“Where’s she going?” Patrick asks.
“I don’t know. She didn’t say anything to me… You don’t think she has a boyfriend she’s not telling us about, do you?” I’m thinking of that smile, small and sly. A smile that said, I’ve got a secret.
Patrick steps away from the window. “No, I don’t. Mia would tell me.”
“During one of your middle-of-the-night chats?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Last night. Mia said you went in to her.”
“And?” He stares at me. “She had a bad dream. It’s a good thing one of us was awake, isn’t it?” He shakes his head. “The food’s going cold—go and get Joe.”
I knock on his door, but he doesn’t answer. The door isn’t all the way closed, so I push it open and peer in. Joe is on his bed, staring up at the ceiling, his sketchbook open on the floor. He’s drawn a boy standing on what looks like a cliff edge.
“Are you coming down for dinner?” I ask.
“Not hungry,” he mutters.
I sigh and step into the room, walk over to sit on the edge of his bed, and let my eyes wander around the room. We really need to work on this room next, as soon as the living room is finished. In the corner near the bed, the edge of the wallpaper is peeling away—not just one layer, years’ worth of it, right down to the plaster. I chew at the inside of my cheek and pull the edge. It lifts away easily, but so does the plaster, crumbling chunks of it clinging to the wallpaper.
“I made that mistake too,” Joe says.
The wall underneath is damp, black-spotted. I can see the scribbled edge of a child’s drawing. It makes me think of the DIY height chart on the living room wall and I smooth the paper back down, trying to make it stick.
“You should see what else is under there,” Joe says.
I keep smoothing the paper. “Not now,” I say.
“Not now?” He laughs, but the sound is not a happy one.
I get up to leave and I’m at the door when he calls me back.
“Mum? I saw Dad earlier.”
I raise my eyebrows.
“He was in my room. I came upstairs and he was in here looking out the window and it was… weird.”
“Weird?”
There’s that hesitation again. I’m tempted to pick up the sketchbook—is the boy on the cliff edge him?
“I think he was crying,” Joe says.
“Crying?”
Joe nods. “But I thought I had to be wrong. Because it’s Dad.”
I look at the sketchbook again. Maybe it’s not Joe on the cliff edge. Maybe it’s Patrick. But, no, like Joe said, Patrick doesn’t cry.
“You don’t believe me, do you?”
“It’s not that, it’s just… Your dad, why would he be crying?”
Joe shakes his head. “This whole fresh start thing? It’s crap, Mum. Things are worse, not better. And all your talk about turning it into a home, it’s never going to happen.”
“Come on, Joe—it’s only been two weeks.”
Joe picks up the sketchbook, closes it, and puts it under his pillow. “Can you go, please?”
My throat is tight. There’s a darkness rising in my son and it makes him a stranger, unreachable. I’ve seen it happen before. I know what happened to his birth mother and it terrifies me that Joe could end up the same.
My phone starts ringing in my pocket, but I ignore it.
“Joe…”
“Just fucking go.”
My phone rings again as Joe closes the door. I put my hand on the wood as I hear a thud inside the room. The ringing stops but starts again almost immediately. I pull my phone out of my pocket. The number is unfamiliar, but I answer with a distracted hello.
“Mrs. Walker? It’s Tom Evans.”
Tom Evans is sitting at a table in the window. He’s thin under a dark blue shirt, sleeves rolled up to reveal the edge of a black tattoo, and his dark hair is cropped short. I couldn’t believe he’d actually called and agreed to meet me. I didn’t suggest Anna’s café as a meeting place. I don’t need her questions—I have enough of my own concerns about why I’m doing this. I recognize Tom right away even though I’ve never met him. I recognize him not from the gap-toothed boy in the newspaper photographs but from the ghost of his father in his face. John Evans was only twenty-nine when he was murdered. Very young to have been married with children, tragically young to die. And Tom’s brother… The thought of little Billy Evans squeezes my heart. He’s here too, in the space next to Tom, the absence, the gap.
I can’t imagine what it would do to Mia or Joe to go through what Tom Evans did. I don’t know how much he saw or heard during the crime or how much he remembers, but like the taint that covers the house, it’s a darkness you could never recover from.
He glances up as I approach his table and smiles, a hint of the old gap-toothed grin still there. “Mrs. Walker?” he says, standing and holding out a hand.
“Call me Sarah,” I say. His hand is cold. He doesn’t shake but holds my hand and squeezes, his thumb stroking my palm as he lets go. I automatically wipe my hand on my jeans, wanting to rub away that accidental caress, and he continues to smile. I want to shout, This was a mistake, and run. What the hell was I thinking? His eyes flicker as he stares at me and the look on his face is odd.
“Thanks for agreeing to meet me.” I’m still standing, half facing the door. I swallow, glad it’s a Saturday afternoon and the café is full. I think I would have run if we’d met somewhere more private. Glancing around, I see no one else is paying us any attention. The tension here is all in my imagination.
He shrugs and sits down again, pulling his coffee mug toward him, opening a sugar packet and pouring it in. “I wasn’t sure whether to, but I don’t live far away and you said you’d found something of mine.”
I sit opposite him, take the Star Wars figures out of my bag, and slide them across the table. “I found these. I thought they might be yours.”
He picks them up and squeezes them in his hand. “They were probably Billy’s,” he says, his voice unsteady. “I didn’t take anything from the house after. I didn’t want anything. My grandparents cleared it and we moved away from the trial and the press. I don’t know how these got missed.”
I think of how I found them on the windowsill, set there as if little Billy Evans had left them mid-game.
“Thank you,” he says, not looking up from the figures.
“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.”
He puts the toys into his pocket. “It’s okay,” he says. “I wanted to come anyway. I was curious.”
“Curious?”
He glances up. “Curious about who’d bought the place. I thought it would never sell. Or if it did, I assumed a property developer would tear it down and build something new.” He starts ripping a napkin into neat strips that he stacks next to his mug. “Then the estate agent told me they already had someone interested—someone waiting for me to sell it.” He gives me that odd smile again. “And it turned out to be you. Like I said, I was curious. I almost called the house.”
Maybe he did call and lost courage. I think of the dropped calls I’d thought might be Ian Hooper. Is it better or worse to think it was Tom Evans?
“Have you been back here since…”
“This town was the only place I knew until I was seven years old,” he says, not answering my question. “I never wanted to live anywhere else.”
“My children are struggling to see the benefits of living here,” I say, forcing a smile.
“You have children?”
“Two—a boy and a girl. Teenagers.”
His hand jerks, knocking over his mug. Coffee spills and soaks the torn-up napkin. “And you?” he says, clutching my hand and leaning close enough for me to smell his breath. “Do you see the… benefits, Mrs. Walker?”
I can’t help but recoil, pulling my hand away and jerking back in my chair so it scrapes on the floor. “I… It’s a beautiful town,” I say. “And
the house…”
“Why did you want to meet me?” he asks. “It wasn’t to give me these toys, was it?”
I think of that newspaper cutting shoved through our door. I can’t ask him about that, can I? Can’t ask him if he believes the house is some evil thing that made Hooper murder his family. God, oh, God—what am I doing?
“Ian Hooper’s out of prison,” I blurt, wincing as I see him react to the name, shoulders hunching, face twisting. Jesus—could I fuck this up any more?
He stands, dropping a couple of pound coins on the table. “I’m sorry,” he says. “This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come.”
“Tom—wait,” I say, putting my hand on his arm. “I’m sorry, I’m doing this all wrong. I didn’t mean to upset you. I’m just… I found out he was released from prison, and we’re in the house and it’s all… it’s all going wrong and I wanted—”
He pulls away from me. “Wanted what? The inside scoop on the infamous Ian Hooper? Reassurance that he won’t come roaring back to slaughter your family?”
I’m unable to face the burning pain on his face. When I turn back, he’s gone, the door swinging shut behind him. I sink into my chair, my legs shaking.
You come out of the house in your sharply creased suit, get into your shiny car, and drive off to your big office in the city. I can see your wife through the windows, drifting in and out of rooms, doing nothing. Your Stepford Wife is defective.
I was never supposed to end up here. I was never supposed to end up like this.
I was getting out. I was moving up. I was going to live the dream.
Then I woke up and I’m back here in this dying cesspool of a town, and I see you with your high-flying career and her with her dreams and smiles, and I say no.
No fucking way.
CHAPTER 13
When I get home, Patrick’s in the back garden, poking at a fire he’s lit in an old metal bin. It looks so beautifully domestic and normal I have to lean against the kitchen counter, my hands white-knuckled, gripping the edge, as I try to get my story straight as to where I’ve been. I can’t tell him I was meeting Tom Evans: he’d never understand why. I’m not sure I understand myself. I wanted to know more, to understand how things went so horribly wrong for the family who lived here before us, but faced with Tom… He’s not the little boy with the wobbly initials on the height chart anymore. He was right to walk out of the café. It was a mistake. I shouldn’t have met him—what exactly was I looking for? Was he right? Was I just seeking reassurance that Ian Hooper wasn’t watching the house? Did I want him to comfort me that Hooper’s murderous spree was a one-off, a crime of passion, like Patrick said? Had I really gone seeking that reassurance from the man whose entire family had been murdered?
I make coffee and go out to join Patrick. My hands are shaking and hot coffee spills, stinging drops hitting my hands. It’s nearly May, but the smell of the bonfire, the chill in the air, makes me think of autumn, crunchy leaves on the ground, the year winding down. Last summer and autumn I was in a fog of grief. Half a year passed and I barely noticed. I was so determined that this year would be different. I would be different. In some ways I am—my mother seems farther away here, my grief less sharp-edged. But is that the move or the pills? Meeting Tom has made me jittery. My throat is dry, my heart racing.
There’s an apple tree at the bottom of the garden, the only thing thriving; the rest is an overgrown mess, weeds choking any sign of shrubs or flowers, the grass patchy, half-dead. But the apple tree already has blossoms on it.
“You making a start on clearing the jungle?” My voice is false-bright. I hold out a mug of coffee and he takes it.
“You’re back. Where did you go?”
“Shopping. I found some of my old recipe books and I felt like making something different for dinner.”
He’s frowning. Is it as obvious to him as it is to me that my breezy tone is a lie?
“I’m thinking, making plans,” he says, turning back to the garden. “We could have started this earlier, but a few weekends of hard work and we can clear this space. Stock up on plants, some new garden furniture, and it’ll be beautiful by summer. Like it used to be.”
He’s ignoring my efforts at painting and DIY inside. He has found himself a new project. I think it’ll take more than a few weekends to make this beautiful. So far, he’s made a two-foot space in the weed jungle. A whole afternoon’s work for a two-foot patch of yellowing grass and mud. He’s sweaty and dirty, his hair all over the place.
“By the way, there’s a message on the house phone for you.” There’s an edge to his voice, and I wonder what he knows. Too many secrets. We’ve never had secrets before. At least, I never thought we did. The wind picks up, whipping across the back of the house, blowing black smoke that stings my eyes.
He picks up another pile of garbage for the bonfire, and I’m turning to go back inside when, through the smoke, I see Joe’s face, younger, smiling, sketched in fine pencil, eaten in from the curling edges by the fire. I reach to snatch it out, but Patrick grabs my hand.
“Don’t be stupid. You’ll get burned.”
But the flames are licking at Joe’s face, turning it to black ash, and only now do I recognize what Patrick has found for his first bonfire. It’s my sketchbooks, the ones I showed Anna, my drawings of Joe and Mia growing up, Patrick sleeping, Mia dancing, Caroline laughing by the lake. I make another lunge for the pile, frantic, but he stops me with his body.
Chest to chest, I look up at him, speechless.
“The message was from that doctor you sent Joe to,” he says calmly, as if we’re chatting over a cup of coffee. “Apparently you called her about another appointment for him.”
“I’m worried about him. He—”
“He is fine.”
“He is not fine. God, Patrick, he’s sinking again. I can see it.”
“Why can’t you ever just leave things alone?”
“So what is this?” I say through numb lips. “You burn my sketchbooks—a fucking lifetime of work—for calling a doctor?”
“You told me you’d finished unpacking but I found all this stuff,” he says, poking at the ashes, not rising to the bait. “Boxes hidden behind doors. Stuff dumped in bags in the corner of the living room. You told me you’d finished and went running off shopping, so I assumed what was left had to be garbage.”
Furious, I break away and run back into the house, pull open the living room door. I’d stored it all there—my sketchbooks, my brushes, my paints and pencils. Stored it all there while I waited to find a space to work in.
It’s all gone. Damp spots are climbing up the wall, exposed now that all the bags are gone. Goddammit, Patrick. Where are my paintings? Where are the canvases?
“So, now we can make this place perfect,” he says, so bloody cheerfully when he comes in and finds me staring into the empty corner. Doesn’t he see the spreading spots of green and black rot? How is this ever going to be perfect?
“What did you do with the paintings—the canvases? You didn’t…”
“They’re in the cellar,” he says, and my fury turns cold.
Patrick looks at my face and sighs. “I’m tired of making do while you’re going behind my back, wasting money on therapy for Joe, going shopping, walking around all doom and gloom, upsetting everyone,” he says. “Come on, Sarah, cheer up. This time, it’s all going to be perfect.”
“Cheer up? Cheer fucking up? Do you have any idea what those sketchbooks meant to me?” There’s an aching lump in my throat and I want to punch him, scream in his face.
“They’re just old drawings,” he says. “God, it’s not like I’ve set fire to a puppy or something. Get new books, if you want—it’s not like you’ve used them recently, is it? When’s the last time you did any drawing? Let it go, Sarah.”
Let it go. Fuck. I grit my teeth and turn away. I know if I say anything else, it’ll be something we can’t move on from. I’ll be setting fire to more than sketchbooks.
He goes out early on Sunday morning, saying nothing, slamming the door and making me jump as I sit at the kitchen table drinking coffee. I put beef in the oven to roast, peel potatoes, and refuse to think about the empty bags that held my sketchbooks.
“I’m sorry,” Patrick says when he comes back in. He’s wearing his coat and holding out a bag. There’s a new sketchbook and a box of pencils inside. It’s a beautiful book, hardbacked, thick, expensive paper—perfect, just like Patrick wants. But the pages are all blank and I feel no urge to draw anything.
I don’t answer him. I can’t speak to him with the anger still lodged in my chest, hurting and desperate to come out.
“I’m sorry,” he says again. “I was wound up, angry that you called the doctor without talking to me, frustrated by the slow progress of everything. But I didn’t know that stuff was important. I thought it was garbage. If I’d known, I would never have burned it.” But he turns away from me as he says it. I slam the potato peeler onto the counter. Of course you knew, Patrick. The sketches were visible as they burned.
He walks past me and goes upstairs. I put the potatoes into the oven and go into the living room, my arms folded, wrapped around the aching anger inside me. There’s someone across the road again, standing in exactly the same place as the watcher stood on the first night. The figure is looking out to sea, wearing a dark coat with the hood up, but I wait for the head to turn, to show me Ian Hooper’s face. A breeze makes me shiver and, for a second, it feels like it’s coming from inside the house, a cold breath on my neck.
I remember the first time I saw the house. It reminded me of something—took me a while to figure it out. It was that ghost house from the fairground we hung out at—remember that? Not inside: the house was nice then on the inside. But outside. Wasn’t there always something about it? Something off? Don’t tell me you didn’t sense it as well.
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