The Visitors Book

by Sophie Hannah

  ‘May I speak to Winifred?’ I ask. ‘Or John?’

  ‘My parents passed away in January 2013,’ he says abruptly. ‘Who are you? Not a friend, I take it, if you didn’t know.’

  ‘My name’s Victoria Scase. Look, I’m sorry, I’ll leave you alone. It’s not important.’ Silently I am thinking, They both died in January 2013? I can’t decide if that’s weird. Perhaps I’m the weird one and the rest of the world is normal. Come to think of it, I remember hearing something once about couples who’ve been married for many years dying within days or weeks of each other. Once one has gone, the other gives up on life and follows soon after. Perhaps that was what happened to Winifred and John Santandreu.

  ‘What did you want?’ Michael Santandreu’s voice breaks into my thoughts.

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  Why did I say that? It matters more than anything else in my world at the moment. I need to know what it was that Aaron didn’t tell me. Wouldn’t tell me.

  ‘I might be able to help you with whatever it is,’ Michael Santandreu offers, apparently keen to make me declare my business.

  ‘I was just . . .’ I clear my throat and start again. ‘I was going to ask them if they remembered visiting a house called Netterden, but, as I said, it’s really not . . .’

  ‘Netterden?’ He throws the word back at me like a stone.

  ‘Yes. Why do you . . . I mean . . . You sound shocked.’

  There’s a long pause.

  ‘That’s where my parents were when they died,’ Michael Santandreu says eventually. ‘They were at Netterden.’

  ‘Pardon?’ I manage to say. The world tips on its axis. ‘What . . . what is Netterden?’

  ‘It’s one of Gloucestershire’s oldest houses. The Landmark Trust bought it about five years ago, to renovate. It used to belong to Penny and Clive Hoddy. That’s where my parents died – at one of Penny and Clive’s parties. Look, I’m sorry to be blunt, but if you don’t know what happened in January 2013, why are you asking about Netterden? Who are you and what do you want?’

  I can’t speak. I try to ignore the thoughts drumming in the part of my mind I try so hard to avoid, but it’s impossible.

  How can I not know what happened at Netterden in January 2013? I used to know a lot, so why not now?

  Meanwhile, other things, things I am sure of, I’m desperate to find a way to doubt.

  Aaron’s surname is Penny. His middle name is Clive. We laughed about it: ‘Clive! What an awful name!’ I blurted out.

  Aaron Clive Penny. Penny and Clive Hoddy. I press my hand against a wall to steady myself.

  To Michael Santandreu I say, ‘Please, just . . . tell me what happened to your parents.’ But don’t ask me to explain first. Hear my hollowed-out voice and understand that I need to know, straight away.

  They didn’t die naturally, John and Winifred Santandreu. No. Not naturally at all.

  How do you know that, Victoria Scase?

  ‘Twenty-three people died that night,’ Michael Santandreu says gruffly. ‘Everybody there was killed. Murdered. My aunt and uncle too: Sarah and Peter Fleming.’

  The Flemings. I know without needing to be told that Richard and Sue Graham are also dead.

  ‘How? How did they die?’ All on the same night, in January 2013 . . .

  I gasp as a shadow at the back of my mind moves into the light.

  That’s it. That’s the element that jarred, the detail I couldn’t call to mind. There were no dates in the visitors book. It wasn’t ‘the terrace at dusk’ – or rather, it was that as well, but it wasn’t mainly that. It was the missing dates. Why weren’t they there? People who sign visitors books always write the date.

  Unless they know they’re about to die. What does the date matter, on the last day of your life and if all of you, together, are signing the book on the same day? I think about the shaky handwriting, about how terror would make a person’s hand shake more than alcohol or old age . . .

  Murdered.

  The comments they wrote . . . were they forced to come up with the wording themselves or did they have their entries dictated to them in a mocking tone? I shudder at the thought, then wonder where it came from.

  Why can I hear the sneer in Aaron’s voice so clearly?

  ‘You haven’t . . .’ Michael Santandreu clears his throat. ‘You didn’t hear about it, on the news?’

  ‘No. I don’t watch the news, or read the papers, ever. Not since . . .’ I stop, finding myself suddenly breathless.

  Since what, Victoria Scase? It’s Aaron’s voice I can hear in my head. Why does he keep saying my name like that? I hate it. Make it stop.

  I try to focus on my conversation with Michael Santandreu. ‘What happened?’ I ask him. It’s all I can do to hold myself upright.

  ‘They were shot – all the guests. Also the hosts, Penny and Clive, and their daughter Eleanor. I’m sorry, there’s no nice way of putting it. The cleaner found the bodies the following Monday morning. Most of them had pens in their hands or lying near their bodies. I’ve no idea why, and the police couldn’t make head nor tail of it. In a way, that remains the biggest mystery.’

  ‘Who ..?’ I start to ask, though I know the answer.

  ‘Penny and Clive’s son Aaron was and still is the only suspect. He disappeared that night and hasn’t surfaced since. There was no break-in, you see.’

  Pens in their hands.

  ‘I met him once or twice,’ says Michael Santandreu. ‘There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that he did it.’

  Nor in mine.

  ‘That boy wasn’t right in the head,’ Santandreu goes on. ‘He hated his family, thought his parents were appalling snobs. He must have decided mine were too, and all the other guests at Netterden that night. And his own sister.’

  No. No. It can’t be true. I’d have heard about it. People would have talked about it for weeks. Though I suppose I don’t really speak to anyone any more, apart from Aaron.

  Wouldn’t the police have found him by now if they really believed he did it? I found him easily enough.

  ‘You didn’t sign the book,’ a woman’s voice says. It’s coming from behind me. ‘You wouldn’t. You were the only one.’

  I turn and see the woman in the red velvet dress that I saw before. She is holding her hand out to me as if beckoning me forward.

  The woman in the red velvet dress isn’t alone. There’s a crowd of people behind her, all as smartly dressed as she is. Dresses, suits, ties. The man I saw on Aaron’s street is one of them – the elderly one in the suit and smart coat.

  Smartly dressed like me.

  I look down at myself. I’m wearing a cream linen dress, pale pink high-heeled sandals, a pink and gold Missoni jacket. I wouldn’t wear this outfit to come to Walthamstow, I’m sure.

  The smartly dressed people are whispering to each other, ‘She wouldn’t sign the visitors book. Point blank refused. She was the only one.’

  Because he was going to kill us all anyway, whether we signed or not. Couldn’t you all see that? You should all have refused like me, you spineless saps.

  The whispering stops. The smartly dressed ones stare at me as if they’ve overheard my thought.

  ‘We were scared,’ says Sue Graham. She rubs her hands together. There’s ink on them. That’s right, her pen leaked. I remember that.

  I was there, at Netterden. All these people were there, and I was too.

  Fuck you, Aaron. I won’t sign it. Fuck you. Fuck y . . . And then silence. I remember.

  ‘He’s here, dear,’ says Winifred Santandreu. She points past my shoulder.

  I turn and see Aaron walking towards me. It’s still light enough for me to see his face. He’s holding the visitors book in one hand and a pen in the other.

  The book itself is not supposed to visit, haha! The book is the host. It should stay at home. I might say this out loud if I weren’t so scared. It will soon be over, I know, and I don’t want it to be. I’ll be forced to write ‘Victoria Scas
e’ in that wretched book, and then there’ll be nothing else. Everything will disappear.

  The book is the host.

  I have to run, but I can’t move. They’re all around me, all the other guests, trapping me in the small space between them. All their mouths are moving, all their hands clutching and clasping.

  ‘Sign it, Victoria,’ Winifred Santandreu whispers. ‘We all did. We’ll help you.’

  ‘Oh, yes, shall we? Do let’s,’ says her husband, John. ‘Do let’s help.’

  ‘We need you, Victoria,’ says Peter Fleming. ‘We need your name. We must finish the book.’

  Aaron moves closer. He turns the page. He holds out the pen.

  I won’t sign. I won’t sign.

  The Last Boy to Leave

  We always have Max’s birthday party at our house, and the parents of his friends always tell us, as they drop off their children at the appointed time, how brave we are. Not brave at all, I say – simply not in favour of fun barns and soft-play centres and all other soulless party venues of that ilk, so what choice do we have? I’m not old-fashioned about many things, but I like the idea of my son celebrating his birthday in his home, surrounded by family and friends.

  ‘We’re going to have to go through it all again, you know,’ I warned Greg an hour before the party was due to start.

  He looked up from his newspaper. ‘What?’

  ‘The whole rather-you-than-me, aren’t-you-brave rigmarole. People will think we’re only doing it to show off our house.’

  ‘But this is the first year we’ve had a big house,’ said Greg. ‘We did it when we lived in a two-bedroom flat.’

  ‘Yes, but this lot won’t know that. All the people coming are from Max’s school – they’ve only known us since we moved here.’

  My husband sighed. ‘What do you want me to say, Jen? It’s an insoluble problem. Why don’t you hand out the phone numbers of some of our friends from Manchester? That way anyone who wants to can ring up and request proof that we hosted parties even when we were poor.’

  He was right: what did it matter what people thought? It was wonderful to be able to do it properly this year. Instead of being crammed in and chaotic, we had all the rooms we needed. The magician – uninspiringly named Magical Steve – would be in the TV den with the boys. The girls would be in the dining room with Michelle the beautician, having intricate patterns painted on their finger- and toenails. I had laid out wine and snacks in the lounge for any grown-ups who wanted to stay, and Greg’s and my bedroom had been designated the coat room. The playroom would be the venue for the children’s party tea, and any presents people brought could pile up in the kitchen, where the goody bags were already waiting in neat rows. All you need for a successful party, I thought to myself proudly, is a big enough house and good organisational skills.

  The doorbell rang. I looked at my watch. Ten past three. The party wasn’t supposed to start until four. Greg went to answer the door. He reappeared a few seconds later looking alarmed. ‘Magical Steve’s here,’ he hissed. ‘What should I tell him?’

  ‘He can set up in the TV den,’ I said. ‘It’s fine. Offer him a cup of tea.’

  Greg didn’t seem to agree that it was fine. He groaned when the doorbell rang again at three fifteen. ‘No one’s supposed to arrive till four. This is going to be a nightmare. Can’t you feel it slipping out of our grasp already? Party hasn’t even started yet.’

  I caught a glimpse of Magical Steve behind him, dragging a folded black-topped table into the hall, scratching the wallpaper. ‘Don’t exaggerate,’ I said, determinedly smiling. What did Greg expect? That we’d open our front door on the dot of four o’clock and find all Max’s classmates waiting in silence in jackets and bow ties?

  The doorbell rang again at twenty past three and again at half past. I wasn’t sure of the names of the early arrivals – Alex and Caleb were my best guesses; Max had only been at the school for a month – but they immediately began to run around the house emitting loud whoops. Max, at any rate, was pleased to see them, and immediately transformed himself into a savage in accordance with the time-honoured imitation-flattery model. Greg shouted, ‘No need to make so much noise, boys!’ Max had the grace to look sheepish but maybe-Alex and maybe-Caleb paid no attention. Their parents had vanished into the darkening winter afternoon. ‘Did you invite them in?’ I interrogated Greg. ‘Did you tell them there was a buffet for parents upstairs?’

  ‘No. They were gone before I had a chance to say anything.’

  I stuck my head into the TV den to check on Magical Steve. He’d taken off his coat and was putting on a waistcoat: sparkly gold stars on shiny red fabric. There were large sweat stains on the armpits of his white shirt. I was about to offer him a drink when I heard a loud crash that sounded as if it had come from Max’s bedroom. Two children’s coats lay on the hall floor. I picked them up and threw them at Greg. ‘Take these to the coat room. I’ll go and persuade the boys to calm down.’ My voice, I noticed, had taken on a desperate tone – the kind you hear in submarine disaster movies when the protagonists realise that water is pouring into the cabin.

  The doorbell rang again. ‘And while we’re doing those things, who’s going to answer the door?’ asked Greg. ‘This is going to be a—’

  ‘Stop prophesying doom,’ I cut him off before he could say ‘nightmare’. ‘Answer the door, then take the coats.’ I was still kidding myself that we were in control – a pretence which, ten minutes later, I was forced to abandon. By quarter to four, everybody had arrived. The noise was unbearable. The house shook hard as twenty-five children ran up and down three staircases. Coats were strewn everywhere, as were crisps and sandwich contents; there had evidently been a raid on the party tea before it had been declared officially open. I had no idea how many parents, if any, were in the lounge helping themselves to wine. Every time I tried to go up there and have a look, I was sidetracked by one or other of the children I hardly recognised grabbing me and wailing, ‘The boys tried to throw me off the bunk bed!’ or ‘Dominic bit me!’ Who was Dominic? Was he the one with ADHD? Most of the party guests I’d encountered so far seemed to have ADHD or some other equally worrying condition.

  I ran from floor to floor, hoping to catch a glimpse of Greg so that I could charge him with seizing control. I stopped every few seconds to hang a painting back on the wall, or scrape an embedded crisp off the carpet with my fingernails. How had crisps got up here, to the second floor?

  The noise was getting worse; my house sounded like a packed football stadium. Over the general din, I heard Max howl, ‘Mummee-eeee! Rufus is breaking my toys!’ The doorbell rang. Michelle, the nail woman, I thought. Getting to the front door was out of the question. I was too far away and my son was still screaming. Magical Steve would have to let her in.

  The rest of the party was a blur. I tried not to notice anything that happened, but a few highlights stood out, hard to miss: Greg running past me carrying a girl who was threatening to be sick under his arm, yelling, ‘This will end, won’t it? One day?’; a precocious girl called Arabella Hemming-Newman, whose name I did remember, sidling up to me as I wiped chocolate smears off the dining room wall and saying, ‘Your house cost one million, one hundred and fifty pounds.’ Shocked, I asked if Greg had told her that. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Mummy looked it up on nethouseprices.com.’

  Another girl asked why I’d arranged a magician for the boys and a beautician for the girls. ‘I like magic and I’m a girl,’ she said. I explained that Max had insisted: the girls had demanded professional nail action or else they wouldn’t come to the party. Not this girl, apparently. She listened, nodding, then said, ‘When I told my mummy, she said you’re a throwback. What’s a throwback?’

  At ten to six, I started to carve up the cake, throwing pieces wrapped in napkins into goody bags. Parents began to ring the doorbell again. When they asked if I knew where their particular child was, I forced myself not to say, ‘Oh, just take any. There are no individuals here. They’ve m
erged to form a rabble.’ Two mothers contrived to devise a particularly exquisite form of torture; they left, with their children, then came back five minutes later. One had forgotten a grey hooded top, one a black scarf. ‘Tell them to take whatever they want and go,’ Greg muttered. ‘The telly, the DVD player, our wallets – anything, as long as they leave.’ The woman who had described me as a throwback insisted on being given a visitor parking permit, even though she intended to leave her car outside my house for less than a minute while she collected her daughter.

  Finally, after the last stragglers had left, after we’d paid Magical Steve and Nails Michelle in cash and dispatched them into the night, I closed the front door and burst into tears. Max ran into the kitchen and started to rip the wrapping paper off his presents.

  Greg, infuriatingly, seemed fine. ‘It’s over,’ he yawned. ‘Pour yourself a glass of wine and forget about it.’

  I took him up on the first part of his suggestion. Armed with a drink, I made my way to the dining room, where I could sit and weep in peace.

  ‘Mrs Rhodes?’ said a quiet voice behind me.

  I turned. A small dark-haired boy stood in the dining room doorway, goody bag in hand. ‘When are my mummy and daddy going to come?’ he asked.

  I remembered him – not from school, but from earlier in the afternoon. He’d helped me to reassemble a broken Lego dinosaur in Max’s bedroom. Later, I’d found him picking up flakes of tuna in the guest room, collecting them in his hand to take to the bin.

  I didn’t know his name, only that he was the one guest I hadn’t at any point wanted to beat to a bloody pulp.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I’m sure they’ll be here soon.’ How odd, I thought. I clearly remembered this boy and how helpful he’d been; I remembered rushing past the TV den and seeing him laughing uncontrollably at one of Magical Steve’s tricks, and then thinking later, I’m glad we put ourselves through this, if only for the sake of that one nice boy who seemed to enjoy the party so much.