The Downstairs Neighbor

by Helen Cooper

  Yet on certain nights, when they’d made love, or lain facing each other in a moonlight-striped bed, she hadn’t been able to escape the feeling that Paul was reliving something in his mind. They’d spoken tentatively about previous relationships and Paul had always claimed, “Nothing serious, not until you.” But she’d begun to suspect that there had been something, and that it had been serious in ways she hardly wanted to imagine. How it connected to his police career, she didn’t know. She hadn’t wanted to push it, and at some point it had become too late and too difficult to ask.

  They’d moved forward nonetheless, and they’d been happy, especially when Freya had come along in all her distracting, demanding glory. Paul was a besotted dad, and Steph had felt safe and blessed. She’d stopped sensing the past like a third party in their marriage. Freya had become their third party instead. Freya had become everything.

  At the same time, though, a particular question had begun to plague her—and still did—whenever she saw a veil return to Paul’s eyes or noticed him twitching restlessly, unable to just sit in peace with his wife and daughter. She could never ask this question, for too many reasons. But it came at her now and again, as did the answer she thought she knew, which she was so afraid of.

  The question she’d asked her father-in-law should have been easier.

  “Did something specific happen?” Steph persisted. “He never talks about it. And he seems to think . . .” The words jammed in her throat. “It’s like he thinks it’s connected . . .” She gestured at the Freya timeline surrounded by Brian’s notes.

  Her father-in-law stared at what he’d written as if he didn’t recognize it. He lowered his head and plaited his fingers, and if Steph hadn’t known him better, she might have thought he was praying.

  She pressed her hands over his. “Please, Brian. Tell me what you know.”

  His head lifted. “There’s only one thing I know for sure, Steph. Before his final assignment with the force, Paul was hardly scared of anything. He thought all things were reversible, mendable. He broke his ankle when he was young but it healed and he was straight back on the football pitch. His first girlfriend gave him the elbow when he was eighteen but he got over it and he was off to university, his next adventure. Life seemed to slide right off him. Freya’s the same, isn’t she?”

  Steph’s eyes burned. She couldn’t entirely agree. Things affected Freya more deeply than people realized. She didn’t correct Brian, though: This was the most she’d ever heard him talk—about his son, about anything.

  “Even in his early career, he didn’t let the cases get to him,” Brian continued. “But then he got picked for that operation . . . We didn’t see him for three years, Steph. Couldn’t even phone him. We were told that if we ever happened to pass him on the street, we should ignore him, in case we blew his cover—”

  “Hang on.” Steph stared at him. “His cover?”

  Brian’s eyes met hers. He blinked twice. “Well . . . yes.”

  Slowly, his words sank in. Steph felt as if she’d been punched in the stomach, felt heat flaming in her cheeks. The humiliation of not knowing this major thing about her own husband. Her picture of Paul shifting yet again.

  “He was undercover?” she said.

  Brian looked stricken now, clearly realizing the information had come as a shock.

  “I’m sorry, love,” he said. “I assumed . . .”

  “It’s not your fault. Of course you’d assume I knew. Paul should’ve told me!”

  Brian rubbed at his temples. Steph pulled Freya’s scarf across her chest as though to help her feel less exposed. Why hadn’t Paul ever said anything? She couldn’t get her head around the implications, the questions. What had he been investigating? Where had he lived, and who with, who as? For three years. Not long before he’d met her.

  “These kinds of operations tend to be highly confidential,” Brian said. “Perhaps he thought it was safer to say nothing at all.”

  Steph didn’t respond. A chunk of her husband’s life had just been made unfathomable. Even more so than before. And what did this mean for Freya? Were unfathomably bad people involved too?

  “I don’t know the details of the operation,” Brian stumbled on, as if he felt he had something to repair. “Only that when he came back he was changed. More serious, cautious, quiet. Then you came along, love, you and Freya . . . and brought him back. But, still, I think he’s spent the whole time feeling like he doesn’t deserve you. Worrying that something will take you away from him.”

  Steph let her tears spill. “What if Freya has been taken away from us?”

  Brian leaned forward. “Then we’ll fight every day and search every bloody place we can think of, and we’ll bring her back.”

  Steph hid her face inside the scarf. Suddenly the search seemed bigger than she could handle, the fight far beyond her. Freya and Paul were receding from her at alarming speed, their fingertips slipping from her grasp.

  17.

  KATE

  Twenty-five years earlier

  Becca is here. Her hair products line the sides of the bath in their blackberry-colored bottles and her heavy, glossy copies of Vogue cascade across the floor of my room. She is a different Becca from the one I saw at Christmas. Sleeker and sharper. Her hair is in a shining bob, shorter at the back than at the front, veering up the sides of her head. She has smoky eyes and vampish lips and she stares at headshots of models, her fingers snipping the air as she imagines how to re-create their hairstyles. Straightaway she wants to give me a trim to cheer me up, and I try not to take it personally as she plans a style that will “liven up my look.”

  There are remnants of the old Becca, though. She still loves banana milk at breakfast, despite pretending to “prefer a black coffee these days.” She sleeps rolled up in a sleeping bag next to my bed and we whisper into the night like we used to when we were young. Becca talks about her ambitions and urges me to get some of my own, something more concrete than just wanting to write stories, use words. Best of all, her presence seems to keep Nick away. I’m starting to wonder if Mum’s told him not to come up while she’s here. Maybe she thinks my cousin’s shrewder than me, will work things out. But then he reappears.

  Us three girls are sitting round the kitchen table, a sunset glow filtering through the blinds. Becca’s trying to persuade Mum to let her remodel her hair into a “layered bob, very now,” and Mum’s poured us each a small glass of wine. The atmosphere has brightened in our flat these last few days, and I’ve let myself get swept up in it, my worries beginning to shrink. When I hear him opening the front door, the dark shadow returns.

  “I’m guessing that’s Nick rather than a burglar,” Becca says as we listen to clattering from the hall.

  “You can meet him at last,” Mum says shrilly. “I bet you were starting to think I’d made him up!”

  “Your toyboy’s the talk of the family in Derby.” Becca grins and I wish she’d stop—wish she wouldn’t talk about Nick in such a flippant way.

  He walks into the kitchen, the collar of his denim jacket turned up around his ears, and as usual goes straight to Mum’s side, gathering her hair between his hands as though he can tell Becca was only just entertaining plans to chop it off. Then he turns to Becca with a slow smile. “So you’re the brainy rebel of the family, by all accounts.”

  “My reputation precedes me.” Becca’s laugh seems genuine and her eyes linger on Nick.

  I see her continuing to appraise him as they shake hands. My stomach bends with anxiety. I don’t want her to be taken in by him, don’t want her to like him even for a second.

  He raises the plastic bag he’s brought. “I got some champers to celebrate Becca being here.”

  Becca hoots and Mum’s expression lifts a little. Nick makes a big show of popping the cork so it cannons across the room. We haven’t even finished the cheap bottle of wine that Mum bought special
ly from the corner shop, but he floods our glasses with champagne instead.

  The bubbles catch in my throat. Becca and Mum seem giddy after only a few sips—Becca especially. Nick starts to tell a story about buying the champagne. He uses the phrase “wine merchant” and Becca creases up, Mum smiling too.

  “Wine merchant!” Becca clearly likes it even as she mocks it. “That’s an offie round these parts, right, Kate?”

  I shrug, pinching the stem of my glass.

  “Okay, I admit, it was a jumped-up offie.” Nick laughs along. He’s playing with Mum’s hair again, twirling it round his hand. I imagine him pulling hard, her neck snapping back.

  I retreat to bed early but their gales of laughter carry through the wall. Becca starts advising Nick about haircuts, offering him a trim; I picture her fingers sliding over his scalp. Mum’s voice seems to fade as the night stretches on. It’s all Becca and Nick, Becca and Nick, hurling banter back and forth. When Becca finally comes to bed, I crush my face into my pillow and pretend to be asleep.

  * * *

  —

  I wake disoriented in the night, my sheets twisted, a nightmare fading, along with a childish urge to cry out for my mum. After a few groggy moments I remember that Becca’s asleep on my floor.

  Except she isn’t. The sky is black through my thin curtains, as black as it ever gets in this city, but Becca’s sleeping bag is empty.

  Nick’s got her, I think feverishly. He’s charmed her, flattered her, made her think he wants to swap Mum for her.

  I scramble out of bed and stand in the middle of my room. When I hear the gush of a tap, my shoulders release. Of course, she’s gone to the toilet. I’m about to return to bed when I catch the sound of retching.

  “Bec?” My voice is low as I creep to the bathroom. “You okay?”

  “Come in, Kate,” she whispers back.

  I glance at the door to Mum’s room, imagining Nick’s body draped around hers, thinking of long-ago mornings when I used to fly in and launch myself onto her sleepy form, burrowing under the covers to snuggle against her warm back. Now a horrible feeling of shyness and exclusion prickles over me. I don’t know who she is when she’s with him. She doesn’t seem to belong to me.

  In the bathroom, Becca is crouched over the toilet. Chunks of pale sick float in the bottom of the bowl. The smell makes me stretch the collar of my pajama top over my mouth and nose.

  “Sorry,” she says. “Gross, I know.”

  “How much did you drink?”

  “Not loads. But it doesn’t mix too great with my tablets. Makes the side effects worse. Plus the meds turn me into a major lightweight.”

  “Oh,” I say, remembering. “Do they work?”

  “They’ve had me on a few different combos. These seem to do the trick. Side effects are annoying, though.” She yawns widely. “The drowsiness does my head in.”

  I’m distracted now, recalling a steaming-hot afternoon five years ago, in Auntie Rach and Uncle Jack’s back garden. When it happened, all the adults were inside drinking beers, pressing the fridge-cold bottles against their cheeks, Uncle Jack’s records turned up loud.

  Becca and I were outside playing catch. Seeing how long we could keep throwing the ball without it hitting the ground. I was never very good at it, Becca was always better, but we’d almost broken our own record this time. I remember the unnerving moment when I threw the ball to her and it landed at her feet because she was standing rigidly still. I giggled, thinking she was messing about, but then she tipped backward onto the lawn and began to jerk. Eyes rolling. One arm smacking the ground. Lips tinged blue. I screamed for the grown-ups, and tried to stop her hurting herself by slipping my hand underneath her head. When I yelled again, one of the neighbors appeared over the fence. “Call an ambulance!” I shouted to her. “Please!”

  Becca came round looking confused and sleepy. The paramedics said I’d done all the right things, and that my cousin was going to be fine. She’d be tested for epilepsy, treated if necessary. Later, all the adults praised me. They felt guilty for not being there, not hearing me as they’d chatted and danced just inside.

  I guess Becca and I have been closer since that day, protective of one another. She often ruffles my hair and jokes that I saved her life, that she owes me, but it’s not really true. I can still see it so clearly, though. The red ball we were playing with sits on the top shelf of my wardrobe. I don’t know why I’ve kept it, why I get it out sometimes and roll it in my palms.

  “Do you still have fits?” I ask her now.

  “Haven’t for a while. I’m hoping I’ve not just vommed out my latest dose.”

  “You should be careful, Bec.”

  She smiles at me. Liquid glistens around her mouth. “All right, Nurse Anxious.”

  She hauls herself up, splashes her face, uses her finger to rub toothpaste into her tongue. Her trendy hair is all matted and moist. She flushes the toilet, then flips down the lid and sits on it. “You were right,” she whispers.

  I perch on the edge of the bath. “About what?”

  “Nick.”

  I look at her in surprise. “I thought you were getting on with him.”

  “He is charming.” Becca fiddles with her earlobe. “And good-looking. I can see why your mum—”

  “Urgh,” I break in. “Don’t.”

  “Is that why you went to bed? Were you pissed off with me?”

  I shrug, not wanting to admit how I’d thumped my pillow, almost cried into it with frustration.

  “Oh, Kay-Kay, I forget how sensitive you are.” Becca pinches my cheek and I blush, flapping her away. “I was just sounding him out,” she continues. “And there’s something . . . I don’t know. The way he’s always watching your mum.”

  My annoyance evaporates. “You noticed that too?”

  “And when I went to the toilet, I came back to them standing by the kitchen window, whispering. As soon as they saw me, Nick gave your mum this look and they both shut right up.”

  I nod urgently. She’s on my side after all, and I have to keep her there, have to make her see. “They often stop talking when I come into the room.” My voice wobbles with the relief of having an ally. “And her bruises . . .” Tears push into my eyes.

  “Have you spoken to her about it?”

  I shake my head. “She won’t talk to me like she used to.”

  “You have to try. Or . . . I could, if you want?”

  “You’d do that?”

  Becca slides off the toilet onto the floor. She lays her head on my knee, where I’m sitting on the damp bath edge, and hugs me around my middle. I can see the porcelain skin on the back of her neck where her hair rises to its shortest point.

  “Don’t worry, Nurse Anxious,” she says. “We’ll sort this.”

  18.

  CHRIS

  “More chicken, Chris?”

  Di pushed the enormous bird his way, then seemed to notice his plate was still half full of meat and gravy-drowned mashed potato.

  “Not hungry?” she asked, and her eyes narrowed—or did they? All afternoon he’d been looking for signs that Vicky’s sisters were treating him abnormally, but he could wring meaning out of anything when he was feeling paranoid—a glance exchanged between Jane and Di, a casual question about what he’d been up to.

  The first part of the meal had brimmed with discussion about Freya. Chris should have anticipated that she’d be the talking point of this week’s lunch, should have come mentally prepared. Instead he’d been dumbstruck as Di’s iPad had been passed round the table, the local news story on its screen, Freya’s photo beneath a smear of fingerprints.

  “It’s awful,” Di had kept saying, her face stretched into a mournful expression, “just awful.” Chris had bristled with anger. She didn’t even know Freya. Why was she acting so upset? Whereas Jane, the younger sister, could barely hide
her excitement at the fact that the missing girl was her sister’s neighbor, her brother-in-law’s student.

  He’d been relieved when the others had picked up their cutlery and the iPad had been set aside. But now the spotlight was shining on his lack of appetite.

  “Dieting?” Jane asked.

  Chris’s hand reflexed to his middle and he was dismayed, as ever, by the soft paunch that seemed to have developed almost overnight when he’d hit his late thirties. Along with the thinning patch on his crown, which he would wince at in unflattering photos or mirrors at the wrong angle. That was why he shaved his hair short these days. Was it also why Vicky didn’t seem to find him remotely attractive anymore?

  “I had a big helping,” he lied.

  “Belly bigger than your eyes,” Di’s six-year-old daughter, Polly, diagnosed.

  “Other way round, Pol,” Di said. “Eyes bigger than your belly.”

  “Nobody’s eyes are bigger than their belly. Not even Anna’s and Elsa’s and they’ve got huge eyes . . .” Polly demonstrated by widening hers, fluttering her fingers on top of them like lashes.

  “Anna and Elsa?” Chris said distractedly.

  “From Frozen!” everybody else at the table replied, looking at him like he was an alien.

  Di began pushing the chicken toward other people. Vicky took a whole leg and bit straight into it. She ate ravenously whenever they came here. Maybe it was a habit from childhood, the three sisters fighting over food at the dinner table. Di had done the cooking from a young age because their mum had rarely been up to it. Vicky still became emotional if she had to talk about the last meal they’d eaten together before they’d been placed with different foster families. She couldn’t even look at macaroni and cheese—as Chris had found out on their third date when he’d made it for her, oblivious to its significance, and had seen behind her tough façade for the first time.