by Alex North
Karen had told me to help myself to anything in the kitchen. I was leaning on the counter in there, drinking black coffee and watching the dawn light creasing at the horizon, when the floorboards began creaking overhead. I set the kettle to boil again. A few minutes later, Karen came down, already dressed, but still looking exhausted.
“Anything?” she said.
I shook my head.
“You’ve not called them?”
“Not yet.” I was reluctant to. For one thing, without me bothering them, they could concentrate on finding Jake. For another, it also meant I didn’t have to hear anything I might not want to. “I will, but if there’d been anything they would have called already.”
The kettle clicked off. Karen spooned instant coffee into a mug.
“What have you told Adam?” I said.
“Nothing. He knows you’re here and that you slept on the couch, but I haven’t said anything else.”
“I’ll stay out of the way.”
“You don’t have to.”
Even so, I kept to the kitchen after Adam came downstairs. Karen made him his breakfast and he ate it watching television in the living room. Outside the kitchen window the day was already brightening. A new morning. I listened half-heartedly to whatever program was playing in the other room, amazed by how life was carrying on. How it always does. You only notice how astonishing that is when a part of you gets left behind.
Karen left me a key before she left with Adam.
“What time is the liaison officer getting here?” she said.
“I don’t know.”
She put a hand on my arm. “Call them, Tom.”
“I will.”
She looked at me for a moment, her face sad and serious, then she leaned in and kissed me on the cheek.
“I’ll take the car. I’ll be back soon.”
“Okay.”
When the front door closed, I fell back down on the couch. My phone was there, and yes, I could call the police, but I was sure that DI Beck would have been in touch if there had been any news, and I didn’t want to be told what I already knew. That Jake was still out there. That he was still in danger. And so instead I reached out for the item I’d brought with me from the house. My son’s Packet of Special Things.
Even if I couldn’t be with him physically, I could think of one way I could at least feel closer to him. I was conscious of the weight and importance of what I was holding. Jake had never told me I couldn’t look inside it, but he hadn’t needed to. His collection was for him, not for me. He was old enough to be entitled to his own secrets. And so, however tempted I had sometimes been, I had never violated that trust.
Forgive me, Jake.
I opened the clasp.
I just need to feel you close to me.
Fifty-seven
When Francis woke up, the house was silent.
For a while he lay very still in bed, staring at the ceiling and listening. No sound at all. No movement that he could detect either. But he could sense the boy’s presence directly above him, and the house felt fuller as a result. There was a feeling of potential to it.
There is a child up there.
The peace and quiet were encouraging, because of course that was how things should be. It meant that Jake understood the situation and was happy with it. Perhaps he was even excited to be in his new home.
Francis thought back to how easily the boy had settled in last night—already asleep and comfortable when he had gone up to check on him. With Neil Spencer, there had been so much crying and shouting at first that, even with the neighbors he did and didn’t have, Francis had been glad for the soundproofing he’d installed behind the walls of the attic. With Neil, he’d been too patient, writing that period off as a tantrum, whereas now he understood that Neil had been bad from the start, and there had been no chance of it ending any other way than it had.
Perhaps Jake really was different.
He isn’t, Francis.
His father’s voice.
They’re all the same.
All hateful little bastards that disappoint you in the end.
Maybe that was true, but he shook the thought away for now. He had to give Jake a chance. Nowhere near as many chances as he’d given Neil Spencer, obviously, but an opportunity to enjoy and appreciate a happy home where he was looked after and truly cared for.
Francis went for a shower, which always made him feel vulnerable. With the door closed and the water loud in his ears, it was impossible to hear the rest of the house, and when he closed his eyes he could imagine something creeping into the bathroom and standing just outside the shower curtain. He sluiced the foam from his face quickly, and opened his eyes to see the water trailing away down the drain. He’d had to unblock that after dealing with Neil. He could unblock it again if it came to it.
You know what you want to do.
His heart was beating a little too fast.
Downstairs, he prepared coffee and breakfast for himself, made the phone call he needed to make, then set about getting food for Jake. He wiped crumbs off the counter with his forearm, then put two crumpets into the toaster. Both were leftovers, with speckles of mold around the rims, but that was good enough. Francis had no idea what Jake liked to drink, but there was an open orange juice box on the side, the one Neil hadn’t had a chance to finish, and that would do as well.
Start as you mean to go on.
He carried the plate and carton upstairs, and then paused on the landing, pressing his ear against the door to the attic.
Silence.
But then he wasn’t so sure. He could hear something. Was Jake whispering to someone? If he was, it was so quiet that it was impossible for Francis to make out the words. Impossible even to be sure that it was happening.
Francis listened carefully.
Silence.
Then the whispering sound again.
It raised the hairs on his neck. There was nobody else up there—nobody that Jake could be talking to—and yet Francis suddenly had an irrational fear that there might be. That in bringing this child into his house, he had somehow brought someone or something else with him. Something dangerous.
Maybe he’s talking to Neil.
But that was stupid; Francis didn’t believe in ghosts. As a child, he would sometimes go near the door to his father’s extension and imagine one of the little boys standing on the other side, bright and pale, waiting patiently. There had even been times when he’d thought he could hear breathing through the wood. But none of it had been real. The only ghosts that existed were in your head. They spoke through you, not to you.
He unlocked the door and opened it, then climbed the stairs slowly, not wanting to scare the child. But the whispering sound had stopped, and that annoyed him. He didn’t like the idea that Jake was keeping secrets from him.
In the attic, the boy was sitting on the bed with his hands on his knees, and Francis was at least pleased to see that he had already dressed himself from the selection of clothes he’d provided in the drawers. Although less pleased to note the chest of toys didn’t appear to have been touched. Weren’t they good enough or something? Francis had kept those for a long time, and they meant a lot to him; the boy should have been grateful for the opportunity to play with them. He looked around for the pajamas Jake had been wearing, and saw they were folded neatly in a stack on the bed. That was good. He would need them when it came to returning the boy later.
“Good morning, Jake,” he said brightly. “I see you’ve got dressed already.”
“Good morning. I couldn’t find my school clothes.”
“I thought you could have a day off.”
Jake nodded. “That’s nice. Is my daddy going to be picking me up?”
“Well, that is a complicated question.” Francis walked over to the bed. The boy seemed almost eerily calm. “And one I don’t think you need to worry about for the moment. All you need to know is that you’re safe now.”
“Okay.”
; “And that I’m going to look after you.”
“Thank you.”
“Who were you talking to?”
The boy looked confused. “Nobody.”
“Yes, you were. Who was it?”
“Nobody.”
Francis felt a sudden urge to strike the boy in the face as hard as he could.
“We don’t lie in this house, Jake.”
“I’m not lying.” Jake looked off to one side, and for a moment Francis had the odd sense that he was hearing a voice that wasn’t really there. “Maybe I was talking to myself. I’m sorry if I was. Sometimes that happens when I’m thinking about stuff. I get distracted.”
Francis was silent, considering the answer. It made a degree of sense. He sometimes got lost in a dreamworld too. Which meant that Jake was like him, and that was good on one level, because it gave him something to fix.
“We’ll work on that together,” he said. “Here—I brought you some breakfast.”
Jake took the plate and carton and said thank you without being prompted, which was another good thing. Presumably he’d learned some manners from somewhere. But he also looked down at what he was now holding and didn’t begin eating. The mold was still visible, Francis noticed. Clearly it wasn’t good enough for him.
It had been good enough for Francis as a boy.
“Are you not hungry, Jake?”
“Not right now.”
“You have to eat if you’re going to grow up big and strong.” Francis smiled patiently. “What would you like to do afterward?”
Jake was silent for a moment.
“I don’t know. Maybe I’d like to do some drawing.”
“We can do that! I’ll help you with it.”
Jake smiled.
“Thank you.”
But he said Francis’s other name afterward, and Francis went very still. The boy recognized him, of course, but a good home was no place for informality. A child needed discipline. There had to be a clearly delineated hierarchy.
“Sir,” Francis said. “That’s what you’ll call me here. Do you understand?”
Jake nodded.
“Because in this house we show respect for our elders. Do you understand?”
Jake nodded again.
“And we appreciate the things they do for us.” Francis gestured at the plate. “I’ve gone to a lot of trouble. Eat your breakfast, please.”
For a moment the eerie calm on Jake’s face faded away and the boy looked like he was going to start crying. He stared off to one side again.
Francis’s fist clenched at his side.
Just disobey me once, he thought.
Just once.
But then Jake looked back at him, the calm restored now, and picked up one of the crumpets. In the light up here, the mold was obvious around the edge.
“Yes,” he said. “Sir.”
Fifty-eight
It felt like a transgression as I opened the Packet and looked inside at the contents.
It was an assortment of paper, fabric, and trinkets, much of which overlapped with my own past and memories. The first thing I saw was a colored wristband, pulled taut at the plastic clasp where Rebecca had stretched it over her hand rather than cut it off. It was from a music festival we’d been to in the early days of our relationship, long before Jake had even been thought of, never mind born. Rebecca and I had camped with friends who had slowly drifted away over the years, and spent the weekend drinking and dancing, not caring about the rain or the cold. We had been young and carefree, and as I looked at it now, the wristband seemed like a talisman from a better time.
Excellent choice, Jake.
I recognized a small brown packet, and my vision blurred slightly as I opened it and tipped the contents into my palm. A tooth, so impossibly small that it felt like air on my skin. It was the first one Jake had lost, not long after Rebecca died. That night I’d slipped money under his pillow, along with a note from the tooth fairy explaining that she wanted him to keep the tooth because it was special. I hadn’t seen it again until now.
I replaced it carefully in its envelope, and then unfolded a piece of paper that turned out to be the picture I’d drawn for him: a crude attempt at the two of us standing side by side, with that message underneath.
Even when we argue we still love each other.
The tears came at that. There had been so many arguments over the years. Both of us so similar, and yet failing to understand each other. Both of us reaching out to the other and always somehow missing. But God, it was true. I loved him through every single second of it. I loved him so much. I hoped that, wherever he was right now, he knew that.
I worked my way through the other items. They felt sacred to the touch, but also sometimes oblique in their mystery. There were several more bits of paper, and while some made sense—one of the few party invitations he’d ever received—much of it was incomprehensible to me. There were faded tickets and receipts, scribbled notes Rebecca had made, all so apparently meaningless that I couldn’t fathom why Jake had dignified them as being special. Maybe it was even the smallness and apparent insignificance of them that he liked. These were adult things that he lacked the experience to decode. But his mother had cared enough to keep them, and so perhaps, if he studied them for long enough, he might understand her better.
Then a much older sheet of paper—torn from a small ring-bound notebook, so that one end was frayed. I unfolded it and immediately recognized Rebecca’s handwriting. A poem she’d written, presumably as a teenager, based on how faded the ink was. I started to read it.
If you leave a door half open, soon you’ll hear the whispers spoken.
If you play outside alone, soon you won’t be going home.
If your window’s left unlatched, you’ll hear him tapping at the glass.
If you’re lonely, sad, and blue, the Whisper Man will come for you.
I read it again, the living room receding around me, then examined the writing once more to make sure. It was Rebecca’s—I was certain of it. A less mature version than the one I was familiar with, but I knew my wife’s handwriting.
This was where Jake had learned the rhyme.
From his mother.
Rebecca had known it when she was younger, and she had written it down. I did the math in my head and realized that Rebecca would have been thirteen years old at the time of Frank Carter’s murders. Perhaps it was the kind of thing that would have caught the attention of a girl that age.
But that didn’t explain where she had heard it.
I put the note to one side.
There were a number of photographs in the Packet, all of them so old that they must have been taken with a physical camera. I remembered doing the same as a child on holidays, and my mother and I had also done what Rebecca and her parents apparently had with these, writing a date and description on the back.
August 2, 1983—two days old.
I turned the photograph over, and saw a woman sitting on a couch, cradling a baby against her. Rebecca’s mother. I had known her briefly: an enthusiastic woman, with a sense of adventure she’d passed on to her daughter. Here, she looked desperately tired but excited. The baby was asleep, swaddled in a yellow woolen blanket. From the date, I knew it had to be Rebecca, even if it was impossible to believe she had ever been so small.
April 21, 1987—playing Poohsticks.
This one showed Rebecca’s father standing on a slatted wooden bridge with lush green foliage in the background, holding her up so she could dangle a stick over the water rushing past below. She was facing the camera, grinning. Not yet four years old, but I could already see the woman she would become. Even back then she had the smile that I could still picture so clearly in my head.
September 3, 1988—first day at school.
Here was Rebecca as a little girl, dressed in a blue jumper and pleated gray skirt, standing proudly in front of …
Rose Terrace Primary School.
I stared at the photograph for several s
econds.
The school was familiar by now, and the photograph was certainly of Rebecca—but those two things did not go together. And yet there was no mistaking either of them. Those were the same railings, the same steps. The word GIRLS was carved into the black stone above the door. And that was my wife, as a child, standing outside.
First day at school.
Rebecca had lived here in Featherbank.
I was stunned by the discovery. How had I not known that? We had visited her parents on the south coast several times before they died, and while I was dimly aware they’d moved when she was younger, that had certainly been home for her: where she had thought of herself being from. All her friends at our wedding had been from there, and they’d seemed to share so much history that I’d assumed they’d grown up together. But then, maybe that was simply where, as a teenager, her life had flowered—where the friends she made and the stories she gathered were the vivid kind that people carry into adulthood. Because the evidence was right in front of me. Even if Featherbank had felt of little consequence to her as an adult, Rebecca had lived here as a child—or at least close enough to attend the school.
Close enough to have heard the Whisper Man rhyme.
I thought about how focused Jake had been on our new house when he’d seen it on my iPad—how all the others in the search results had become invisible to him after viewing the photographs of it online. It couldn’t be a coincidence. I quickly flicked through the other photographs that he had kept. Most were snaps that had been taken on holiday, but a few of the locations were more familiar: Rebecca eating an ice cream on New Road Side. High up on a swing in the local park. Riding a tricycle on the pavement by the main road.
And then—
And then our house.
The sight of it was as incongruous as the school photograph had been. Rebecca in a place where she simply shouldn’t and couldn’t be. Here, she was standing on the pavement outside our new home, one foot placed backward on the driveway. The building behind, with its odd angles and misplaced windows, looked frightening, looming over the little girl who was just far enough over the threshold of the property to get the kudos for daring.