Cuckoo: A haunting psychological thriller you need to read this Christmas

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‘Hello!’ I said.

The assistant looked only a little younger than me.

‘Can I help you?’ she said, smiling.

‘Er …’ I stood there mulling over what to get. Even the bacon rinds were perfectly aligned to show the stamp printed on the skin.

‘I’m sorry,’ the assistant said, ‘but do I know you?’

I looked up. Perhaps she knew me from school but I didn’t know her. I struggled to picture faces from the playground.

‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘I used to live here years ago. Up at Larkstone Farm when I was a kid.’ I didn’t know why but the words came reluctantly to my lips.

‘Oh.’ She fell quiet. Then, ‘I’ll be right back.’ And she disappeared through a door to the rear of the shop.

I lifted my head, annoyance prickling. A man appeared, a large stained apron covering the expanse of his belly. He was followed by the assistant and the two exchanged glances as they entered the room. Did they know me? They must have known Elizabeth. Had they seen me at the funeral? The other faces there had been a blur, my thoughts mostly concentrated on Elizabeth and Steph. The woman stepped back to allow the man to take over.

‘We’re closed,’ he said.

‘Oh?’

I was taken aback. It seemed unlikely that the butcher’s would be closed at this time of day, with the door open and inviting.

‘Phone order,’ the man said. ‘We’ve got a large phone order. You’ll have to come back later or go to the supermarket.’ He nodded towards over the road.

He was clearly lying. What on earth? I stood there, dumbfounded.

‘Um, sure.’

I left the shop and turned back to look through the window. The butcher and his assistant were talking. The woman lifted her head towards me and there was something about her expression. I felt a flush of embarrassment, like I’d been caught stealing. Anger swept over me. Closed, really? What was their problem?

I crossed the road to the Co-op. A small queue gathered at the desk. I lowered my head, flipping up my hood, still aware of the heat on my cheeks. So much for company, now I felt the need to hide. I picked up a basket and headed down the aisle; it didn’t take long to choose what I wanted. As a last thought, I grabbed a couple of tins of cat food and made for the till.

‘Hello, Sheila, two packets of your usual?’

The assistant was addressing a middle-aged woman in front of me. She turned to pluck two cigarette boxes from the shelf behind her.

‘Thanks, Em,’ said the customer. ‘And a book of stamps.’

‘First or second?’

‘Oh, second will do. Have you heard? We think we’ve found it.’

I wondered what it was.

‘Yes, Pete was in a minute ago. Crying shame.’ The assistant opened the till, fishing for the stamps.

‘The sheep must have got run over last night. Some idiot driving too fast.’

I winced. A sheep hitting a car would have been nasty, for both parties.

‘Pete’s really angry, he loves his animals.’ The woman opened her purse.

‘Where did he find it?’ The assistant seemed to have forgotten about payment. There was a shuffling of feet behind me.

‘Outside Elizabeth’s house.’

The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up.

‘Well I suppose that makes sense, he’s got the field opposite, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes.’ The woman sighed, clutching her purse. ‘But the body was hidden in the verge – took a while to find it. Not much left of it either – the foxes had already had a go. Pete’s gone to fetch the trailer to shift it and ask his brother to help. But he’s annoyed with himself. It must have escaped the night before. Normally Elizabeth would have spotted it and given him a call.’

‘Well, she couldn’t have done that no more,’ said the assistant. ‘Twenty-one pounds seventy, love. Isn’t the house still empty?’

There was the chink of money and a rattle as it was stashed away in the till.

‘Pete said there was a car outside first thing this morning. Reckon one of the daughters has finally turned up.’

‘Really? Which one? The flashy one or the nutcase?’

I felt my ears burn, humiliation flooding my body. I lowered my head, fingers pushed deep into my jacket pockets. What was wrong with these people?

‘Don’t know, the car’s a bit crap, Pete said. Perhaps it was that car which hit our sheep?’

I ground my teeth. What right had they to make that assumption?

‘Oh, well, tell that lovely husband of yours how sorry I am when you see him.’

‘Sure. Thank you. See you tomorrow.’

The woman lifted a hand and left. I presented my basket and waited patiently. The assistant ignored me as she scanned the items but threw me a look when she got to the tins of cat food. My eyes dropped and I paid the bill as quickly as I could.

Back in the car, I pulled over when I got to the bottom of the drive to the house. On the roadside, they’d said. I told myself I needed to see what I’d been accused of, but perhaps the truth was that I’d always been drawn to the macabre, the visual trickery of the surreal, an artist’s fascination for the biological structures behind our physical façade. My car eased onto the verge and I stepped out.

The wind had picked up, with a bitter edge, bending the trees on either side of the road, already twisted and contorted from years of exposure on the hill. My hood whipped down and my hair caught in my eyes. One of the poppers on my coat was broken and I had to grasp the folds of it over my chest to keep the flaps from bursting open.

There it was. The feet were visible through the long grass and a tangle of briers growing in the hedge. It was just about recognisable as a sheep. The head was intact, but the body had been badly damaged, not just by a car. Entrails splayed across its woolly coat and something had tugged and pulled at the flaps of skin. The eyes were wide open, bulging from the skull, and its tongue lolled uselessly between its teeth. I couldn’t help but think of my stepmother, how her body must have looked lying on the floor at the foot of the stairs. I tried to push the image from my mind, gazing at the animal. Judging by the state of it, that hadn’t happened today.

I thought – what if it had been me? Yesterday, as I’d arrived? I’d been tired those last few miles, not particularly alert. What if I’d hit the sheep myself? No, I didn’t believe that. I would have felt the impact. And there was that car behind me. The driver would have noticed too. Surely, he’d have reacted if either one of us had hit an animal that big.

I reached out with my foot, giving the carcass a nudge. A bevy of flies rose up from the body, flying in ever decreasing circles before settling down to their business again. I felt my stomach flip. It was disgusting. But a sheep was just a sheep, wasn’t it? Another animal bred for consumption, its death inevitable one way or another. Like all of us, I thought.

I looked around me. I saw the last few leaves hanging on the trees, great piles of damp and blackened vegetation heaped on the verge below. I saw the remains of a pheasant cleaved to the tarmac further down the road, berries that clung shrivelled and inedible, rejected even by the birds. Already I’d alienated my neighbours without doing anything wrong at all. The strange looks at the butcher’s, the assumption of my guilt over this sheep, made without a shred of proof, and the vague gossip about Elizabeth’s two daughters.

‘The flashy one or the nutcase,’ they’d said – I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as ‘flashy’.

I’d only just arrived, after an absence of ten years. Why would they say that about me? I felt a sense of helplessness. Already it was as if I’d never left. This was meant to be a fresh start, wasn’t it?