Erin and Connie Danvers loved the beach. They lived with their mother and their little sister, Daphne, in a little white house at the top of a road, at the other end of which was the beach. The twins set out every morning of the school holidays, carrying their towels in one hand and a coin purse full of ice cream money in the other, (Erin also kept a Lucky Coin in hers – one with a hole in the middle – but little Daphne was never allowed to join them.

‘You’re too young to go on your own yet, darling,’ Mrs Danvers would say.

‘Why can’t you take me?’ Daphne would ask.

‘We’ll bring you back some seashells,’ Erin would jump in, ‘maybe even an oyster.’ Then she would make a mouth-snapping gesture with her hand.

‘With a big tongue, like this,’ Connie would finish, and poke out her tongue.

Mrs Danver’s fear of leaving the house was something that, at twelve years old, her eldest daughters were used to, but she had yet to satisfactorily explain it to her little one, so every morning they would engage in the same dead-end conversation.

But by the last Friday morning of the nineteen-fifty-nine summer holidays, Daphne had finally grown tired of talking. She kissed her sisters goodbye and went to her room to play with her doll. Grateful for being able to jump straight into her mending and ironing, Mrs Danvers didn’t question it.

But while Mrs Danvers was darning other people’s socks and ironing shirts for women whose husbands were still alive to crease them, little Daphne was wiggling out of her bedroom window. 

She ran around to the front of the house and down the long, steep road until she hit upon the glorious sight she’d waited six whole years to see. But when she stepped onto the sand, she found that it was rough and itchy -not at all the soft powder she’d imagined. She liked the smell of the sea air even less, and all the people she didn’t know made her nervous.

The beach was not for her, she’d just decided, and she set off for a walk around the neighbourhood instead. For hours – to Daphne it seemed like minutes – she walked, marvelling at how all the houses looked the same, looking in shop windows, and playing in the park.

Then it began to get dark, and Daphne started home, only now, she couldn’t remember the way. She walked up and down, sure every time that she was headed in the right direction, but coming upon a new row of houses with cars in the driveways.

When it was so dark that she couldn’t see her hands, Daphne began to cry. She was so upset that she didn’t see a car slowing down and following her.

‘What’s the matter, Pet? Are you lost?’

Mrs Danvers was in such a state by the time the twins got home – right on dusk, as usual – that she couldn’t stand still.

‘Is she with you? Is DAPHNE with you?’

The twins joined hands, something they always did when their mother was having one of her turns.

‘No.’

‘Oh my god, she could be anywhere by now! Run next door to the Harrop’s and ring the police!’

The twins did as they were told, then set off for the beach again, ignoring their mother’s pleas; Daphne would never come to a strange man, uniform or not. They had to be the ones to find her.

At ten o’clock, a black car pulled in to Mrs Danver’s driveway. Mrs Harrop opened the door. Little Daphne Danvers was dwarfed in the arms of the policeman who had stumbled across her on his way home from work.

‘Poor little mite cried herself to sleep.’

Mrs Danvers leapt out of her chair.

‘Thank God!’ she cried. ‘I hope the twins weren’t any trouble.’

‘Twins?’

Erin and Connie were halfway down the road when Mr Harrop pulled up. 

‘Beach is pretty dark, this time of night. I’ve got a couple of flashlights here for you.’

Daphne Danvers became less tolerable to her mother the longer the twins were missing. Her hair wasn’t the same golden brown, their dresses draped over her like a tent pole, and she always forgot something important on the grocery list. 

These and sundry other weaknesses meant that she wasn’t fit to be addressed by the name her father had given her, so Mrs Danvers gave her a moniker that was more befitting of her station.

‘Third Child, take the bins out!’

‘Third Child, stir the porridge!’

‘Third Child, keep those candles burning, or else!’

This last command was one Daphne had been obeying since the night the police came to the house and told her mother they had found one of Erin’s sandles in some scrub at the side of the road. 

Daphne didn’t dare remind her mother that the sandal had blood in it. Instead, she put two candles in the lounge room window every night and lit them, so that there would be a beacon to lead Erin and Connie home.

When Daphne was eighteen, she tried to convince her mother to face facts.

‘They’re not coming back.’

Mrs Danvers continued on with her sewing without looking up.

‘I can’t hear you, Third Child.’

‘I said, they’re not coming BACK.’

Mrs Danvers continued sewing.

‘They’re dead, Mother.’

Mrs Danvers didn’t drop a stitch.

‘So?’

Daphne abandoned any hope of her mother coming to her senses when she was getting ready to go out one Saturday night. Daphne had picked up her purse and was about to walk out the door when her mother called to her.

‘Have we forgotten something?’

This was the last thing her mother always used to say to the twins before they left for the beach. Thinking the ice shield surrounding her mother had melted, Daphne ran to her and gave her a kiss.

What she got in return was a look of utter contempt.

‘Light those candles,’ her mother snarled.

When she got in her boyfriend George’s car, red faced, and he asked her what the matter was, she told him everything. When Daphne had tearfully sputtered out every last detail, George shook his head. 

‘Why doesn’t she light them?’

Daphne cast down her eyes.

‘They went out looking for me, and they won’t come home unless they know I’m safe.’

‘But it’s been twelve years!’

‘Like I said, she’s crazy.’

George put his arm around her.

‘What if she HAD to do it herself?’

‘What do you mean?’

George opened the glove box and took out a black velvet box. Daphne opened the box and started crying again.

She told her mother that night, as soon as she got home. 

‘It’s on Saturday the seventh. We’ll be honeymooning in the hills. I always wanted to see the snow, remember?’

Mrs Danvers (as Daphne now called her), looked up from her sewing and smiled.

‘Don’t be silly; you have to light the candles.’

Daphne went into the kitchen and picked up the phone.

‘George? I can’t wait. We have to get married tomorrow.’

The next morning, Daphne blew out the twin candles for the last time. She picked up the small bag with her clothes in it and turned to Mrs Danvers.

‘Goodbye now. I’ll send you a postcard.’

Mrs Danvers didn’t smile this time, only stared straight ahead.

‘They won’t be able to see…they won’t be able to…find…’

Daphne took three boxes of matches out of her pocket and put them on the windowsill.

‘Mrs Harrop’s going to do your shopping for you. She’ll take the bins out, too. She offered to cook for you, but I told her you could do that for yourself. You always were a good cook.’

‘I used to make their birthday cakes. Every year. Every year but…’

‘Goodbye…Mum.’

Daphne waited two days before ringing home. She was expecting trouble. She wasn’t disappointed. 

‘Your poor mother…she was going on and on about those candles, insisting that your poor dear sisters were coming back. You really should have had her seen to, you know.’

‘What happened, Mrs Harrop?’

‘She lit the candles, despite my telling her how dangerous it was to leave open flames burning in a window all night and, sure enough, no sign of them. She must’ve been hysterical. She…ate all the matches. I’m so sorry, dear.’

Daphne cut short her honeymoon to go home and make arrangements. When she got back to the house, it was after seven, but the house wasn’t in total darkness – the twin candles were burning in the lounge room window.

‘Forgive me,’ said Mrs Harrop, ‘but I thought it only right to keep them burning…in honour of your poor mother.’

‘It’s fine. Thank you, Mrs Harrop.’

‘If you need any help with anything, I’m just a hop, skip, and a jump away.’

‘Thanks,’ said George. 

When she was gone, George gave her a two-fingered salute.

‘Wish she’d hopped, skipped, and jumped away sooner.’

Leaving George to turn off the water and the pilot light and start packing up the shed, Daphne tried to get a start on the house, but found that she couldn’t get anything done with the light in the window flickering. 

With no ceremony or fanfare, Daphne blew out the twin candles, putting an end to her mother’s madness and her own torment. She turned off the light and headed to the main bedroom, with the intention of stripping the bed, when she saw something move out of the corner of her eye.

She turned toward the window again and saw two girls walking up the path, their towels in one hand and their coin purses in the other. Erin knocked on the window, Connie poked out her tongue.

Daphne turned on the light, but the girls held their hands up to their faces and turned to go. Daphne turned it off again, and they came back. They both opened their coin purses, which were still full of ice cream money, but Erin’s lucky coin was missing.

‘Where is it?’ asked Daphne.

Both the girls turned toward the Harrop’s place and pointed at Mr Harrop’s shed. Daphne’s breath caught in her throat. Now it all made sense, Mrs Harrop hadn’t been helping Daphne’s mother out of kindness; she was appeasing her guilt. She knew! 

Daphne didn’t want George to think she was crazy, but she needed to get into that shed.

‘He’s been stealing from us for years, and I know that’s where he hides it all. He spends all day in there. There’s a coin with a hole in it. Mother had it valued and apparently it’s so rare that it’s worth something. I’d like it back.’

‘Okay, what do I need to do?’

Daphne emptied the refrigerator and the cupboards, and took the contents over to the Harrop’s.

‘My way of saying thank you, for being there for her. You were good friends.’

Mrs Harrop took the food, a little reluctantly. 

‘Could I trouble you for a cup of tea? George has gone to see his parents for an hour or so and I don’t want to be alone.’

‘Of course, love. Come on in.’

George pried open Mr Harrop’s shed door, and was floored by what he found: tools, a small work table, and a lawn mower. He was also struck by how warm it was inside, for the middle of winter.

Insulation was still a fairly new thing in Australia in the late nineteen-fifties, which was when Mr Harrop built his shed, according to Daphne. It was also expensive, and there was only one reason a man would bother insulating a shed.

George worked fast – breaking into false wall panels in a tin shed was noisy, and he would soon be discovered. He took his crow bar and tore down the right plaster board wall and the insulation behind it – nothing. He took down the wall on the left, and suddenly it was raining crap.

Children’s toys, a set of rosary beads, hair ribbons, and various other things that were not particularly valuable, rained down on George’s head, but no holey coin.

Daphne slowly sipped her tea, and was about to thank the Harrops again when she noticed Mrs Harrop’s necklace. More specifically, the gold, centreless charm dangling on the end of it.

‘That’s lovely,’ said Daphne, pointing at it.

‘This? Thank you, dear, but it was just a piece of junk jewelery. You might say it’s my good luck charm.’

‘My sister Erin had something similar, but hers was an old coin with a hole in it. She called it a good luck charm, too. Wasn’t a very good one, I suppose.’

George reached down and picked up something that was laying amongst the crap on the shed floor. It was a flashlight. It was stained with rust from the head down, and there was a large dent on one side.

There was hair wedged into the dent. 

Mr Harrop stood up.

‘Where is your husband?’

‘I told you,’ Daphne smiled, ‘at his parent’s place.’

‘Yeah? Well what’s all that racket outside?’

Mr Harrop went to the kitchen draw, pulled out a carving knife and held it to Daphne’s throat.

‘Tell me what you know, and I’ll make it quick.’

A roller skate boot hit Mr Harrop square between the eyes and he fell back against the stove.

‘I’ll tell you what I know,’ said George. ‘You’ve got a thing for hurting little girls. You’ve been doing it for years.’

Daphne picked up the knife and held it to Mrs Harrop’s throat.

‘What did you do to them?’ she asked Mr Harrop.

‘Put the knife down, Daph. Let the police sort them out. You shouldn’t have to go to jail for this scumbag.’

Deciding George was right, she handed him the knife.

‘Gee,’ said Mr Harrop, ‘your sisters had much more fight in them.’

When the Harrops were taken away, Daphne turned to go back to her mother’s place.

‘Let’s leave that for the minute, Babe. You’ve had a shock.’

‘I just have to do one more thing.’

Daphne walked down the front path. The girls were still standing in front of the lounge room window, but as Daphne got closer, they turned around and walked toward her. 

Daphne opened her mouth to speak, but the girls walked right by her. 

‘Wait!’ Daphne called. ‘Where are you going?’

The girls stopped at the bottom of the path and turned around. Erin made a mouth-snapping gesture with her hand, and Connie poked out her tongue. 

‘Have fun,’ said Daphne and with that, the twins turned and walked down the road towards the beach which, Daphne supposed, was their idea of Heaven.