd come with us, I felt bitterly resentful of

her intrusion.

We set off, an oddly silent picnic party.

We came to the beginning of the path I had followed on the day Fran arrived.

She said she was sure she'd been this way before.

Didn't it lead to a cove? I felt strongly against going there again,

especially with her.

It wasn't worth seeing, I called after her. But Fran took no notice.

Kelly wanted to get out of her pushchair and walk with Fran. I almost pushed her

out and let them go ahead.

My jealousy had become an obsession.

I recognised that, but I couldn't control it.

It seemed to me that Fran was trying to take over more than my child.

It was as though she had some sort of power over all our lives, which I

couldn't shake off.

Fran went ahead, more and more purposefully. She seemed oblivious, even

of Kelly.

I dropped further and further behind, hampered as I was with pushchair,

picnic, and the teddy which Kelly had abandoned after insisting on taking.

When we got to the cove, I at first couldn't see Fran.

Then I made out a motionless figure looking out to sea.

Kelly was somewhere away at the edge of a pool.

Some instinct of danger made me leave the pushchair and hurry to her.

All the time, Franz stood transfixed, looking out at the waves, almost as

though she were part of that great turmoil of water.

I ignored her as Kelly and I played on the edge of the ocean.

Fran was coming towards us.

She was holding a piece of driftwood in her hands.

It might have come from a wreck, she said.

This part of the coast was famous for shipwrecks.

The desolate cries of the seagulls filled up a long silence between us.

Fran said that there's a legend that seagulls are the souls of dead children.

Children.

I felt as if cold water were being poured down my spine.

I knew she meant to frighten me, and I was determined not to show it.

It terrified me to see the child in her arms.

The mood of the beach had quite changed since the sunny afternoon when I

discovered it.

The stones and rocks now looked ominous, like part of a stark, primeval

landscape. And I was possessed by the most primitive of emotions.

Anger had at last liberated me. I was ready to tell Fran to clear out of our

lives.

While she held Kelly, I dare not speak.

Fran strode on, disregarding me.

If I could have hit her with that driftwood...

I would have done.

We set off for the cliff top, Fran still carrying Kelly.

As she went, she began telling me a story about the cove.

More than a hundred years ago, she said, a packet boat bound for America had gone

adrift in fog one October evening.

and was wrecked on the treacherous rocks.

Among the people struggling in the water was a young woman who managed to reach

the shore with her child in her arms.

She had just set the child down on a ledge of rock when a strong wave swept

her off her feet again and she was drawn back into the sea.

She was rescued and brought ashore unconscious.

But no one heard the little girl crying in the foggy darkness.

and the waves washed her from the ledge.

I was thankful to reach the clifftop. We were safe from the dangerous sea and

rocks. But Fran still held my child.

There was no pretense now of friendliness as I pulled Kelly away and

dropped her into her pushchair.

Our rivalry was out in the open.

Fran said nothing.

She refused to share our picnic and sat down beside the pushchair.

My child.

Her child?

What could she mean?

Horrible possibilities crowded into my mind.

I called her to come back and explain.

She just walked on, out of sight.

She was nowhere in sight.

Into empty space, I screamed out all my hatred.

You bitch!

I hate you!

Then I saw a figure at the water's edge.

How could she have got there in so short a time?

Tears of shock and rage filled my eyes.

When I could open them again, she'd gone.

There was nowhere for her to go.

But she had gone.

I turned away, dazed.

Then the teddy bear, zombie-like, rolling towards the cliff edge, as

though blown by the wind.

But there was no wind.

Had Kelly seen?

Horrified, I realized that she was getting out of her pushchair.

But she wasn't looking at me.

She began to run, as though someone were calling her.

I don't know how I got to her in time.

I clung to her.

Feeling my knees must give way.

I moved to the push chain, but as I reached for it, it moved away from me as

though possessed by some strange force.

For a frozen moment, I stood watching after it as it began its slow, dreadful

descent.

I began to run as though all the powers of darkness were behind me.

Kelly might have fallen.

She'd been meant to fall.

Panic, held at bay until now, had me in its grip.

As I went running and stumbling along the road, I had only one goal in life.

To be home.

Home was safety.

At last, the familiar shape was in sight in the gathering gloom.

Gasping painfully for breath, I leaned against the door.

At last, I could put Kelly down.

She was safe.

We were back in the world I knew.

Then I heard Kelly call Teddy.

I thought I must be going out of my mind.

It was there.

The teddy and the push chair were there.

Andrew's photograph was whole again.

Then I knew Fran was also there.

My eyes were drawn to the mirror.

To her.

There was no sound.

Slowly, she faded away.

The cottage is my own again now.

But it'll never be the same.

Fear has moved in with me.

And the night is still to come.