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

by S. E. Lynes

  ‘Please.’ Once again she closes her eyes, apparently trying to keep control of this terrible rage lying immediately beneath the surface of her, as it has been for a year. ‘I know you want to believe him, and I didn’t put two and two together either at first. But the thing is, yesterday she was looking for Neil, calling out her nickname for him, don’t you see? Before the party, in our kitchen, he said he didn’t know the Lovegoods’ kids. But Jasmine recognised him in front of the entire street and he reacted badly, yes? And then she recognises Abi’s toy even though she’s never seen it, yes? You’ll forgive me if I’m starting to think something isn’t right. And… and it was Neil who found Mr Sloth that day. He came into the house and said he’d found it on the road, do you remember? But how do we know that’s true? I didn’t see him pick it up. Did you? And I know he’s your best friend and I know he helped—’

  Matt roars; his fist smashes against the coffee table. ‘For God’s sake, Ava! You can’t say that! You can’t even let yourself think it! My God, this is Neil we’re talking about!’

  She is panting, chewing her lip furiously, and she looks… she looks like a caricature of madness – bulge-eyed, flushed, manic. This is who she is now. This is what unresolved grief has done to her. What he has done to her. His wife.

  ‘OK,’ she says, visibly trying to stay calm. ‘What’s going on then? Explain it. Because I asked Neil last night and he sure as hell couldn’t; he just filled up the air time with what a great guy you are.’

  The violence of her words, the way she says them, takes him aback. They are glaring at each other, both trembling, both shocked, and it is this shock that frightens them, calms them momentarily.

  ‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ he says after a long moment, but even now he can feel the effort it takes just to keep himself from shouting. ‘Except that there will be a good reason.’

  ‘He said he didn’t know those kids!’

  ‘He only said he didn’t know them well! They could still recognise him! If Neil had a little game going with the older one, it doesn’t mean that he knew her well, it just means he was kind to her, and that’s probably all he meant. That Jasmine remembers him and got all excited is down to Jasmine. Neil made an impact on her, which he would because he’s kind and he’s good with kids. And with Jasmine having learning difficulties, he was probably all the kinder because that’s who he is, Ava. He’s a good bloke, and he’s kind and he’s fair, and I know he seems tough but he’s not. He’s a softy underneath – the reason we’re even friends is because he stepped in to defend me when we were kids. Christ, he pretty much adopted me. Ava, it’s you who’s talked me through so much of why I do what I do. I would’ve thought you’d have the emotional intelligence to realise that Neil is all heart.’

  ‘I’ve always thought that.’ She too is speaking quietly. She too is trembling with the effort of not screaming – or perhaps she’s beginning to see just how crazy she’s being. ‘I love Neil. As a friend. But yesterday morning with Jasmine… and how come he miraculously found Abi’s toy?’

  ‘Oh my God, Ava, he found it on the road! On the road! A cop would have seen him pick it up; there were at least four on the street by then, one of them stationed outside the house. What do you think he did, started Charlie Chaplin whistling and somehow dropped it there in plain sight? I can’t do this, Ava! You can’t do this! You’ll drive yourself mad. You are driving yourself mad. You’re going to end up in hospital again, darling.’ His eyes sting with tears, the hot steam of his rage condensing into droplets. Above all else, he feels so damn sorry for her. He has done this to her. He has broken her.

  ‘Darling,’ he tries again, softly. ‘Ava, my love. Please. You have got to move on. Whatever happens to us, you can’t let one stupid party when we’re all a bit drunk and a bit stressed turn into this… this witch hunt. I was wrong to make you go. You weren’t ready. You’re not ready. I’m sorry.’

  She sighs. ‘There are so many things, things you haven’t spotted. Like, he was so upset that night. And after not speaking to me for a year, it was like he had to speak to me then, and when he did, he was… I don’t know how to say it, but it was like he was too upset…’

  ‘Too upset? What does that even mean? He and Bella are having problems – they’ve lost a baby, more than one baby. That’s why he’s so upset.’

  She sniffs, shakes her head. She won’t look at him and he wonders if she’s finally realised how wrong she is.

  ‘I’m not making any accusations.’ Her voice is watery. ‘I tried to talk to him last night, but today I’m not convinced he answered me properly. He’s very smooth. At the party Bella said he was out all night that night, and when I asked him about that, he said he’d gone back out to look for Abi, which is plausible, I suppose. But another thing that doesn’t add up is that Johnnie and Jen said Neil always came to work before they left the house. Except for that morning. Why would he be at home when he was always at work by that time?’

  He opens his mouth to speak, but it is like trying to board a moving train.

  ‘When I asked him, he made some excuse about getting building supplies from Apex Corner, but don’t you think that’s a bit too much of a coincidence?’ She is speaking faster now, her voice rising. ‘I keep going over and over conversations from the party – Jen, Johnnie, Bella, Neil – asking myself why I’m feeling like this, and I remembered Bella was very insistent that Neil loved Abi no matter what. No matter what – what does that mean?’

  ‘It’s just a figure of speech.’

  ‘They’re all just figures of speech! They’re all just little tiny things. Why would he go out and look for Abi all night and never tell you?’ Her eyes are round; she is barely stopping for breath. ‘That doesn’t make sense. It’s not something you’d keep secret, is it? Do you see what I’m saying? Do you?’

  Matt feels his eyes prickle. His heart is breaking as surely as it did that day. He has tried not to lose her but that’s exactly what’s happening. He is losing her. She is losing herself. He must think, think carefully before he speaks. It’s important to make her feel heard without giving her theories any credence.

  ‘I understand,’ he says slowly. ‘And I can see how you can get to where you’ve got to. But the problem is, you’re filtering it all through trauma. It was traumatic for you to go to that party. Being with Neil and Bella again brought back too many terrible memories and I shouldn’t have made you… I shouldn’t have asked you to go. It was too soon.’

  ‘It’s not about that!’ she shouts, then shakes her head, as if to dispel her temper.

  ‘I’m not saying it is,’ he tries. ‘I’m not saying I don’t believe you or that these things weren’t said, but it’s all completely explainable. Neil didn’t want to see Johnnie again because he hates him. He got angry because he felt patronised. They’ve been going through stuff we didn’t know about and we were all a bit raw because it was the first time we’ve socialised since Abi died—’

  ‘Died? So, what, it’s definite now, is it?’

  ‘No, I… but, Ava… we… The police say they haven’t closed the case, but they have, essentially, haven’t they? There’s no evidence other than that she wandered up to the river, tried to feed the ducks and somehow toppled in. It’s a tragedy, darling, a terrible tragedy, but—’

  ‘But her coat was found the next morning – what if, after Neil left you, he went and threw her in the river at Richmond?’

  ‘Oh for Christ’s sake, stop!’ His hands curl into fists. He is on his feet, standing over her, shouting at her. He can feel the veins in his neck, the heat in his head. He raises his fists, feels the violent grimace setting his jaw. He stops, fists falling, pressing now against his temples. My God, this is not him – it is everything he swore he wouldn’t do. Wouldn’t be.

  ‘Ava,’ he whispers. ‘You’re going to end up back in hospital.’

  ‘You can’t not stick up for him, can you?’ Her voice is quiet, her simmering heat matching his. ‘You can’t no
t put him before me. I’m your wife, Matt, not him. And maybe that’s the problem. Maybe that’s always been the problem.’

  The silence that follows is like lead. He can hear them both breathing in the quiet room.

  ‘Ava,’ he says softly.

  ‘Please go.’ She almost whispers it. ‘Just… go. I’ve told you about their problems, that’s all I intended to say, so now you know. I wish I hadn’t bothered with the rest. I knew you wouldn’t listen. You don’t want to listen.’

  His eyes fill. He can hear the hum of the fridge from the kitchen, the soft out breath of his baby boy. Don’t speak, Matt. Just don’t say anything.

  ‘I’ll be at Neil’s,’ he says.

  ‘Of course you will.’ Default sarcasm. She has turned away from him, will think him cheap, of course, not to stump up even for the Travelodge. And she’ll be privately disgusted at their boys’ conspiracy.

  ‘Maybe we can talk tomorrow?’

  ‘I doubt it.’ She does not turn around.

  He swallows what feels like a hard lump of air. ‘Ava…’

  ‘Matt. I’m begging you. Go. Please.’

  Thirty-Two

  Matt

  ‘Mate.’ Neil holds open his front door.

  Matt steps out of the falling light into a house once familiar, now strange to him. It is over a year since he has been here. July, a barbecue on a Sunday afternoon. A flashing memory – Neil swinging Abi around and around by her arms as she laughed and squealed – hits him like a punch. It feels like a decade ago. It feels like yesterday. Ava was right: Neil and Bella have withdrawn. Much more than he’s realised.

  ‘You OK?’ Neil’s brow furrows.

  ‘Yeah, sorry, just feel a bit weird. I don’t know how I got through work today, to be honest.’

  ‘Yeah, course.’

  The pause that follows is bulky and awkward.

  ‘Bel’s made up the bed in the back bedroom,’ Neil says after a moment. ‘There’s a clean towel. You can stick your stuff there if you want. Do you need anything else?’

  ‘No, that’s great. I’ll go and dump my bag. Cheers.’

  Matt plods up the stairs, feet like rocks. The spare room is clean and smells of freshly laundered bedding. On the wall is a framed architectural drawing – his own, for a converted warehouse on the South Bank, his first big commission. Neil loved this drawing.

  ‘That’s art, that is,’ he said, shaking his head with pride.

  ‘Building it is the art,’ Matt replied.

  Neil asked for a copy, insisted that he was serious. So, on his thirtieth birthday, Matt took it to be framed for him. Now he studies it a moment before sitting on the bed and letting his head fall into his hands, the weight of it threatening to topple him over. When he exhales, his breath is ragged. The last twenty minutes of his life have been amongst the worst, with the obvious exception of that day.

  ‘Mate.’ Neil is calling from the bottom of the stairs. ‘I’m having a beer – do you want one?’

  ‘Yep,’ he calls back. ‘Down in a second.’

  He sighs into the damp palms of his hands. His feet are sweaty; his Marks & Spencer suit clings to his legs, his shirt wet against his armpits. He is alone in his friend’s spare room, sports holdall at his stinking, sweaty feet in the Church’s brogues that Ava bought him when he won a big contract, about three years ago now. Buy a better suit, she told him, she damn well told him – go to Aquascutum, she said. Or Armani. But he didn’t, didn’t spend the money, because, essentially, he must have known deep down that his high-street suit was good enough. When she bought him those beautiful shoes, he read pride, but what he reads now is hope, her hope that he would one day rid himself of the smallness she always saw in him, shake off the mediocrity and, with her love, become bigger, a bigger man. A better man.

  A vain hope, as it turns out.

  He wants to take his shoes off but he cannot stand the stink of his own feet, let alone inflict it on someone else.

  He stands up and looks out of the back window onto Neil and Bella’s garden while he attempts to compose himself. That sunny Sunday afternoon, a little over a year ago, seems like the most impossible idyll. Ava sitting in the shade fanning herself with a place mat. He remembers he complained about a headache when they got home. He’d been running in the morning and had not drunk enough water – it was Ava who pointed this out with weary maternal indulgence, as she would whenever he didn’t take the most basic steps to look after himself. The way she looked at him then said: you are so childish, but I love you.

  She loved him. Despite his limitations, she loved him. And now she doesn’t.

  But he loves her. He loves her, even in her reduced state, because she was extraordinary and he knows she can be that again. His love for her is still in the present. Hers is in the past. It ended yesterday.

  So much love has been lost. There was so bloody much of it that day, here in this garden. Love between couples, between families, between friends – it didn’t seem like so much then, but now… now of course the simple fact of them being together like that is everything. Abi squealing, No, NeeNee, no! as Neil spun her around, giggling when afterwards she couldn’t stand up without falling down, Neil catching her when she fell, tickling her to the ground.

  ‘Neil,’ Ava said, breaking off her conversation with Bella. ‘She’s saying no. She’s telling you to stop.’

  He carried on. No, NeeNee, no!

  And Ava rose from her chair. ‘Neil, seriously. If she says no, you have to stop, OK?’

  Only then did he stop, blowing at his hair, his face red with the exertion.

  Abi ran away giggling, fell over, got up, ran back to her mum. Ava smiled and pulled her up onto her knee, made her drink some water in the shade.

  Jasmine recognised Abi’s toy. Ava had never seen Jasmine until the night of the party. Jasmine associated the toy with Neil. Did Neil see Abi that morning? Is it possible that he saw her, played a game, chase, maybe, meaning only to make her laugh but—

  ‘Mate?’ Neil’s one-word question sails up to him, making his cheeks burn.

  ‘Sorry,’ he shouts, pulling himself away from the window. ‘I’m coming now.’

  Thirty-Three

  Ava

  The front door closes with a dull click. The sigh that leaves me is long and heavy. I feel tired. Tired and unfathomably sad.

  Fred wakes and begins to cry. I lift him, put him to my breast and feel myself drift. More memories of the party come back to me in flashes: Jen’s kind eyes, her naturalness, her sympathy. She has been the only stable point, outside family – standing at a distance, a point on the horizon. When the press receded, when the investigation was scaled back, when the lasagnas and casseroles and lemon drizzles ceased, she was still there, always with hand-tied flowers or a small wrap of posh chocolates, sometimes staying for coffee, sometimes not – knowing which to do out of some empathic sixth sense. She has never hidden from asking how things were, has never shied away from the bottomless dreadfulness of it all. More than once she has sat with me and held my hand, in silence, for long minutes until the depthless sadness became its own kind of peace.

  I think of her and Johnnie standing together. A power couple, I suppose you’d call them. I can’t put her together with him at all, but then I suppose, other people’s relationships are always mysteries to those outside them.

  In my silent house, Johnnie’s words return to me: Always there bright and early before we even left for work, wasn’t he, Jen?

  But he wasn’t. The day, the one day my daughter disappeared, he wasn’t. He went for building supplies. Did he? It’s possible. He was at home. I banged on his door. That morning. That ticking metronome morning. That accelerating crescendo of panic. I run out onto the street. I run about, hysterical, my chest a banging drum. Abi. Abi, Abi, Abi. Did I ring on the Lovegoods’ door? I might have done. Then or later. I can’t remember. I wish I’d known Jen then. She would have helped. She would have known what to do.

  Abi’s toy
. Mr Sloth.

  Could Jasmine have seen it another day? Would one of her school friends have one? Is it like Matt said, she calls all her toys Mr or Mrs?

  Ava, stop. You’re desperate, reading signs where there are none. Neil is your friend. He is Matt’s childhood friend, his best friend.

  Neil is solid. Neil is a safe pair of hands. Neil fixes problems.

  I try to focus on the soft black sweep of Fred’s eyelashes, the barely perceptible rhythm of him sucking. I try to keep the moment pure, but still the sense of something more presses in. How difficult that Sunday must have been for them both. Then the next morning, that morning, Neil’s panic-stricken face when he answered the door. As if he already knew.

  Ava, stop.

  I lift Fred from my breast and push my face into his soft Babygro. Stop. Stop. There is nothing here, nothing at all. Look away. Neil and Bella had their own troubles that day, troubles you now know about, troubles they’re still dealing with. Come on. Of course he looked concerned when he answered the door. You were battering on it, for God’s sake, shouting through the letter box. He answered it with precisely the expression you would wear if someone was banging on your front door and shouting for help.

  He found her toy.

  Stop.

  He was out all night.

  Stop it, Ava.

  Would Jasmine even know the word for sloth?

  Stop, stop, stop.

  What would Barbara say? Stay logical. It isn’t about you. How others behave is rarely about you.

  Against my shoulder, my baby boy’s tiny body rises and falls. A human being at peace, in blissful ignorance of the horror of all that his parents have been through. What must that be like, to be at peace? Is Abi at peace? My eyes fill. Bella’s tipsy face swims in my mind’s eye.