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

by S. E. Lynes

  ‘Hi.’ I look about me, searching for Matt. Help.

  ‘So good of you to come tonight,’ he says. ‘Must have taken a lot of courage.’

  I glance at him. My cheeks burn. I have no idea how to respond. If Jen had said this, it would have been fine, but Johnnie is not Jen.

  ‘Jen tells me they scaled back the investigation some months ago. Do you think they’ll close it altogether once it reaches a year? It’s almost a year now, isn’t it?’

  ‘Y-Yes.’ My hand flies to my mouth.

  ‘I mean,’ he adds, apparently oblivious, ‘I don’t know how these things work, but you’d imagine a year would be long enough, what with budget cuts and so forth. Can’t imagine there’s much to be gained.’

  My skin is alight. The room spins. I have the impression of rising into the air, that speaking is all that will keep me on the ground.

  ‘There would be for us,’ I manage to say. ‘There’d be everything to gain.’

  He swats the air with one hand. ‘Of course, yes, I didn’t mean that, I meant more in the sense that I can’t imagine there’d be more evidence now, after all this time. No new leads, are there? They’re not watching anyone?’

  I wait. Wait to see how far he will dig before he strikes rock and breaks his shovel. Stop, I want to say, just stop talking.

  ‘There are no new leads at the moment,’ I say instead. ‘And no, they don’t have a suspect as such. But they’re not closing it. Should something new come to light, they’ll move quickly.’

  He nods, hugely, pushes his bottom lip up so far it overlaps the top, his chin puckering beneath his highly curated stubble. ‘Yes, yes,’ he says, head cocked, musing like an art critic. ‘Yes, I can see that, I can see that… It’s just that it was reported as a tragic accident, wasn’t it? I suppose because there was nothing suspicious. And they searched all the houses and gardens. The dogs were taken into Neil’s place too, weren’t they?’

  ‘Only for procedure. With them being our closest friends.’ The last two words sound – are – pointed. Back. Off.

  ‘Of course, of course. But they didn’t take the dogs into anyone else’s home, did they?’

  I narrow my eyes at him. If he picks up how aghast I am, he doesn’t show it.

  ‘They can’t treat everyone as a suspect, Johnnie,’ I manage. ‘They’d have to have found incriminating evidence, they’d have to have good reason to justify that kind of… of violation.’

  ‘So they had good reason? I thought you said it was procedure.’

  I inhale deeply. My shoulders rise. ‘I did. It was. I meant—’

  ‘Hey.’ Matt appears, hands me a drink. My third. I shouldn’t. But my hands are shaking and I’m so relieved to see him, I almost down it in one go.

  ‘Ava was just updating me on… everything,’ Johnnie says.

  Matt eyes him warily. ‘OK.’ He turns to me, must see something in my face, because his eyes flicker with concern. ‘Do you want to go home soon?’

  ‘Catch you kids later,’ Johnnie says, pressing his hand to the top of my arm before he leaves us, as if in this last conversation we have established some sort of bond. My God, I think. What on earth does Jen see in him?

  ‘Neil wasn’t wrong,’ Matt says under his breath once Johnnie is out of earshot.

  ‘No. No, he wasn’t.’

  The music dips.

  Both of us look towards the far end of the kitchen. In a half-sigh, Matt says: ‘What the hell?’

  Nineteen

  Ava

  At the far end of the kitchen, cheeks even pinker now and looking for all the world like an aged cherub, Johnnie has raised his hands. He says nothing, simply stands with his arms out, confident that the talking will cease. Like Moses parting the Red Sea, I think. And sure enough, the chatter dies away. Jen is beside him, looking a little coy. Another second and I realise she is holding hands with a young girl who looks about twelve or thirteen.

  When he’s satisfied that the room is silent, Johnnie lowers his hands.

  ‘Hi, everyone,’ he says. ‘We just wanted to say thank you for coming to our humble abode.’ He smirks; no one laughs. ‘It’s really great to finally meet our neighbours, and yeah, hi, welcome, willkommen, bienvenue. As you know, I’m Johnnie, this is Jennifer, and these are our girls, Jasmine and Cosima, who are up way past their bedtime.’

  ‘Past their bedtime, past their bedtime, past their bedtime,’ the elder one says, stepping forward and flapping her hands in front of her chest. Her smile is so wide, it is on the edges of a laugh, which duly follows. She steps back and looks at her mother for reassurance. Jen takes both of her hands and moves them back and forth, smiling at her all the while, and in that moment I realise, with a kick to the solar plexus, that her daughter has some form of learning difficulty.

  ‘This is Jasmine,’ Jen says to the room. ‘Say goodnight, Jasmine.’

  ‘Say goodnight, Jasmine,’ Jasmine calls out, and laughs again. ‘Say goodnight, Jasmine, say goodnight, Jasmine.’

  Shame burns through me as the guests respond in a warm chorus. I assumed the elder daughter attended an exclusive school. I have not at any point considered any other possibility for her being spirited away each morning in their big posh car. I have never asked.

  ‘I didn’t realise their eldest had special needs,’ a woman behind me whispers, though loudly enough that I hear it. ‘You wouldn’t think, would you?’

  I barely have time to consider what this even means, because at that moment Jasmine points to Kevin from across the road and says in a very loud, excited voice: ‘Bicycle! Bicycle, bicycle.’

  Jen and Johnnie are grinning like idiots. Their pride moves me. I have judged Johnnie harshly, but perhaps he isn’t so bad after all.

  ‘Bicycle, bicycle,’ Jasmine calls out again, laughing.

  ‘She’s not wrong.’ Kevin lifts his glass and addresses the room with a nod. ‘I cycle to work.’

  A collective murmur of affection rumbles through the room.

  I cannot stop thinking that I never once asked Jen about her girls. Grief is selfish. I have become selfish as well as mean-minded and sarcastic. I used to ask people questions; I used to care. I used to be witty. Not hard. Not self-obsessed. Not like this.

  ‘No flies on Jasmine,’ Jen says, laughing and gesturing round the room. ‘She’s got you all pegged.’

  But Jasmine has moved on and is gesticulating now at Louise Parker. She mimes headphones and runs on the spot, her fists pumping.

  Louise blushes. ‘Yep. I’m a runner.’ She raises her cocktail in cheers. Her eyes are glassy and she looks a little drunk.

  Jen throws out her hands, clearly delighted. ‘What did I tell you?’

  Jasmine jumps from foot to foot. She is flapping her hands quite wildly now. She takes a gasping breath and points across the crowd.

  ‘Pockets!’ she cries – a loud, joyful shout. ‘Pockets, pockets, pockets.’

  I follow her gaze to where Neil is skulking at the back of the kitchen. She has spotted him despite the fact that he is almost in the garden.

  ‘Pockets,’ she says again, almost beside herself. ‘Pockets! Pockets!’

  Johnnie puts his arm around her. ‘OK, Jazzy, that’s enough excitement for one night, I think. Time for bed.’

  Jasmine is still pointing.

  ‘Pockets,’ she says. ‘Pockets, pockets.’

  Johnnie looks over at Neil. There is something in his expression I cannot read. Neil has dipped his head. The tips of his ears glow. I look back at Johnnie.

  ‘She’s wondering where your overalls are, Neil,’ Johnnie calls across the heads, then redirecting himself to the room at large. ‘Jasmine was obsessed with Neil’s overalls when he did the building work on this place, weren’t you, darling?’

  ‘Weren’t you darling,’ comes the echo. ‘Weren’t you darling, weren’t you darling.’

  ‘Oh shit,’ Matt says, slipping away from my side.

  My face heats. I presume Matt has headed to find Neil,
but I dare not look round. I just had enough of being treated like the staff. Words he said in our kitchen this evening. From anyone else’s lips, Johnnie’s comment just now would have been innocuous, but the drawing of attention to Neil’s role as labourer in Johnnie’s home, under Johnnie’s professional direction, with its implication of class and hierarchy, is blatant. It’s possible I’m being oversensitive, overthinking, but if I am, then so is Matt.

  I look out into the garden, where a group of eight or so people stand next to the bar. A little further on, under the willow tree again, is Neil, with Matt. Neil is shaking his head. Matt puts a hand on his shoulder, which he shrugs off, and from nowhere, I have the impression that something bigger has happened, bigger than being patronised in front of a room full of people. I have no idea what, but it bothers me for reasons I can’t name. Reasons that have to do with Abi. Barbara tells me that everything will come back to Abi, for a long time, and so I dig into my CBT and tell myself that no, this is not about her. My reaction is about her, about me and my grief.

  ‘Come on now, that’s enough. Wave goodbye, Jazzy.’

  My attention is called back to Johnnie, who is guiding his daughter out of the room, her voice an excited echo: wave goodbye, Jazzy, wave goodbye, Jazzy, wave goodbye, Jazzy. He appears to be handing her over to someone hidden in the hallway beyond. Back in the room, he bends out of sight, reappearing once again with a beautiful little girl in his arms. Cosima. She looks so like Jen, has grown so much in a year, has become less of a baby, more of a little girl. Like Abi should be. Might be. Somewhere. On his hip, she grins shyly – a delighted little girl allowed to stay up late, to come and say hello to the grown-ups. My heart tightens. My eyes prick. I bite down hard on my bottom lip.

  It’s not enough.

  My heart accelerates. My vision clouds. I stare at my trainers, focus on my breathing.

  ‘This is Cosima,’ I hear Johnnie say.

  Matt has left me. He has left me on my own.

  ‘Say goodnight, Cozzie,’ Johnnie says.

  I make myself stand up, almost straight, and look. Cosima giggles and sinks her head into her father’s chest. A moment later, she raises her head and blows a kiss, says goodnight in a sweet little-girl voice that runs through me like a blade, and collapses into embarrassed giggles, just like Abi used to. I stare down at the floor, blinking back tears, my body white hot, my heart racing. I take deep breaths, determined to remain upright. I am stuck, stuck and alone in this hot, pounding space, while the crowd call out their goodnights, their voices soft with alcohol and affection, with memories of their own children, perhaps, at that age, children who have grown up now, who are still here.

  Johnnie is handing Cosima to a middle-aged woman standing just behind them with her arms outstretched. She takes the child into her arms with a nod and a kind smile. The nanny, I guess. The one they bought a little runaround for. Cosima on one hip, Jasmine holding her hand, the three become shadows as they recede. My throat aches.

  The cool bossa nova drifts back into the air. Jennifer is wielding her phone, her eyes screwed up at discreet round ceiling speakers. The volume rises. My neighbours begin to dance. They are red and jolly, animated and talkative. The party is really getting going now.

  I have to go. I have to get out of here. It has to be now.

  Twenty

  Matt

  Neil is spitting bullets.

  ‘Did you see that?’ He moves to pace away, apparently decides against it, but his body bristles with the effort of simply standing still. ‘Did you hear him? He couldn’t not do it, could he?’ His speech is half-whisper, half-hiss. ‘Couldn’t resist lording it over me in the bloody palace I built for him. Arsehole.’ More expletives follow, a furious tirade that threatens to get louder and be overheard. His face pinks; the rims of his eyes redden. His scalp glows through the shaved sides of his head.

  ‘Mate.’ Matt is aware of people looking at them. ‘Just keep it down, will you? He didn’t mean anything by it.’

  ‘Yes he did. Yes he did, Matt. The guy’s a condescending prick. It was like this every day when I did his kitchen. Every fucking day.’ At his sides, Neil’s hands roll into fists.

  ‘Mate. It was his daughter. She can’t help it. She hasn’t got… she doesn’t speak in sentences – that’s not her fault. Johnnie was just trying to… I dunno… accommodate her.’

  ‘All right.’ Neil raises one hand, nods his promise to stop making a scene. ‘The thing is, it makes me laugh, because if it weren’t for me, his kitchen would look like shit. It was him who got the measurements for the RSJs wrong, me and the lads that had to work around it, correct his bollocks maths. I could have done those calculations in my head.’

  Matt waits. Now is not the time to say he’s heard this before.

  ‘I’d already done the maths when he first showed me the house!’ Neil glances towards the kitchen and bites his bottom lip in disgust, makes a gun with his fingers and points it at his own head. ‘I’d already built it, in my mind. In here! These pricks make you think it’s rocket science, but it’s basic… it’s basic building. They think just ’cos they dossed around for a few years at uni, they think they’re better. They think they know more but half the time they’re useless. I’m telling you, he thinks ’cos he’s got some bullshit certificate, it means no one has ever thought of doing what he’s done. Leaving the steels exposed to make them look industrial?’ He makes sarcastic jazz hands. ‘Woo, big deal. I saw that in Peckham about five years ago. He thinks he’s so edgy and cool with his zinc and his glass bullshit extension. He’s a… he’s a… the guy’s a…’ He sighs deeply, appears to cool. When he looks at Matt, there is apology in his eyes. ‘I don’t mean you.’

  ‘I know you don’t.’

  ‘I don’t. I know you worked hard at uni. I mean, I respect your qualifications and that. I’m not, like, chippy about it or anything.’

  ‘I know.’ Matt wonders why Neil feels the need to say this – he’s never said anything like it before.

  ‘I’m not jealous of you, that’s what I’m trying to say, so don’t go thinking that. I’m just pissed off, that’s all. With him. I mean, I bet he couldn’t get in to do architecture. I bet that’s why he didn’t use an architect.’

  ‘I’m sure he was capable of doing the sketches. He was probably just sure about what he wanted.’

  ‘All right. I know. I’m just… and I know he got me all that work and he gave me a massive tip at the end of the job – did I ever tell you that?’ Neil shakes his head, continues without waiting for an answer. ‘Well, no, it was… I probably never mentioned it, did I, but it was… It was difficult times, but, yeah, he gave me a five-hundred-quid tip. Five bloody ton – who does that? I said nah, but he insisted, said I’d done an exceptional job and deserved it and all that nonsense, so in the end I took it, I took because I reckoned it was more of his patronising bullshit, do you know what I mean? Pay the little man.’ He blows out a long jet of air, cools another degree. ‘I dunno, it’s just him, the way he is gets on my tits. But you, you were always proper brainy – you know I mean that, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, of course. I’m not offended or anything.’

  ‘That’s why you were so shit at football.’ He almost grins, takes a gruff swig of his beer.

  ‘Funny.’ Matt feels his chest loosen, the way it does when he spots and corrects a last-minute mistake at work.

  ‘And at least you don’t go round telling your builders how to do their job.’

  ‘I never see the builders anymore. I’m too important.’

  Neil’s eyes round like he’s been slapped but just as quickly crinkle. He laughs. ‘Tosser.’

  ‘Come on.’ Matt lifts the empty beer bottle out of Neil’s hand. ‘Let’s get pissed on Johnnie Lovegood’s organic ale, shall we?’

  He’s about to head to the Brazilian-style bar that has been set up on the raised dais outside the zinc home office, but to his astonishment, Neil shakes his head.

  ‘N
ah, mate.’ His eyes fix on his shoes. He kicks at something invisible on the polished concrete. ‘I can’t stay here. I just… I just can’t.’ He slaps Matt on the shoulder and walks away into the house, his head hanging low like a man bereaved.

  Another moment, and he’s gone.

  Twenty-One

  Ava

  Out on the Lovegoods’ driveway, I text Matt.

  Have gone home. All OK. Enjoy the party. See you in the morning. Xx

  The air is cool. The sky is mottled navy, starless. The clouds have kept the evening warm. I stretch my arms out and exhale heavily into the night.

  ‘Ava? Ave.’

  Neil’s voice. I shiver, turn around, wait while he jogs the few steps to join me.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I had to get out. Just…’

  ‘Yeah. Bit intense.’

  We stand a moment, awkward in each other’s company, before walking to the end of the drive. Another three or four steps and I am in front of my own home. Neither of us has spoken.

  ‘Kind of you to walk me all this way,’ I say.

  He shrugs. ‘You know me.’

  No, I don’t, not anymore, I want to say. But I say nothing of the sort obviously.

  ‘Was it complete torture tonight?’ I ask instead.

  He nods, his eyes flicking over to the Lovegoods’ front door, to the pavement, though not to me. ‘Did you hear him? Going on about my overalls? Arsehole.’

  He is slurring his words. Only slightly, but I’ve known him as long as I’ve known Matt; I know how he sounds when he’s had too much to drink and how much drink that takes.

  ‘I don’t think he meant it unkindly,’ I offer.

  He shakes his head. ‘You say that because you don’t know him.’

  ‘I think he’s clumsy more than anything. Tries too hard, that’s all. It’ll be insecurity, underneath it all, I reckon. It usually is.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know. I’m not deep.’