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

by S. E. Lynes

  The picture of my daughter’s soaking-wet coat on DI Farnham’s phone.

  In the salon, Bella is waiting for me. She is solicitous, she is kind. She shows me to the waiting area as if I were a special guest, even though, since we met, I’ve always had my hair cut here, by her. It has been my attempt to find some common ground, for the sake of Matt and Neil’s friendship. My hairdressing needs are not great: a wash, a trim, sometimes a little longer, sometimes shorter. I had never coloured my hair, never curled it, until I met Bella. Bella persuaded me to highlight it after Abi was born to give me ‘a lift’. Now, at thirty-five, there are whitish strands amid the brown roots. But I have no real opinion on them.

  ‘Sit there, lovely.’ Bella’s brightness is unnatural, but I try to squash the thought. We were never so sure of our bond as to be able to tease one another. ‘I’ll bring you a drink. Coffee or tea? Or something stronger for a Friday? I’ve got some Bailey’s, I could do you an iced Bailey’s?’ Like Matt’s, her eyebrows rise.

  ‘Oh, just tea’d be great.’ I feel the apology in my smile; I cannot raise my game. ‘Thanks, Bel.’ Bel. There – my attempt to reassure her that I am still me, that we still know each other. I don’t need to imagine how anxiety-inducing I must be to deal with; I have experienced it vicariously in the expressions of everyone I’ve met for a year, and see it now on my friend’s too-eager-to-please face.

  In the waiting area, I sit down on the red leather sofa. My arms float. I’m not sure where they should go.

  ‘Look at some pictures.’ She nods at the magazines, as if she has read my mind. ‘Find something you might like, yeah? No perms though.’ She giggles briefly, before downgrading to a benevolent smile. In her expression there is a trace of something – that she’s proud of me for managing to come, or perhaps that she feels she can help me with her beautician’s sorcery. Bella is a firm believer in appearances; I have always suspected my own isn’t quite up to her standards and that this is why she doesn’t invite me on nights out with her ‘girls’ – why she didn’t, even before. Her other friends possess a specific type of glamour. Their clothes are always on a trend I haven’t tuned into yet and that now I never will; their hair is always the right kind of colour and cut, the kind that looks like they’ve emerged from the sea or minutes earlier hiked down from a hilltop, a little bleached-out and wind-blown – a little post-coital, perhaps, is what they’re going for, who knows? Women like Bella know things I don’t: clothing lines, brands of make-up, new boutiques in the area; what shoes to wear with which dress. Their nails are perfection, their Instagram feeds photo shoots. I don’t think she’s wrong to believe in appearances – a public face is useful, essential even. Right now, it is the only thing protecting me from falling apart.

  Further into the salon, hairdryers drone above commercial radio. Does the Magic newsroom have magic news? I wonder. The smell of hair and nail products pervades. I flick through magazines, try not to look too openly aghast at the misogynistic shaming of other women’s bodies, the gleeful revelling in celebrity breakdowns. How can any girl grow up not hating herself? Really though, how? In the end, and in disgust, I throw down the dog-eared pages and decide to ask for a simple trim.

  A young woman in a pink apron and holding a white mug of tea shows me to a styling chair and places my drink on the little shelf in front of me. In the mirror, my appearance is an assault. My brown roots are much longer, much more noticeable than I thought – they are over halfway down my head, the rest a straggly semi-blonde mess. My cheeks have hollowed; around my eyes are greyish-black pockets I have chosen not to see in the mirror at home. I am reminded of Munch’s The Scream, the rest of me thin but not toned, my belly popping out like a moulded jelly – a snake that has swallowed a soft-boiled ostrich egg.

  ‘So, what we having done?’ It is Bella, smiling into the mirror from behind immaculate make-up and rich auburn-brown Hollywood-shiny hair. Her teeth look preternaturally white, and I see her that morning, that same immaculate appearance belying the distress and pain on her face. Running along the middle of the street in her little high-heeled ankle boots, super-skinny jeans and off-the-shoulder top, crying.

  ‘Ava? Matt? Abi?’ Her hair was aubergine back then – falling over one eye. Her forefingers propping up her eyelashes, a way of crying that, looking back, I realise prevents the make-up from running. ‘Oh my God,’ she sobbed. ‘I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. Little Abi.’

  Both she and Neil were unhesitating that day. Everyone was. It has been afterwards that has been more difficult for all of us. When a child goes missing, you search. You burst into action. When they cannot be found, that agency is lost; it is hard to know what to do. And if it is hard to know what to say to a grieving parent, it is even harder to know what to say to one who cannot grieve.

  But here she is, smiling at me in the mirror. This I can do, the smile says. I can fix the outside.

  ‘Just a trim,’ I say, pulling at the ends and letting them drop.

  She looks at me through those laborious top lashes of hers. ‘I think we can do better than that.’ She mimes scissors with her fingers and holds them across my hair, level with my chin. ‘If I chop it here, it will lift your face and show off your amazing cheekbones.’

  Ah. Where I see skeletal hollows, she has seen cheekbones. ‘OK.’

  ‘I’ll run three tones through it to make regrowth less obvious. You’ve got a few grey hairs coming in at the top, babe.’

  I have no idea whether or not it is early to have grey hair. I suspect so. I realise I don’t give a monkey’s what she does, and the idea frees me. She’s probably right: a cut might take off some of the weight.

  ‘Whatever you think.’ I smile back at her in the mirror and she goes off to mix the bleach.

  Five minutes later, she is applying paste to my hair and wrapping it in foils. To her credit, she doesn’t ask if I’m looking forward to the party. What she says is: ‘So, do you think you’ll manage an hour tomorrow night then?’

  I nod. ‘I’m going to try.’

  ‘Great stuff. We’re coming to yours for a drink first, aren’t we? And you’ve got Matt, so you won’t be alone.’

  ‘I’m taking Fred. I know they said no kids, but…’

  ‘I know, but it’s not like he’s going to start running round their Danish flooring or whatever, is it?’

  ‘Is that what they have?’

  She frowns. ‘I think they had polished concrete in the end. I’ll check with Neil. I know they had a hand-made kitchen ’cos Neil didn’t have to fit it; it was some carpenter from Devon. And I know they spent a bomb on the lighting. The garden’s been done now as well apparently. Apparently they have a pergola and, like, this zinc cube garden office thing. I can’t wait to see it. I bet they have caterers.’

  ‘Jen popped in the other day,’ I offer. ‘I know they’ve ordered some posh food.’

  ‘I don’t know her at all actually. Older than us, isn’t she?’

  ‘A few years, I think. She was very kind when… when Abi…’ I can’t go on for fear of sounding passive aggressive. The fact is, Jen has called in more often than Bella this last year. In that she has called round at all.

  ‘She’s a lawyer, isn’t she?’ Bella asks, wiping another blob of gunge onto my sad split ends. ‘I know he’s a structural engineer obviously, because of Neil.’

  ‘She’s a lawyer, yes, I think so. Divorce, possibly. He has an office on Eel Pie, I think.’

  ‘That’s right. I went there when…’ She blushes, gives a vigorous stir to the paste in its black plastic bowl. ‘She works up in town, doesn’t she? I think they drop the kids, then he drops her at the station then drives over to Eel Pie.’

  I shrug. To my shame, I haven’t really met their kids. I know only that their younger daughter is about the age Abi would have been, or might still be, because I remember seeing Jen persuade her into the car once at the weekend. The older one, I have never actually seen, which seems incredible to me now I think abou
t it. They’d only recently moved in when Abi went missing, and this last year I have deliberately designed my timetable so that I don’t bump into anyone. Johnnie, like most, has kept his distance, and when Jen has come to see me, she has come alone. I suppose I should feel honoured, or something, that she’s made such an effort to get to know me, especially under the circumstances. I could have asked to see her house, I suppose, and she would have gladly shown me round, but I haven’t even thought of it. It’s amazing how immaterial the material world can become when you lose someone who was a living part of you. And it’s ironic that, in having no interest in the luxurious sheen of the street’s new golden couple, I’ve inadvertently become closer to them than anyone else. Closer to one half of them, at least. From what Matt tells me, it would appear that every single one of my neighbours would give their right arm to be friends with the Lovegoods. Which explains why every single invitation has been accepted with such alacrity.

  ‘The nanny brings them back apparently,’ Bella is saying, and I realise I haven’t been listening. ‘That Volkswagen Up is hers – you know the little black one? They bought it for her. Bought the nanny a car – who does that? There’s something superior about them, I think. I mean, I know it’s all SUVs round here now, but a Porsche Cayenne is just showing off, isn’t it, and that bright orange colour… Honest to God, d’you know what he said to Nee? He said, orange as in cayenne, you know, as in cayenne pepper, like Neil wouldn’t know what cayenne pepper was.’ She laughs. ‘Idiot. And patronising. Like we wouldn’t know what cayenne pepper was, cheeky sod. Can you believe that? I bet I can cook better than him. I did courgette flowers last week for me and Nee. I bet he’d have a heart attack if he knew. He’d be like, don’t you people have egg and chips? Honestly, a Porsche just so you can go two miles down the road. I mean, I get it, mate, you’re as rich as the Kardashians.’ She laughs again before shaking the little plastic bowl at me and telling me she’s evil, isn’t she and to hold on while she fetches the heat lamp.

  She leaves me sitting in my cape, trying not to stare at my nose growing under the harsh lights, the shadows blackening under my eyes, trying not to think about how much more she knows about my next-door neighbours than I do, despite the bud of friendship with Jen so recently flowered. We are not friends, not really, I think with a flash of guilt. If we were friends, I would have asked her about herself. I would know about her children, more about her job, where she’s from. Instead, I’ve just let her be the shoulder I chose to cry on. I’ve used her, in a way. I resolve to remedy that.

  Meanwhile, the fact that Bella thinks Johnnie is condescending comes as no surprise. But as far as I remember, he was kindness itself that day. It was Johnnie who let Bella use his office printer to make the extra leaflets and posters – ah yes, of course, that’s what she meant a moment ago, why she blushed and moved on so quickly.

  ‘I should have offered to pay for the ink,’ I say to my reflection before stirring out of my daydream, checking that no one saw me talking to myself.

  No one is looking at me. No one cares. No one really notices anything – not even a little girl wandering alone up a road, a toddler talking to the ducks at the river’s edge, reaching too far, too far… falling in.

  I can hear a hairdryer, but I don’t know if that’s because someone has just turned it on or if I have re-tuned to it. A jingle, the promise of an hour of classic love songs later. The chemical smell of hair products. The jabber of women talking. A glance into the mirror reveals a woman with my face, but thinner and older than me, her hair covered in folded strips of tin foil. She looks utterly exhausted. I am too young to look like her. I am too young to look like this.

  Bella reappears wheeling a heat lamp, wide bulbs branching off like hydra heads. This she positions over my head. She is fixing the outside of me. She is putting up the scaffold, doing what she can.

  We are all, all of us, doing what we can.

  Sixteen

  Matt

  The doorbell goes at 6.30 p.m. Ava is still upstairs getting ready after Fred, apparently picking up on his mother’s anxiety, was restless during his feed. Matt wishes she was here with him now; he would be able to give her a last hug before the party, a last encouraging word. She has barely spoken to him today, barely looked at him.

  As it is, Fred asleep on one arm, he opens the front door to find Neil and Bella, as expected. Opening the door to them would have been nothing a year ago – it would have been Friday-night takeaway or movie night, maybe a lazy Sunday lunch. Now, the sight of them all dolled up takes him aback.

  As if to emphasise the near formality of what was once so casual, Neil looks like he has come directly from the barber’s. The sides of his blonde hair have been close-shaved, and his remaining hair, piled up and back, looks stiff with wax. He has on a crisp white shirt with Superdry embroidered on the breast pocket in navy blue, matching navy chino-style trousers and tan brogues. Neil has always been hyper-clean and smart, always freshly shaved, even on site, but since he met Bella, about six years ago now, he is immaculate. Even his overalls are white, a fresh set each day. Bella found Neil the way most people round here find their houses: great location, solid foundations but in need of TLC, to coin a favourite estate-agent term. And to be fair, she has showered her refurbishment project with plenty of tender loving care.

  Bella, in a swishy dress and high-heeled sandals and smelling strongly of perfume, follows Neil into the house, handing Matt a bottle of Prosecco as he leans in to kiss her cheek.

  ‘No need for this,’ he says. ‘We’re only having a quick one here, aren’t we? Take it with you to the party.’

  ‘It’s OK, I’ve got another in my bag.’ She swings her hip to reveal a large white leather bag with a telltale bottle-shaped bulge. ‘I’ve got some chocs as well. Hotel Chocolat.’ She pronounces Chocolat chockerlarr and Matt hates himself for noticing – it is precisely the kind of educated snobbery Neil would despise, and that he himself despises.

  ‘Thank you, that’s really kind.’ Matt holds up the bottle, suddenly awkward in his own skin even though he knows Bella is always over-generous. He’s lost the habit of her, he realises. He discovered long ago that her over-the-top way – of giving, of dressing, of talking, of partying – is insecurity, knows that from Neil, who once told him that Bella feels she needs to do more, to be more, just to be enough. And yet to meet her, you’d think she was the most confident woman in the world.

  Bella swishes past him in her thick cloud of scent. Her dress, Matt suspects, is up-to-the-minute: a soft animal print with thin shoulder straps that show off her gecko shoulder tattoo, arms tanned and muscular from the gym. He takes in her spike-heeled sandals, the painted toenails, and they bother him because he can’t separate her polished appearance from how it might make Ava feel. Ava has a different style, is a completely different kind of person, but even so, of late…

  ‘Just let me pop Fred in the basket,’ he says, escaping into the living room.

  When he returns, Bella is arranging her leather jacket on the back of a bar stool, complaining that it’s too hot. He tries not to notice that they’ve chosen the places they always used to sit in, as if their seats have been saved.

  ‘Thing is,’ she says, wiggling back into her seat, ‘once the sun goes down, it gets chilly, doesn’t it? I just brought my leather thinking we might be in the garden later. If they’ve invited the whole street, there won’t be room in the kitchen for everyone, will there? I mean, it’s a big kitchen but it’s not that big, and it can get chilly, can’t it? Really chilly once the sun goes in. You don’t want to be cold, do you? Nothing worse than being cold.’

  She plucks at an olive and pops it into her mouth, almost as if she is telling herself to shut up. Her long nails are painted the colour of a field mouse. This must be the latest shade. Matt remembers a few years ago Bella getting very excited over a pinky-beige colour that looked to him like calamine lotion and which she’d had done at her salon. He and Ava had laughed about it afterwards,
which he regrets now as he pulls four flutes down from the cupboard and places them on the kitchen bar. But the fact is, Neil and Bella are so different and sometimes he and Ava need to process it, that’s all. And it’s not like they themselves don’t have their insecurities.

  ‘So nice to be getting together again,’ Neil says, taking charge of the bottle opening. He has rolled up his sleeves; the tips of his thumbs whiten against the cork.

  ‘It so is,’ Bella chimes in. ‘I can’t wait to see their place. Do you think they’ll let their kids come down for a bit? I’ve never even seen their kids. You have, haven’t you, Nee?’

  Neil shakes his head. ‘Not really. I mean, in passing. I don’t, like, know them or anything.’