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

by S. E. Lynes

  ‘Don’t say that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Don’t pretend you’re not smart, or that you don’t feel. You are smart. You know you are. And you do feel. You feel deeply.’ I feel myself blush. The cocktails have loosened my tongue. Which is their job, I suppose.

  Neil glances towards the end of the street before looking back at his shoes. The cavity of my chest heats, swells.

  ‘Neil.’ I’m hoping that by saying his name, the courage to speak plainly will follow. Cocktails or no, it is so hard to tell our closest friends when they’ve hurt us. There’s always the fear they will resent the reproach, that nothing will be the same afterwards. But we are beyond that, I suppose.

  ‘I know you don’t like seeing us,’ I begin. ‘I mean, I know you find it difficult to see me.’

  ‘Work’s been mad.’ He kicks at the ground but doesn’t look up.

  ‘I know. I know that. But…’ Now it’s me glancing around: at the damson trees that line our street, where posters once asked HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? ‘I know how difficult it is, that’s all I’m saying. And I know you’re grieving too, I think I realised that tonight, properly. I know you loved her too – that’s all I wanted to say.’

  Somehow his gaze unglues itself from his shoes. When he looks at me, it is right into my eyes and it seems that his are full of pain – his, my own. With a jolt, I realise it is the first time he has looked at me, really looked at me, since that day.

  ‘I did love her,’ he says, his bottom lip trembling, a heart-wrenching sight in such a man. ‘I did,’ he repeats, looking away again. ‘You’ve got to know that.’ Overcome, he covers his eyes with his hand and lets out a gasp of distress.

  I reach out, lay the flat of my hand on his arm. It is getting chilly. I have started to tremble. In the papoose, Fred sleeps on, cocooned against my chest.

  ‘I know you loved her,’ I say softly. ‘I do know that, of course I do. And she adored you. I just haven’t had room to… for anything else. Anyone else. And if I’m honest, I’ve been hurt by how distant you’ve been, but I understand. And I don’t blame you.’

  He lets out a cry. ‘Oh God, Ava,’ he says. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve let you down, I’ve let both of you down. I’ll never forgive myself.’

  ‘Oh, Neil, come on. It wasn’t your fault. I’m the one who left the door open. It’s my fault. All of it.’ Tears run down my face. I push them away, into my hair, and sniff.

  ‘Now who’s talking rubbish. It wasn’t your fault, all right? You’ve got to stop beating yourself up about that. It’s killing you, I can see it is.’

  He holds out his arms. I lean into him. He pulls me to him in a kind of half-hug. My head falls against his chest, Fred between us. Neil is so much thicker-set than Matt and he feels good: solid. The embrace lasts longer than either of us intend. When we pull apart, he wipes his eyes with the backs of his hands and seems about to walk away, but a moment later, I’m not sure quite how, his forehead is pressed against mine, his hand at the back of my head, keeping me there.

  ‘I wish I could have brought her back to you,’ he whispers. ‘I’ll never forgive myself.’

  ‘You did everything you could,’ I whisper back. ‘It’s me who’ll never forgive myself.’

  There is a beat, and it is no more than that, when a kiss is a possibility, not a kiss of friendship, nor one of two people caught up in lust for one another. Another kind of kiss, a connection too deep, a moment too intimate for what we are supposed to be to one another. I am certain he feels it too.

  He breaks away, breathes out a heavy, shuddering sigh.

  ‘I’ve been so wrapped up in… everything,’ I rush in. ‘I forgot you and Bella were suffering. I didn’t think about you guys at all, really, and I’m sorry too, for that. But it’s been all I can do to get through. I’m still taking it one day at a time. I didn’t even know the Lovegoods’ daughter had any kind of learning difficulties. Jen’s my next-door neighbour, she’s my friend, for God’s sake, and she’s been so kind to me and I didn’t even… What does that make me? I’m… I’m a monster.’ My eyes fill. I make myself stop.

  ‘You’re not a monster.’ He takes my hand, rubs his thumb across the back of my knuckles. His skin is rougher than Matt’s, a scratch in the caress, and this too feels dangerous. ‘You’re doing great, Ave. You’ve got to take it one day at a time. And I’m sorry we’ve not been round. Work’s no excuse.’

  ‘You’ve seen Matt though, haven’t you?’ I take my hand from his. ‘I know he appreciates you getting him to do the triathlon and everything. I suppose it’s hard hooking up like we used to, without Abi there. It’s like there’s a hole that can’t be filled, and none of us have been able to face that. I just wish we knew what happened, you know? That’s the worst thing – the not knowing, hanging over us all the time. I know the evidence points overwhelmingly to her drowning, but with no body… Just the thought of her being taken, being out there… suffering.’ Suffering. All that is contained in that word, all that is unspeakable. ‘And that I’m responsible for that. No one else. Me. How can any mother ever get over that?’

  ‘Ava, please.’ He tries to take my hand again, but I snatch it away.

  ‘No, Neil, it’s true. I wish I’d never had Fred. I wish I hadn’t been pregnant. I never would have had another child, never. And I can’t tell anyone how I feel because it’s too awful. I haven’t even told my counsellor, but the truth is, I don’t deserve a baby. I’m not a good enough mother. I’m not safe.’ I am weeping, and the fact of it shocks me. I have spent a year avoiding Neil, barely speaking to him, and now, now I can’t stop the rush of words, of tears, pouring all over him, things I have never said out loud, have barely dared think. We are friends become strangers become friends again – almost more – crying together on the street. This is what we have needed to do, all this time. We have both known it. But it has been too frightening.

  ‘You’ve been strong,’ he says eventually. ‘You have. I know you think you haven’t, but you have. And I can understand you want to believe Abi’s still alive, but…’

  ‘Matt’s the strong one,’ I say, not taking on board what I know he’s leading up to, what everyone wants me to accept. ‘Can’t even admit to using the last tea bag, never thought he’d be the rock for us both.’

  ‘You mean the absolute world to him– you know that, don’t you? He’d never leave you. He’d do anything to keep hold of you, I mean.’ Now that Matt is front and centre of the conversation, I feel the danger passing, am unsure whether it was really there.

  ‘I don’t know, Nee. I’m horrible to him, just horrible, a lot of the time. If I were him, I’d leave me. God knows, I’m a misery. A misery that can’t be trusted.’

  Neil puffs his cheeks and blows out a long blast of air. ‘You’re killing me, Ave. You can’t keep saying this stuff. It isn’t like you think. It’s not your fault, trust me, I know it wasn’t.’

  ‘What?’ I wipe my face, meet his pale-blue eyes. My guts have folded over. ‘What do you mean? What do you know?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Nothing. Forget I said it.’

  ‘Neil. What do you know? If you know something, you have to tell me. You owe me that. Please, Neil. How do you know it wasn’t my fault?’

  ‘You…’ His face crumples.

  ‘Neil! Please! I’ll beg you if I have to. I’ll go down on my knees.’

  ‘All right.’ He raises his palms to me, looks behind him, towards the Lovegoods’ house, back to me. ‘But you’ve got to know he did it for you, all right?’

  ‘What? Who?’

  ‘Matt. He loves you. He’d lie down on hot coals for you – you know that, don’t you? But it was him, babe.’

  ‘Him?’

  ‘He left the door open. It wasn’t you. It was him.’

  Twenty-Two

  Matt

  ‘Where’s Nee gone?’ Bella has materialised out of thin air and is looking all about her. ‘I literally saw him here five seconds ago.’

/>   ‘Bella,’ he says. ‘Where’ve you been hiding?’

  ‘God knows. Where’s Nee though, Matt?’

  ‘He…’ Matt gestures towards the kitchen but gets no further. ‘I was looking for Ava, but I can’t see her either.’

  ‘Check this place out, eh?’ Bella says then, the whereabouts of her husband apparently no longer a priority. She takes a sip of her tall pink drink through a black paper straw, then fixes Matt with a direct, almost flirtatious stare. She releases the straw and smacks her lips. ‘I don’t think I’ve been to a party where they have actual waiters in the house. The guy on the bar’s, like, a proper mixer. I literally told him what I wanted and he mixed a cocktail just for me.’ She holds up her glass and looks at it. ‘This is a Pink Gin Bella! It’s delicious! Try it!’

  Matt shakes his head.

  ‘Oh go on. Don’t be boring.’ She holds the straw to his lips and reluctantly he takes a sip.

  ‘Nice,’ he says, without knowing what he means.

  ‘Can you taste the rhubarb?’ Bella asks, eyes twinkling. ‘It’s got rhubarb in it.’ Her brow furrows. ‘Or was it gooseberries? I can’t remember. Anyway, this is my fourth, lol.’ As if to prove it, her eyelids half close and she sways a little. ‘Johnnie said he’s going to turn the music up in a minute. He asked me to start the dancing.’

  ‘Great,’ Matt says, his gaze wandering again to the kitchen. No sign of either Neil or Ava. He has left Ava alone, as he said he would not. He went to check on Neil and when he looked round, she’d gone. Then Neil left, and he got talking to Pete Shepherd, the retired guy from over the road. He meant to look for Ava, he did. But somehow he forgot about her.

  The flash of guilt amplifies in the face of another realisation: it has been a relief. To forget about her.

  ‘Have you seen Ava?’ he asks Bella.

  She shakes her head. ‘I saw her a while ago. Before the speeches, well, not speeches – you know what I mean.’

  ‘I’m going to find her, OK?’

  ‘K, babe.’ Bella raises her glass. Her eyes close as she first misses then finds her lips with the end of the straw.

  In the kitchen, the music is louder. The voices have amplified in such a large space. The kitchen is too big, he thinks. A garage. An aircraft hangar. The hard surfaces, the high gloss and the lack of curtains or soft furniture make the cacophony of voices bounce around, make it sound like there are a hundred people here when there are about half that. A warm smell of spices reaches him; hot snacks on square black plates spread across the ice-white kitchen bar. It is almost 10 p.m. and the atmosphere is boozy. This has happened quickly, possibly on account of the strong cocktails and perhaps because everyone is so excited to get a look inside the Lovegoods’ – God knows, Pete Shepherd could barely contain his scandalised excitement, eyes popping as he took it all in, brain visibly exploding at his own wild estimations of the outrageous cost.

  Stopping to grab another beer from the artful selection piled high on blue ice in some sort of futuristic metal trough, Matt takes the opportunity to taste what turns out to be a rice ball with melted cheese – mozzarella? – inside, delicately flavoured with… cumin? Fennel? Chilli, definitely, and salt. My God, it’s good.

  ‘Matt,’ someone says.

  He turns to find Jennifer Lovegood standing beside him, her features soft with alcohol and the early years of her forties, he guesses.

  ‘This is so good,’ he mumbles, holding up the… thing.

  ‘Supplì, yes, they’re great, aren’t they? Angelo’s, the Italian deli over in Barnes – do you know it? Anyway, I’m so glad you and Ava came. How are you?’

  ‘Erm, fine,’ he replies, preoccupied. ‘Actually, I was looking for Ava.’

  She glances about, her height allowing her to scan the room. ‘She’s probably in the sitting room. I showed her it earlier, in case she needed somewhere quiet to feed Fred.’

  Unable to stop himself, he looks around for his wife, sees a woman he vaguely recognises with white hair, palm pressed to the top of a walking stick, in earnest debate with a tall bespectacled man with a grey Gandalf beard while Shirley, Pete’s wife, listens in.

  ‘I had a good chat with Ava,’ Jennifer is saying, pulling him back. ‘We stayed in the sitting room until she settled. Which she did. She’s coped brilliantly.’

  He meets her eye. Her soft Irish accent soothes him; it makes him want to believe everything she says, though he has no idea why that is. She has a calmness, a deep intelligence in her soft grey eyes, which is in stark contrast to her husband’s rather jarring brand of being. If we’re lucky, we find the person we need, he thinks. That’s what Jennifer is for Johnnie, what Bella is for Neil and what Ava was for him; he can’t afford to forget that. He just has to get her back to being that person. He has to make her right, make her herself again. Perhaps tonight will be the start.

  ‘Ava said the police have scaled back the investigation,’ Jennifer says, with a directness that takes him aback but somehow doesn’t grate on his nerves like Johnnie does. No one apart from the Lovegoods has mentioned Abi tonight. No one ever does, unless he brings it up. Which he doesn’t. Ever.

  ‘Oh, that was months ago.’ He makes himself meet Jennifer’s gaze. ‘They haven’t closed the case, but there are no new leads for the moment.’ How odd it feels to say it out loud. ‘I suppose we’ll always be looking for new leads. I’m trying to get Ava to move on, but…’

  Jennifer is nodding gravely, but there is nothing vampiric in her attention to the open, bleeding wound of his life. ‘It must be so tough.’

  Such a simple statement.

  ‘It’s hell actually,’ he replies. Another simple statement. What else is there? It is hell. Or purgatory, perhaps – a grim antechamber, waiting. Forever, possibly. He wants to say more, to add that he believes his daughter drowned that day, that it was an accident, not a dumping of her body after something sinister, that he has chosen to believe this for his own sanity, but he doesn’t. ‘The police think she drowned,’ he says instead. ‘They think she was feeding the ducks and got overexcited, maybe tried to pet one and lost her balance. They’ve said as much.’ That it’s the police that have said this makes it sound less like he’s writing her off in one great dismissive act of callousness. Yes, he has felt callous. Feels callous. As if he wants his daughter dead. Which he doesn’t obviously. But if she’d had some sort of accident, that would be better. Better than…

  ‘Your daughters are lovely,’ he says, sounding inane even to himself.

  ‘Thank you. And your baby boy is an absolute darling. I love the name. Fred. A grandparent?’

  ‘Chopin.’

  ‘Ah. Of course. Ava teaches piano, doesn’t she? I’d love to learn to play. I used to but I gave up – typical idiotic teenage move.’

  He gets the sense that Jennifer is acknowledging his need to change the subject rather than, as is often the case around here, simply waiting until she can talk about her own children. She has been so direct with him; he figures he can return fire.

  ‘Your elder daughter, Jasmine,’ he begins but hasn’t the courage to continue.

  ‘She has Angelman syndrome,’ Jennifer offers, her frankness extending, then, to herself.

  He nods. ‘She seems incredibly happy. She lit up the room earlier.’

  Jennifer smiles. ‘She does that. It’s part of her condition. She smiles a lot, laughs a lot. She flaps her hands. Other things too, which you won’t have noticed, like her obsession with water and shoes. She’s less obsessed now that she’s a teenager, but when she was little, she used to fill my slippers with water. Well, all of our shoes actually, but particularly my slippers for some reason.’ She laughs.

  ‘Wow. I’ve never heard of that.’

  ‘She’s echolalic too.’

  Matt inclines his head in question.

  ‘Sorry, you get used to the terms. She repeats back what people have said. An echo. Echolalic. She has limited language, but she can attach words to things or people. She can ask
for things in her own way. Earlier, she said “bicycle” because we always point them out to her and she’s seen Kevin so many times on his.’

  ‘And she called Neil “Pockets”.’

  She grimaces. ‘He seemed a bit pissed off about that.’

  Matt waves it away. ‘Oh, he’s OK, don’t worry about it. Neil’s a great guy but he can be a bit… sensitive, in a way. He’s one of the cleverest, smartest people I know, but he’s not… he’s…’

  ‘Not academic?’

  ‘Exactly. He’s dyslexic, but he’s clever. Cleverer than me in so many ways. And driven, you know? He’s done it all himself, in his own way. Sometimes I feel like I’ve been channelled through a tube, the funnel of higher education, I suppose, whereas Neil just got out there into the world and made it happen. He didn’t need channelling. The whole academic thing can be a bit in-your-face, particularly round here. It never used to be like that when I was a kid. Now, it’s like it’s the one true path or something. I’m not sure what I’m trying to say, to be honest. I suppose we all feel inadequate, one way or another.’

  ‘You’re obviously very proud of him.’ Jennifer takes a sip of her drink. It is clear and fizzy and he suspects it’s mineral water. She’s not the type to get drunk, he thinks. Not the type to lose control.

  ‘You seem very close,’ she continues.

  ‘We’ve been friends since we were eleven. We were each other’s best man, et cetera.’

  ‘Well, he’s a good guy. Very hard worker, very reliable. I trusted him one hundred per cent in the house, which is a bigger thing than you might expect when you’re having work done, especially with a vulnerable child. A lot don’t seem to remember they’re in someone else’s home, it’s just a job to them, but Neil respected my wishes without question. And Jasmine loved him.’

  ‘Did she?’

  ‘Pockets,’ Jennifer says, smiling again. ‘He used to hide her toys in one of his overall pockets, and when he saw her, he would pull out her teddy or her doll or whatever it was and say, “What’s this doing in my pocket?” And she would laugh hysterically and repeat it, you know – pockets, pockets, pockets.’ She shakes her head fondly. ‘Sometimes she’d give him the toy and put the two together – doll pockets or teddy pockets. And he understood what she was asking and would repeat the whole thing for her – so sweet.’