The Woman in the Dark

by Vanessa Savage

  She hands me some photocopied sheets of old newspaper reports. “Is this about the house? I know—”

  “It’s not about the house. It’s about Patrick. I told you Sean found something. This is it.”

  My hands shake as I read the photocopied story, dimly lit by the outside light.

  A man and a woman have been questioned in connection with child cruelty charges after a 12-year-old boy was removed from their house and taken to the hospital.

  The boy was found with injuries and in a severely malnourished and dehydrated state. He is currently in the care of Social Services.

  “What is this?”

  “It’s Patrick. The twelve-year-old boy was Patrick. He spent months in care—has he ever told you this? He was in the same group home as Eve—that’s where they met.”

  “No, that can’t be right.”

  “It is—I’ve seen the files. Sean looked them up. He could have been fired for doing it, but I needed to see. You need to know, Sarah. He was in care with Joe’s birth mother and he never told you. He’s been lying—why would he do that?” She takes a deep breath. “Didn’t you tell me he and Eve were in a casual relationship, then she got pregnant? How casual could it have been if he knew her all those years?”

  I feel sick reading the story. That’s what Patrick told me, a casual relationship that resulted in a pregnancy. But if they’d met when he was twelve, were they in touch the whole time? And how could he have been in care? What happened? Injured, dehydrated, malnourished— Oh, God, oh, God… The cellar. The writing on the wall. How could he not have told me? How could he keep something so huge a secret?

  “I’ve never liked the way he acts around you,” Caroline says. “He shut everyone else out, wouldn’t let us near you. He wanted you all to himself, right from the beginning.”

  “Please stop it.”

  She opens her mouth, closes it again, then sighs. “I saw it, from the first moment you introduced us… He was controlling. Creepy. I didn’t like it.”

  Everything Patrick had told me about his childhood was a lie. All lies—that bloody perfect life he’s been trying to re-create is all a lie.

  “I saw his file. I saw what they did to him. He never said a word to the social workers or the doctors. He denied his parents ever touched or neglected him,” Caroline says. “His dad went to AA and they let Patrick go back to them. But he was in care, Sarah. Something happened that was so bad, he had to be taken away. And he’s never told you about it or about knowing Eve since he was a kid.”

  “No. It can’t be true. It can’t.”

  “How can you still be in denial?”

  Denial? It’s not denial. Not anymore. I’m shell-shocked. Reeling. I can’t… I just can’t…

  “Sarah, he’s been lying to you the whole time. You need to get out. Come to me—bring Mia and Joe. Please.”

  I stare at her. “I can’t just walk out now—he’s upstairs. So are Joe and Mia. Do you think he’d let us walk away with you? He’ll know—he’ll see you.” I’m suddenly scared for her as well as us. She has a husband at home—and her boys. They’re so much younger than Joe and Mia. I can’t bring Patrick roaring after me to her house.

  My fear is reflected on her face as she looks up at the house.

  “You have to go now,” I say. “Before he knows you’re here.”

  CHAPTER 30

  I go upstairs on shaking legs, but Patrick’s not in bed. His pillow’s cold, still plumped up. In the dark, in the silence of the night, my imagination supplies a picture: Patrick spying on me talking to Caroline, or drinking with Ian Hooper, swept in by the storm, Hooper sliding the bloody knife across the table. Here, he says. I’ve held on to this for you for too long. Have it back.

  I head toward the stairs but stop dead before I take the first step down when Mia’s door opens and Patrick comes out. He doesn’t see me hovering there: he goes the other way, into the bathroom.

  I walk along the landing and push Mia’s door open. “Mia, honey?”

  She’s curled up, facing the wall, barely visible under the quilt, and I think she’s asleep. It’s okay, she’s sleeping, Patrick was just checking on her, like he used to do when the kids were tiny. Maybe she left her light on, maybe he was turning it off…

  It’s this house, putting bad thoughts into my head. Every time I pass through one of the cold spots, more of them seep in, thoughts of ghosts and cellars and hidden secrets and buried lies. I think she’s asleep and then I see her hand clutching the quilt, white-knuckled. She’s awake.

  “Mia…” I step farther into the room. What can I smell? “Mia, have you been drinking?”

  She turns then and my eyes have adjusted to the dark enough to see the fury on her face. Anger and… something else. Fear?

  (I’ve been bad. I’ve been very bad.)

  “Me?” she says, in a whisper to match mine. “Me drinking?”

  I glance at the half-open door. Patrick’s still in the bathroom. I push Mia’s door closed and go to sit on the edge of the bed.

  “I can smell it,” I say. “It can’t be your father drinking. He said he was going to bed. If he sat in the bedroom drinking alone at half past ten, that would be…”

  (very bad)

  “You don’t know anything. You’re so fucking blind.”

  “What was he doing in your room?” We’re still speaking in whispers, but those words seem too loud and I see Mia flinch.

  “It’s this house,” she says, turning from me to stare up at the ceiling. “Everything was fine until we moved to this bloody house.”

  Was it? I think of my breakdown, my grief after my mother died; Joe’s car accident, the older scars on his arms. Mia’s only half-right. Everything that’s wrong now was wrong before. The house isn’t making these things happen: it has been stripping away the lies blinding us all.

  “He called me Sarah,” Mia says as I get up to leave.

  “What?”

  “You asked why he was in my room. He’s drunk. He staggered when he came in. He was looking out the window at something and he called me Sarah. Don’t tell me the house isn’t affecting him.”

  “He must have gotten the wrong room.” My words feel clumsy and forced.

  Mia thinks so too. I can see it on her face, in that edge of fear.

  (I’ve been bad)

  “He called me Sarah and he was ranting about secrets and lies and punishments.” She sits up, chewing her lip. “You haven’t…you haven’t lied to him, have you, Mum? Because the state he was in, that would be…”

  (very bad)

  I think of the gallery, of Anna and Ben and Tom Evans, of everything Caroline just told me. Fear rises in my throat, like a physical thing. I’m wrong. Mia is right. It is this house, feeding these evil, creeping thoughts into Patrick’s brain, where they sit and fester. The cellar, his parents, John Evans, the murders, Caroline, the watcher, going into Mia’s room…

  “No—don’t worry. No secrets. Nothing for you to worry about. But Caroline has said you can stay with her for a while,” I say.

  “After what she did?”

  I swallow past the lump in my throat. “It wasn’t what it seemed—she still loves you. You can stay with her for break and you’ll be…”

  Safe. I don’t need to say it out loud. I see the relief on Mia’s face and I feel it myself. I know it’s the right decision. It doesn’t matter what’s gone on with me and Caroline: all that matters is that Mia will be safe with her. I’ll have a week and in that week, I’ll… Fear grips me, panic of the unknown. In that moment, I feel younger than Mia: I’m the girl who watched her mother fall apart when left alone; I’m the girl who’s clung to Patrick and closed her eyes to every hint of something wrong for more than seventeen years in fear he might take Joe away from me.

  I step back onto the landing as Patrick comes out of the bathroom. He looks at me and back at Mia’s door. “What are you doing?”

  “I thought I heard a noise.”

  His eyes
are red, like he’s been crying. He looks defeated.

  “Are you okay?” I ask, and he straightens up, his face blank, Patrick again.

  “I’m tired,” he mutters, and walks into the bedroom, leaving me on the landing, poised on a cusp: part of me just wants to run.

  Even back then, when the house was just a house, not yet the Murder House, it was a bad house. You sensed it; I know you did.

  We were there together once. It was locked up and empty—your parents were out. We walked through the house in the dark and when my eyes adjusted, I saw cracks in the walls, felt cold drafts creeping through. It was perfectly tidy, but I saw mold in the corners, rotten window frames. I saw a house your parents had obviously lost, long before the bank took it away from them. It smelled rotten. It smelled dead. If someone had told me then what the house would become, I’d have believed them because I could already see it creeping through.

  All those months before you lost the house, you were just the same. The smile never dropped. That time, though, your smile wasn’t there.

  “Do you want to see the cellar?” you said.

  I shook my head, but you took me down there anyway.

  CHAPTER 31

  “What do you think? Looks good, doesn’t it?”

  It’s not Ben asking; it’s Juno, his permanently smiling assistant, already walking away before I can answer. I’m staring at my painting in the window of the gallery. Not the painting of the Murder House—in the end I couldn’t exhibit that one. Or the ones still locked in the cellar. Instead there’s the painting of Anna’s secret beach, with all its glittering colors. Down at the water’s edge, someone stands staring out to sea. I think it’s me. I think I painted myself onto the canvas and what I can see in that swirl of cobalt blue is yearning: a yearning to sail away, a yearning to drift, or a yearning to drown.

  It’s Thursday afternoon and the exhibition opens this weekend. I haven’t been back to see Ben since he came around, but I brought my paintings down from the studio when I knew he wouldn’t be there. I thought this exhibition would be my opportunity. There are half a dozen bottles of Prosecco in the gallery fridge, a box of rented glasses on the counter, and posters are going up all over town with my name on them. I’ve done all this in secret, encouraged by Anna.

  But Patrick’s going to find out. He’ll see the posters or walk past the gallery and see my work in the window.

  I’m finding it hard to breathe.

  I can’t be in that house when Patrick finds out about this.

  What do I think? I think I’m scared.

  I walk away from the gallery and take out my phone.

  “Caroline? I need your help.”

  I open the door quietly, but Patrick still hears. He comes out of the kitchen and watches me hang up my coat. It started raining on my way back and I’m leaving a pool of water in the hall. I need to shower and change, but Patrick’s blocking my way.

  “Where have you been?”

  “Sorry I wasn’t here when you got home. I went for a walk.” The exhibition program burns a hole in my pocket.

  “In the rain?”

  “It wasn’t raining when I went out.”

  He’s turned away from me, but I can tell the rage is there, simmering, bubbling. I can tell in the set of his shoulders, the way he squeezes the kitchen door handle before he opens it.

  What would he do if I told him the truth? It’s not even about the exhibition—it’s the fact that I’ve lied, gone behind his back.

  “I’ve got dinner in the oven,” he says. “Go and change and we can eat.”

  Mia opens her door as I go upstairs. She looks at my dripping hair. “Where have you been?” she says, an echo of her father, but without the simmering anger under the surface. I hear in Mia’s voice the fear I feel.

  My hand tightens on the program in my pocket. I want to tell her, but Patrick is just downstairs and he might hear and he might…

  “Mum?”

  “What?”

  “I saw Dad on the beach earlier.” She looks down at her feet, then back up at me. “He was… he was in his work suit and it was the middle of the afternoon. He stood right at the water’s edge in the rain. He had his shoes on and the sea was going over his feet and up his legs and he looked… People were laughing because he looked mental.”

  “Mia…”

  “Seriously, Mum. It was pissing down with rain and he was there in a suit, getting soaked by the waves and he looked deranged.”

  Has he already been past the gallery? That simmering rage…

  “I have your train tickets,” I say, over the too-fast beat of my heart. “Pack up your stuff—I’ve called Caroline and you can go tomorrow as soon as you get home from school. We won’t wait until break. You can miss a week—I’ll call them, sort it out.”

  “Have you told Dad?” The fear on her face makes my heart beat even faster and, for a moment, I think I might pass out.

  I shake my head. Mia’s lip is trembling, but she doesn’t say anything else. It’s implicit that this will stay secret until she’s on that train. Until she’s safe.

  I press my hands against the sides of my head as I put the shower on. Every morning Patrick gets up, puts on his suit, picks up his briefcase, and drives off God knows where. He hasn’t mentioned the suspension in days. I thought… I hadn’t thought. I had other things on my mind. But if Mia saw him on the beach, has he been going to work at all? If not, what has he been doing? The water starts running cold and I step out, shivering.

  I go down with dry clothes on and my hair wrapped in a towel. Patrick’s in the kitchen, stirring something in a saucepan.

  “Patrick, Mia said she saw you on the beach,” I say.

  He doesn’t answer.

  “Patrick.” I say it again, gently, but he turns away, puts the oven mitts on, and bends down to take a roasting pan out of the oven.

  “Where have you been going? To work?”

  He stands with his back to me for a moment, then spins suddenly. “Here, take this,” he says, pushing the pan toward me. He does it so quickly that I grab the pan without thinking and scream as the hot metal sears my bare hands. I drop it, beef and fat spattering across the floor. He grabs my hands and I scream again as he pulls me toward the sink, pushing them under the cold tap. Tears spring to my eyes as the cold water gushes over my red palms, the skin already blistering.

  “I’m sorry. God, Sarah, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think. It was an accident—I wasn’t thinking.”

  But I’m thinking of his rage, bubbling and boiling over. I’m thinking of the look in his eyes as he pushed that roasting pan toward me.

  “Mum?” Joe peeps around my door and I get up, pull it open wider to let him in, trying not to use the tender part of my hand. I’m not sleeping. I’ve been sitting on the bed, trying to work out what to do next.

  “What happened?” he asks, staring at the bandages on my hands.

  I put my hands behind my back, like he might forget he’s seen them if I do. “I had a silly accident and picked up a roasting pan without oven mitts. I wasn’t thinking.”

  He stares at me. He knows I’m lying. “I have an interview tomorrow for that course. Can I show you my portfolio?”

  “Of course.” I smooth down the quilt so he can heave it onto the bed.

  The first page is another drawing of Mia, bigger than the one I framed. I glance up at him, but he’s grown his hair and I can’t see his face under the fringe that falls over his eyes.

  “I worry about Mia,” I say, tracing a finger over her pencil-drawn face.

  “I know.” Joe turns a page in the portfolio and Patrick’s staring up at both of us, a dark, almost faceless figure set at the eye of a swirling maelstrom. I pull my hand away from the page and lean back, as if he could come lurching out of Joe’s painting, wrapped up in all that swirling storm.

  “She’s going to stay with Caroline,” I say. “Next week and for the break. Do you want to go as well?”

  He shakes his h
ead. “I can… I can stay with Simon. Are you going to Caroline’s with her?”

  “I don’t know.” Despite what happened with Patrick and Caroline, it’s the first place he’d look for me.

  Joe sighs. “Why don’t you leave?” he says.

  I look at Joe’s painting again, searching for the Patrick I fell in love with, the man who danced with me, who had a smile so wide and open I could see all his love. If I can find that Patrick, I can show him to Joe.

  “Sometimes”—Joe glances at me—“the way he treats you… Sometimes I’ve wondered if you like it.”

  Shame grows sour in my gut. I don’t know what to say, so I keep my eyes on the portfolio, now turned to one of his sketches of me. I’ve always been so scared of living alone—I went from my mother to Caroline to Patrick. The thought of being alone makes fear bloom inside me. But how do I tell that to my son?

  I turn the next page. Here Joe has painted the house, the Murder House. He’s painted it not as it really is, a pretty Victorian seafront house, but as some Gothic horror house, standing alone on a cliff-top, battered by winds and storms, but it’s recognizable. He’s painted it like it is in my nightmares. And I recognize myself in the tortured Munch-like figure in the top window, pressing on the glass, shadows creeping up behind her. The tears in my eyes blur the drawing and I reach up to wipe them away. It’s the dark twin of the one I painted, with the wrong angles and sense of something off. This is full-on Monster House.

  “This is how it looks in my dreams,” Joe says. “If I get in,” he says, “if I get into college, I’m going to move out. I’ll keep my job—Simon’s said we can find an apartment together, not as a couple, but share an apartment.”