As he speaks my hands start to tremble. I want him to stop now.
“But . . . well . . . it was what you said as you got in the cab that concerned me the most,” he says.
I look up, willing him to stop. But another part of me needs to know.
“What did I say?”
Paul puts his glass down and drums his fingers on the table.
“What is it, Paul? Tell me what it was that I said!” I can feel a familiar tightening in my throat. “Please?”
He stops drumming, then continues.
“It was probably the drink talking, I wouldn’t worry . . . but as you leaned over to close the cab door you looked me straight in the eye and you said . . .”
“Paul, tell me what I said.”
He looks at the floor. “You said: ‘I killed him.’ You kept saying it.”
I look down at the deep red liquid in my glass and wish I could disappear into its opacity. Who was the prince who chose to be executed by being drowned in a vat of wine? I can’t remember but if ever there were a way to die, that would be it. I take a long sip and the taste mellows; I can feel the alcohol numbing my nerve endings one by one.
“What’s going on, Kate?” he asks. “Do you want to talk about it?”
No is the answer. I will never talk about it.
“I’m fine,” I say, reaching over to refill my glass. “And you’re right, hair of the dog was a good idea. Now, are you going to slice that chicken or will I have to do it myself?”
“Okay,” says Paul, his face all concern. “I just want to say this and then I won’t mention it again, but you know you can confide in me, don’t you? You know that I’m here for you?”
“Yes, I do,” I reply briskly. “Now somewhere in this sorry excuse for a kitchen is an electric carving knife. Remember those? If we can find it we can eat.”
An hour later we’re sitting on the green fake leather sofa in the living room polishing off the wine. We’ve had a bit too much and are both slightly tipsy.
“I don’t know about you but I’ll be glad to see the back of this house,” says Paul, looking around at the grubby room. “I’ve always had a bad feeling about it. God, listen to me, I sound like you talking to your friend what’s-her-name,” he jokes.
“Alexandra Waits,” I reply and I tickle the back of his neck. “Look, she’s here. I think she likes you.”
“Get out of it.” He laughs, pushing my hand away. “You’ll spook me again and then I’ll leave and you’ll be all alone with Alexandra.”
“Sorry, I couldn’t resist,” I say, laughing too. It feels good. “But I know what you mean about this place. It’s as though the walls have soaked up all the grief and violence that went on over the years.”
“If walls could talk,” says Paul.
“They’d say: could you get your father to stop bashing that woman’s head against us please, he’s damaging the plaster.” I laugh again, this time without humor.
Paul rubs my shoulder.
“I’m sorry,” he says gently. “It must have been hell for you.”
His face is rather too close to mine for comfort so I sit up and reach for the wine.
“Anyway, enough about me,” I say as I refill our glasses. “What was your childhood like? Did you get on with your parents?”
“It was okay,” he replies. “I didn’t really get on with my dad but I’m not one for analyzing all that stuff. Shit happens and then you grow up, you grow some balls and get on with it.”
I smile.
“That’s a good philosophy,” I say, taking a sip of wine. “I should take it on board.”
“Well, it always worked for me,” he says.
“Speaking of your folks,” I say, putting my glass onto the table. “What do you know about the people next door, your tenants? Fida and her husband.”
“Why do you ask?”
“Just curious, that’s all.”
“They’re all right,” he says. “Keep themselves to themselves, pay the rent on time.”
“Do they have a child?”
“I don’t think so,” he says. “Mind you, I’ve never really spoken to them much. The letting agent deals with them. I think the woman’s from the Middle East somewhere.”
“She’s from Iraq,” I say.
“How do you know?” he asks. “Have you been talking to her?”
“Yes, she was out in the garden. She asked me about Mum. Apparently they were good friends.”
“Were they? I don’t remember that,” says Paul. “Still, you know what your mum was like, she’d chat to anyone.”
“Yes,” I say. “Listen, Paul, I think there’s something odd going on in that house.”
“What do you mean?” he asks, leaning forward, his brow furrowing.
“Well, the other day just before she spoke to me I heard a child laughing in her garden but when I asked her she said she didn’t have a child.”
“That’s strange. Are you sure it was a child you heard? It couldn’t have been, I don’t know, a dog barking or someone’s car radio?”
“Oh, come on, I know what child’s laughter sounds like. I’m telling you, there was a child in that garden.”
“It does sound odd,” says Paul. “But it’s a busy street and I know there are kids on the other side of forty-four. Maybe it was them you heard.”
“Yeah, maybe,” I say, stifling a yawn. I know what I heard but I’m too tired to press it and, anyway, Paul is as much in the dark about the neighbors as I am.
“Do you know what you need?” says Paul, leaning back in the sofa.
“What’s that?”
“Some fresh air,” he says. “Look at you. You’re exhausted. You’ve been cooped up in this dusty old place for days now. And before that you were in a bloody basement in Syria. You need perking up. How about we organize a day out somewhere nice, eh? You name a place and I’ll take you.”
I smile at his attempts to cheer me up. I’ve had too much wine again, but the dull fuzziness in my head is rather soothing.
“Come on,” says Paul. “Where shall we go?”
I close my eyes and hear my mother’s voice: Picnic time, girls. And I don’t know whether it’s the wine or my own ghoulish tendencies but for just a moment I get an urge to go back there.
“Kate?”
I open my eyes and look at Paul. He seems different tonight, less frazzled than usual, almost attractive. The wine must really be getting to me.
“I’d like to go to Reculver,” I say, holding his gaze.
“The beach or the towers?”
“Both.”
“Okay, you’re on,” says Paul. “I haven’t been to the towers for years, not since I was a kid. My dad loved them for some reason but then he always was a maudlin old bastard. They’re haunted, aren’t they?”
“Supposedly so,” I reply drowsily.
I take another sip of wine and close my eyes. I am so tired.
“Reculver it is,” says Paul, his voice muffled. “We’ll take a picnic. Kate? Are you asleep?”
He nudges me and I open my eyes.
“What time is it?” I grunt, stretching my stiff legs out in front of me.
“Nearly midnight,” says Paul.
“Sorry,” I say as I ease myself off the sofa. “I should probably get some rest now.”
“Yes, you should,” said Paul, getting up. “So do we have a plan?”
“A plan for what?” I say as I stumble toward the door. My head feels very odd and I wonder if I’m coming down with something. When did I last take a sleeping tablet?
“Reculver,” says Paul, following me out. “This weekend.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” I say, wishing I’d never mentioned the bloody place. “Some things are better left in the past.”
“Go on. It’ll be fun,” he says as he fumbles with the zip on his jacket. “Just a few hours, that’s all. It will do us both good.”
I look at him and think that he could probably do with the sea air more th
an me. Weekends can’t be much fun in the Cheverell household. He deserves a break.
“Okay,” I say, unlocking the front door. “You’re on. Now get out of here and let me go to bed.”
He laughs, then pulls me toward him and hugs me tightly.
“Thanks, Kate,” he whispers in my ear.
“Good night, Paul,” I say as we pull away from each other. “Drive safely. You’ve had quite a bit to drink.”
“I’ll be fine,” he says as he steps outside. “It’s not far. Oh, and I’ll call the letting agent tomorrow, see if I can find out anything about the people next door. Now you go and get some rest, okay?”
“I’ll try,” I call to him, watching him walk to his car. “I really will try.”
I close the door and go back into the kitchen. The table is still laden with dirty plates. I take them and put them in the sink. They can wait until morning, I tell myself, as I pour a glug of washing-up liquid over them and run the hot water. The wine has made me fuzzy-headed and so sleepy that I wonder if my pills are necessary tonight. Still, better not to take chances. I slip two out of the box and swallow them with a mouthful of water. As I go to leave the kitchen I notice the newspaper lying on the counter. I unfold it, distractedly, and within moments I am wishing I hadn’t.
SYRIA’S LOST CHILDREN
Exclusive: Rachel Hadley reports from the Kahramanmaras refugee camp
Each word twists inside me like a knife. She’s done it; the little witch has finally done it. After months of trying to undermine me, she’s got her big assignment. I look at the accompanying photographs. There is Hadley simpering into the camera while holding a small child. I notice she’s done her hair and has a full face of makeup. The child she is holding looks uncomfortable. It’s a typical staged shot. Dear God, woman, you’re supposed to be a journalist. I read the first couple of lines of her report, incredulous at her lack of impartiality. “I’m so angry I can barely speak,” she bleats in the second paragraph. I turn the page and see that at the bottom of the report is a link to her Twitter page. “For more updates from Rachel’s exclusive story please follow @rachely88.”
I remember Harry imploring me to set up a Twitter profile so that readers could follow me and I told him in no uncertain terms that I didn’t do social media, that readers could read my reports in the newspaper. I mean, Jesus, how are you supposed to update your social media page when you’re trapped in a bombed-out city without running water, never mind bloody WiFi?
“Bullshit,” I exclaim, ripping the paper and Hadley’s insipid face into pieces. “All of it.”
I need to get back there immediately. I need to talk to Harry, tell him that I’ve recovered from what happened in Aleppo, that I’m ready to go back.
My heart is thudding so hard it feels like I may have another panic attack. I sit down in the chair, the remnants of the newspaper still in my hands, and try to catch my breath. And then I see it, a nice full bottle of red, on the shelf in the pantry. Good old Paul. I stand, pick up my empty glass, and take it and the wine upstairs to bed.
18
The sky is raining blood as I crawl through the bodies. Where have they all come from? A few minutes earlier the room had been quiet, the only noise the steady hum of the refrigerators and the gentle ticking of the clock.
Explosions ravage the air above my head and with each detonation blood trickles onto my hair, my clothes, my skin, as more body parts drop from the sky like scraps of meat being flung into a lion’s den. There is no sign of him, though I know he will be here somewhere, clutching his scrapbook in his hands and waiting to show me his favorite picture. I have to find him before the weight of the bodies suffocates him.
So I press on, flinging aside corpses to get to where he is.
“Kate.”
There. I can hear him, his voice a faint whimper against the barrage of bombs that rage in the skies above. But how to determine his body from the swell of body parts all about me? My nostrils fill with the smell of decay as I wipe my face.
“Kate.”
I’m getting closer; I can sense him, though I know I don’t have much time. The fridges whir as I dig and dig to the bottom of the pit. Then I hear a groan and I know I’m close.
“I’m coming, Nidal,” I yell into the darkness. “Stay there, I’ve almost got you.”
Deeper and deeper I dig until I see a flash of dark hair and his face, expectant and terrified all at once.
“I see you, Nidal. I see you. Now hold on to my hand.”
I feel him grip my hand tightly.
“Now pull, pull with all your strength,” I shout, but my voice is obliterated as the sky explodes and we are saturated with red rain.
“Kate.”
His voice grows louder though I know that’s impossible as he is deep underneath the ground.
“Kate.”
The door of the shop bursts open and a soldier stands there caked in blood and sweat and excrement, a dead body draped across his arms, its entrails hanging out in silken threads behind him.
“This what you’re looking for?” he growls as he steps toward my prone body and throws the corpse onto the ground where it bursts on impact, spraying me with a fine mist of deep-red blood.
“Kate.”
The voice grows fainter as I shield my eyes from the putrid liquid and curl myself into a tiny ball.
“No,” I cry. “No, no, no.”
I open my eyes and slowly unfold myself. My hands are shaking and my mouth tastes of foul gristle. As the bedroom comes into focus I exhale long shallow breaths to ward off the nausea that is rising in my gullet.
Two bottles of red. Why did I do it? I climb out of bed in search of water and pills.
Red wine always brings on the blood dreams. They’re the ones I dread the most because they are relentless and there is no way out of them.
The room is cold. I drag my suitcase from under the bed and take out a thick wool cardigan. I put it on and step out onto the landing. As I walk down the stairs I hear a tapping sound. I pause and listen for a moment. There it is again: a muffled tap, tap, tap, like the sound of distant shelling.
I slowly make my way downstairs and stand in the hallway listening. The noise has stopped. It must have been the pipes spluttering out the last of the heat. Another thing in need of modernizing, I tell myself, as I wearily make my way to the kitchen.
The water is heavenly and I drink glass after glass of it, washing away both the taste of the blood dream and two more oblong pills that will ensure me a few hours of blank sleep. I turn off the tap and stand for a moment, my eyes sore from exhaustion. The noise, when it comes again, is harder, more insistent, a bang rather than a tap. It’s coming from outside. I go to the back door and unlock it. What is it? The banging continues. It’s coming from the garden next door.
I go to the pantry and take out the heavy rolling pin my mother kept as a prop to hold one of the shelves in place. I shudder as I hold its bulky weight in my hands and remember its former use. My father, the policeman of the house, favored the rolling pin as the truncheon in order to implement his unique brand of crowd control.
With the rolling pin in my hand I open the door and step out into the garden. The air is freezing and I pull my cardigan around my chest as I creep toward the plastic chair that is still where I left it by the fence. Easing my weight onto it, I carefully climb up and stand looking into next-door’s garden. The noise has stopped and there is nothing there but an empty clothes line and a pair of old Wellington boots lying by an overgrown rockery. The shed is in darkness. I look to my right and see that the house seems to be locked up; the curtains in the back bedroom are closed and there is no light coming from inside.
“Hearing things again,” I tell myself as I climb down from the seat, but just as my feet touch the ground the noise starts again, this time louder and more frantic.
I scramble back onto the chair and peer over. And then my heart flips inside my chest.
There, in the window of the shed, i
s a face, a child’s face.
He is very pale, almost translucent, and his face is framed with a shock of jagged black hair. He looks so scared. He bangs his fists against the glass window of the shed.
I have to get him out.
I haul myself up and into a sitting position on the fence, as if I were on the back of a bony horse, then with one swift twist of my body I land on the grass with a thud. The rolling pin that I had wedged under my arm bounces off my knee and I wince in pain.
Pulling myself up from the ground, I look around the garden for something I can use to get back over the fence. We’ll need to be quick. A rickety wooden chair lies on its side on the raised decking area by the back door. That would work but it’s so close to the door I risk alerting Fida. As I stand procrastinating the boy bangs on the window again. I will have to risk it. Crouching on my haunches, I hurry across the lawn and drag the chair back to the fence.
Once it is in place I turn and head to the shed, waving my arms to let him know I am coming to help. He looks terrified. A large cloud drifts across the moon, plunging the garden into darkness. I carry on waving as I approach the window but the glass is opaque and the boy’s face no longer visible. I turn the door handle, holding the rolling pin in front of me like a cumbersome compass. The door is locked but the wood is thin and half yields as I push it with my shoulder. One good shove will get it open, I reckon, and I stand back and come at the door with all my weight. It springs open and I land in a heap in the center of the shed. It’s pitch-black.
“Hello,” I call out, and my voice comes back at me. “It’s okay, I’m here to help you.”
My back aches as I pull myself up and look around. The moon comes out again and exposes slivers of objects: a stepladder is wedged against the window, a bulky lawn mower, a set of shears and, at the far end of the shed, a wall of shelves with paint pots and gardening tools neatly stacked. But no child.
“It’s okay,” I call out to the shadows of the room. “I know you’re scared but you can trust me. My name is Kate. I’m staying in the house next door.”
Where is he?
I move aside some boxes. Peer behind the ladder. Nothing.
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