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

by S. E. Lynes

  But that doesn’t stop him picking at it. Thinking about how, gladly, without a moment’s hesitation, he would give all that he owns to reverse time, to go back, to put it right. Bella, yes, even Bella. He would start his life again from scratch. He knows how to do it, knows he can. The castle he built is rubble at his feet. It wasn’t, was never, worth this. Every time he closes his eyes, he’s back there, back to that terrible morning, that dusty shell of a room, picking up Abi’s tiny body, running, cradling her, laying her gently in the bag. Her pale, lifeless face; the touch of her eyelids on the ends of his fingers. The worst is pulling the zip closed over her, half choking, her face blurring. That terrible, terrible morning.

  ‘Oh God. My little darling; my beautiful little girl.’

  He stands, wipes his eyes, takes shallow breaths, over and over, gasping for air. He crosses the site and looks back. All he can see is a work site, tools, a tool bag. He will figure out what to do in a moment. He just needs the Lovegoods to leave.

  He picks up the toy, leaves the site, locks the door behind him. One hand on the kitchen door handle, he pushes his forehead against the glass and lets out a long, ragged breath.

  ‘Pockets.’

  Startled, he turns. Jasmine, her face alight with that smile of hers, her mischievous way. He has such a soft spot for her, the way she repeats everything he says, the fact that he has to do so little to make her laugh. It is all he can do to compose himself. His heart batters against his ribs. It feels like it’s about to come right out of his chest.

  ‘Hello, Jasmine,’ he manages.

  ‘Hello, Jasmine, hello, Jasmine.’ She shifts from foot to foot, waving her hands at him and smiling.

  Beyond her, he can hear Jennifer out on the drive, bustling little Cosima into her car seat.

  ‘Pockets!’ Jasmine is pointing at the toy.

  ‘This is Mr Sloth,’ he replies helplessly, tears running down his face now. ‘Say hello to Mr Sloth.’

  ‘Say hello to Mr Sloth, say hello to Mr Sloth, say hello to Mr Sloth.’

  He knows the word for this; Jennifer told him last week: echolalia.

  ‘Mr Sloth. Mr Sloth. Pockets.’ Jasmine throws back her head and laughs.

  ‘Jasmine?’ Jennifer calls from the driveway.

  Neil pushes his finger to his lips. ‘Shh,’ he says. ‘I can’t do Mr Sloth pockets today, darling, I’m sorry.’ He waves. ‘I’ll do Mr Sloth pockets another day.’ He slides into the utility room, closes himself inside, silently. Ear pressed to the door, he listens.

  ‘Mr Sloth pockets another day,’ Jasmine is almost singing, repeating, her voice coming closer, closer now.

  He grabs the door handle just in time. Feels it shudder in his hand as she tries to open the door from the other side.

  ‘Mr Sloth pockets another day,’ she says, shaking the door handle. ‘Pockets, pockets, pockets.’

  A line of sweat runs from his forehead.

  ‘Pockets isn’t here yet, darling.’ Jennifer’s voice is near. She’s come back into the house. She’s right on the other side of the door. He clamps his mouth shut, closes his eyes.

  ‘Pockets, pockets,’ Jasmine says. The door handle trembles, loosens against the palm of his hand.

  ‘We’ll see him later, darling.’ Jennifer sounds like she’s back at the front door, coaxing her daughter outside. ‘Come on, darling – let’s get in the car now. Daddy’s waiting.’

  ‘Pockets.’ Jasmine too is quieter. She’s heading out of the house.

  The front door slams shut. A long breath leaves him. He thinks he hears Jasmine half singing his nickname over and over again before the car door closes with a thunk. Another few seconds and the deep roar of serious horsepower fades to nothing.

  He gasps, sobs against the door. What has he done what has he done what has he done?

  Professional negligence, manslaughter, his lifelong friendship over, his wife a stranger, his business ruined, his reputation in tatters, his place in the town he’s lived in all his life gone forever. His castle. Everything he’s built, he will lose.

  He will lose Bella.

  He will lose Matt, his mates, his mum, his sister, his niece and nephew.

  He will lose everything.

  All he can do now is take control.

  All he can do now is fix it.

  All he can do now is… is what?

  He creeps down the hall, opens the Lovegoods’ front door a crack.

  There is no one about. He checks the upstairs windows. No, no one. He runs as far as the kerb, throws the toy into the gutter, legs it back inside. He closes the door, pushes his hands to his knees and slides to the floor. He is hyperventilating, crying and cringing. Please God let no one have seen him do that. Please God don’t let this be the end of him. Little Abi, his darling little Abi, it’s not possible, it can’t have happened, it can’t be happening. For a moment, she is still alive. He’s got it wrong. When he goes back and checks, she will wake and look at him in confusion.

  ‘NeeNee,’ she will say. She will wonder what she’s doing there.

  He will take her in his arms and carry her back to her mother. Here, Ava, look who I found, cheeky monkey. No. No, he won’t, because she’s gone; he knows it’s impossible just as he knows it’s true. But nothing good can come of coming clean. Nothing nothing nothing good can come of coming clean nothing good can come nothing good nothing nothing oh God oh God oh God.

  ‘Abi!’

  Ava. Ava is on the street. He checks his watch. Holy Christ, he’s been here over ten minutes, caught in some sort of daze.

  ‘Abi? Abi, darling, where are you?’

  A rivulet of sweat runs from his forehead; the salt and grease sting his eyeballs. His breath comes fast, faster; the air thin.

  ‘Abi? Abi!’

  This is hell. This is what hell is and he’s in it. There is no way out. All he can do now is fix it. All he can do now is take control. He has to work fast.

  Back in the work site, he clears the trench in one stride and studies the bag. He’ll have to get it out of here but the street is too risky. The back of the house is open. The gardens on this street are long. Should he take the bag now? Whatever, he can’t be here. No one apart from Jasmine knows he’s here.

  The bag.

  He picks it up, weighs it. It is heavy. Big. There’s no way he’ll get it to his own house if he goes the back way – he’ll have to sneak behind the sheds and that’ll be a tight squeeze as it is, and there’s no way he can throw her over the fences. No way. On his own, he can, he reckons, get back to his house. He’s done it enough times as a lad, fence-hopping through gardens much smaller than these for a dare.

  He puts the bag back on the concrete floor, the beginnings of a plan forming in his mind.

  The police will be here soon enough. Ava will start to panic. And only now does he wonder how the hell Abi got into the Lovegoods’ house.

  The front door, of course. That wasn’t him; that was fucking Johnnie, fucking idiot. She would have seen it open and she would have known he was in here because she’s seen him coming in and out these last few weeks. She must have toddled in looking for him. For him, oh God. For Uncle NeeNee. It must have all happened in seconds, split seconds. But how did she get out of her own house, unless… unless Ava left her front door open too.

  Not one door left open then. Not two. But three.

  And he’s only to blame for one of them. There’s no way he could have known. If it’s his mistake, it’s Ava’s too. And Johnnie’s.

  Enough.

  None of that matters.

  What matters is now, what he does now.

  Think. Think, Neil.

  He studies the bag. Steels himself. Opens it and removes Abi’s hat. Then, cringing, her little coat. He needs to lay a trail. A plan forms in his mind. The coat he wraps in a dirty work towel and stuffs it into the washing machine. It is too big, too blue to hide in his pocket. He’ll come back for it later. The hat. The hat he can place. But he needs to be quick.r />
  He runs out of the open work site, climbs over the Lovegoods’ back fence, lands in the flower bed of the flats beyond. His heart bangs. If Johnnie for some reason comes back to check on him…

  Stop thinking. Just act.

  He crouches and runs, like that, eyeing the windows of the flats. It is the work of seconds and he is out on Thameside Lane, almost opposite the Oasis. He could drop the hat here and run back. The traffic is light. He spots a young mother pushing a buggy, her son in a school uniform on a scooter about five metres ahead. They’re early. Some pre-school club maybe. He waits.

  When they’re far enough down towards the school, he walks calmly across the road. Sits on the wall by the leisure centre. A car passes. Then nothing. All he needs is this second. He drops the hat and he’s back, back across the road, back into the flats’ bushy overgrowth. He scales the fence. Back in the Lovegoods’ garden, he studies the work site. It looks normal, like nothing has happened, but still, a doubt about the bag has him running back. It’s closed. He closed it. It will have to hide in plain sight. There’s no way he can risk being seen carrying it out now.

  He’s about to grab the coat and get the hell out when he glances down at the trench. He should wash it, he knows. If they bring forensics in here, they could pick up some trace of something he can’t see. Yes. He should wash it. Quickly.

  He detaches the washing machine from the standpipe and uses it to fill his bucket, along with some of the Lovegoods’ detergent. Down on his hands and knees, he sponges the sides of the trench, the base of the trench, rubbing hard, hoping the water dries before anyone looks in. He can’t see any blood – she must have cracked her head and that was it. He washes the floor of the site, washes the hallway, up to the front door.

  Sweating hard, he empties the bucket into the flower bed and stashes it back behind the washing machine. The detergent he places carefully, adjusts it, thinks it’s in exactly the same position. He reconnects the washing machine, stands back and takes one last look.

  It looks OK. He could walk out now, but no, someone will see him. It’s better if he was never here. If he goes the back way, he can return for her later, walk straight in the front door, as if to collect his tools. Hopefully before the police get here. It’s not perfect but it’s all he’s got.

  He runs to the back fence, hides a moment behind the dilapidated shed. A quick scan of the bedroom windows – no one, so far as he can make out. There’s no time to wait; he’ll have to take his chance.

  He climbs, jumps, lands in Ava and Matt’s back garden. He is behind their shed, panting, when he hears Ava again, this time close by.

  ‘Abi? Are you in the garden?’

  She is metres away. He hears the crackle of something underfoot as she paces up the lawn.

  ‘Abi?’ She is closer still.

  He holds his breath, his palms flat against the sap-sticky back of the shed. Oh God.

  ‘Abi?’ Her voice alters as she pushes her face to the window of the shed. She is so near. The urge to make himself known, to throw himself at her feet and tell her what’s happened almost overwhelms him. A wincing sound escapes him. He closes his eyes tight, as if by not seeing he will become unseen. Her footsteps recede, her calls growing distant. A moment later, the back door slides shut with a low roll and a soft thud.

  ‘Oh God,’ he breathes.

  Another second, sweating, panting, he clears the next fence. Again he is hidden behind a shed, the cramped space strung with cobwebs and dropped pine needles. He was right. These spaces are small, too small to bring the bag over this way. And he cannot wait until dark. He will have to take it out later in plain sight, as if it’s simply a bag of tools. There’s no choice. He’ll have to stash it somewhere until the heat dies down. It. Her. Abi. His little darling.

  One, two, three, seven, eight, ten fences. He is crying, he is sweating, his T-shirt drenched, his overalls torn where he caught them on a nail. He reaches his own back garden – his super-shed on its perfectly level concrete base, his garden furniture, the brick barbecue he made.

  Bella will have left for work.

  He hopes.

  He digs his keys from his overalls pocket, unlocks the back door, opens it. The house is still, silent. But even so, he calls out to his wife.

  No reply.

  His phone is on the table. He texts Adam, his labourer, tells him the concrete mix hasn’t arrived, to not bother coming till Wednesday. Two days, to be sure.

  Another idea comes to him. He thumbs a WhatsApp to the group Jennifer set up.

  Hi J and J. Just to let you know I’ll be in a bit later today – have to pick up some stuff from the builders’ merchants. Best, N.

  He studies it a moment. It sounds like him, yes; he’s pretty sure it sounds like him. He presses send.

  He strips naked and loads every item into the washing machine, finds where Bel keeps the detergent and sets it to wash. Up the stairs three at a time. Under the shower, he scrubs himself near raw, biting down hard on his bottom lip, forcing himself to stay in the moment. He can’t lose it. He has to keep focused.

  He dries himself and puts on fresh clothes, clean white overalls. He is still panting like a racehorse, still crying, still stopping himself from crying. Everything is loud, everything throbs in his head. He has no idea what he’s doing, is as clear-eyed as a gunman. His focus terrifies him. He blows out a long jet of air, his jaw clamped shut.

  A hammering at the door.

  ‘Neil? Bel? It’s Ava. Help. I need help.’

  He steels himself. A second, two. Come on, Neil. You have to do this.

  He runs downstairs, inhales, opens the door.

  ‘Have you got Abi?’ Ava’s face is a mask of total terror.

  It is a mirror.

  Forty-Two

  Ava

  Lorraine Stephens and Sharon Farnham are on the doorstep. Farnham cocks her head briefly towards next door. Matt reaches for my hand.

  ‘OK,’ Farnham says. ‘Your neighbours have gone to a hotel. Are you sure I can’t persuade you to spend the day with someone?’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘We want to be here. We want to be here when they find her.’

  ‘Yes, thanks. We prefer to stay.’ Matt lifts the knot of our hands to his mouth. I feel his tears on my fingers. I can’t put my arm around him because we are tied together.

  ‘Shall we step inside a moment?’ Farnham says.

  They follow us into the kitchen. None of us sits down.

  ‘We knew she was in that house,’ I say. ‘At the party. We both sensed she was there.’

  ‘That’s understandable,’ Lorraine says. ‘Often what we almost know comes from lots of little things we haven’t quite put together. It’s possible part of you always thought your friend had something to do with Abi’s disappearance, even where he might have hidden her. Some things are so unthinkable we… we don’t or can’t think them so they become feelings instead.’

  ‘Will they be careful?’ I ask.

  ‘As I said last night, please be reassured that they’ll be very careful,’ Farnham says. ‘They’re experts, and remember she’ll be protected by the bag.’

  ‘But how will they know where she is? Exactly, I mean?’

  ‘Mr Johnson—’

  ‘Neil’s going to be there?’ Matt interrupts. I feel his body bristle; his hand tighten around mine.

  Farnham shakes her head. ‘No, he’s drawn a plan of the kitchen and marked the place. Please try not to think about it too much. We’ll be as careful as we possibly can, all right?’ She looks at her feet, briefly, before turning to leave.

  ‘Detective,’ Matt says. ‘Would I be able to talk to Neil? Can I call him?’

  She shakes her head. ‘No, sorry. It’s… that would be inappropriate.’

  He nods, too hard. ‘Of course. Sorry. Yeah. And he won’t be here at any stage?’

  She shakes her head, her expression weary. ‘As I said, we have the drawings and he’s marked—’

  ‘The place. Of cour
se. You just said that. Sorry. Thanks. Thank you.’

  ‘I’ll see myself out, all right? I’ll be in touch.’

  Lorraine wanders over to the kettle, as if on autopilot.

  Matt covers his eyes. He has a cold sore at the corner of his mouth. We have not slept at all – lying on the bed talking it over endlessly, trying to make sense of the surreal and grisly events Farnham relayed to us last night. There is no sense to be made. It is senseless. A tragic accident caused by our friend’s negligence, a hand grenade he tried to throw away only to create a time bomb. That bomb has exploded now, of course. It has destroyed all of us and everything we were to one another.

  My eyes drift to the black bin bag on the kitchen floor. In it, last night’s rage: broken ornaments, a ripped dress of Abi’s, a traditional teddy bear holding a heart cut into pieces with scissors, a smashed bottle of champagne, its contents left to glug, fizzing, down the drain. All gifts from Neil and Bella. There is a cracked picture frame in there too – a photograph of an Elvis impersonator with his arms around the four of us, taken at a curry house in Twickenham, dug out and ripped into shreds.

  I did this, all of it.

  If I had to say how I feel now, I’d say I don’t know. Neither of us knows how we feel. Adrift is as near as we can get. Our daughter is lost. She is dead. And with her death, we have lost our friends, our life here.

  Last night, when he was on his way to the spare room, I called to Matt.

  ‘Hey,’ I said. ‘Sleep in here.’

  ‘Of course.’ He climbed in beside me and held me.

  ‘This doesn’t mean we’re together,’ I sobbed into his shoulder. ‘I still hate you.’

  ‘I know,’ he whispered into my hair. ‘I get it.’

  ‘Best thing to do is stay as comfortable as you can,’ Lorraine says now as we sit on high stools, burnt-out in the falling ash of ourselves. ‘Let’s go into in the living room, shall we?’

  We move to the front of the house, all of us tacit in the knowledge that the noise will come from the rear. Through the front window, we see the van arrive. Men in helmets and protective gear, ear defenders hooked around their necks, bring out electric drills. Matt draws the curtains closed. I don’t stop him.