The House of Ashes

by Stuart Neville

  There was no thought in my head about what I was going to do, but I reached down and I picked the pistol up off the floor. It was all slick and slippery in my hand. I took care not to stand in Mummy Joy’s blood as I went to the door, for I thought that would be a terrible sin.

  I stepped over Mummy Noreen’s legs and went to the bottom of the stairs. From up above, I could hear Daddy George weeping, an awful desperate sound. I started climbing the stairs and I heard him clearer as I reached the top. His bedroom door was open and even though his lamp wasn’t lit, I could see him in the darkness, sitting on the edge of his bed. He saw me watching and he dropped his head in shame. I walked along the landing and into his room, the pistol heavy and cold and wet in my hand.

  He looked up at me again and I could see the tears glistening in his eyes and on his cheeks. Says he, I hid that gun in the kitchen. I thought if Da said no, I couldn’t leave, I’d take that gun and do myself in. But they were right, you know. I am weak. And I’m stupid. I don’t even have it in me to kill myself.

  Says I, It’s all right. You don’t have to.

  Just then, I don’t know for why, I minded this one Sunday afternoon when Daddy George carried a calf out of the cowshed and into the yard. One of its back legs was broken and hanging from it all wrong. He laid it down on the concrete and called Daddy Ivan out, asked him to help it. Daddy Ivan went back into the kitchen and came out with the big knife in his hand. He opened the calf’s throat and the blood poured out.

  No call to let the cratur suffer, says he.

  I minded that time, and I lifted the pistol up in both my hands and I put the snout of it agin Daddy George’s forehead.

  I thought of all the years I’d been there in thon room under the house, living in the damp and the dirt. All the years Mummy Joy and Mummy Noreen had been there. All the hidings they’d took, all the bruises they’d had, all the bloody lips and black eyes. I thought of the times they’d been called upstairs and I’d filled a bath for them before I was sent back down into the dark. I thought of the times Mummy Joy had come down the stairs, the shame and the tears on her face, the stink of him on her body.

  I thought of all the times he could’ve let us go. All the times he could’ve turned a key and opened a door. All the times he could’ve saved us.

  But he never did.

  I put both my thumbs to the pistol’s hammer and I pulled it back, just the way I’d seen him do it. It was awful hard to do, but I managed, and it clicked as it locked into place.

  He breathed in and out, just the once.

  I pulled the trigger.

  43: Sara

  When Sara arrived at the care home, Margaret at reception told her Mary was waiting for her. She let her gaze linger too long on the dirt on Sara’s jeans and sleeves.

  “I was gardening,” Sara said.

  Margaret gave a forced smile and said, “Mary’s up in her room. You’ll just need to show me some ID when you sign her out, all right?”

  “Oh, sorry, I think I left my driving licence at home,” Sara said, the lie coming as easy as a breath.

  Margaret waved the matter away. “Och, sure, we know who you are.”

  Sara thanked her and climbed the stairs. She found Mary in her room, sitting on the edge of her bed, dressed, with plain and stout shoes on her feet.

  “Is it today?” Mary asked.

  Sara couldn’t keep the smile from her mouth, in spite of it all. “Yes, it’s today,” she said. “I have the car outside.”

  On the way out, as Sara signed the book, Mary lifted two apples and two bananas from the fruit bowl on the reception desk. Then Mary gave Margaret a long hug.

  “You have a good day,” Margaret said.

  “I will, don’t you worry,” Mary said, stuffing the fruit into the pockets of her cardigan as she walked with Sara to the door.

  In the car, while Mary hummed to herself, Sara spent several minutes figuring out the BMW’s navigation system, and eventually she had a route to a car park overlooking one of Portrush’s two beaches. A little over ninety minutes to get there, according to the satnav. Sara hoped that would be enough time. She knew the police would be searching for her, and for Damien’s car. Please let there be enough time, she thought, a quiet prayer to no one.

  On the journey, Mary talked about her days in the care home, how the staff were awful good to her, their names, what food they gave her. She talked about the cats she used to have out at The Ashes, six of them before the fire, all of them strays that she had adopted. And the chickens she kept, five hens and a rooster, and all the ways she knew how to cook an egg on the old wood-fired stove.

  Sara listened and told Mary about herself. About the girl she used to be, the dreams she used to have, the woman she had wanted to be. How that woman had been stolen from her and she hadn’t even realised until it was too late. But it wasn’t too late, was it? Things were different now, and she would find that woman again, one way or another.

  They reached the outskirts of Portrush before eleven, a golf course to one side of the road, sprawling caravan parks to the other. Sara missed the turn for the car park and had to drive in a circle to find her way back. The day was autumn-overcast and cool, and the town was quiet. She imagined it in the summer months, thronging with holidaymakers and day trippers.

  At one point, she pulled up to a set of traffic lights at a tangled junction, a monument nearby, and a spired building made of red brick. All around them, ice cream shops, cafes. Ahead of them, Barry’s Amusements, apparently closed. Sara imagined the screams of delight she might hear had it been open. To their right, past the smaller outdoor amusement park, a glimpse of the sea, blue-green, stretching away to the hazy horizon. Mary saw it and gasped, took hold of Sara’s arm.

  “Look,” she said. “Look.”

  A few minutes later, they had circled the town and pulled into the car park. The ocean came into view, stretching as far as Sara could see, north, east and west. The car park was nearly empty, and she was able to find a space at its far side, next to the path that skirted the beach. She shut off the engine and they sat in silence for a few moments before Mary spoke.

  “Look at it,” she said, giggling while she wiped a tear from her cheek. “Would you look at it.”

  “Let’s go,” Sara said, unbuckling the seat belt.

  Her back and shoulders ached, worsened by the ninety-minute drive, and the blisters on her hands stung from the steering wheel. But she didn’t care. It was worth the pain. She went around the car, opened the passenger door, and helped Mary out. They held hands as they walked down the gentle slope that led to the beach.

  Mary looked down at her feet as the paved surface faded into sand and let out a laugh. They walked further, feet slipping as the ground shifted beneath them, down towards the water’s edge, stopping where the sand remained dry. The water came in shallow waves, in and out, breathing like deepest sleep.

  “Look,” Mary said, turning from east to west and back again. Rocks at either end of the long beach, saltwater carried by the wind to spray around them, small islands to the north, perhaps a mile offshore. Close to them, to the west, perched on top of the rocks, an old white-painted building with the word Arcadia proud upon it in blue lettering. Gulls squabbled overhead. A few bodyboarders rode the waves. Further along the beach, an elderly man threw a stick for a yelping dog.

  “Listen,” Mary said, closing her eyes.

  Sara did the same, hearing the ocean rumble and sigh.

  “I always wondered what it would sound like,” Mary said. She inhaled through her nose. “Can you smell it?”

  “Yes,” Sara said, “I can.”

  “Such a thing,” Mary said. “You know, when I was a wee girl, I used to imagine if you stood on a beach, you could see the rest of the world. You could see England and France and America and Africa and all those places if you looked hard enough. But all you can
see is the waves and the sky. And that’s enough, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” Sara said. “It is.”

  A movement on the water caught her eye, almost as far out as the islands. There, another. Black darts leaping from the distant waves and disappearing again.

  Sara pointed. “Look, did you see?”

  “Aye,” Mary said with a giggle. “Are they . . . ?”

  “Dolphins, I think,” Sara said.

  Mary laughed and clutched Sara’s hand to her breast, squeezed it hard. “Thank you,” she said, breathless. “I think I need to sit down now.”

  Sara turned back towards the car park. “Of course, we’ll head—”

  Mary sat herself down on the sand, shifting her rear to make herself comfortable. Sara lowered herself to join her, going slow to keep the pain to a minimum.

  “Are you hungry?” Mary asked.

  She reached into her pockets and pulled out the fruit she’d taken from the reception desk. Sara realised she was indeed hungry and gratefully accepted a banana and an apple. They ate in silence and watched the dolphins until they’d moved too far from the shore to be seen.

  Sara glanced back over her shoulder, to the car, and wondered how long before the police found it. It was a valuable car, and she believed it had some sort of tracker device fitted. Only a matter of time before they would come for her, possibly arrest her for what she’d done to Damien. She would tell them everything, hold nothing back, and bear the consequences. But for now, there was nothing but the ocean, and Mary, leaning against her. Sara put her arm around her, felt her shiver.

  “You’re cold,” she said. “We’ll have to go soon.”

  “I don’t mind the cold,” Mary said. “I never have. Tell me something.”

  “What?” Sara asked.

  “Can I ever go home again? To my house?”

  “I don’t know,” Sara said. “I hope so. With everything that happened there, you still want to go back?”

  “It’s my home. It’s the only one I ever had. And the children need me. Did they find you yet?”

  “Yes,” Sara said, “they did.”

  “What about Esther?”

  Sara pictured a girl with scarlet ribbons clutched to her belly.

  “Yes,” she said. “Her too.”

  Mary nodded, seemed satisfied at that. “I won’t be here forever. They’ll need you when I’m gone.”

  “Who are they?” Sara asked.

  “They’re my brothers and sisters,” Mary said. “All of them. And they’re your brothers and sisters now, so I suppose that means you’re my sister, too.”

  She took Sara’s free hand and squeezed it tight.

  “Tell me what happened at the house,” Sara said. “I want to know. When this is all over, I’ll make sure I get the house. Damien can fight me for it in court and I’ll tell them everything.”

  Mary nodded along as if she knew what Sara was talking about.

  “If I’m going to go back there when it’s is all over, if I’m going to live there, then I need to know.”

  Mary lifted a fistful of sand with her free hand, let it run through her fingers. She watched the grains fall and drift, wonder on her face.

  “I never telt anyone,” she said. “No one who’d listen, anyway.”

  “I’m listening,” Sara said.

  Mary looked out to sea, its greys and blues reflected in her glittering eyes.

  “Maybe it’s time,” she said.

  Then she nodded, exhaled, a decision made.

  “Aye, it’s time.”

  She took a long breath.

  “Here, now, till I tell you . . .”

  Acknowledgments

  This has been the most difficult book of my career to date, and it wouldn’t exist without the help of the people around me. I owe them my heartfelt gratitude.

  As ever, my deepest thanks go to my agents, Nat Sobel and Judith Weber, and all at Sobel Weber Associates, and Caspian Dennis and all at Abner Stein Ltd. They have guided me through some of my most trying years as a writer.

  Bronwen Hruska, Juliet Grames and Paul Oliver at Soho Press have shown patience and kindness far beyond that which could be expected of any publisher, as well as friendship, for which I am eternally thankful. And also Katherine Armstrong, who helped me get this book over the line, as well as Kate Parkin, Ben Willis, Ciara Corrigan and all at Bonnier Zaffre. And Victoria Woodside, whose sharp eye has saved me from multiple embarrassments.

  The book Regulating Sexuality: Women in Twentieth-Century Northern Ireland by Dr. Leanne McCormick was very helpful in providing a contextual backdrop for portions of this novel.

  A special thanks to those women who, with great courage, shared their experiences of domestic violence.

  My life has been improved immeasurably over the last few years by my fellow Fun Lovin’ Crime Writers: Mark Billingham, Chris Brookmyre, Doug Johnstone, Val McDermid and Luca Veste. I hope to see them all on a stage very soon.

  And my friends in the wider crime fiction community whose camaraderie has helped me want to keep trying.

  Finally, Jo, Issy and Ezra, whom I don’t deserve.