The Man in the House

by Emmy Ellis

  Soon it was the feast, and everyone lined up at the trestle table by the fence, nice and orderly, considering how excited they were, and Mum passed out white paper plates as the girls selected what they wanted—ham, cheese, or beef paste sandwiches, sausage rolls, cheese sticks, cupcakes, Monster Munch, and all manner of lovely things, and best of all, red jelly right at the end in transparent plastic beakers. Dad said he’d put a dob of Neapolitan ice cream on the top once it came to pudding time, and maybe sprinkles if they were lucky.

  Suzie tagged on the end of the line, and once all were seated in a circle on blankets covering the grass, munching away, Dad winked at her and switched the CD to the Spice Girls.

  Emma almost wet herself—she had no idea he’d picked the music up in Tesco on his way home from work last night, Suzie and Callie sworn to secrecy so they didn’t spoil the surprise. Strains of Two Become One wailed out of the speakers and various mouths between bites of food, some even singing with grub on show until Mum said that wasn’t very nice, was it, and where’s your manners?

  After the food had gone, pass the parcel came next, everyone belting out a-zig-a-zig-ahhhh long after the music had been paused for someone to open a layer. The prize, won by Miranda Bellsthrop, a Barbie with a sparkling pink dress and high-heeled rubbery shoes, seemed the envy of everyone else, and more than a few groans went round—there were a couple of pouts in place, too.

  Still, it didn’t spoil anything for Suzie. Parties were wonderous things, and even the air seemed to be celebrating right along with them. Suzie reckoned it fizzled, just like the excitement in her belly, or that might be because she’d had a bit too much pop.

  Hide and seek was proposed after the jelly and ice cream, and while everyone scampered off to find a place to hole up amid Mum calling out that no one was to go in her bedroom and mess up the piles of ironing on the bed—“I didn’t spend all morning pressing that for it to get creased, you know!”—Suzie waited. She knew exactly where she was going to tuck herself away.

  She crept indoors, smiling at the shrieks and pattering footsteps where the guests rushed to scurry under beds or stand stock still behind doors. Emma had stayed in the garden, counting to one hundred with her hands over her eyes, her voice sailing through into the hallway, where Suzie stood in front of the door to the cupboard under the stairs.

  In she went, trampling on shoes, the smell of feet heady in the muggy air. She pinched her nose, closed the door, and wedged herself in the triangular end where there might be spiders, but it didn’t matter, she wanted to win the prize.

  Emma shouted, “Coming, ready or not!”

  Suzie’s stomach clenched, and she squeezed her eyes shut, as if that meant Emma wouldn’t know she was in the cupboard. Footsteps thundered past, then a “Found you!”, and Emma went off in search again, up the stairs this time.

  Suzie opened her eyes.

  The door peeled outwards, and she stared. Maybe someone was joining her in the hiding place. It was him, poking his head inside and spotting her. She didn’t like him, never had, but if she kicked up a fuss, she’d spoil Emma’s day, and that wasn’t something Suzie was prepared to do.

  He climbed in, closing the door behind him, and he was so big, and the cupboard seemed to shrink, and Suzie grew uneasy, trapped there with him.

  “Go away,” she said. “I got here first.”

  “And I got here second.”

  Then he told her things—things that frightened her—and asked, “So, are you going to keep the secret?”

  She nodded, unable to do anything else, stuck as she was in the triangle. She wanted Mum or Dad, but he’d said they wouldn’t believe her if she told them what he’d said, so she kept her mouth shut.

  Then he touched her, and suddenly Suzie hated parties, hated music, hated buffet food, but most of all, she’d hated forget-me-nots and purple nail polish once he’d explained that they were indicators of their ‘sessions’.

  She’d keep quiet. He mustn’t be allowed to kill anyone. She couldn’t stand the guilt if he did.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Helena left Suzie’s flat and smiled at Clive. “She’s not letting on, is she,” she whispered to Andy. Then to Clive, “Open this door for me, will you, please, so I can see what her brother has to offer.”

  Clive let her in, and Helena walked inside, the layout the same but a mirror image. Andy followed her and shut the door.

  “Jacob?”

  “In here,” came his incredibly deep voice.

  Helena glanced at Andy, and he raised his eyebrows as if to say: Let’s get this over with. She nodded in answer then entered the living room.

  Jacob sat on a sofa and, like next door, the room was bare of everything except the essentials. Soulless, uninviting, but it did the job for those who had to stay here. Empty crisp packets surrounded him, probably from the Waitrose delivery stash, and it appeared he’d chomped his way through half a twenty-four pack of Walkers. A box of Jaffa Cakes balanced on his vast lap, his rotund belly giving them a cuddle.

  “How are you?” she asked.

  Helena sat on a chair adjacent. Andy remained standing. The sofa was only a two-seater, and Jacob took up most of it—him and his junk food. A bottle of Diet Coke leant against him, as though it wanted to join the Jaffas in the love fest.

  “Devastated,” he said. “Who wouldn’t be when their sisters… God, I can’t even bring myself to say it.”

  “I understand. Sorry our interview has been delayed.”

  “Emma’s fault,” he said.

  Helena forced herself not to frown. “Emma hardly meant for this to happen.”

  Jacob opened his mouth to speak then shut it again. Grief had a funny way of affecting some people. Maybe he was going through the angry stage, having possibly been through the tears yesterday over Callie, although his eyes gave no sign of it.

  Something about him had been bugging her, so she may as well get it off her chest right away. “Why did you opt to go to work when this had happened? Most people need time to take it all in.”

  “I’m not most people.”

  God, he’s a surly bastard, isn’t he?

  Andy coughed—or was that a disguise for something he’d said? Wanker, probably.

  “Okay. Where were you on the night Callie died?” Helena clasped her hands over her knees.

  Jacob grunted. “At work. As well as doing deliveries, I sometimes stay behind to help the night staff stack shelves. I need the money.” He gestured to the food. “I’ve got an addiction.”

  “And last night, when Emma died?”

  “Same thing. Check with the manager. She’ll tell you.” He opened the Jaffa Cake box then pulled out a packet of twelve.

  “I’m sure she will.” She inwardly cursed at having not checked in with Olivia and Phil about Jacob’s whereabouts. Then again, if he hadn’t been at work, one of them would have rung her to say so. “Do you know of anyone who would have wanted to do this to Callie and Emma?”

  “No idea. They’re a pair of buggers, those two. Could have been into all sorts of things for all I know.” He crammed a cake in his mouth.

  “What do you mean by ‘buggers’?”

  “Always tarting it about, aren’t they. They couldn’t be like Suzie and settle down. It’s like they’re on a destruction course where their main aim is to shag around.”

  He’s talking about them as if they’re still alive.

  “So you’re saying they were promiscuous?” she asked.

  “Let’s just say they’ve had a lot of fellas, one-night stands. They’ve never been in a proper relationship. I don’t know why they’d want to have sex with every Tom, Dick, or Harry, but there you go. They do.”

  She’d have to see if Olivia had picked anything like that up from speaking to their friends. Callie’s work colleagues at Waitrose hadn’t revealed anything when they’d been spoken to, and Olivia would be going to The Villager’s Inn, probably about now, to chat to all the staff. Those who always worked evenin
gs had agreed to go to the pub and meet with her.

  “Did either of them have any close friends?” Helena couldn’t believe he’d finished all the cakes in the time she’d been thinking.

  “They hang around with each other. Thick as thieves, the pair of them.” He opened the Coke and glugged some down, straight from the bottle.

  Helena’s stomach churned. She hoped he wouldn’t be sharing that drink with anyone else. “We were led to believe that Callie was a little—”

  “Slapper?”

  Good grief. “No. Perhaps paranoid. Do you know anything about that?”

  He gave a hearty belch then screwed the lid on the Coke. “What, her keep saying a man was in her house?” He let out a raspy laugh. “Listen, she’s been a bit weird ever since we had a night in the tent in our back garden. She changed after that. Got all jumpy, always glancing about as if someone was going to leap out at her. I reckon she had a nightmare in the tent. You know, from being outside and not safe in the house.”

  He stared into space, and Helena waited for more. Sometimes, people liked to gabble to fill the silence.

  “Then when she got older,” Jacob said, “and the rest of us moved out, she stayed with our mum, didn’t want to leave her on her own. Then Mum died”—his lip wobbled—“and Callie had to live by herself. Emma didn’t want her sharing her place. Said Callie put on too many colours. You know, loud clothes and shoes.”

  What a strange thing to have an issue with. The bleakness of Emma’s house appeared in Helena’s mind, and she shivered at how stark it all was.

  “Ours was a council house, when we were kids, like, and the bastards wouldn’t let Callie take on the tenancy because she didn’t have any kids.” He let out a growl. “It was a three-bed—they needed it for someone with a family. They offered her a crummy bedsit in a shared house, so she rented instead. The other people there probably wouldn’t have liked her bringing man after man home, so it was a good job she didn’t go there. Maybe if she’d taken it, she wouldn’t be dead. On her own in her place, there wasn’t anyone to save her.”

  Helena shook her head. That was a lot of information in one go. She glanced at Andy to make sure he’d jotted it down. He nodded, as if sensing her looking at him.

  “So you don’t know why she changed after the camping?”

  “No bloody idea. I was just a kid myself. I didn’t hang around with them, my sisters. I played with the lads of a family we knew. We had barbecues and holidays with them, stuff like that.” He ripped open a bag of crisps and all but tipped them down his throat. Prawn cocktail.

  She waited a while for him to chew then asked, “When did your food addiction start?”

  “What the fuck’s that got to do with you?” Crisps showered out of his mouth.

  Tread carefully. “I’m asking in case it was around the same time Callie became jumpy as a child. Was it near when your dad died?”

  He swallowed the food and nodded. “For me it was, but Callie was a long time before that.”

  “Okay. Please don’t snap at me, I’m just trying to help, but would you like me to put you in touch with someone about your addiction? It may get worse now you have new trauma to deal with. I’m worried you’re going to do yourself some damage.”

  He stared at her, mouth open, remnants of soggy crisps on his tongue. “You’d do that for someone you don’t know, would you? There’s got to be a catch.”

  “No, there isn’t. Do you want help? I know of a lady who runs a class. Maybe you could just go for one and see how you feel. It’s a charity, so it wouldn’t cost you anything. You go along and chat with people who have issues. Alcoholics, smokers, recovering drug addicts, and other people who have a similar thing to you.”

  He continued to stare.

  “Have a think about it,” she said, unlacing her cramping fingers. “Now, I must ask this… Your comments about your sisters were disparaging.” Downright horrible. “Did you like them?”

  “Like them? I love them! I just don’t like what they get up to. It winds me up, makes me sound like I don’t give a toss. They’re better than that. Opening their legs all the time…it’s not exactly good for them, is it? I want them to be happy, to be cared for properly. Losing our dad so young, I felt protective over them, and it doesn’t stop even though we’re older.”

  Bless him. “Do you know any of the men they slept with? I’ll need to speak to them.”

  “I don’t. I just know they do it. They talk about it with Suzie. She doesn’t like what they get up to either.”

  She explained that she was going to tell him something upsetting, then went on to give him the news she’d given Suzie and Robbie. “Do those items mean anything to you?”

  “Fucking hell… That’s just… I can’t imagine why anyone would want to do that.” He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, then lowered them to his lap. “Now there’s a thing. I remember Dad’s shaver going missing and him having a mare about it because it’d not long been a Christmas present from our mum. He never did find it. What the bloody hell would she have that inside her for?”

  “We have no idea, Jacob. It’s incredibly disturbing and upsetting. What about the flowers and the nail varnish?”

  “No clue why they’d have been left there, but I remember those sorts of flowers being outside their room for a good few years. Once a week they were there, then later on, they appeared every night.”

  What the hell? Outside their bedroom? “Was there any explanation given for them being there?” How she managed to stay professional and not screech that question was anyone’s guess.

  He smiled sadly. “Yeah, Emma said it was to ward off a demon, something like that. Something bad or other anyway. She’s into all that fantasy stuff. Loves her dragons and fairy tales. Castles, all that sort of thing. I just shrugged it off as her being her usual self.”

  The dragon tattoo on her foot…

  “She has tatts of them—the dragons, I mean.” His eyes misted. “One on her foot, another on her arm, a castle behind it. She was on about getting a big one to cover her back,” he went on. “She won’t be able to do that now…”

  Ah, here it came… He cried then, big, choking sobs, and Helena got up to sit on the arm of the sofa and rest a hand on his shoulder. What an utter mess. She looked at Andy, who shuffled from foot to foot. He never had been much good at consoling the bereaved.

  Once Jacob had calmed down, she crouched in front of him. “I know this is hard, but are you up for more questions?”

  He nodded.

  “What about the nail varnish?”

  “All I know is that none of my sisters can stand it, which doesn’t make sense because they put in on as kids.” He shrugged and sniffed.

  “Do you remember when the flowers first started appearing outside their door? It doesn’t have to be exact, just a guess.”

  He looked at the ceiling, opening a bag of crisps. Salt and vinegar this time. “I must have been about eight, which meant Suzie was nine, Emma was seven, and Callie six. God bless our mum, she had a kid a year. I was playing on the landing when I noticed the purple flowers. I don’t know what they were. Small things, lots of them on a stem. They had a yellow bit in the middle. Lilac, the petals were, maybe with a bit of blue. I had a red toy car, and I was making it drive along the carpet. I got it for my eighth birthday.”

  “Okay. So the flowers were there, and Emma said it was to do with a demon. What about the polish, though? Can you think of—”

  “Purple for Suz, pink for Emma, and red for Callie. They only wore it for a day at a time, though, then they took it off. Picked at it, they did. Mum thought they’d been nicking hers, but Suz said her friend had given it to them. I remember that night. We were eating at the table, Mum saying they had to give the nail varnish back, and all the girls had a bloody meltdown, so Mum backed off.” He frowned, as though the scene played out in his head.

  Helena imagined a family meal, Mum, Dad, and their four children sitting around the table, t
alking about their day, the girls toying with their food after the upset, little hiccups every so often from their tears.

  “Did they say which friend gave it to them?”

  “No.”

  Did that friend have something to do with this? “Did they say where they got the flowers from? Were they real?”

  “Plastic. And no, sorry, I didn’t ask. I wasn’t that bothered. So long as I could play on the landing, I didn’t give a shit. Now the flowers and the varnish are significant, I wish I…”

  “You were little. No one was to know what would happen in the future. Please don’t blame yourself.”

  “I’m their brother. I should have been able to help them. I shouldn’t have kept banging on about what they got up to in bed. They probably think I hate them, that I think they’re disgusting. Now I can’t tell them I just wished they’d have more respect for themselves because… Fuck’s sake.” He reached out to lay a hand on a packet of crisps.

  The poor man needed food for comfort.

  “Look, we’re going to leave you for now, but we’ll see you tomorrow, just in case you think of something overnight.” Helena stood, her leg muscles protesting. “It’s fine to go and see Suzie if you need to. Clive will let you in.” She didn’t have the heart to tell him off now for the Waitrose delivery. She understood why he’d done it. “If you need any more shopping, let Clive know, and he’ll deal with it for you, okay?”

  Jacob nodded.

  With nothing more to say for now, Helena and Andy left the flat.

  Helena quietly told Clive about the food addiction. “So if he needs more, sort it out for him. It might be the only thing keeping him together at the moment.”

  “All right, guv,” Clive said.

  “We need to go back to see Suzie,” she said.

  Clive let them in, and again, Helena called out.

  Suzie poked her head out from the living room into the hallway. “Yes?”

  “I need a quick word in the kitchen.” Helena smiled and led the way.