The Housewarming: A completely unputdownable psychological thriller with a shocking twist

by S. E. Lynes

  But they do it again, like some hellish penance, their torches flashing in the dark, making everything look eerie and strange. Houseboats glow from within; a few stragglers stroll along the rain-soaked path by Tide Tables, the closed-up coffee shop under the arches of the bridge.

  The rain holds off – just. Two hours later, dirty and dishevelled from scrambling in the muddy bramble-strung undergrowth, they are walking back down Cross Deep. The Alexander Pope pub looms up on the right. Behind glass, under yellow lights, people drink and chat as if nothing, nothing at all has happened.

  ‘Matt?’ Neil is scrutinising him. He realises he has stopped dead. ‘Have you seen something?’

  ‘The people,’ Matt says. He closes his eyes tight, opens them. ‘Sorry. It just looks weird. People… out.’

  Neil claps him on the back. ‘Come on, mate.’

  They dip into the grounds opposite – a manicured lawn with a children’s park at the far end, a little café. It is where they took Abi sometimes for a change – a short bus ride, part of the fun. He and Ava would get coffee and take turns pushing her on the baby swings, or gasping with proud surprise when she reached the bottom of the slide. Neil and Bella came with them sometimes, sometimes to Bushy Park, Richmond Park, once to Garston’s Farm to pick strawberries. It feels hazy, a memory of a life lived long ago, in another reality.

  ‘I used to feel inadequate,’ Matt says as they flash their torches over the sheer drop that is the edge of the path, into the water.

  ‘What? What about?’

  ‘When we came to the park. You and Bella always had so much energy for her. You were better at playing with her than we were. Than I was anyway.’

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘It’s true. I’d see you throwing the ball for her, teaching her to catch or twirling her about, and I’d think, I should be doing that, but I was too selfish. I was too tired. I’d be reading the paper and drinking my coffee, thinking how great it was to sit down.’

  ‘Mate.’ Neil stands square on to him. ‘That’s rubbish – you know that, don’t you? You’re her parents. It’s called having a break, yeah? That’s what me and Bel are for; we’re her godparents, aren’t we? Come on! We didn’t have the sleepless nights and all that lot. Don’t start beating yourself up about that. You’ll lose your mind.’

  Matt nods, blinking away the tears that are pricking his eyes. His throat aches. Below the wall, the dark river rushes.

  ‘Do you think she fell in?’ he says, forcing himself to look Neil in the eye.

  Neil frowns and glances away, across the river.

  ‘Let’s not think anything yet,’ he says, but Matt knows what he means. What he means is: yes.

  Quarter to midnight, and the rain hardens. Their clothes are plastered to them, their hair flat against their heads. Rain runs in fat drops down their faces, falls from their noses, their chins, the bottom of their cagoules. They have reached Thameside Lane, and Matt finds he is weeping uncontrollably. Neil too is crying; Matt feels a kick of shock in his chest. Neil is crying even as he walks, his burly rugby player’s shoulders chugging with gruff, coughing sobs.

  ‘Oh man,’ he says, over and over. ‘I can’t believe it. I’m so sorry, mate.’

  Matt puts his arm around him and together they stagger along, saying nothing. He has seen Neil lose it only once before: at school, when he missed a conversion that cost his team the match. Neil doesn’t cry; he just doesn’t. He is old-school: rugby captain for all five years of secondary, later a top first-team player at the local club, now a veteran, plus coaching the under twelves. His business has consumed a lot of his fitness this last year – he’s been drinking more, exercising less – but back then he was the scorer of tries, the downer of pints, pass me the yard of ale, as if even in drinking beer he was the winner. When Ava first met him, she nicknamed him Action Man, and his drive to make a success of everything has been the example Matt has tried to follow. I must be an OK bloke, he still thinks sometimes, if I have the friendship of a guy like Neil.

  But now all Neil’s bravado is gone, as if washed away in the sheeting rain, as if it were only a superficial layer in the first place, no more a part of him than his clothes.

  Matt stops walking, leans against his best mate’s shoulder. ‘I can’t go home. How am I supposed to go home?’

  They hold on to each other. There is no pretence left. After a minute or two, they return to themselves and stand apart, wiping uselessly at their faces.

  ‘What about in there?’ Neil gestures towards the hoardings of a building site between the Oasis and the pubs: two- and three-bedroomed luxury riverside flats, advertised for sale off plan.

  ‘The police searched it,’ Matt says.

  ‘This morning they did.’

  Matt breathes away the insinuation, shakes his head against the words that will not leave him: his daughter. A body.

  Neil hoists himself up, hooks one work boot over the top of the plywood sheet. A grunt and he has heaved himself over.

  ‘OK?’ Matt calls.

  ‘Yep. Throw us the lights.’

  Matt throws the flashlights one by one. The board rattles against its fixings as he clambers awkwardly over. He drops down, chafes at the splinters in his hands. Together they move into the skeleton structures, their flashlights catching the glittering rain.

  It is so fucking dark.

  ‘Abi? Abi? Abi!’

  Matt’s light bounces off a pair of staring eyes.

  ‘Jesus!’ He almost drops the torch. But it is only a fox, which stares at him a moment before sauntering away like arrogance itself.

  Further in, there is some shelter. The torturous drip-drip-drip of water falling from the steel poles above their heads. They shine their beams into the scaffolding, the half-built walls, the shallow puddles shuddering in the dug-out trenches.

  ‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ Neil says, drops budding on his eyelashes. ‘I don’t have words, mate.’

  Matt stares into Neil’s wet blue eyes, sees all the love and loyalty of the past two decades. If there is one person on this earth he can tell, it is this man. And he has to tell someone.

  Nine

  Ava

  Midnight. My husband and his best friend on the doorstep, their clothes saturated and filthy, raspberry pinpricks up their arms, darker red slashes. Their hands are empty. They are crying, their sobs muscular, visceral. We are not sufficiently evolved that the sight fails to shock. And it does, it shocks, especially in a man like Neil – his physical stature making up in strength what it lacks in height. He is a robust square of a man, built to lift things, to take punches, to withstand. Matt, the more effete of the two, his tall frame sagging in the middle, his dark hair slick with rain, his wretched, rectangular mouth.

  ‘I’m so sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.’

  The wooden floor of the hall hits my knees; the welcome mat needles the palms of my hands.

  Afterwards, once Lorraine has left, Matt and I take showers. We change into jogging bottoms and T-shirts. We want to be dressed should a call come. I suppose we must fall asleep in the small hours. I remember weeping against his back. Please let her be found, I remember whispering. Please. Please. Please.

  September. Almost a year ago and yesterday at once. My daughter, gone. That not knowing, that hanging chord. The rupture of selves: me there, me here. Then, the certainty somewhere not in my head but in my heart that I will search for her until the end of time; now, searching for her, still searching, until the end of time.

  It isn’t until the next morning that Abi’s coat is found.

  I wake up in my jogging bottoms next to Matt. For a split second everything is normal. And then it isn’t.

  Lorraine comes to the house early, around 8.30 a.m. She makes toast and marmalade and we eat it. We drink coffee made the way she knows we take it. Matt goes out on his bike, but not for long, I think. At around 9.30 a.m., a woman I recognise arrives. DI Sharon Farnham.

  ‘Mrs Atkins,�
�� she says.

  I let her in. The tape is gone from the front door. That’s right – they took it down last night.

  ‘Did they find the BMW?’ I ask her.

  ‘Can we go and sit down?’ The look on her face makes me think she must have something of importance to tell us. The boulder of dread in my gut hardens.

  ‘Sure.’

  Matt is coming down the stairs. He has popped back to see if I’m all right and to change his trousers, which have got soaked in yet another heavy passing shower.

  ‘Detective,’ he says, no bewilderment at all. ‘Any news?’

  ‘If we could go into the living room a moment,’ she says.

  And I know then with every cell of my being that she has news and that it isn’t good.

  ‘Ava,’ Farnham says, ‘I think it’s best if you sit down.’

  I lower my backside onto the sofa next to Matt. I feel the ache in my thighs, the sting of my sleepless eyes, the weight of Fred in my belly even though he is only the size of a grain of rice. The warmth of Matt beside me. The minty smell of his shower gel. The creak of the leather sofa. My feet are cold. I have not put my slippers on. Bitter saliva fills my mouth. I nod for her to tell us what she so clearly must.

  ‘I need to tell you,’ she says it quietly, though every word is as clear as a bell, ‘that a coat matching the description of Abi’s has been found at Richmond barrier. We’ve got divers in there now, the RNLI are out there and we’re in touch with the coastguard, but so far nothing else has been found. Now, I need to tell you that the water is high and it’s very fast – apparently due to heavy rain in Oxford over the past few days. If Abi fell in where she feeds the ducks, with her being such a small mass, it’s possible her body will have surpassed Richmond barrier within an hour of her entering the water.’

  The rug rushes at me, becomes a single shade of grey. Matt’s fingertips push into my upper arms. I hear my name. The forward loll of my head, then back, my head against the soft velvet of the couch.

  ‘Ava.’ Matt’s eyes are brown, the whites red. My bones are nothing but dust. DI Farnham closes her eyes. Matt pulls me to him and shushes me, but when he speaks, his voice is ragged and full of fear.

  ‘But it might not be her coat,’ he says. ‘It won’t be. She’d never jump into the river. She’d never walk that far. She’d… Can we have a look at it?’

  I cannot see. All I can hear is myself, this low lupine howl. I feel myself fall as Matt leans away from me. I push the heels of my hands at my eyes. Lorraine hands me yet another tissue and tells me to be strong, not to give up hope. She rubs my back.

  Matt is holding an up-to-the-minute iPhone. On the screen is a picture of a coat.

  ‘That’s Abi’s,’ I say. ‘That’s her coat. Sorry, I… I just…’

  I stand up. I walk down the hall and into the kitchen. My phone is charging on the countertop. I unplug it, stretch my arm as long as it will go and bring it down hard, releasing the phone at the last second. It clatters on the tiles but doesn’t smash. I open the cupboard where we keep the vacuum cleaner and a few basic tools. I pull out a screwdriver, a spanner, a hammer. A moment later, I am straddled over my iPhone. I am bringing the hammer down on it, over and over. My phone crunches, bounces, breaks.

  ‘Ava! Ava, stop!’ Matt grabs my arm as I raise it, holds me like that, like a criminal being disarmed, but then his arms are around me and we are crying into each other’s necks.

  ‘This is my fault,’ I say. ‘It’s all my fault.’

  Ten

  Ava

  I’m in my nightie and dressing gown, Fred hooked over my shoulder after his morning feed. It’s 7.45 a.m., thereabouts. As I cross the kitchen, my slippers slap on the tiled floor.

  Matt is standing against the counter, drinking a quick coffee before he sets off for work. He looks too thin. I don’t think it’s the training. Training doesn’t give you black circles under your eyes. Grief does. Trauma does.

  The crinkly invitation to the Lovegoods’ party lies on the bar, where it has been for three days. When I avert my eyes from it, I catch Matt watching me, seeing.

  ‘Neil said he and Bella are going to go along for a bit,’ he says, sliding a cup of tea towards me. ‘I said we’d maybe come with them. Just for an hour. To be polite.’

  My teeth push back into my gums. I wonder if Matt can see my jaw clenching.

  ‘I said they could come here first,’ he continues. ‘Might be good to see them, just the four of us? We’ve not socialised since… we’ve not seen them for ages, have we?’

  We haven’t socialised since the day before Abi went missing. But then Matt and I have not socialised with anyone.

  ‘I saw Bella the other day actually,’ I say, a rather obvious attempt to change the subject.

  ‘Oh? You never said.’

  ‘I forgot.’ I cringe at the memory of the small talk we made out on the street. She couldn’t get into her house fast enough.

  ‘She was dressed immaculately as usual,’ I add. ‘I looked a state obviously.’

  ‘I’m sure you didn’t. Did you chat much?’

  ‘Not really. Not like I could ask after her friends, is it? I don’t even know their names. And I suppose she couldn’t ask about mine.’ I haven’t seen any of my friends since Abi went missing, if you don’t count the strained one-off visits to see the new baby, visits I cut short to spare them their palpable discomfort.

  ‘How’s the salon going?’ Matt asks.

  ‘Oh, her dad’s really pleased with the new business she’s bringing in with the nail bar and the sunbed.’

  Matt smiles. ‘That’s great.’

  ‘She said I should come in some time. She’ll give me a discount. Don’t know why she said that, she always gives me a discount. A good cut and colour would give me a lift, she said, which is clearly code for you look like crap. No offence, I almost replied.’

  Matt doesn’t reply. It’s possible I’m boring him, but c’est la vie.

  ‘Neil’s working all the hours apparently,’ I go on, boring myself now. ‘Bella said she never sees him anymore. Apparently he got tons of work through Johnnie, and she reckons he’ll soon be able to take three months off and work on their house for a change.’ The last phrase I put in invisible quotation marks in imitation of the passive aggression in Bella’s tone.

  ‘Bella’ll be happy with that,’ Matt replies flatly. ‘And Neil’ll do a great job.’

  I nod, feeling thwarted.

  ‘She’d had her nails done,’ I add. ‘Some new way of doing them apparently. She was pretty serious about it.’

  Matt gives me a look and I feel shitty. I never used to be like this. And I did admire them, Bella’s nails.

  ‘They’re gorgeous,’ I told her, though without taking her hand in mine as I would once have done.

  ‘Come in,’ she said. ‘I’ll get Courtney to do yours.’

  I smiled, said I would. Definitely. Soon.

  ‘She’d had some false eyelashes put in too,’ I tell Matt now, unable to help myself, wickedness going neck and neck with the self-hate.

  ‘Yeah?’

  He can’t possibly be interested, but I continue anyway. ‘I asked if she’d had them stitched in and she thought that was hilarious. They glue them in apparently. She asked me if I liked them.’

  ‘And did you?’

  I shrug. ‘I mean, she didn’t look bad or anything.’

  I’m trying to steer away from saying something disloyal, I am, but I can feel myself driving towards it at top speed and I’ve lost control of the car. Bella can’t look bad is the truth of it, and yes, maybe I am a little jealous. She is so symmetrical, with full lips and dark hair, thick sculpted brows and beautiful, almost turquoise eyes that, I think, come from some Burmese ancestry on her mother’s side. The amplification of the fake eyelashes had taken her expression into the realms of a cartoon. She looked astonished. I felt vaguely trippy just looking at her.

  ‘I think it would be rude not to at least show our
face at the Lovegoods,’ Matt is saying now, changing – or returning to – the subject.

  ‘Well we wouldn’t want to be rude, would we?’

  My sarcasm scratches like nails down a blackboard. Even I wince. But Matt perseveres. ‘It’d be interesting to see their kitchen, wouldn’t it? Apparently the lighting alone cost six grand.’

  ‘Six thousand pounds? Gosh. We can’t miss out on seeing that.’

  He frowns, his head cocked to one side. ‘Ave. Come on.’

  I give the merest nod. More than anything, I want him to stop talking. ‘Let me think about it, all right?’

  ‘Sure. You can always say you have to put Fred to bed if you want to leave.’

  ‘I said I’d think about it.’

  ‘OK. Sorry. Just let me know.’ He crosses the kitchen, walking stiffly in his cycling shoes. He grips the door and waits. I can’t look at him.

  It is hope that will kill us in the end.

  ‘So,’ he says, the word little more than a breath. ‘Did you book a haircut then?’

  I shift Fred further up my shoulder and reach for my tea. ‘Bella said I should book in for next Friday, for a manicure as well. Clearly I need to up my game if she’s to be seen out with me.’

  ‘I think she was probably trying to be nice.’

  I shrug. I am a horrible person, horrible.

  ‘That’s good, isn’t it? A haircut? I could work from home or take the day off so I can look after Fred. Honestly, it’ll be good for us to get out. We can’t keep dodging the neighbours forever.’

  ‘Matt. I said I’d think about it, and now you’re… you’re pushing me.’

  He throws up his palms. ‘Sorry! Sorry. I just think if we could normalise things—’

  ‘Normalise things?’ The blood flies into my face.

  Matt’s eyes widen. ‘Not normalise, sorry. Sorry! I didn’t mean that. I just meant… Oh my God, Ava, I didn’t mean… Don’t cry. Please don’t cry.’

  I am weeping into Fred’s Babygro. Matt tries to hug me, but it’s too awkward with the baby on my shoulder, and frankly, I don’t want him to. I hate him and I hate myself and I don’t deserve to be hugged. But still we stand there, holding on to each other as best we can.