The House of Secrets

by Sophie Draper

  The early morning light casts long shadows through the trees, shafts of shimmering gold between the black. My chest is burning. I have to stop to lean against a tree. I drag the chill air into my burning lungs and my fingers curl against the rough bark. Somewhere in the distance is the scream of a fox.

  The path leads directly to the shore. I run and for the first time I am not afraid. The woods are filled with the vivid scent of wet moss and dry pine and I hear my own heartbeat thudding in my chest. I feel my upper body lift, my chest no longer in pain. My arms and legs are pumping with a strong purposeful rhythm as I dodge the trees and power across the uneven ground. I only stop when I reach the shore and the closest point to the island.

  A last hub of mist lingers around the old tower. It fills the void where there should be only water. I am so close, I can see the individual strands of ivy, the green ferns that hang between the gaps in the stonework, the bold, intrusive shape of its staggered, bleeding walls.

  The path has disappeared behind me. I’ve been following the hidden animal tracks, worn away over time. I am the same as them, the creatures of this woodland, pure instinct, blood and flesh made good. As I look out across the water, I feel more alive than I have ever been. I can’t see Duncan. Where has he gone?

  Instead, I see all around me creatures along the shore. Deer pushing through the undergrowth, a family of badgers on the bank. There are cows and sheep that flick their ears, and on the water, ducks and geese that swim out from the reeds and spin around to face me.

  I don’t feel threatened. A buzzard swoops low over the reservoir, its long shadow streaking past the island. Its cry is like a call to all the others.

  She’s here.

  The sun warms my deadened skin. It’s the first time I’ve felt warm in a long time, my fingers tingling. But it’s the cold reservoir that holds my gaze. It’s sparkling clear and I can see something through the water. A solid shape of gleaming metal, three windows still intact and a swell of fish that slip and slither in the murk – the remnants of my car.

  The metal roof is crumpled and bent, the wheels torn and shredded. The doors and bonnet are scratched and dented as if the whole thing has been dragged by the intermittent currents this way and that. The car is draped with brown and green weeds like a beggar cloaked in rags. One of the rear doors has been wrenched open and on the back seat is a body.

  I feel my blood chill. I don’t want to look. I don’t want to remember that last sight of my son. I don’t want to see what’s inside.

  I feel a shadow cross my back. I turn round.

  ‘Duncan?’

  But it’s not Duncan. It’s someone else.

  I stumble backwards. It’s the man from the village, my landlord, the rider. I cast a look across to the island. It is so much closer now and I see people crowding on the bank. The old woman and a host of others I don’t recognise, a strangely mismatched congregation standing in the old church openings. The wind tangles long threads of riverweed over their heads and the sun shines through the building, giving colour to their old and faded clothes. The woman from the village lifts one hand and smiles at me. My mouth opens as if to speak, but I can’t bring myself to say the words.

  And all the time my eyes are drawn back towards the car and the shape slumped over on the back seat.

  I vaguely think about the crumpled mess that is my car. My car – Duncan chose my car so that his would stay squeaky clean. I hope he thinks about that, that he broods on it every single day.

  ‘I don’t think you’ll be driving that again,’ says the Puppetrider.

  I follow his gaze. To the car and the body trapped within. It’s not Joe. I feel the joy of it sweep through my body. He’s alive! I’ve got this all wrong. I remember now, he got out, after me, after the car sank to the bottom of the reservoir, after the water pressure equalised and the door could finally be released.

  My eyes swing back to the tree with its flowers. The blue-and-white ribbons that flutter in the breeze. No, I’m not sure. Doubt clouds my heart. My memory deceives me. My joy plummets. It took too long, Joe trapped on the back seat. He panicked, struggling with his seatbelt. Duncan didn’t realise. And I couldn’t help Joe. I couldn’t get him out. I tried and tried, finally pushing my way through the gap, but by the time I got the belt loose and the door open, it was too late.

  After. Somehow Joe’s body must have floated away, drifting on the currents towards the spillway. It must have been sucked down into the tunnels until it wedged up against a wall, where it waited all those weeks. Lost. Missing. Until the old waterworks were flooded again, the first time in a long time, and it was released.

  Then it drifted once more until it found the muddy banks, his body stuck, his limbs floating out like riverweed, blank, sightless eyes staring through the green murk of the water. Joining the rest of them, these people who stand around me, who were buried at the bottom of our garden.

  All this time that I’ve been searching, inhabiting the cottage that should have been mine … hoping to find Joe … to understand my loss …

  Haunting the valley.

  That’s finished, I know it now. I only have to go to that island to find him. It’s not Joe’s body resting on the back seat of that car. Nor anyone else’s.

  It’s mine.

  CHAPTER 75

  DUNCAN – AFTER

  Duncan stood by the tree on the road, overlooking the reservoir. The water was still swathed in drifting fog. It seemed to him to have been like that ever since the accident.

  He’d placed the flowers there every week since that day. Carnations, chrysanthemums, alstroemeria and zinnia – flowers that last. For Claire. And sunflowers, big and bold and full of life. For Joe.

  His hand reached out to the flowers, letting the petals drop between his fingers. Grey and dry, they fluttered down like shreds of burnt paper. Like an illicit love letter thrown then snatched too late from the fire.

  Claire must have hated him in the end. Those last hours filled with a burning resentment over Sally. Their feelings had simmered, had done long before that, waiting to come to the boil, the atmosphere in the house like a volcano about to explode. And all the time, Joe had watched and waited with trepidation, not knowing what to say, what to do, or where to go. What did you expect a kid of that age to do, to feel?

  Why had he, Duncan, slept with all those women? Why had he married Claire? Why had things panned out the way they had, that first summer after Claire and he had graduated from university? They had both suffered a cruel twist of fate. Life was a sequence of never-ending choices, a decision table, this way, that way, yes or no. But not all of it was under your control. And the arrows never pointed back the way you’d come. Time doesn’t work like that.

  Claire had said it was his fault, their combined misery. That she’d lost her career, her independence. She’d trusted him, loved him, and he’d let her down. But she had made her choices too. She should have accepted responsibility for that, not blamed it all on him.

  After the accident, things with Sally had changed. His fault, not hers. He’d kept her distant, just like he had Claire. Sally’s status had been unclear, he got that – the other woman. It was made worse by the fact Sally worked at the surgery and further complicated by her being Martin’s daughter. Duncan had just lost his wife and son. It was not the time to stir things up and go public. Let alone trigger a confrontation with Martin.

  Duncan had been like a wounded animal, snapping and biting at those who would help. He was confused, filled with guilt and self-loathing. Everyone had said it was a dreadful tragedy. But to Duncan, it had been the culmination of all of his infidelities, the bickering and tension, his deliberate withdrawal of affection for Claire, his failure to consider the impact of all that on Joe. It was even down to his choices on that day. If only they’d driven in his new car, with its winter tyres and traction. If only he hadn’t asked Claire to ring Sally. If only he’d not been out of control, angry, worried about Arthur, driving too fast for the conditi
ons. If only it hadn’t snowed like that. Or the dog had never been run over in the first place. Or they’d never had the dog at all. If Garfield had been a better owner, if, if …

  One split second when before was ‘normal’ and everything was okay.

  And after, when everything was not.

  After that day, he’d functioned but didn’t feel. Ignoring his pain, seeking distraction where he could, just as he had before. Denial, anger, work, it was the only way he knew to cope. He was aware that he was alienating people. He didn’t deserve their patience, their kindness or Sally’s love. She was gone now and he knew she wouldn’t change her mind. Would she tell Martin? Probably not.

  Time – isn’t that what everyone said? Time will heal. That’s a load of bollocks, he thought. Time doesn’t heal, ever.

  The police had recovered the car within twenty-four hours, along with the body of his wife and Arthur, their pet dog. But not Joe. Somehow Joe’s body had floated free of the car once one of the rear doors had drifted open. Duncan had had to live with the knowledge that he hadn’t been able to save any of them.

  The police search hadn’t stopped; Martin had said they would find Joe eventually. That moment had come. He knew forensics would soon officially confirm that the body they’d found was Joe.

  It was a good thing. The thought of his son’s body lost in the reservoir had been agonising. Now Duncan could cremate his son and take his ashes to scatter alongside those of his wife and dog, from the dam.

  Something small glittered at his feet, half submerged in the mud. Duncan reached down and picked it up. It was a coin.

  Using his finger and thumb, he washed it briefly in the water. On one side was the head of an emperor, with an arrowhead poking from the eye socket. On the other was a half-skeleton rider on a horse. The Rider. The Puppetrider.

  Duncan stared at it. Claire had said that Joe had found the coin. It must have fallen from his son’s pocket into the water. There was no hoard. Never had been. Duncan had already made it clear to Ray Turner and his friends that he didn’t want them anywhere near his land. Or Martin would intervene.

  But Duncan knew what it was. That rider figure on the coin. Curiosity had prompted him to look it up after he’d placed it beside Evangeline. The Puppetrider was a strange pagan character. Academics were undecided as to whom or what he was. Something akin to Charon the ferryman, perhaps, the mythical figure who guides the dead to their proper place of rest. A collector of lost souls, or hunter, chasing down those newly departed not yet accepting of their fate. Helping them to move on.

  Duncan contemplated the coin, letting his fingers feel the shape of the pattern embossed in the metal.

  He closed his eyes. He squeezed them tight, still refusing to let himself cry. He didn’t deserve that release. One day, maybe, given time. When he was finally ready to forgive himself. But he did forgive her.

  Raising the coin to his lips, he kissed it. For Joe, he thought. He held the coin close and then kissed it again. For Claire.

  Then he threw it far out across the water.

  Acknowledgements

  I feel I have grown to know Derbyshire a little better in the writing of this book. Living here and watching the way the countryside changes over the course of the seasons was a part of what inspired the ideas for this book. As were the tools of my oral storytelling trade, the way people communicate, empathise, each listener interpreting a story in their own way according to their own life experiences and mindset. It got me thinking about how perspectives differ, stories grow and mistakes are made that can suddenly spin out of control. And the damage that can do.

  There are two interconnected folk tales that spawned the initial idea. One story tells of how a vicar confronts the pagan beliefs that linger in his village. He is asked by his parishioners to preach a sermon ‘to the dead’. He indulges them, and on New Year’s Eve is horrified to see his church filled with the newly dead, including those who will die in the coming year. One of which is him. That village was Derwent Village, itself drowned in the creation of Ladybower Reservoir, to the north of Derbyshire. Later, the village church was said to reappear when the water levels reduced, and its bells heard tolling in the water when the water levels were high. This, despite the fact the church was demolished after it was first revealed by a drought. I took those ideas and transposed them to a valley near to where I live. Add to that the sad story of St Bertram (mentioned in the book), and the haze of wet weather that hangs over our own house on the hill in autumn and spring, and the ideas began to fuse.

  Writing a second book under contract is a very different experience to writing your first one out of contract – less time, more intense, with deadlines and a formal editing process – I have found it exciting and inspiring to work with the team at Avon. My sincere thanks go to my editor Rachel Faulkner-Willcocks and to Tilda McDonald who took over towards the end as Rachel went on her maternity leave. It’s been a delight to work with and involve the team in feedback right from the early stages of the book. I’d like to thank Claire Pickering, my copy editor; that last stage is like a final polish, very satisfying, and her eagle eyes spotted so much that I missed. My sincere thanks too, go to Sabah Khan, Molly Walker-Sharp, the HarperCollins Canada team and Emma Pallant (who narrated the audio book of The Stranger in Our Home, bringing it to life so wonderfully). And to everyone else who I haven’t perhaps met but who have still been involved in the production and marketing of both The Stranger in Our Home and The House of Secrets. I couldn’t ask for a more supportive, and kindly, environment to write in.

  I also wanted to thank those bloggers, readers and fellow authors who supported The Stranger in Our Home when it first came out. There are too many to name each of you but I was overwhelmed by the support with tweets and reviews as the book was launched, and very appreciative of the time people took to read the book and comment on it. I have particularly enjoyed all those little messages and kind words that came my way from readers. They motivate me each day, thank you. For a new author, it has been brilliant and exciting and nerve-wracking all at the same time.

  I have to mention and thank my friends and fellow #Doomsbury writers: Roz Watkins, Fran Dorricott, Louise Trevatt and Jo Jakeman. Our journeys each continue, and Lou’s work with rescued dogs inspires. I hope a little bit of her love for dogs is in this book too. I’d like to thank Coleen Coxon and Gemma Allen for being early beta readers for The House of Secrets and for their ongoing generosity, kindness and support.

  I also had invaluable advice from a couple of police contacts which has been very much appreciated. I promised not to name you but my thanks are nonetheless there.

  Finally, my thanks go to my family – my husband Rob, and our boys: Ben, Jamie and Jasper. And to my parents, Ronald and Irene. Their interest and on-going support and patience has meant the world to me and kept me going through what was a difficult year. Not because of the writing, but those other things that we encounter in life. For me, that included breaking both my legs in the summer (and being unable to walk or drive for months), and then later, the very sad loss of my sister Anne. I am sure this has influenced The House of Secrets. As the first draft took shape, and later with editing, I experienced both grief and a sense of isolation, and the realisation that life, with all its troubles, is to some extent just what happens. It may be framed and moulded by our response but some things still remain outside our control.

  At the front of this book, I have dedicated it to each of my much-loved boys, as per my original plan. But this book is also dedicated, with love always, to my sister, Anne.

  Keep Reading …

  She’s not your mother …

  The haunting psychological thriller with a twist.

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  About the Author

  Sophie Draper won the Bath Novel Award 2017 with her debut novel The Stranger in Our Home. She also won the Friday Night Live competition at the York Festival of Writing 2017. She lives in Derbyshire, where The Stranger in Our Home
and The House of Secrets are both set. Under the name Sophie Snell she works as a traditional oral storyteller.

  www.sophiedraper.co.uk

  @sophiedraper9

  facebook.com/SophieDraperAuthor

  By the same author:

  The Stranger in Our Home

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