I keep going until every bit is gone, until my hand is shaking and my stomach is somersaulting. Then, I finally breathe and look at Patrick. He’s smiling, his own plate still full, and I think maybe he’s the tiger. Only three minutes have passed.
“Wow. You did enjoy that,” he says, and I take this as permission to go and throw up, hoping I’ll make it to the toilets before the ice in my guts melts and the gorge rises.
“I’m not actually that hungry,” Patrick says as I scrape my chair back. “When you come back, you can have mine too, if you like.”
I wake in the night, my stomach churning, and I know I’m going to be sick again. I run to the bathroom and this time Patrick follows me. He crouches next to me as I hunch over the toilet and he holds my hair away from my face.
“That dinner was so important to me,” he says as my stomach tightens again and I retch, nothing coming up but bile. “I’ve been telling David about the house. All I wanted was to host them in my house, not some cheap, crappy restaurant. I wanted to show them I didn’t need a damn promotion.”
“Did you know John Evans?” I say, my voice hoarse.
For a second his hand tightens on my hair so he’s pulling it, not holding it back. Then he lets go. “You’re obsessing, Sarah. Stop it. Leave it alone.”
He gets up, reaches for a towel, and hands it to me. I splash my face with water, my hands shaking, and take the towel. I see his reflection in the mirror and it’s as if I’m looking at a stranger.
“I’m sorry about the calamari,” he says as he turns to leave the room. “I’d forgotten. I forget things sometimes too.”
CHAPTER 15
I sit at the table in the kitchen, massaging my temples. My head has been pounding all day as I got more and more tense, waiting for Patrick to arrive home. But he breezed in as if nothing had happened, and if it weren’t for the sour taste in my throat from spending half the night throwing up, I’d have wondered if I’d imagined the whole thing.
Patrick’s in the bath and I should be preparing dinner, but I can’t seem to make myself move. There’s a knock on the door and it makes me jump. I open it, expecting Anna, but it’s Ben on the doorstep, holding up a pair of baby shoes.
“I’m sorry,” he says. “I was passing and I saw these outside and thought you might have dropped them. It’s about to rain and I didn’t want them to be ruined.”
I look at the shoes—I remember Mia having some very like these, cream satin with velvet trim and long silky ribbons. These shoes, though, are smudged with dirt, the edges of the ribbons frayed.
“They were on the doorstep,” he says.
I glance back at the cabinet in the hall where I’ve put the shell I found, which was also on the doorstep. I wonder why Ben seems to be passing the house so often. We’re not really on the way to anywhere.
“Not mine,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady. “Someone must have left them as a joke or something.”
“A joke?” he says, touching the silk ribbons.
“I’ll throw them away,” I say, but I don’t take them from him. I don’t want to bring them into the house—I don’t even want to touch them.
“I’ll do it,” Ben says. “I’ll put them in your wheelie-bin on my way back… Are you okay? You’re very pale.”
“It’s nothing, really. I’m still feeling the effects of some bad seafood.”
I didn’t sleep last night. I couldn’t stop horrible thought after horrible thought from building in my head. This morning, I welcomed the numbness that creeps in after I take my pill, wishing I could take two instead of one. But I don’t want to tell Ben about the pills. Or about Patrick and the calamari.
I close the door a fraction, but Ben doesn’t move. “Actually, I wasn’t just passing,” he says. My hand tightens on the door frame and I half expect him to push his way in. I glance back into the house—what if Patrick or Joe comes down to see me talking to Ben? I should never have opened the door.
“I’ve had an artist pull back his exhibition and wanted to discuss your going in his place next month. We’ll promote it with posters and flyers—get some real interest.”
I press my stomach to hold in the panic. “I can’t. I told you, I don’t have enough paintings. I haven’t… How can I have a whole exhibition ready in a month?”
I could have framed my drawings, like Anna suggested, but they’re all gone now and the loss is like a sore, weeping and raw.
He frowns. “Will you come into the gallery tomorrow or Friday? There’s… I have something that might help you.”
There’s something wrong. Something different. I stand outside the house after Ben leaves and stare. The I on the window that I scrubbed away… there’s another. Next to where mine was, smaller, fainter, but there: another line drawn through the salt already building up again. I look down at the border: tiny white stones are scattered through it that weren’t there before. They’re like the white pills I take every day, so much so I almost go back into the house to check that I haven’t scattered them like seeds in the garden without even knowing I did it. But when I crouch down, I see that they’re not pills or stones but dozens of broken pieces of shell. I put that poor hermit crab out here the other day and now the crab has gone, its broken home crushed into tiny pieces. And next to them, right under the new I, a footprint.
I hold my breath. This is too close. This isn’t someone watching from the other side of the road. This is someone right outside the window. When did this happen? Earlier, when I was alone in the house? Last night? No—the baby shoes weren’t there when Patrick and Joe came in, and it must be the same person.
My mind jumps from Ian Hooper to Tom to Ben, imagining all of them watching me through the window, wiping away the salt to spy. I shake my head. Nearly time to take another pill, time to be calm and numb again.
But what else have I missed in that drifting numbness? Would I have forgotten Patrick’s dinner if it weren’t for the pills? Would I have taken so long to unpack and decorate? Wasn’t it both those things that drove Patrick to lose control? I take my pills and passively watch life happen around me. I’m never going to be able to paint enough for a whole exhibition like this. Instead, the pills will take root inside me, grow into something rotten while I sleep through it all and the I on the window will cloud over and disappear. I get the plastic box of pills from the house and take off the lid. I go out to the wheelie-bin in front of the house and lift the lid. My hand tightens on the box, unable to tip them in. Maybe I can hide them in my room somewhere, just in case…
I walk back up the path and stop by the border under the window again. The footprint looks less distinct, the line through the salt perhaps a streak from a raindrop. Am I imagining all this? Obsessing, like Patrick said? I look at the pills in my hand. If I took another now, the footprint and the I might disappear. But the baby shoes—I couldn’t have imagined them, could I? Someone is doing this, messing with us, and I have to stop hiding from it. Using my hands, I dig holes in the wet earth. I kneel to do it, not caring as wetness seeps through my trousers. I bury the pills, scattering them among the pieces of broken shell, covering them with earth until the border is neat and there’s no sign of white, no footprints.
I rummage through Mia’s coat pockets in the hall, searching for the tins of mints she always has. They’re bigger than the pills, but from a distance, in the opaque plastic box, you can’t tell.
Patrick comes down as I’m putting the lid back on the box, rubbing his wet hair with a towel, warm from his bath as his arm brushes mine.
“Taking your pill? Good girl.”
I nod, my heart pounding. My arm aches from holding it rigidly still—I daren’t let Patrick see my hand tremble. There’s still dirt under my fingernails. I couldn’t get it out, but if he notices, I’ll say I’ve been weeding.
I’ve always been so bad at lying. But if I tell him I want to stop taking the pills, he’ll march me back to the doctor, who’ll look at my records and won’t let me stop.
And after last night, after he burned my books, I’m scared of Patrick’s reaction if I tell him. I’m learning to lie better, though. I’m learning as I take a mint out of the box and put it into my mouth.
I close the box again and turn away, my shoulders hunched and sweat dripping under my hair as I wait for him to grab me, to smell the mint on my breath and then see the lie.
He walks up behind me and puts his hands on my shoulders, leans down to kiss the top of my head. I turn and I’m in his arms, his hands stroking my back. He’s nearly a foot taller than me and his arms are strong. I used to like this—how safe and secure I felt, locked in. Now I find it difficult to breathe and I have to try hard not to struggle. I move and his arms tighten.
“Patrick…” I try to bring my hands up to push him away and he shifts, but only an inch or so. My back is touching the high windowsill and I can’t get away because he keeps his arms around me.
This house, this moment, feels like how his parents’ house used to feel, when the claustrophobia would build and build until sweat broke out on my forehead and my breathing grew unsteady.
Patrick touches my chin, lifts my head, reaches down to kiss my cheek, moving to whisper in my ear. “What’s wrong, Sarah?”
What’s wrong? I can hear the frustrated edge to his voice. I get it again, the fear that everything is in my imagination. How can he be acting so normally? I saw the look on his face as he burned my books—I can feel his hand pulling my hair as I was sick last night. It’s not just me. It’s not. In my head, I see Tom telling me about Patrick and his father, I see Ben and the gallery, picture my paintings in the window, picture Patrick’s reaction to it, and my pulse rate builds as Patrick stares at me. What if he can see inside my mind?
It’s still dark when I wake. The streetlight outside shines yellow through a gap in the curtains, and when my eyes adjust, I see Patrick’s not asleep next to me. His side of the bed is cold: he hasn’t just gone to the bathroom. That’s not what woke me. How long has he been gone? I came up earlier than him. It was only me and him downstairs and the silence got to be too much, but I’m sure I remember the bounce of the mattress as he got in next to me, a soft brush of a kiss on my rigid shoulder as I drifted off to sleep.
I wait for him to come back, but he doesn’t. It’s three o’clock in the morning: there can be no good reason for someone to be up at three o’clock on a weeknight. Is it the children? I listen in the dark, but the house is silent. I close my eyes, but my mind sends me pictures of Patrick burning more than my sketchbooks. It sends me pictures of Mia waking from one of her nightmares. I won’t be able to sleep again without knowing why Patrick’s up, so I reach for my dressing gown, pull thick socks onto my feet. I pause in the doorway, scared to leave the room. My heart is racing as I make myself step out onto the dark landing.
He’s not upstairs. Joe and Mia are both fast asleep when I look in on them, which calms my thudding heart a bit. Didn’t I have that nightmare once? That I woke in the middle of the night and Patrick was gone, and when I checked, the children were gone and I was alone?
I smell fresh paint as I go downstairs. The kitchen and living room are dark, but the cellar door is ajar and there’s a light shining from down there. I don’t want to go in. I don’t want to find out what’s happening. I’ve never been down there. I’ve never wanted to go down there. I want to go back upstairs, pull the quilt over my head, and go to sleep, pretend this is all part of that dream I once had. I wish I hadn’t buried those pills.
But I’m here and I’m awake and there’s a light on in the cellar and the smell of fresh paint is drifting up. It’s surreal enough to be a dream. Slowly, numbly, I walk down the cellar stairs and see Patrick. He’s wearing a faded T-shirt and old jogging pants and he’s painting the wall, covering the water-stained beige walls with bright white.
“Patrick?”
He doesn’t answer. He bends, dips the roller in the tray of paint, and straightens, rolling it up and down the wall, another two feet of white to cover the dirty, damp surface.
“Patrick—it’s the middle of the night.”
“Couldn’t sleep,” he says without turning.
The only light is a low-wattage bulb hanging in the middle of the room so the corners are all in shadow.
“You’ve got to get up for work in less than five hours. Come on, I’ll make you a tea to take up.”
He ignores me. He’s missing bits as he paints in this stupid, inadequate light.
“Patrick, seriously, this is not the time to be doing bloody decorating.”
“I know that,” he says, throwing down the roller so paint spatters across the floor and my feet, polka-dotting my socks. “You think I really want to be doing this now? But I have to work all the damn hours to pay for this house while you sit around doing nothing, whining about having no storage for all your damn junk, having nowhere to paint your little pictures, expecting me to be pleased you’ve spent a fortune on paint before you’ve unpacked one fucking box.”
His voice rises to a shout that echoes and I step away, glancing toward the open cellar door. He runs his hands through his hair and lets out a shaky sigh. “Sorry. I’m sorry. You’re right. I’ll come to bed in a minute. I’m sorry I shouted. I’m tired and the move stressed me out more than I thought, and work is so busy and… Never mind.”
“Patrick, please talk to me.”
He bends down to pick up the roller again. “There’s been a problem at work. It was one of my buildings. Some safety issues.”
“Is it serious?”
“They caught it in time. But David called me into his office today and David thinks I should take some time off.”
“Will you?”
He shakes his head. “We can’t afford for me to take time off now, can we? I wanted the dinner to smooth things over, but that didn’t happen, did it? There’s so much to do to the house. It’ll be fine. It’ll blow over. All this nonsense you keep coming up with about Ian Hooper and imaginary people watching the house is not helping. I try to sleep and I can’t shut off. Work and Joe and you and Mia and the house. There’s so much to do.”
The butterflies in my stomach have multiplied. The hairline cracks in his control are widening. I take a breath and pick up a brush. “Want some help?”
He shakes his head. “Go to bed. I’ll be up in a minute. I’ll clean up here and then I’ll come.”
But when I wake again, it’s past four o’clock and Patrick’s still not back in bed.
CHAPTER 16
I’ve felt anxious and jittery all day. I don’t know if it’s not taking the pills, worrying about Patrick, or panicking about this exhibition Ben wants me to have. Patrick’s hovering behind me as I chop vegetables for a stir-fry. He’s distracted—he doesn’t seem to have noticed my agitated state. I’m wondering if something more has happened at work today, but I daren’t ask. The front door slams and he seems to snap out of his preoccupied state, turning with a smile as Mia walks into the room.
“Hey,” she says, her eyes wary as she looks at us. Something’s wrong, something that’s making her hunch her shoulders and bite her nails.
“Hi, honey—nice evening?”
She shrugs, pushing her hair away from her face and already turning to leave. “We were just doing homework and watching TV. Is there anything to eat? I’m starving—Jane’s mum did this stupid creamy pasta thing that was disgusting.”
“I thought you said you were going to Betty’s,” Patrick says, and I see Mia flinch.
“She called me,” I put in, before Mia can answer, “to say Betty had to go out and could she go to Jane’s.”
She frowns at me but nods and backs away before Patrick can ask anything else. Patrick’s pretend smile drops as she leaves the room and he stares at me as I hurry after her.
“Thanks,” she mutters as we pass each other on the landing. She stops with her hand on her bedroom door. “But you didn’t have to lie for me. Dad wouldn’t have minded.”
Her defense o
f Patrick is nothing new, but the note of doubt in her voice is.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”
She opens her door and I see the walls are still bare, no photos of a gang of new friends. Maybe there is no gang. Maybe there’s just one, the he she talked about, any photos of him hidden on her phone for her eyes only.
More worry. It’s making my stomach ache. I want to ask her who she was with, what she was doing, but she’s all hunched and defensive, and I know if I do, we’ll have another fight.
“Are you still having bad dreams?” I ask instead.
Her knuckles whiten as she grips the edge of the door and I expect it to be slammed in my face. Instead she lets her hand fall and steps back, an unspoken invitation into her room. I sit on the edge of her bed and she hovers in front of me.
“Not as bad as before,” she says. “Not since you made me get rid of those books and articles.” She looks back at me, a faint smile on her face. “It’s not surprising I had nightmares, is it? Did… did you read any of it?”
A line from the murder houses book comes into my head: Neighbors report the children grew quieter and more withdrawn over the months leading up to the murders. She doesn’t need to know I keep the book in my bedside table, that it’s become my bedtime reading. “I know enough about this house and the murders—true facts, not speculation.”
I get up and reach out a hand to brush her hair. “Listen,” I say, wanting to see a repeat of the smile, “we never had that shopping trip, did we? How about we go this weekend? I’ll buy us lunch.” I look at her blank walls again. “Maybe I can arrange for you to stay with Caroline for a few days. It’ll be break soon.”
The Woman in the Dark Page 15