The Woman in the Dark

by Vanessa Savage

  But it’s not the house, or Patrick, that gets my heart racing. It’s the grinning man next to Patrick, who’s obviously a young John Evans, looking just like a happier, luckier version of Tom. Then my eyes drift to the teenage girl with the wild black hair leaning her head against Patrick’s shoulder. It’s Anna.

  * * *

  She’s still standing in the hall when I go down.

  “You told me you only moved here last year.”

  “What?”

  “Both strangers in town, you said. Always lived in the city, you said.”

  “Christ, Sarah, what are you talking about?”

  My sleeves are pulled down over the bandages, hiding the photo. I’m searching Anna’s face, but she gives nothing away, just stares at me in confusion.

  “How long have you really been here? How long exactly have you known my husband? How well did you know him when you and he and John Evans were all laughing fucking teenagers together?”

  I push my sleeve back and hold out the photo. “Look at this—look. It’s taken here, right in front of the damn house. Patrick’s got his arm around you—were you sleeping with him? Were you his fucking girlfriend? Why would you lie?”

  She looks shocked, ready to deny it; then something changes in her face and her shoulders sag. She hunches over, her eyes on the floor. “Does it matter?” she says. “I never lived here. I was passing through and we hooked up. He wouldn’t even remember me, so does it matter?”

  “Does it matter? You never told me. You’ve been lying the whole time.” I thrust the photo at her, waving it in her face.

  She doesn’t answer, doesn’t react. Instead she reaches for my bandaged hand, raising her eyebrows when I gasp and snatch it away. “Did Patrick do this?”

  “It was an accident. Everything’s fine. Stop trying to change the subject.”

  “What subject? I’m trying to help you, Sarah, and you want to bitch at me about some crap teenage sex a million years ago?” She marches away from me into the kitchen. “So what if I was?” she says. “So what if I was sleeping with Patrick? Or John fucking Evans? So what if I had sex with half the town over one wild weekend by the sea? You didn’t know me; you didn’t know them. What if I told you we had sex in this house, we had sex on the beach, at the fairground, in the restroom of the pub? Is that what you want to hear? Does that make you feel better?”

  “It’s not the sex,” I say. “It’s the lying.”

  “I’m not the only one lying. You should ask him. Ask him if he remembers.”

  “Remembers what?”

  She’s shaking her head, white-faced, her arms wrapped around herself, like she’s in pain. “Nothing. Forget it.”

  “Look, Anna. I think it’s best if you stop coming around for tea for a while, okay? I know you’re trying to help, but this is my life, not yours, and there are things you don’t know.”

  “You think you can skip off into some bright golden future?” she shouts, stepping closer, yelling right into my face. “I’ve seen your paintings in the gallery. The exhibition opens tomorrow, doesn’t it? What do you think Patrick’s going to say about that? Or has he already seen them? Is that what the fucking bandages are about?”

  “Doesn’t matter now, anyway,” I say, to the house, to myself, as well as to her. “I’m leaving. As soon as Mia gets home, we’re leaving.”

  “What about Joe?”

  “Joe’s with a friend and he’s moving out anyway. He’s going to get a place at college, an apartment share with a friend.”

  Anna frowns. “Joe? What are you talking about? He’s too young.”

  “He’s almost eighteen. He’d be going away to college soon anyway.”

  She shakes her head. “You told me he was fifteen.”

  “Mia’s fifteen, not Joe.”

  She walks over to a framed sketch of Joe and Mia as toddlers. “I thought they were twins,” she says, tracing their smiles.

  “No, they’re not. There’s nearly two years between them.”

  Her hand stills on the drawing. “Two years?”

  I nod, even though she has her back to me.

  “No,” she says. She takes the picture off the wall and stares down at it. “No. What did you do?” she whispers.

  “What?”

  She whirls around and her face is set in a snarl, her eyes filled with tears. She raises the picture and throws it past me at the wall. I duck and cover my head as the glass shatters and flies everywhere.

  “You bitch!” she screams. “You thieving fucking bitch.” She rushes toward me and I step back, my shoe crunching on broken glass. She stops a foot from me, trembling, breathing fast, her face still set in that snarl. I think she’s going to attack me, but instead she turns and runs out through the door, slamming it behind her.

  I crunch over the broken glass and lean to pick up the drawing, brushing shards of glass off it. I’m going over what I said in my mind, looking for the catalyst, for whatever set her off. I blink and then I see. It’s not in this picture: it’s in the photograph, the one Tom Evans left for me. I see it now. I see it in the spin of her foot, in the wave of her hand, in the edge of her bitter laugh. I finally see it.

  I look from one picture to the other.

  And there it is.

  Eve.

  There’s writing on the back of the photo from Tom. My hand is trembling so much it takes a moment for the words to sink in. When they do, when I read them and look at the picture again, I have to rush out, to the bathroom, head over the toilet, retching and retching up bile and bitterness.

  I’ve been so stupid. More stupid than I ever thought I could be. So damn stupid.

  Still time not to do it. I look at the envelope in my hand. I could rip it up, walk away now, go and get shit-faced, keep going until I die. But I’ve already put the letter in the envelope. You’ll know, won’t you? You’ll know what it means.

  This envelope is a bomb. This envelope and what it contains is a grenade, a Molotov cocktail I’m about to push through your door. I know what it’ll do and I still have the power to stop it. If I want.

  But I don’t.

  CHAPTER 33

  “Joe? Joe—it’s Mum. Please call me back as soon as you get this message. Don’t come home. Call me first.” It’s the third I’ve left and I’m worried. I need to speak to him before— The front door slams and I gasp.

  I’m upstairs, throwing clothes into a suitcase. It’s not three o’clock yet, too early for Mia, too early for Joe to be back after his college interview. I shove the suitcase under the bed, my heart pounding, tugging the quilt down to cover it just as Patrick walks into the bedroom. The awful truth, all Patrick’s lies, Anna’s screaming accusations—they hover in me like physical things, wanting to come out in a howl of fury. But I can’t speak: he stands between me and the door, and tension fills the space between us. I can see, in the sheen of sweat on his forehead, his trembling hands, his red-rimmed eyes, that any semblance of control has gone. This is the Patrick who threw Joe against a wall. This is the Patrick who went roaring toward Mia.

  “We’re famous,” he says, chucking the local paper and a bunch of flowers onto the bed.

  Patrick brought me flowers? I stare at them. I’m reaching for them when I see the card clipped to the bouquet. There’s a printout of the photo of the Evans family that was in all the newspapers, the words Never forgotten written underneath. I recoil and snatch my hand away.

  I go cold, looking at the headline on the newspaper. They’ve used the same photo, the famous photo from fifteen years ago, fluttering police tape, Welcome to the Murder House spray-painted on the front door… and those are the words they’ve used as the headline. There’s a weird buzzing in my ears and the world retreats for a moment. All I can see is the newspaper.

  “It’s the anniversary of the murders,” he says, brushing past me to go to the window. “The fucking vultures are back.”

  I look out, past Patrick, who is white-faced and shaking.

  Lyn Bar
rett is walking up to the gate. She lays a bunch of daffodils and a small stuffed toy on the ground.

  “Oh, God,” I mutter.

  “They do it every year apparently,” Patrick says. “Lay flowers and pretend they all knew the murder victims so well. Fucking vultures.”

  I step closer, looking for Ian Hooper, for Tom Evans.

  I rub my arms to smooth away the goosebumps.

  Run, a voice whispers. Now, while he’s distracted.

  “They lay their flowers and talk about how awful it was, such a tragedy. But they’re all dying for something exciting like that to happen again,” Patrick says, not looking away from the window. “Fifteen years to the day… They’re just dying to see more blood spilled in the Murder House.”

  He pulls the curtains closed and turns away. “I’ve been called into work,” he says. “For an urgent meeting. What a treat for a Friday afternoon.” He steps closer to me. “Better lock the door, hide the key, keep the murderers out.”

  I nod. But if we lock the door and hide the keys, we’re trapped in here. And I no longer think it’s the danger on the outside we need to worry about.

  After he’s gone, I find myself pulled back to the window. It might be paranoia, but it seems that everyone who passes, the dog-walkers, the joggers, pauses to stare up at the house. I draw the curtains again and reach down to pull out the suitcase.

  The newspaper is still on the bed when I put the suitcase next to it. I feel sick as I read all about my husband, his family, and this house. The report gleefully revels in the fact that Patrick has moved back into the family home. I read the last lines and draw in my breath.

  Ian Hooper was arrested last week for assault in Liverpool after a fight outside a club. Hooper, who’s been living in Liverpool since being released from prison, was charged with assault on a 25-year-old man.

  All the things left on the doorstep, the watcher outside the house. If Hooper has truly been in Liverpool all this time, it can’t have been him. None of it was him. I wanted it to be him, the obvious Big Bad, because otherwise… But it was never him. The Ian Hooper I’ve been so scared of has never existed. It has to have been Tom, waiting and watching even before I contacted him. Oh, God—I’ve been so stupid, inviting him into our lives.

  I should never have waited this long to leave. Why did I? Was it for my stupid exhibition, which was always a ridiculous dream, wasn’t it? Another form of denial. I don’t know where I’ll go. I won’t stay with Caroline, but I can borrow money from her, find a cheap B-and-B and I can— Oh, God, what can I do? Doesn’t matter. I can figure that out later.

  I throw more clothes in, but I need some of Mia’s and Joe’s things. Mia’s only packed for a week. I take my suitcase downstairs and run back up to fill another bag. My heart is racing as I cross the landing to Joe’s room. I’m gripped by the conviction that I have to go now, that even taking these few minutes to pack is wrong. It’s definitely colder in Joe’s room than the rest of the house, even when the heat isn’t on. I can’t blame a faulty radiator.

  The wallpaper is peeling again and I pull it off in a big sheet. What did Tom say? Look at the walls. Plaster falls, a shower on the floor. Underneath the wallpaper, beneath the black spots of damp, the whole wall is covered with drawings. Sketched by a child’s hand, but not an innocent hand. The drawings are of a family, the stick man and woman with knives in their bellies, being torn apart by sharp-toothed dogs. The stick man strangling a stick child, the stick woman climbing into the stick child’s bed, hands outstretched. I put my hands over my mouth and swallow sour vomit.

  My legs are shaking as I back out of the room and close the door, wishing there was a fucking lock on it. Joe’s been sleeping in there, with those monstrous pictures on the wall. My breath is fast and harsh as I move on to Mia’s room. Most of her possessions seem to be scattered across the floor, clean and dirty all mixed up. I crouch to look under her bed for shoes and see something else, tucked right at the back, something shiny. She must have dropped something down the side of the bed. I lie down and wriggle under, stretching my fingers out to reach it.

  The chain is dusty, but I recognize it right away. It’s my mother’s necklace, the gold chain with the sapphire pendant, her “best necklace,” she used to call it, always putting it on when we went back to visit. My hands are shaking and I drop it on Mia’s rug, where it sinks into the shaggy pile and disappears. I push my hands into the rug until I find it again, the dust all gone, shiny and gold again, so many memories of my mother in every link of the chain.

  “What are you doing in my room?”

  I hadn’t even heard Mia come into the house. She’s in the doorway, scowling at me. Guilty, I think, as her attention goes from me to the chain in my hands.

  “Did you take this?” I say, standing up.

  “Where did you get that? It’s mine.” She stretches for it, but I hold it out of her reach.

  “Yours? You took it, didn’t you? You went into my room and took it. Where’s the rest? I saw”—my voice is shaking—“I saw my mother’s engagement ring in a jewelry shop in town. I thought your dad took it… but you sold it, didn’t you? Is that how you paid for the new clothes, how you could afford to go out and get drunk?”

  “What the hell are you going on about?” she says. “I didn’t take any bloody jewelry. It was a present.”

  “What?”

  She’s wary now. It’s there in the double blink, the shifting of her feet. “Dad gave it to me. As a present. I haven’t worn it—it’s gross. I hate gold. I thought I’d lost it.”

  “It’s not his. It was never his. It belonged to my mother. Why did he give it to you?”

  “As a reward,” she whispers.

  “A reward? For what?” I force the words out and she glances behind her as if expecting to see Patrick there.

  Mia looks so young and so like me standing in the doorway. There’s a moment here, a moment for us to do what we always do, to walk away in opposite directions, ignoring what we don’t want to confront. I close my eyes and wait for it to pass.

  “He asks me where you’ve been, who you’ve been talking to. He told me it was because he was worried about you. After the overdose.” She reaches into her pocket and pulls out a crumpled twenty-pound note. “It’s what he gives me the money for. I’m sorry. I told him I didn’t want the money. He kept insisting he was only doing it because he was worried.”

  I swallow, thinking of all the places I’ve been, all the lies I’ve told.

  “It doesn’t matter. We’re leaving, both of us,” I say to her. “I’ve packed a bag. We’re leaving.”

  “The other day when you were out…” She comes to stand next to me, leaning her head on my shoulder. She traces the bruises on my arm, four perfect circles of purple where Patrick grabbed me. “Oh, Mum, I’ve really fucked up.”

  She seems smaller, younger. I kiss her forehead and smooth back her hair. My little girl. How could Patrick have put this on her? This is my fault. Anna was right: I should have gotten out already—I should have found a way earlier.

  “He came into my room again,” Mia says.

  I pause, my hand still on her hair.

  “He was drunk,” she whispers, and I hold her a little tighter, closing my eyes. “I could smell the whiskey on his breath when he got closer. He was drunk and raving and I was scared, and he kept asking me about you and what you’ve been doing…”

  I hold her so tightly, rocking her back and forth as she cries, whispering soothing words to her, telling her everything will be all right, words meant to be a balm to her raw wounds. I hold her tighter still and try to control my own trembling.

  “He was drunk and I tried to tell him nothing was going on, but I saw you, Mum, at the café and then at the gallery with that man. Your paintings in the window. I saw your face. You were suddenly happy while me and Joe were going through so much shit. So I told him. I told Dad you’ve been painting and I told him about the exhibition and that you’ve been seeing someone
else. I told him everything and he gave me that bloody necklace. I wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how to…”

  I go cold. I remember Patrick’s face as he thrust that roasting pan at me. Mia told him all this and he didn’t say a word, but it’s festering inside him, truth and lies. My burned hands are a punishment. He meant it. What’s he going to do when he sees the exhibition and recognizes Ben? I can’t go with Mia now. I can’t run with her—Patrick will come tearing after us if I do. He’ll go straight to Caroline’s with all his rage and he’ll—

  “Go,” I say to Mia. “You go ahead. Get the train and go to Caroline’s and stay there until I come for you.”

  “You can’t stay here, Mum.”

  “I’ll be fine—it’s just for a bit, just until you and Joe are away and safe.”

  Mia’s shaking her head, her arms wrapped around her stomach as if she’s in pain. “No, no, you have to come too—you can’t let him… What will he do? He’ll go mental, you know he will. He’ll lose it again. He’ll—” She stops and takes a shuddering breath. “You don’t know, you don’t know everything.”

  “What? What is it?”

  “At the old house, when you took the overdose…” I can barely hear her words over the rushing and roaring in my ears.

  A car door slams outside.

  “After school, Dad picked us up. Dad never picks us up—he should have been at work. I told him I was going shopping with you, but he took us home and we found you… It was like he knew. I asked him. After. I asked him and he said I was wrong, he just finished work early and wanted to pick us up.”

  “I believe you,” I say, through numb lips, tasting the bitterness of pills on my tongue.

  “I didn’t want it to be true—I wouldn’t let it be true because I was scared,” she says, tears spilling. “I was scared and I took it out on you because I couldn’t face thinking that Dad would do that.”