by Luana Lewis
I don’t wipe away my tears. I enjoy the feel of them against my dry skin.
‘Vivien wrote her a note, on a serviette, saying the earrings were a gift. We believe Oksana is telling the truth.’
‘Will she be allowed to keep them?’
‘That’s up to Ben. I’ve got a feeling he’ll say yes.’
DS Cole picks up her bag and opens it. She pulls out a tissue and reaches over to hand it to me. I pat my cheeks dry.
‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘It’s so kind of you to come and tell me in person.’
DS Cole nods. She leans forward to put her teacup down onto the tray, then she crosses her legs and relaxes back into the chair. She waits, as though she knows there is something more I need to ask.
‘I do have one more question,’ I say.
‘Go ahead.’
‘Did they ever catch the person who killed your sister?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did this person go to prison?’
‘Yes.’
‘And did that help you, with your heartache?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘Not with that.’
She is very still as she speaks. I recognize that stillness, the lack of expression. It’s a stillness I too have perfected, as though if I keep my body quite still, I can stop the pain, keep it buried in my core.
‘We have to be careful,’ I say, ‘not to allow ourselves to become prisoners of grief. Do you agree?’
‘I do.’ She looks directly at me with those clear green eyes and she does not flinch.
‘It might sound strange,’ I say, ‘but I’m going to miss talking to you.’
DS Cole smiles, as though she feels the same way.
‘Thank you for the tea,’ she says. And then she rises from the armchair in one fluid, easy motion.
When she is gone, I stand alone in my living room. Vivien’s wedding photograph is still on the mantelpiece and next to it, Lexi’s latest school photograph. It’s stuffy in here. The windows are shut and the net curtains are drawn. This flat, where I’ve lived for so long, has begun to feel alien to me, while Blackthorn Road feels increasingly like home. It turns out Cleo was right. I do like being on the inside.
Epilogue
Lexi and I are holding hands. This graveyard is a peaceful place, a square of green grass enclosed by an old stone wall. Vivien’s headstone is beautiful; Ben chose a white marble that glows in the sunshine. Bluebells have begun to spring up around the wooden benches.
Lexi has sprung up, too. She’s grown taller since her mother’s death; all of the hems of her trousers have had to be let down. She’s flourished in these past few months, like a plant deprived of water and sunshine in a too-small container that now basks, replanted in a large and sunny corner of the garden.
I am holding a bouquet of flowers that Lexi and I made together, in the kitchen of the house on Blackthorn Road. I watched over her as she used scissors to trim the stems of the gardenias. When she had finished, I added forget-me-nots to our arrangement. The gardenias I bought, but the forget-me-nots grow in Vivien’s garden. I noticed them one spring morning, as I stood in the kitchen, preparing Lexi’s breakfast: bright patches of violet blue emerging from between the cracks in the wall, on either side of the lion’s head.
Alexandra reaches over and prises the bouquet from my fingers. She runs forward to her mother’s grave and kneels down to arrange the stems. Her tongue pushes at the side of her cheek and she is deep in concentration. When she has finished, she begins to trace the gold lettering: Vivien Kaye, beloved wife, mother and daughter. The brief time between the dates of her birth and death speaks for itself.
I feel a shifting of air, a crackling, as Isaac walks up behind me.
Lexi is on her knees, tracing the years of her mother’s life. Her hair shines coppery in the sun. I have let it grow long and beautiful. It is her lion’s mane, her courage.
I feel the pressure of Isaac’s hand on my waist as I lean back into him. Happiness flutters behind my ribcage, but at the same time, there is also a soft stirring of apprehension. I’m used to this sensation. It has become my constant companion.
I don’t know what my granddaughter is thinking, as she traces the inscription on her mother’s grave. Nor do I know what she intended, the day her mother died. She has never spoken about what she did, or what I found, hidden underneath her quilt.
I am always careful to make sure that any medicine in the house on Blackthorn Road is securely locked away. We do not speak of what happens at night.
Lexi comes back to me. She runs and throws herself at me and she buries her head and her soft curls in my middle. I hold her and rub her back.
Then we say goodbye to Vivien, once again.
Isaac takes us for hot chocolate, with marshmallows and cream on top.
This is our ritual.
Acknowledgements
It has been my privilege to work with my editor, Harriet Bourton, on this story. Harriet helped me through several drafts, challenging and encouraging in equal measure and at all the right moments. Harriet accepts only the writer’s best.
Beth Kruszynskyj has worked side by side with Harriet for much of this process and I am most grateful for all of her enthusiasm and assistance. My thanks go to the entire team at Transworld.
My agent, Madeleine Milburn, continues to support me with expert advice and guidance. Thanks also to Cara Lee Simpson and all at the Madeleine Milburn Literary, TV & Film Agency.
A number of experts gave generously of their time while I was writing this novel. Malcolm Fried, John Hawkins, Steve Andrews and Wendy Wong spent several hours talking to me while I researched the background to the book. Callum Sutherland explained police procedures and pointed me to articles about forensic investigation. Sam Lewis, the finest GP I know, and also my brother, helped with aspects of toxicology and the practicalities of finding a dead body. Professor Michael Patton kindly answered my questions about genetics. Ultimately though, this is work of fiction and any errors are mine alone.
Thanks as always to Jake and Joseph for their patience and for putting up with less attention than they deserve while I am distracted and in another world entirely. And finally, I’m so grateful to Rachel Tucker, Sarah Fisher and Emma Smith for all their support.
Read on for an extract from
Luana Lewis’s chilling first novel:
Hilltop, Friday, 7 January 2011, 3 p.m.
At first, she ignored the doorbell.
The sound rang out, echoing through the entrance hall, crashing through into the living room and clattering and bouncing inside her skull.
She stood at the window looking out at her garden, at a world that blazed white. A layer of snow coated the ground and the tangled arms of the trees and the Chiltern Hills beyond. It looks like Narnia, she thought, as though Aslan might stride out from the forest at any moment.
The quiet was unnatural. Unnerving.
The snow had begun to fall at nine o’clock that morning. The newspapers carried warnings: A Wall of Snow. Airports cancelled flights. Her husband had left for work as usual.
The doorbell rang again. Longer, louder and more insistent.
She felt exposed, in front of the wall of windows stretching across the back of the house. Her home was a white concrete edifice, a modernist triumph of sharp angles and tall windows. Nobody should be able to get past the entrance to the driveway without the intruder alarm sounding an ear-splitting warning. And yet someone had. The snow was the problem: it must have piled up so high that it had covered the infra-red eye of the sensor.
She pulled at the neck of her jumper. It was too tight and her throat itched. Her mouth was dry and her palms moist. It was three o’clock and darkness would come soon. Her husband would not be coming home. Inches of snow had turned to ice, had made the steep approach impossible.
She checked the locks on the patio doors. A draught whistled around the edges of the black steel doorframe, as if the cold was trying to force its way inside. The house was Grade II l
isted, nothing could be done, the doors and the windows could not be changed. She tested the locks once more and then pulled the heavy drapes closed.
The doorbell rang again. And again.
She paced the living room. A half-empty bottle of wine stood open on the coffee table. She breathed. In for three, out for three. She pressed her hands against her ears.
A normal person would go to the front door and see who was there.
Stella walked through to the large square entrance hall. A chandelier with myriad round glass discs spiralled down above the staircase. She flicked a switch and light bounced off the pale-grey walls and shimmered, everywhere, too bright. She was disoriented, as though she had stepped inside a hall of mirrors and could not get her bearings. She would not panic. Nobody had ever tried to harm her at Hilltop. People intending to do harm did not announce themselves, or wait to be invited inside. But she could not think of a reason why someone would ring her doorbell in the middle of a snowstorm.
She checked the monitor mounted on the wall next to the front door. A young woman was outside. She stood on the doorstep, her arms wrapped around her chest, shifting from one foot to the other. A beanie hat was pulled down low over her long fair hair. A short leather jacket, covered in studs and zips, barely covered her midriff.
Stella lifted the handset. ‘Yes?’ she said.
‘I’m freezing. Can I come inside?’ Snowflakes churned around her as she shouted at the intercom. She shivered with cold and she didn’t look like much of a threat. ‘Could I use your phone?’
She looked up into the camera. Her face was lovely on the screen, with cat-like eyes and high cheekbones.
‘I’m sorry,’ Stella said. ‘No. Try one of the neighbours.’ She placed the receiver back on to the cradle.
She waited until the screen faded to black and the person outside disappeared and then she returned to the living room and took up her place at the window. But she was uneasy and the spell was broken. The snow that covered everything – the lawn, the trees and the hills beyond – no longer seemed magical. She hated being alone. The daylight hours were difficult, the nights almost impossible.
The air shattered as the doorbell rang again.
The police would hardly be impressed if she called them out to complain that a young woman had rung her doorbell. And she didn’t want to disturb her husband. But she so wanted to call him and ask him what to do. Her BlackBerry was right beside her. She picked it up. Ran her fingers across the keypad. Put it down again. She would not call him, she would deal with this herself. She was getting better. Of course, she wasn’t. She was alone and helpless and useless. She wanted Max. If she had her way, she would have him home all day.
Max deserved a better wife. He had rescued her and then it had all predictably gone to hell.
She returned to the front door, a rising anger competing with her nerves. The intercom screen showed the same young woman, with her beanie pulled down almost to her eyebrows and the absurdly short leather coat that provided no warmth.
‘What is it?’ Stella said.
She babbled as she looked up into the camera: ‘I used to live here,’ she said. ‘I came up from London to see my old house. I didn’t know the snow would be so bad. It’s all frozen and it’s really steep going back down the hill. Can I please come inside?’
Stella realized that the girl outside was very young. She couldn’t be more than fifteen years old. Fourteen, maybe. A child.
‘I’ll call a taxi to take you back down to the station,’ Stella said.
‘You can’t. They’ve shut down because of the snow. Please. The tube isn’t running either, I’m stuck here. I can’t go back down the road or I’ll break my neck.’ Her voice was rising with outrage and distress. ‘Can I just come inside?’
The girl was shaking with cold. Her lips were a purple gash, startling and dark against the pale skin of her face. She looked as though she was about to cry. Stella felt sorry for her. Not sorry enough, however, to risk opening the door.
‘No,’ Stella said. ‘Go and try one of the other houses. You’ve got an entire street to choose from.’
‘Please,’ the girl said, ‘I’m so cold. Why can’t you just let me in?’ She pouted at the camera and she stomped her white trainers on the black marble tiles.
Stella slammed the receiver back against its white plastic cradle. She watched as the girl tried in vain to keep warm. She paced up and down, leaving a haphazard pattern in the snow around Stella’s front door. She wrapped her arms around herself and bounced, up and down. At a certain point, she stopped fighting. She sank to the floor, her head on her knees.
The cold must be unbearable, like torture.
The minutes passed as Stella sat in front of the fire on her grey linen sofa. She pressed her bare feet into the soft, Chinese deco rug. She stood. She walked around the navy border, placing one foot in front of the other as though she was on a tightrope. She stopped at the yellow and orange parrot embroidered in the right-hand corner. She did not understand why the girl insisted on waiting outside her door.
Her thoughts came fast and fragmented. One day it would be different. She would be free of her chains. But she was losing time. She found it harder and harder to remember what she had been like before.
The house was silent.
Almost forty minutes had passed since the bell had rung for the first time. The girl at the front door must have decided to brave the steep hill that was Victoria Avenue. She was right: if she tried to make her way down, she might slip and fall. But after all – and here Stella tried to make herself feel less guilty – what was the worst thing that could happen to her? She might end up with a wet backside. And once she made it down the hill – wet backside and all – she could walk along the High Street and she would be inside the cosy inn within minutes. The Royal Oak: good wine, an open fireplace and exposed beams. The television above the fireplace had sort of melted along the bottom but no one seemed to notice it was a fire hazard. Stella could feel the soft sheepskin throws against her skin. She could taste the Bloody Mary – poured from a jug on the counter, slices of lemon arranged on the wooden board next to the glass pitcher. Max had described it all. He often walked down there alone on a Sunday evening. Stella had never walked with him, but maybe she would go, for the first time, when he came home to her the next day. He must be desperate for her to leave the house, though he hid it well.
The silence had become a pressure, pushing against her eardrums, and the darkness drew closer.
Max would not force her back into a world that terrified her. But she had been hiding a long time. More and more often she feared it was too late. Whichever way she looked at it, she was a recluse.
With any luck, the girl had gone to pester the neighbours, families with children of varying ages whom Stella had never met.
Or she might still be outside, waiting.
The silence and the waiting became unbearable.
Hilltop was her home, she was safe inside. If she went down the road paved with paranoia and self-pity she knew where it would lead – into a padded cell, most probably. She was safe. Nothing had changed; no one could get in. It was just a girl.
Hilltop was her own private kingdom, her palace and her prison.
Stella returned to the entrance hall. She tilted the shutters and peered out into the silvery-grey landscape. Heavy snowflakes swirled everywhere, as though a million goose-down pillows had been sliced open in the sky. With each passing second, the light grew weaker. The girl sat with her back to the polished steel front door, her knees pulled up to her chest and her head down. She was a child: helpless and cold.
A part of Stella was excited, the part she usually kept locked down tight. A little of her old self stirred in her chest. She needed to take a risk, to shatter the invalid’s life she had created for herself before it was truly too late. She needed to know that she could still be of use, to someone. She was tired of being inside, immobilized, waiting for something to happen, tired of waitin
g to get better while other people went on with their lives and her husband stayed away. She punched in the code, turning off the motion sensors. She rested her left hand on the door handle. There was a human being outside, alone and suffering. With her right hand, she reached for the deadbolt. She opened the door.
The blackened sky was shot through with violet. Icy air raged inside and heavy snowflakes blew through the open doorway then melted as they landed on the heated floor.
The girl was covered in white. Ice crystals had settled everywhere, in her hair and on her shoulders, and they clung to her leggings and her shoes.
She blinked up at Stella. ‘It’s fucking freezing out here,’ she said.
Her blue eyes were defiant and full of mistrust. She stayed where she was, unsure whether she was to be allowed inside. She made no sudden movements and she did not try to force her way in. She waited to be invited.
Stella took a step backward and nodded. With stiff, frozen fingers, the girl picked up her bag and scrambled to her feet. She stepped across the threshold.
Stella shut the front door behind her, locked it and then turned to get a better look at her uninvited guest. The girl was like a frightened deer. Strands of damp hair clung to her face. Her jacket hung open, revealing a cropped T-shirt and a hint of pale, goose-pimpled flesh. Bony knees protruded through tight black leggings. She held on to the strap of her rucksack and rocked back and forth on her grubby white running shoes. The girl pulled off her hat, her fingers still angry and red. She shook out her long wet hair and, as she did so, she caught sight of the colossal chandelier. She stared up for a moment, wide-eyed.
At five foot four, Stella was not particularly tall, and the girl was a head shorter than she was. And that was with the extra inch she gained from the running shoes. Stella felt foolish for being afraid.
‘My toes are burning,’ the girl said. ‘And I can’t feel my fingers.’ She glared at Stella as if she were responsible for her pain. She curled her fingers into a fist, then released them; watching her hands as though they belonged to someone else. Her eyes glistened and Stella thought she might be about to cry.