by Lauren North
“How are things with Tim?” I ask.
“The same.” She sighs. “We’re doing a very good job of avoiding each other at the moment. We need to sit down and talk our problems through, but I don’t think either of us is ready for it, which is another reason why dinner with you tonight would be great.”
“Ok. I’ll make a paella for the three of us,” I say as Shelley ducks her head into the back of the car and reappears with my shopping bags. Jamie will be so excited. He hasn’t stopped asking when he’ll see Shelley again.
Together, we lug the shopping to the porch and dump it down, two bags at a time. Ten bags in total. Shelley steps back to the car to shut the boot and I unlock the side door, giving it a shove with my shoulder until it opens.
The moment I step into the kitchen I know something is wrong.
It’s subtle—the littlest thing—and if Shelley had been behind me chatting away, I probably wouldn’t have noticed the kitchen door. The door I shut on my way out to keep the draft from the side door sweeping through the house. The kitchen door that is now wide open into the hall.
I freeze. The weight of the carrier bags digs into my fingers and I drop them to the floor. A glass jar hits the tiles with a crack, but still I don’t move.
Someone has been in our house, Mark.
Flashes of memory strobe though my thoughts. I see the faceless man lurking in the doorway in Manningtree. Me running on the slippery cobbles. He was chasing me, I know it. I hear the gravelly voice on the answerphone, full of menace and threat, and feel myself huddled on the floor in your cold dark study. The weeks have dulled my fear, but it’s back, digging its claws right into the pit of my stomach.
Stop, Tessie. It’ll be OK.
I hold my breath, listening for any creak, any noise, out of place among the usual groans of the house.
“Tess?” Shelley’s voice slices through the silence. “What’s wrong?”
“Someone’s been here.”
“What do you mean?”
“Someone’s been here while we were out. I shut the kitchen door and now it’s open.” Hearing the words aloud I realize how ridiculous I sound. But it’s more than the door; there’s a feeling too. Something in the air, the stillness of the house being disturbed, that I can’t describe. And a faint odor I can almost smell.
“Right, let’s walk through the house,” Shelley says, giving my arm a nudge. “We won’t touch anything, we’ll just look and see what’s missing.”
“Should we call the police?”
“They’ll ask what’s been taken. We should take a quick look first.”
“Of course.” I nod and swallow the mounting fear.
We wander through the downstairs together, looking for anything missing. I’m looking for anything different too. Did I leave the cushion fallen on the sofa like that? Did I leave the dining room chair pulled out?
It’s only when we reach the top of the stairs and turn onto the landing that I’m certain. Your study door is wide open, adding a chill to the upstairs. I can see all the way to the window and Jamie’s tree house in the garden. I always shut that door.
“I didn’t leave that door open either,” I whisper. “The radiator is broken. I always shut the door or the whole of the upstairs gets cold.”
My heartbeat hammers in my chest and I want to run and wait for the police, but Shelley pulls me forward.
The room looks like it always does. The boxes are stacked neatly against the wall by the door, the phone balanced on top of the first box. The bookshelves are still bare. Dust is floating in the room like a miniature snowstorm.
“Has anything been taken?” Shelley asks.
“I . . . I don’t think so.” My eyes are fixed on the boxes. Something isn’t right. They are pushed up against the wall, just as they were the last time I came in here, but something is different. Then I see it—the writing isn’t there. Where is your swirling handwriting that reads Mark’s study?
“The boxes,” I cry out. “They’ve been moved.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“OK. Take a look through them and see what’s missing. I just need to call my client to tell him I’m running late, then we’ll call the police.”
I nod and sink to my knees.
I pull at the lid of the first box and realize how futile this is. How can I tell what’s missing when I don’t have the first clue what was in them to start with?
The box is filled with papers and programming manuals. It’s a mess. Everything is jumbled up and it looks like a recycling bin, but maybe you left it that way. Right on top of the pile, lying there like it’s waiting to be discovered, is a glossy yellow folder. The words Life Insurance Policy are printed in blue across the front.
Ian’s words ring in my ears. “I know there’s a death benefit from Mark’s job, and a life insurance policy. He declared it all when you made your wills.”
I back out of the room and shut the door, breathing hard and wishing I hadn’t opened the box. I know you’re not coming back, Mark, but the policy makes it too final somehow. I’m not ready.
The walls of the hallway push toward me. My breath catches in my throat in short suffocating gasps. A dizziness spins in my head. I can’t lose it again. I can’t. I race down the main stairs to find Shelley. But she’s not in the house. She’s outside the side door, standing in the porch.
Her back is to me and she’s talking on the phone. I’m about to step away and let her finish when she speaks.
“What did you think you were doing?” Shelley says, her voice hissing into the phone. “Are you purposefully trying to mess this up? Because if you are, then well done, you’re doing a great job.”
I’ve never heard her speak like this before. Her tone is sharp, each word punching the air.
Who is she talking to? Not a client, surely.
“Stay away from her. Do you understand? . . . I can’t talk about it now.”
Shelley ends the call and I back away from the door, tripping on the shopping bags and sending an apple rolling across the kitchen tiles.
“Was anything missing?” Shelley asks as I’m collecting the spilled fruit. There’s a residue of the anger to her voice and I spin around, feeling guilty for listening, but curious too. Her porcelain skin is flushed a pale pink.
Who was she talking to? And who was she talking about?
“Huh? Oh, I . . . I couldn’t tell. I’m sorry to mess your plans up this afternoon. Was your client OK about the delay?” I ask, hoping my question will prompt Shelley to explain the phone call I overheard.
“Oh, I couldn’t get through, so I’ve sent a text, but it’s fine, Tess,” she says, her voice softening. “Come sit down for a second.” Shelley points to a chair, and I do as I’m told. She takes my hand and looks right at me with her green eyes.
“When we walked through the house,” she says, “I checked the front door and all of the windows and they were all shut and locked. Was the side door definitely locked when you came in?”
“Yes. I remember unlocking it. It’s not an easy door to open.”
She nods. “I’m just wondering how someone might’ve got in? And what they wanted when there’s nothing missing.”
“You think I’m making it up?”
She shakes her head, swishing her blond hair from side to side. “Not on purpose, but I think our minds have a way of playing tricks on us. You’ve been through so much, Tess. It’s natural to feel scared and to worry about being alone.”
“I’m not scared. I mean, I am but that’s because there have been other things happening.”
“What things?” Shelley frowns beneath her bangs.
I hesitate, suddenly reluctant to tell her, but I have to. Shelley is the only one I trust. She’ll know what to do. “There have been hang-up calls to the house every day and . . . a man
left a threatening message on the answerphone. Here, I’ll show you—” I leap up and head to the dining room.
“Tess, it’s OK, I’m not doubting you,” Shelley calls after me.
She is, but I understand why. I’m not sure I believe me half the time, but the answerphone message exists, and now that I’ve started telling Shelley, I’m desperate for her to hear it.
“Just listen,” I say, pressing play on the machine.
There’s a beep and the room is filled with the sound of the electronic voice: “You have no new messages.”
“What?” I jab the answerphone again and the same message plays.
“It was here.” Tears blur my vision and my voice drops to a whisper. “It was.”
Could I have deleted it without realizing? Maybe Jamie fiddled with the buttons and deleted it by accident.
“Tess,” Shelley says.
I shake my head. “It’s OK. I know. I’m letting my imagination get the better of me.”
It’s a lie for me as much as for Shelley. The answerphone message was real; so was the faceless man in the baseball cap. Someone has been in this house, and they may not have taken anything but they were looking for something. I’m sure of it. Maybe it was the intruder who deleted the message.
But if I try to tell Shelley all this it will only make her worry more. I have to figure this out for myself.
“I think I need to lie down,” I say. “You’d better get to your client anyway.”
“Are you sure, Tess? I can stay.”
“I’m fine, honestly. I’ve not been sleeping, that’s all.”
“Call me if anything else happens,” Shelley says in the doorway, hugging me tight. “It will be OK. I’ll see you later.”
I nod and shut the door, bolting it from the inside. Then I dig in my bag for my phone and find a local locksmith. They’re coming first thing tomorrow to change the locks. Part of me knows Shelley could be right, but there’s another part of me that knows I shut those doors. I walk through the house again, smelling the air as I go. If I’m sure the door was locked, and nobody broke in, then that means someone let themselves in.
Who has a key to this house, Mark?
You did, of course, but that has been burned to smithereens. And I do. Shelley has one too, but I know it wasn’t her, because she was with me in Tesco. Who else?
We didn’t change the locks after we moved. This house belonged to your mother; it’s where you and Ian grew up.
Ian must have a key. It must have been him. But why?
CHAPTER 34
Shelley texts me at six p.m.: Accident on A12. Stuck in traffic.
By the time she arrives, bottle of wine in hand, the paella is overcooked and Jamie is already in bed reading a book.
“For you,” she says, handing me the white wine. “After the day you’ve had I thought you might need it.”
“Thank you.” My fingers touch the green bottle. The glass is cold on my fingertips and I imagine the tang of citrus on my tongue and the heady hit of alcohol to my head.
“Fancy a glass now?” Shelley raises an eyebrow and grins.
“Er . . .” I pull a face. “I want to, but I don’t think it’s a good idea. I’m barely hanging on as it is. I doubt drinking wine will help.”
“You’re doing brilliantly, Tess,” Shelley says, wedging the wine in the fridge between two packets of cheese and a bag of spinach. “We’ll have this another time.”
“Thanks.”
Shelley turns, her eyes finding mine. “Are you all right? Has anything else happened since I left? I’ve been so worried. I wish I hadn’t left you.”
Me too, but I shake my head. “I’m fine. It was probably my imagination running away with me.”
I don’t believe it but it’s easier to pretend than to tell Shelley that I think it was Ian. I need to figure out what he is up to before I tell her, I decide, thinking of the doubt on Shelley’s face when I tried to show her the answerphone message. The one I’m now sure Ian deleted.
Shelley opens her mouth to say something more but for once I get there first. “I hope this will be OK.” I motion at the pan on the stove filled with heaps of yellow rice and meat and vegetables. “I’ve made too much. We’ll be eating it for weeks.”
“It smells lovely, and I’m so hungry it could taste like cardboard and I’d still eat it,” she jokes.
“Hey, what are you saying about my cooking?” I reply and we both smile.
“I’ll just go wash up quickly.” Shelley moves toward the door and slips into the hall.
The paella has stuck to the pan and it seems to take forever to scrape it off and stir it around on the low heat. Shelley hasn’t returned by the time it’s ready again. I don’t know what makes me go looking for her instead of just calling through the doorway, but I do.
I find Shelley upstairs, creeping out of Jamie’s room.
“What are you doing?” My voice is low, barely above a whisper, but Shelley jumps and turns to face me.
“Oh, I . . . I didn’t mean to intrude. I’m sorry, Tess. I thought I heard something.”
I push past Shelley and peer into Jamie’s room. Jamie’s bedside light is on and he’s flicking through his Where’s Wally? book. He looks up at me and smiles a beautiful smile.
The anger disappears and I realize how rude I must’ve sounded. “Sorry.” I sigh. “It’s just I’m a bit overprotective right now. Today has been a challenge.”
“It’s fine, Tess. Completely natural. I should’ve asked first.”
She rubs my arm and tears leak from my eyes. I’m so fed up with crying, Mark. I wish you were here right now.
Me too, Tessie. I love you.
“Come on,” Shelley says, “let’s go eat. Oh, before I forget,” she adds as I follow her down the stairs. “Your mum wanted me to tell you that she’s thinking of you and that she loves you.”
“Thanks. Maybe I’ll give her a call tomorrow.”
There’s a pause before Shelley speaks. “That’s a really good idea. I’m really pleased you’re feeling up to speaking to your mum. I know how draining it can be reassuring loved ones when you’re the one who needs reassuring.”
“Oh” is all I say. Shelley is right. Speaking to Mum will sap my energy, and I know I’ll feel guilty when I hear her voice. I used to visit every few weeks. Help around the house and take her out for lunch at a seafront café she likes. I don’t even have the capacity to think about how she’s doing, how she’s coping without my visits. “Maybe next week,” I add.
I should call Sam too. I can’t remember the last time we spoke. I know my family are worried about me but I don’t know what to tell them.
Shelley squeezes my hand. “I’m here for you, whatever you need, OK?”
I nod and we sit down to eat.
Later, when Shelley has gone and the house feels like the loneliest place in the world, I wrap the duvet around myself and write in the notebook: Someone came into the house. Nothing taken. Were they looking for something? Did they find it? Will they come back? Answerphone message deleted—who did it? Why?
I flick back through the pages and try to add meaning to my notes, but all I find are more questions. The hang-up calls have stopped, I think. The man hasn’t phoned back. I wish I knew what it meant, Mark. I feel like the answer is here, in the pages, but I just can’t see it.
Stop, Tessie. Go to sleep now, baby.
Remember last summer when we camped in the garden with Jamie? The tent was too big for our garden in Chelmsford. Jamie was so excited he didn’t fall asleep until after midnight. But we stayed awake even longer, whispering quietly to each other. Making plans. I miss making plans with you, Mark.
CHAPTER 35
IAN
It was impossible to get through to Tess when Shelley was there all the time, whispering in her ear. I even wondered at one
point if she’d moved in with Tess. It was frustrating. Anyone in my situation would’ve felt the same. There was no way Mark would’ve wanted things to drag on like they did. The probate needed to be started and instead Tess was walking around the village in the pouring rain.
Clearly things were not right, but I didn’t know who to talk to about it. Her mother is an old bat and lives miles away. She has a brother somewhere, I seem to remember, but I didn’t have any contact details for him and I couldn’t exactly see Tess giving me his number. The only friend I knew of was Shelley, and considering she was the problem, I wasn’t going to speak to her about it. I thought things would sort themselves out. Obviously with hindsight I would do things differently, but the fact that it was Jamie’s birthday was irrelevant.
SHELLEY
After that Tess started doing better. She was getting dressed and taking care of herself more. She was far from OK but there were definite steps in the right direction. She was opening up to me and seemed so much more with-it than when I first met her.
We spoke all the time. It meant something to both of us. There was one awkward moment when I went in to Jamie’s room again while Tess was sorting out dinner. I didn’t think she’d mind. I was only in there for a moment, but she did mind—understandably, she’s protective of him. I should’ve asked first. I thought I heard a noise, that’s why I went in there. But we got over it. The next time I saw her we were fine. I was the person she called when she was in trouble, so obviously she trusted me.
CHAPTER 36
Thursday, March 22
17 DAYS TO JAMIE’S BIRTHDAY
The locksmith couldn’t fit new locks. “They come as standard, you see,” he said yesterday morning, turning up half an hour late for the appointment, not that it mattered to me. I wasn’t going anywhere.
He was a squat man with more beard than hair on his head and skin a touch too red to be healthy. “Give me any door and I can offer you ten different lock types, but not for the listed buildings like this. Grade two listed, isn’t it? Sixteenth century? It’s a different lock size, ergo I don’t keep them in the van, ergo I’ll need to order and come back. Should be a couple of days. When is a good time?”