I need to go home. I need to run this by Mark.
Crushing loneliness sweeps through me. I wish I had more people I cared about in my life, apart from Mark and Blythe. How did I end up so alone? So lonely?
“Come on boy,” I say sadly. “It’s time to go home.”
THIRTY-FOUR
I never did see Mark today. When I got back from my amateur sleuthing, Mark – plus car – was gone.
And now, as I sit here in my window seat on this dark evening, with Bertie at my socked-feet and a throw over my knees like an old lady, I agonise over where Mark has gone and what he’s doing. He and Holly have probably gone to lunch somewhere. Perhaps they went to the cinema afterwards to catch an afternoon matinee. Or maybe they went to a neighbouring town on the Kent coastline, and are enjoying a romantic stroll along a beach. Perhaps they hit up a city like Canterbury, and are taking in some galleries, or museums.
I just do not know because I have been thoroughly side-lined in Mark’s life.
No Mark.
No Blythe.
No Bill.
I stare at the phone on the arm of the chair next to me, willing one of those three to call. For any of those three to call. My phone remains resolutely silent, shunning me.
I haven’t texted Bill – I don’t want to come across as too keen. I am so scared that he is going to ghost me. It’s been thirty-two hours since he dropped me off at my house, and I haven’t heard a peep from him. Not even his fan page on Facebook has been updated. I have decided to contact him tomorrow – casually, of course – should I not hear from him today.
No Mark.
No Blythe.
No Bill…
I should move. Get up. Do something. I feel like I’m losing my mind, sitting here, going over the same old ground, thinking the same old things.
But still I don’t move.
Only when I hear a car pulling up outside do I spring to my feet and part the blinds. This had happened every half hour or so, and it isn’t until eight o’clock – until now – that it is finally them.
I watch them exit the car, my heart in my mouth. Where have they been all day? I watch their figures, shrouded by the night, the way they embrace briefly on the pavement before they enter the house.
When they shut the front door behind them, I remain standing there, staring at his car.
I don’t go and knock and ask Mark’s opinion on what I should do about Blythe. He’s busy. He has his own life; a life that I am even more on the peripheries of than I have ever been before.
I know when I’m not wanted.
I go to bed early, sick of my own thoughts. Everything will be better in the morning. It always is.
*
Blythe is calling out to me, screaming for me to help her. But I am the only one who can hear her.
I am in Mark’s kitchen, sitting at the table with him and Holly, eating the meal of steak and chips that Holly has cooked for us.
Mark and Holly are discussing the weather, the most banal exchange about how cold it is for this time of the year, and all the while Blythe is screaming.
Please, Claire, make it stop. Do something, you’re the only one who can see.
I get to my feet, scraping back the chair over the tiled floor.
What’s the matter? Mark asks.
He is still sitting there next to Holly, smiling benignly up at me. He can’t hear her, of that I am sure. His expression is neutral, mildly curious.
I can’t say the same for Holly. She can hear Blythe. I can see the evil simmering behind her sickly-sweet smile. She is loving her screams.
Can’t you hear her? I ask Mark. Why can’t you hear her?
Don’t you like the steak? Holly asks me. I cooked it just the way you like it.
Mark, I sob. Please, just listen.
But he is now ignoring me, eating his dinner.
Claire, help me.
Blythe’s voice is stronger. Nearer.
I swivel on the spot in the direction of her voice. And I scream. She is in the kitchen. How could I not have seen her before? She is standing by the countertop, naked, sheened in blood from head to toe. She lifts an arm that drips blood, pointing her forefinger at us.
Blythe, I gasp, paralysed with terror.
What’s the matter, Claire, why aren’t you eating the delicious meal I cooked for you? Holly asks.
I twist my head to look at Holly and Mark, who are still sitting at the table like nothing is the matter. Holly smiles sweetly up at me, then she raises her eyes to the kitchen ceiling. Won’t you just look at the moon? It’s such a beautiful night.
Automatically I follow her gaze, tilting back my head to look up at the kitchen ceiling.
Except, there is no kitchen ceiling, and in its place is the night sky, in the middle of which hangs the moon. The moon is too big, too bright. I have come to hate that moon.
Oh God, I gasp, the tears streaming down my cheeks.
No, Claire. Not God, Holly says.
When I look back down again at Holly and Mark, Holly is sitting there naked, still smiling at me. Mark either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care, for he is tucking into his dinner like nothing is amiss.
Except it isn’t the same dinner we were eating before. The steak looks different; the lumps of meat on our plates look deeply wrong.
And why is Mark’s mouth ringed with red?
It’s not steak, I realise.
It’s human flesh.
Help me, Claire, Blythe cries. I turn to look at her, and in absolute terror I see that she is missing half her face, and there is a large chunk of flesh missing from her torso. Oh God, make them stop. Please, just make them stop.
Mark continues to eat, his jaw working hard on the chewy meat.
It won’t be long now, Holly says, smiling up at me.
And all the while, my blood-soaked friend sobs and wails.
THIRTY-FOUR
Mark and Holly leave for London mid-morning. I wasn’t expecting him to bang on the door to say goodbye, but the fact he hasn’t still hurts. I watch them pull away in his car from my spot in the window, a great sadness twisting in my chest.
Sure, I have developed an infatuation with Bill – who still hasn’t called me – but my feelings for Mark run deeper. Soul deep. He is a part of me, and no matter what happens in my life, or who else I may fall for, he will always be a part of me. He is forever branded into my very being, a part of my genetic makeup.
I guess I’m just stuck with him forever.
After they have pulled away, I flop down onto the sofa, clutching my phone. Now that Mark has gone for good – or the short-term good – I no longer have any need to obsessively look out of the window. This leaves only one thing left for me to repeatedly check – my phone. Blythe still hasn’t responded to my last text, and I must have called her fifty times since then.
But I still haven’t tried to contact Bill. I want so much to give him the benefit of the doubt, to believe that he’s been too busy with work to call me.
I should text him, I decide. Surely the old dating rules are archaic in this day and age? It can no longer hold true that the man should contact the woman first. Perhaps Bill is waiting for me to contact him.
“Guess there’s only one to find out,” I say to Bertie.
It was him that put his number into my phone, wasn’t it? Therefore he’s probably waiting for me to initiate contact. I start typing out a message before I change my mind, before this transient bubble of confidence irreversibly bursts:
Hi. Just wanted to say thanks again for a great night. And I’ve been thinking about you. I hope you still want to see me again, sometime. All the best. C. x
I press send before I can change my mind. Too late now. The deed is done. But the self-doubt is already threatening to take hold. Was I too needy? Did I come across as pathetic?
Stop. Just stop.
Boredom and restlessness are also beginning to creep in. Usually, when I get to feeling like this in the winter months, I li
ke to go round Mark’s. Just being in his house, even if he isn’t there, brings me some semblance of inner peace.
You could still go round, if you wanted to, a devious little voice whispers in my mind. Holly isn’t coming back until tomorrow and you still have Mark’s spare housekey. No one will ever know…
The urge hits me like a ton of bricks, and now that the thought has taken root, there is no shifting it. This seed – this need – has been well and truly sown in my brain.
And it is a devious, deceitful, downright criminal urge. Doing so would be a criminal offence, as I no longer have Mark’s permission to let myself in. It would be classed as breaking and entering. I am disgusted at myself for even thinking such a thing.
But, in the same breath, I know that I’m going to do it just the same.
God help me, I am going in.
*
I can’t believe that I am doing this, I honestly can’t. I am detached from my own actions, in a daze, yet determined. I think this is what might be called sheer bloody singlemindedness.
I am focussed on the task at hand when I let myself into the house with Mark’s spare key that rainy afternoon. And my task is snooping – nothing more and nothing less. Right now, I am an opportunist of the worst kind. But is it my fault that Holly has driven me to this? That she traumatises me on a deep level that I can’t even begin to understand?
But I am trying to understand. This is the only chance that I may get to find out more about Holly. I’ve exhausted the internet, and I even fell into bed with her ex stepson when I only initially sought him out with the intention of getting him to dish the dirt on Holly.
And things have got so much more complicated for me now that Bill has come into the picture. I wasn’t expecting to develop feelings for him. The truth is, I feel so confused.
I’m not even quite sure why I’m doing this. My motives are mixed. On one hand, I am in love with Mark and want to find out more about this woman whom I distrust immensely, and on the other I want to check that Bill isn’t involved in anything seedy. As in, I need to know if he is – or ever has been – involved with Holly sexually. Or if he plotted to have his own father killed. I don’t believe this, not deep down, but I still need to know for sure.
But, right now, I am temporarily numb to deeper meanings and finer nuances. I am here to snoop. Detective Claire, checking every closet both figuratively and literally. I shall leave no rock unturned…
Gently, I shut the front door behind myself. I can’t even say that my heart is pounding and I am a bundle of nerves, because it isn’t and I’m not. That curious sense of detachment clings to me as I make my way down the long and wide hallway.
Mark’s house feels so much bigger than usual, most probably due to the fact of me trespassing. I pass the door to the living-room which is closed. I turn the handle, pushing it open like it is my God-given right to do so.
I look inside the room. The cloudy, rainy weather means it would be ideal to switch on the light right about now, but I don’t dare. Mark isn’t on friendly terms with the neighbours any more than I am, anyone that our respective parents used to have the time of day for have long moved away, and a lot of these houses on Grange Road have been turned into flats, most of which are inhabited by DHS. Strangers surrounding us or not, I am still reluctant to switch on the lights as you never know who is watching. You never know who might say to Holly, I saw your neighbour snooping around your house Sunday afternoon…
The living-room is heavy with shadows from the overcast day. It looks different in here. Not hugely so, but enough.
I didn’t see in here the other night as I refused Mark’s offer of port and cheese, so this is the first time I have seen the new additions to the room. There is a thin, heavily patterned Persian rig on the floor where there previously was none. A wingback, leather armchair has appeared, as well as a fold-down table with elaborately carved legs tucked against a wall – a table that I think I spied in the back of the van the day Holly brought down her stuff.
There are very few of Mark’s paintings that hang in the house, apart from in his studio, as his parents collected art long before Mark started painting. These paintings are traditional in style, but extremely arty – mostly tasteful nudes and elegant seascapes in watercolours. The three new editions to the walls, however, are a completely different kettle of fish. They are old-fashioned, as in, they look centuries old and are dark and dingy oils in ornate, gold-flecked, dark-wood frames. Two of them depict hunting scenes and the third is of a rotting bowl of fruit.
I gaze at them, a shiver running the length of my spine. They are just so creepy, and such a bizarre choice for a young, beautiful, fashion-savvy woman like Holly.
Mark has retained the somewhat traditional décor his parents had, but these paintings, along with the rug and the studded leather chair are just old looking rather than timeless or classic. They look like they belong in an old person’s home.
It’s just weird.
I turn away from the living-room and head down the hallway, which remains largely immune to Holly’s ‘feminine touches’.
I make my way up the wide staircase, pausing at another painting that has recently been hung. This one is bigger than the others and depicts yet another gruesome hunting scene.
It makes me shudder, because it is more bloodthirsty than the others. The men in red coats sit straight-backed on their horses, watching the dogs maul an animal that is rendered unidentifiable by the blood and gore. The snarling jaws reveal pointy teeth, dripping in blood, their prey suspended in the air between them, like they are fighting over a ragdoll.
But it isn’t the blood-thirsty detail that troubles me the most – it is the fact the scene is set against a night sky.
And in that night sky hangs a bright, full moon.
Hunts never happen at night, surely? I guess this is called artistic licence, but I don’t like it. I can’t stop staring at the moon in the painting, a cold chill settling over me, the sight of it stirring up memories of my nightmares. Specifically, the one from last night, which had to be the worst one yet.
What it is even wrong with me, anyway, to even dream such a thing?
I turn away in disgust, ascending the remaining stairs.
THIRTY-FIVE
My feet have taken me to where I want to be, even before it was a conscious decision to do so.
I find myself in Mark’s bedroom. Except, it isn’t Mark’s bedroom anymore, but Holly’s study. I look around myself, my heart thumping hard in a mix of indignation and fear. Indignation, because it seems so arrogant on her part that she could take over his childhood bedroom like this, and fear because I can’t even conceive of the repercussions if she were to find me in here, right now.
I also feel great sadness, because it’s like the last traces of Mark have been erased from the room. Gone is the boyish, zigzag, navy-blue duvet cover and in its place is an abundance of cushions and blankets in rich shades and various textures. Flocked fur, velvet and satin in crimsons and purples jostle for space on the bed. Also, the desk I spied in the back of the van that day is now in front of the bay window. There is also a rug adorning the floorboards, similar to the one in the living-room. Mark’s old wardrobe is still in here – a wardrobe that is usually pretty much empty, except for a few items of forgotten clothing, and I fully intend to look inside it in a minute…
But first things first.
Perched on top of her desk is a laptop and I go over to it, raising the lid before I have a chance to start an internal debate of whether I should be doing this or not.
No stone unturned, remember? I remind myself.
I am confronted with a lockscreen. In all honesty I wasn’t expecting anything less, but I still had to try, on the off chance.
Next up, I open the top drawer in the line of four that run down the righthand side of the desk. All but the bottom one is empty, and I lift out the small shoebox.
I am trembling now, as I bring it over to the bed, setting it down nex
t to me on a cushion-free spot. Licking my suddenly dry lips, I lift the lid, carefully flicking through the contents, which at first glance is a stack of documents. I must be careful not to disrupt the order of anything, to leave it exactly as I found it.
On the top of the pile is her passport, and I pick it up. I smile grimly to myself, for clearly, she has never lied about her name or age, as she goes by the surname Butler in the passport.
I flick through the documents and bits of paper beneath the passport. I find her marriage certificate to Jasper, the deeds to the house in Belgravia, and some bank statements and letters, which almost make me fall off the bed in shock. If there were any remaining doubt in my mind that she was after Mark for his money, they have been banished once and for all. This bank statement is for over a million pounds.
“Jesus,” I mutter.
There are more official letters, some about stocks and shares that Jasper apparently has. Or had, more like. There are no figures in these letters, but I can easily imagine that these shares are worth obscene amounts.
And then I get to the small stack of photos, lying facedown beneath the paper pile. As I go to prise them up with my fingernails, something hard rattles against the cardboard. Gingerly, I lift everything sideways so I can see what it is. It is two gold rings – one noticeably larger than the other.
Two wedding bands, I realise.
I pick up the larger of the two, holding it up to the meagre light from the window to better examine it. It has a slightly raised surface in places, the edges of the ring itself uneven. Only then does it twig that the ring is in the shape of a snake, the tip of its tail wedged in its mouth, so that it is eating itself. A shiver courses through me, a coldness, and I almost drop it. There is something inherently distasteful about the design.
As I’m tilting it this way and that, I notice that the inside is engraved. It says forever. I pick up the smaller ring and it is identical, right down to the abhorrent snake design and the engraving of forever.
Two Doors Down: A twisted psychological thriller Page 18