by Emma Rowley
But then if that thing in the cellar—and the pin and the tile, too, I suppose—if they were not Sabrina’s spiteful jealous tricks, what were they?
“And what about you, Lucy, are you going to come out with us next time”—Sabrina’s loud voice cuts into my thoughts, her tone baiting—“or are you still too nervous?”
“Actually,” Lucy is defiant. “I’ve been practicing. Olivia took me to the range.”
“Oh, did she,” says Sabrina, and takes a step over to Harry, rebuffed.
Down on the grass, Josh is holding a light to the thing on the ground, and then it registers with me, what Lucy meant . . .
“Olivia shoots?” I hear myself say.
Because I asked her. When I was angling to find out about her dad . . .
“God no . . . I never tried anything like that.” That’s what she’d told me.
“But of course,” Lucy says, then jumps and claps as Josh jogs back up.
“Get ready for a big one!” he shouts.
As the firework goes up with an electric scream, I take a tiny step backward.
“Oops, careful,” Lucy gives me a gentle shove.
“Sorry,” I manage to get out. “It startled me.” I lift my head to watch the sparks drift slowly down, painting our upturned faces pink and green . . .
But it wasn’t the firework that made me stumble.
It’s almost funny, how you can try to close your eyes to an unpleasant truth, push it away, until you’re forced to confront it and your whole world teeters on its axis.
I knew what happened, didn’t I? I had it all worked out . . . Elsa killed Alex and then they fled. Unless . . .
What if... what if Olivia wasn’t the one staying away from Elsa?
What if Elsa stayed away from Olivia?
* * *
And now I force myself to be still. I stand there with my face upturned to the night, barely seeing the lights and colours, as my mind races over what I know.
That Olivia was blamed for stealing money, about to be sent away. That young Paul Bryant might have had a reason to protect not Elsa, but Olivia. That Olivia faked those tears about her father, on my tape.
That she didn’t want to tell me she can shoot.
And I can’t help it, I glance over at Olivia, following my thoughts, but that is another mistake. Because she is already looking directly at me, her features lit up by the firework above—really looking at me, almost expectantly. Like maybe she is waiting for me to realize something. Because maybe she heard what Lucy just said.
I tear my gaze away. “I need to go to bed,” I say to no one in particular, and none of them tries to stop me this time. They are distracted by the fireworks as I head inside, trying not to hurry.
It is cold in the dining room now, the chill of the night spilling through the open doors. I am still stunned as I move through the house, turning to check that no one is following me, and yet I feel as if I am seeing everything clearly for the first time.
All the strange things that have happened to me here—not Sabrina. Not spiteful tricks. Somebody else. Something else.
Warnings, maybe, as I looked where I shouldn’t. Or punishments . . .
I am half-running up the stairs now, racing to get inside my room. At the top of the staircase, the dim hallway flushes red—no one has pulled the curtains shut—but the screams are quieter up here, the thick glass muffling the sounds.
I understand it now: what she has done to this house. Not only a restoration. But an act of reparation, atonement. . . re-creating what was destroyed . . .
And as I wrench open the door to my room and slam it shut, pressing myself against the wood, the fear I have been keeping at bay overtakes me, hot and wild and overwhelming, making my hands tremble, making me sink down to the floor.
Because now I am telling myself a different story. Not one that belongs to the past, like I thought, but one that is living and breathing and dangerous.
A confrontation that got out of hand, yes. A mother who covered it up, that still holds. But I know now, what I missed: Olivia’s hands on the gun.
I can see it now. Others will see it, too—they must. Won’t they? They must.
I just have to make it through the night.
PART 2
OLIVIA
Chapter 43
There are two sides to every story. Everyone knows that.
I’m not going to rehash what’s behind us. As I told her, I don’t like to live in the past. What’s done is done.
And honestly, when she arrived on my doorstep, I didn’t think much of her at all.
Slight, nothing clothes, hair that could do with some highlights, a face bare of makeup, not even mascara. Could be pretty if she made an effort, though you’re not supposed to say that.
I saw her reading the contents of my house and clocking Josh, though.
And afterward, once she was gone?
I was worried, yes. Increasingly anxious—even fearful, you might say—as time passed. That was true, if not quite in the way they interpreted it.
But my first instinct when she disappeared, before people started to panic?
Pure, overwhelming relief. Thank fuck that’s over.
* * *
But I am getting ahead of myself. By now, of course, I have gone over in detail what happened that Saturday, the day after the dinner party. It wasn’t until later on that the alarm was raised—but I’ll get to that.
So I had the morning to myself—the calm before the storm, let’s say.
Admittedly, when I woke up I was not feeling too hot. But I got up, grabbed the glass from my bedside table, and held it under the cold tap in my bathroom. I drank it down, twice. Then I rushed to the toilet, crouched down, and started retching. Josh wasn’t there to hear, at least; his side of the bed was empty.
Afterward I pulled on my running gear and went downstairs. Annie was already there, trying to get out what looked like a wine stain on the living-room rug, while Bea watched cartoons, sucking her thumb on the sofa.
“Don’t worry about all that, Annie. In fact, that rug might have to be totally chucked away.” I toed it with one socked foot.
She looked up. “Off for a run already? Why don’t I make you a nice cup of tea?”
“No, thanks,” I said. “This is just what I need.”
“Exercise is the perfect cure after a heavy night!” I once wrote, back when I used to do more blogging. There is never an excuse for letting things slide.
But it was more punishment than pleasure as I started to run. I had to stop behind the tennis court, leaning against the fence to take a break out of sight of the house. I could smell the cut grass and feel the warmth from the compost heap as I bent forward and emptied my stomach again.
* * *
Back in the kitchen I took a can of Diet Coke from the fridge and looked behind me. “Morning,” I said to Josh, as he walked in. “Annie’s already tidying up.”
“I know.” Josh came over and dropped a kiss on my head, his hands on my shoulders. “You’re an angel, Annie.”
I put the cold can back, hesitating, and pulled out a carton of coconut water. That would be better for my stomach.
“How are you feeling?” I said, shutting the door and turning round. “You were up early.”
“Mm,” he shrugged. “Bit of a sore head. I could do with a run, like you.”
“But you’ve already showered.” His hair was still damp.
“I felt rough.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “Thought it might freshen me up.”
I smiled. “Poor old you. Annie,” I said, turning to the figure in the corner. “When you’ve a moment, would you mind taking a cup of tea up to Nicky, see if she wants to join us?”
As Annie busied herself with the kettle, I laid the table for breakfast. I always like to help her where I can: I like Annie to think well of me.
“It’s a little rude though,” I added. “Staying in bed all morning.”
* * *
Wh
en Annie returned to the kitchen, she was still holding the cup of tea.
I looked up. “She’s still asleep then?” I shook my head.
“No,” said Annie. “She’s not there. She’s gone.”
I can picture the two of us, Josh and I, sitting there at the table among the breakfast things, framed in that instant: before everything changed.
I spoke first, my voice steady. “What do you mean, she’s gone?”
“She’s not there,” says Annie. “But all her things are still there.”
“Well, she must have just gone out then.”
“Her car’s here, too, I saw through the window.” She sounded a little worried. But she is such a worrier, Annie.
“She must have just gone out for a run then, like me,” I said, and refilled my coffee cup. I could feel Josh’s eyes on me. I didn’t look up.
* * *
And so the day progressed, its mundanity taking on a grim inevitability in retrospect. So that was the last time, you think afterward, that was the very last time that we would do this or that, before everything changed. Of course then, it looked like just another day.
At about eleven in the morning I was in the hall, Annie helping me to get Bea’s shoes on so we could go out, when Josh came down the stairs.
“Maybe we should give her a call? Nicky,” he added, as he shrugged on his jacket, like I might not realize who he was talking about. “If we’re both going out. Say good-bye?”
He wants everyone to like him. It was one of the things that appealed to me about him, when we first met. Right then it just irritated me.
“I suppose so,” I said. “I’ve got her number in my e-mail. I’ll find it in a bit.”
But I didn’t. After Josh left—he was already late for golf, he said—I went to say good-bye to Cav, collecting branches into a pile in the garden: Nicky might come back, could he tell her we had gone out?
Then I dropped Annie in the village, thanking her for all her hard work, telling her to have a good night off—she was spending it with a friend in the village, more of a break for her that staying in the house. After that, I drove out to the show farm half an hour away, so Bea could see the baby animals. She always enjoys that.
* * *
It was sometime in the afternoon, not long after I had got back, when it happened. The three of us, Josh, me and Bea, were in the kitchen. I was making Bea’s tea: cutting up chunks of cucumber for her into batons, the way she likes.
“Hold on,” Josh said, frowning. “Can you hear that? Ringing.”
We both listened for a second, as the unfamiliar ringtone sounded through the house. It was coming from upstairs, of course.
Chapter 44
Later, I couldn’t really explain why we both went up, him taking big steps up the stairs, me following with a protesting Bea in my arms.
I suppose you know, I told them, don’t you, when some detail is not right: some part of you knows what it might mean. After all, I pointed out, her car was in the driveway.
As we pushed open the door to her room, the phone was still ringing, vibrating on the side table.
Josh picked it up. “Joey,” he read aloud, before putting it to his ear. “Hello?
He listened for a moment then held the phone away from his head. “He’s hung up already.”
“Well, call him back,” I said.
“I can’t,” he said, fiddling with it. “It’s locked now, you need a code to do that.” He proffered the phone so I could see the screen: there were four missed calls from Joey. “Look, anyway. I’ve got to go out. Can’t you deal with this?”
I couldn’t believe his lightning-fast switch of focus. “You’re going out? Now?”
“I need to go check on the site this evening. One of the boys called before, said they’d driven past and seen someone dodgy looking around . . .”
“You’re going to look at your property project,” I repeated. “But it’s Saturday night—can’t someone else go?”
“Who? Anyway,”—his mind was already onto the next thing—“I don’t have time for this.”
I turned to look at him as he brushed past me. “But what should we do about Nicky?”
“Mummy cross again,” said Bea conversationally, and rested her head against my shoulder.
He stopped in the doorway, hands braced against the frame.
“Report it, if you like,” he said, heavily. “Ten to one she’s just embarrassed, gone out—dealing with a hangover somewhere. She was pretty gone last night.”
“You all were,” I said sourly. “But without her phone?” I add.
“If you’re that worried, call that police number—101. Report it. And I’ll drop by the pub on the way back, see if she’s ended up there.” His voice carried down the corridor, as he left me and Bea in there. “It’ll be fine.”
* * *
After that I took Bea back downstairs to finish teatime; then I was busy with bath and bed. It was still light in the evenings, making her want to stay up and play. When I came out of her room, I felt a wave of tiredness. I stopped in the hallway near the top of the stairs and looked out through the window, over the low roof. I’d have to replace that missing tile, I remembered, looking at the space it had left.
I had things to do, of course, but I stayed there a moment more. The wind was growing stronger, lifting the branches of the trees all around the house, and for a second I felt quite alone, surrounded by all that green.
But that was stupid, I was never afraid in the house: I was not the sort of the person to be scared of shadows. To say the least.
And I was already turning to go down the stairs, to tidy up, when I pivoted on my heel and walked the short distance into Nicky’s room at the end of the corridor.
* * *
It was dim, and I flicked on the overhead light, making the sky through the open curtains appear suddenly darker.
I don’t know why exactly I decided to do it. I suppose you could just say I just like things to be neat. Already it looked empty, abandoned, even with all her stuff in there. And it was such a mess that it bothered me. You cannot have an ordered life without ordered surroundings. As I had told Nicky in one of our sessions.
So I wiped down the toothpaste she’d left in the basin in her bathroom, and hung her dress—my dress, puddled on the floor—on a hanger. Then after I straightened up the bedspread, I went over to her suitcase, clothes spilling over the sides.
That was where I found them, the sheaf of papers and photos.
I wish I could have felt more surprised.
* * *
There was no need to panic.
I simply took them down through the house and the kitchen, out to the garden, where Cav had been burning leaves. The embers in the bonfire bin were still warm, and it didn’t take long to stir them up into flames again.
The floor plan went first, then the big color printouts showing my burned-out home. I recognized them from that horrid website Marie Crompton’s boy had set up. I didn’t get involved of course, but Annie had let it be known that he needed to take them straight down. Marie had been very embarrassed; she couldn’t apologize enough.
I thought that business was all done with. But it is hard to escape the grip of the past. I of all people should know that.
Last of all into the fire went my family photo, the edges turning black. I knew where Nicky must have found that; she must have been all over the house, to get into that box. But as I watched the flames take the four smiling faces, I stopped seeing them. A moment from the night before—it felt like an age ago by then—kept replaying in my mind.
We were all outside watching the fireworks.
I thought the day had gone OK. I’d had that final session with her, made all the right noises. She had seemed to buy it all.
Then I had looked at her, and she had looked at me.
It was then that I saw it, before she wiped her expression clean and turned to go back inside the house, like she had to get away from us. From me.
Because I had read what was written on her face under the bright flashes of the explosions above. And I understood what that dawning realization meant.
She knew too much about me.
* * *
Still. There are two sides to every story, everyone knows that.
But what matters, in the end, is who gets to tell it.
Chapter 45
By the time I was back in the house, I was yawning—exhaustion slamming into me after the stress of the week—but strangely peaceful. There was nothing else for me to do, right then. Josh was gone for the evening, Bea was in bed, and Annie was away for the night. I fell asleep on the sofa in the living room, something I never do.
When I woke, the room was dark and my throat was dry. For a moment, staring at the unfamiliar shadows on the wall, I did not know where I was. Then I heard it again, what had woken me: someone knocking, from the back door.
Josh. He must have assumed I’d put the chain on the front. Sometimes I did, pissed off that he wasn’t home yet. At least he hadn’t rung the bell and disturbed Bea.
I swung myself out of the soft sofa and wandered through the dark kitchen into the utility room. Still foggy with sleep, I registered the tall familiar figure through the frosted glass of the door, as I twisted the key and—
“Nicky?” said the stranger.
With a jolt of alarm, I took him in as the security light clicked on: a teenager in a navy parka, his bike propped behind him against one of my huge—and expensive—urns.
“No,” I replied. I smoothed my hair behind my ears. “I’m Olivia.”
“Oh, sorry,” he said blinking at me owlishly. “I thought she might be in . . . Uh, the gates were open, I couldn’t find a doorbell round the front.”