The Midnight Feast

This chapter is titled with a bird symbol that appears throughout the text.

A mysterious, mystic group of “black-robed, beast-headed” (3) figures gathers in the woods. Nearby, an old man lies dead in his cabin with a single black feather on the ground in front of him.

Bella, a guest at the hotel, attends the opening night celebrations of The Manor, a luxury hotel on the Dorset coast. She observes the beautiful owner, Francesca Meadows, at the center of the party. Suddenly, a group of locals comes out of the nearby woods. Their leader shouts that they have a right-of-way on the land and that Francesca cannot take it from them. The manager talks to them, and the group leaves. The party resumes.

Around 5:00 am three days after the opening celebration, a group of fishmen near the cliffs see that the Manor is on fire. They call the police.

Just before midnight, Eddie, a Dorset local and dishwasher at the hotel, works in the kitchen on opening night. A guest arrives and asks Eddie to make her a drink. An aspiring bartender, Eddie agrees to make her two gin martinis, even though it’s against the rules. She asks him to bring the drinks to her cabin near the woods. When he arrives, she asks him to drink with her and he agrees. She introduces herself as Bella and kisses him. He startles and Bella goes to the bathroom in embarrassment. While she’s in the bathroom, Eddie gets up to leave and knocks over a file folder. When he bends to pick up the papers, he sees a collection of articles about Francesca and her husband, Owen Dacre, who designed the hotel. One of the articles has “cunt” written across Francesca’s face. Eddie leaves quickly.

Francesca reflects on her feelings about the success of the opening night of The Manor but wishes she could make some improvements. She wants to get rid of the Seaview Farm down the road with the off-putting cow smell. She thinks about how in the future she wants to incorporate “local pagan history” into events at the hotel (24). When she hears the locals partying at the beach, she calls the manager, Michelle, and asks her to take care of it.

Bella feels embarrassed for having kissed Eddie. She tells herself she was acting out of character “because I am in character” (27). She reveals she made up a new name and biography for herself when booking the hotel. She notices that Eddie has gone through the clippings in the file folder and wonders who the anonymous person was who sent her the first clipping about Francesca and the hotel’s opening. She tells herself she is doing this for her daughter, Grace.

Around midnight, Francesca walks out to the Orangery [greenhouse] to scatter her grandfather’s ashes. Francesca reflects on how toward the end of his life her grandfather “went a little odd” (34) and started rambling about how she must not “upset the birds” (35). She scatters her grandfather’s ashes and tells herself to let go of the past.

Back in the hotel after leaving Bella’s room, Eddie is approached by the manager, Michelle. She says that some of the guests have complained about hearing sounds and lights in the woods. She asks Eddie to go talk to the locals on the beach. He reluctantly agrees to do so. He heads toward the beach when he is hit from behind and falls down.

Francesca goes back to her apartment where her architect husband Owen is waiting. She thinks about when their first meeting in which Owen pitched his ideas for The Manor’s redesign. He’d said that her company contacted him, but she assumes he misspoke since he contacted her about the project. They get ready for bed. She notices a black feather on her pillow and wonders where it came from.

Owen lies in bed after sex with Francesca and thinks about how violent she is during sex, scratching him and making him bleed. He wonders if she has a secret dark side, and thinks about the secrets he himself has kept from her. He hears the locals partying on the beach, and Francesca assures him she has sent Michelle to deal with it. Owen pulls up the expensive sheets and reflects that he is “such a fucking fraud” (48).

On the beach, Eddie gets up after being knocked down and sees Nathan Tate, a local drug dealer and wannabe musician. Eddie tells Nathan that he has come from The Manor to ask them to keep it down. Nathan tells him they have a right to be on the public beach. Eddie’s ex-girlfriend Delilah—now dating Nathan—joins the conversation. Eddie notices Delilah is wearing a feather from the scene where they found an old man who died of a heart attack on a chain around her neck. Eddie is shocked. Nathan and Delilah make fun of him for being “frightened of the Birds” (56).

In her cabin, Bella is having trouble sleeping. As she scrolls through The Manor’s Instagram, she hears a groan of pain outside. Opening the door of the cabin, she sees a figure standing at the end of the woods, possibly in a hood. It reminds her of something she would rather not think about. She quickly closes and locks the door.

Three days after the opening celebration, the fishermen who called in the fire sail closer to The Manor. They see a bloody body in the water. One of them says there was talk at the pub the night before about “the Birds” (61). They hear the police sirens arriving.

Eddie returns home to Seaview Farm in the early hours of the morning after the opening celebration. His mother is awake in the kitchen. She complains about the guests at The Manor driving recklessly and the owner Francesca cutting off the right-of-way. She tells Eddie that his father had gone to the hotel with some cheese and milk to see if they were interested in buying any, and he had been turned away, but he’s out. After his mother goes to bed, Eddie hears his dad come home.

After having sex with Francesca, Owen goes into the hotel storeroom for a bottle of wine. Michelle follows him inside, and Owen thinks about how much he dislikes her. She tells him his “secret’s safe with [her]” (68). Owen snaps at her, and she leaves, but he’s so shaken that he drops the bottle of wine and it breaks.

The day after the opening celebration, Eddie eats breakfast in the kitchen. His dad comes in wearing his work clothes, which makes Eddie sneeze. Eddie cannot work on the farm because he’s allergic to cows. Eddie thinks about how his dad never talks about his older brother, who disappeared when Eddie was young, except to say that his brother was good at driving a tractor. Harold, one of the farmhands, arrives and tells them that the bull, Ivor, is missing. Eddie’s parents don’t talk much since his brother disappeared and Eddie’s father attempted to take his own life by locking himself in the garage with the tractor engine running. Graham Tate, Nathan Tate’s father—a previous tenant at the Manor, had saved his father’s life.

Eddie bikes to The Manor for his shift. He sees Bella sneaking up the steps to Francesca’s private apartment holding a large shoulder bag. In his rush to get to his shift, Eddie bumps into a member of the cleaning staff and realizes it’s his mother. They have both been lying about working at The Manor to avoid angering Eddie’s father. Eddie notices one of the sheets in her cart has blood on it. Eddie’s mom says she’s proud of him and gives him a hug.

A short time later, Bella leaves the private apartment area and heads toward a hidden cave on the cliffside. She sees a kitesurfer out on the water. She goes past Graham Tate’s caravan park. She feels shocked at the toll his alcohol addiction has taken on his appearance. Eventually, she reaches the cave. She crawls in and gets out a notebook she had left there 15 years ago. Just as she is about to leave, the kitesurfer—Owen Dacre—comes ashore near the cave. He tells her it’s a dangerous part of the beach and that she should stay away from it. Alone, Bella opens the notebook to see a map she had once drawn.

The chapter is a series of entries from Bella’s journal beginning July 23, 2010. She’s a teenager staying at Graham Tate’s caravan park with her family on summer vacation. On the beach, she finds a bird fossil in a tidepool, and a group of other teens comes over to look at it. One of them, a wealthy girl, takes the fossil from Bella and invites her to come to “the Manor” where she lives. Over the next few days, Bella hangs out at the Manor with the rich girl, Francesca (nicknamed “Frankie”). Bella learns that Graham Tate is a tenant of Francesca’s grandparents, who own the Manor. One day, she runs into Graham Tate at the caravan park and he warns her about the people at the Manor, saying that the horses of the former lord of the Manor were killed by The Birds. On July 29, 2010, Francesca invites Bella to a “midnight feast” in the woods.

On the day after the opening celebration, Owen returns to the hotel after running into Bella in the hidden cove. He thinks about how he found the allure of both redesigning the Manor and Francesca irresistible. As he approaches their private apartment, he sees that someone has nailed a dead cockerel—the same bird Francesca had been photographed with in Harper’s Bazaar magazine—to their door. There is also a note in an envelope underneath the door. Michelle passes by and sees it too. Owen wraps the dead bird in his shirt and throws it in the trash. He puts the envelope in his pocket.

Francesca gets an IV infusion of vitamins in her room, then checks the hotel cameras that she installed in all of the rooms without anyone, even Owen, knowing. She thinks about how she trusts her guests and even provides them with full-size toiletries and matches in all of their rooms, but she wants to be sure. She sees Owen shirtless talking to Michelle on the camera feed. She closes the laptop when he comes into the room. He doesn’t tell her about the dead bird and simply says he’s tired from surfing when she asks what’s wrong. When Owen tells her he saw Bella at the hidden cove, Francesca decides to look into her further.

On the day after the solstice, three days after the opening celebration, Detective Inspector Walker and Detective Sergeant Heyer arrive in Tome to investigate the dead body. They talk to Graham Tate, who is drinking a bottle of Bell’s scotch whiskey. He says The Birds carried out the recent murder as well as the murder of Old Lord Meadows. Walker and Heyer head down the cliff to see the body on the beach. In the sand nearby is a bottle of Bell’s whiskey.

On the day before the solstice, a day after the opening celebration, Bella returns to her room from the hidden cove to find an invitation to a midnight feast the night of the solstice. She tears it up, filled with anger. She goes to the dining room for breakfast and sees Francesca, who looks at her, giving her chills.

This chapter is a series of excerpts from Bella’s diary from the summer of 2010. The entries begin on July 31, 2010. She lies by the pool with Francesca reading Bella by Jilly Cooper. Francesca tells her she should change her name from Alison to Bella. Later that day, at the caravan park, Alison/Bella meets an older girl named Cora. She introduces herself as Bella. That night, Bella sneaks out of the house to go to the midnight feast in the woods with Francesca and her older twin brothers, Hugo and Oscar, who have a local girl with them. In the woods, they come across a tree with lots of birds in it that the local girl calls the Tree with a Hundred Eyes. In a nearby treehouse, Francesca and her brothers pressure Bella to take pills with them. She pretends to agree but spits them out. Bella and Francesca leave the local girl in the treehouse with Hugo and Oscar. Bella hears the girl scream.

In the breakfast room, Francesca notices someone who shouldn’t be there. She is so startled she bites her lip and draws blood.

Owen goes out into the woods to oversee the removal of the trees where he intends to build the Treehouses, part of the hotel’s expansion plan. The tree surgeon, Jim, tells Owen he won’t cut down any elder trees in the woods because it’s bad luck. Jim also points out that some of the trees have been marked with a bird symbol. Owen says if Jim won’t cut down the trees, he will use Jim’s chainsaw and do it himself. A little while later, Owen takes the note he found earlier out of his pocket and reads it—an invitation to meet in the woods at midnight under the “tree with a hundred eyes” (130).

At the crime scene, Detective Sergeant Heyer holds up an evidence bag with a black feather in it. She says it was in the victim’s fingers. One of the fishermen crosses himself when he sees it.

Sitting by the pool, Bella overhears Hugo Meadows, Francesca’s brother, telling someone about what a nice job Francesca has done with the place. He says they had a lot of fun in the nearby woods growing up. His words upset Bella.

This chapter is a series of entries from Bella’s journal beginning August 2, 2010. Bella daydreams about a cute boy she saw at the beach. She describes meeting another boy named Shrimp who lives at the caravan park, sitting outside playing with matches. She tries to be nice to him, but he’s rude to her and keeps lighting matches. The next day, Francesca and Bella find a bird’s claw under the pool cover. Francesca sends Bella to the pool shed to get the net to fish it out. While she is in there, Hugo forcibly kisses her and puts his hand in her swimsuit bottoms. Bella pushes him away, and the next day, he pretends nothing happened.

On August 6, Francesca, Bella, and the twins go to the local pub, The Crow’s Nest. Cora works there and gets them drinks. She is fired for giving alcohol to minors but stays and drinks with them. Bella runs into the cute boy from the beach, Jake, and they go to the nearby chip shop together. Bella sees the girl Hugo and Owen brought to the midnight feast working there and realizes that the twins sexually must have assaulted the girl that night. The next day, Francesca gives Bella two pot brownies to eat and they go out into the woods. They see bird symbols painted in red all over the treehouse. Inside the treehouse is a strawman in Hugo’s tracksuit with a bird’s head on top. Nearby is a note reading “The Birds are watching” (147).

Bella, sitting by the pool, sees some young locals making a bonfire on the beach. One of the girls is very beautiful with dyed red hair. Suddenly, the local youths start throwing rocks at the hotel guests, who flee.

Meanwhile, Francesca decides to go to the hotel spa to get a Reiki session to calm her nerves. The Reiki healer, Julie, is an older local woman. Julie tells Francesca that she senses someone wants to do her harm. Julie breaks an egg yolk into water and tells Francesca to look into the yolk. Francesca sees a bird.

Owen is making his way back from cutting trees in the woods when he runs into Michelle. She tells him she has finally figured out why she recognizes him: He is Shrimp, the poor fisherman’s son who lived at the caravan park. Michelle herself is the girl who worked in the chip shop. Annoyed about being recognized, Owen threatens to have Michelle fired. Michelle tells Francesca is “not [who Owen] think[s] she is either” (162).