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‘Hello, Mr Wargrave,’ I say. ‘How are you?’
‘All right, aye. Getting a paper. The obituaries,’ he says, pointing shakily at the local newspaper sitting on his walking frame. His nails have turned yellow. They are splintering at the edges. Then he grins at me. He’s got new teeth, I think. ‘It’s always good to see you’re outliving all them bastards, isn’t it?’
I smile, not sure what to say to that. ‘Mason,’ he goes on. ‘She’s still going strong. Nursing home now. Good for her, though, with that son of hers.’
I furrow my brow. ‘What do you mean?’ I ask him. Jay adored his mother.
But Mr Wargrave only waggles his eyebrows, grown far too long, just like the hairs sprouting out of his nose. ‘I’m not in a home yet. All alone at my place. Neighbours are gone, too. No one to listen in on us. You remember that, Martha.’
Well, that was a disturbing experience. As quickly as possible, I go to one of the self-checkouts, grabbing a prepaid SIM card as I pass. I will be needing it. I don’t think I’ll be able to bear seeing all of Oliver’s messages and not respond. For the first time, I’m almost grateful there isn’t any signal down in the hollow.
Once all the groceries are in the boot, I steer the car towards the High Street and put the Dresden Dolls back on. ‘Coin-Operated Boy’. Sing, under my breath, watching the houses I drive past, looking for the Masons’. There’s an uneasy sensation at the bottom of my stomach. He is just a toy, but I turn him on and he comes to life, automatic joy …
What did Mr Wargrave mean when he talked about Jacob like that? I remember the way Anvi and Kaitlin talked about him, too. The tone of their voices, far too disapproving for the boy I remember: Bright eyes, well-spoken, well-mannered. Entitled, maybe, but good at heart. He’d wanted to be an artist, or a graphic designer at least. While we went out, and when we were friends, too, he would make me little drawings and pass them to me in class. Of flowers, instead of giving me bouquets. Of chocolates, to tease me. Of myself, when he was feeling particularly brave. I was the only one he showed his sketchbook to.
The uncomfortable feeling at the pit of my stomach intensifies as I get closer to where his house should be. He was my friend. The first person I fell in love with. You don’t forget your first crush. I haven’t seen him in nineteen years, and even at seventeen, we’d been split up for a while. Goodness, we’d been so young when we got together, we didn’t even have sex. Even though we did do all sorts of other things. He wasn’t exactly shy about what he wanted, and neither was I. We weren’t in a healthy place, so we thought the more bruising it involved the better. I still remember how he’d sneered at me when I broke up with him, sneered and insulted me to hide how hurt he was, a teenager about to lose everything but unable to stop it.
Driving down the High Street has memories batting into me on every corner. About the first time that Anna, Teo, Jay and I tricked the goody machine, spilling sweets into our laps like a miniature version of Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. The first time the three us scratched our names into a bench, Anna and Teo and I, in the small park by the graveyard. The first place I rode a bicycle, in the parking lot just behind the town sign, with Jay teaching me, already carrying around his box of crayons wherever he went, painting broad colourful patterns onto the pavement along the High Street and into their front garden.
I follow the road past the red parasols. Just behind the bend, that’s where it should be.
And then it comes into view.
It looks just the same. The door is still painted red, the stone still grey, the front garden filled with sad shrubbery and grey stone tiles, the front room hidden behind large artificial flowers. I don’t think they’ve even changed the curtains. They look like they’re straight from the Eighties.
After parking the car on the side of the road, I walk up to his house and ring the doorbell.
Something moves in the front room. I think the telly is running. Footsteps approach. Then the door is thrown open.
I don’t recognise the person I’m looking at. ‘Sorry,’ I say, instinctively smiling at the strange man. ‘I must have got the wrong door.’
The man looks at me, dark hair and bright eyes in a sunken face. He is wearing a sweaty Burberry shirt, and is still in the motion of throwing on a Barbour jacket, dark green with orange lining. I can tell it used to be fine once. A bad stain sits right on his lapels. His hair is too long for him, and the colour of his skin is paler even than his eyes. He looks like someone who worked out for a while but then gave up on it again, fat and muscles creating a threatening bulk. Even as he straightens his tie, hastily put together, his eyes are slightly unfocused.
‘I was just looking for an old friend, but he must have moved after all,’ I continue. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know where …’
His eyes narrow. Then they widen very suddenly. ‘It’s you! Caroline Wilson, as I fucking live and breathe!’
He’s grinning. I stare at him. Right into those bright, pale eyes. Right at that wide grin. The crooked incisor at the bottom on the right.
No.
This cannot be Jay. He cannot have changed so much. But he’s grinning, and I recognise that grin, as if this old, tired man has stolen it and put it on, stolen it from the young man who drew me flowers on pieces of paper he’d torn out of his books, who took me to a fine art museum on our first date, who’d laugh just as easily as he’d sneer. ‘You’re back! Bloody fucking hell,’ Jacob says and takes a step towards me. His voice sounds scratchy. There’s a smell coming off him.
‘Jacob,’ I say, suddenly out of breath. ‘Hi.’
His eyes are running all over my body. Like I am something he can hold on to. The first friendly face in years. ‘You are looking good, Linny.’
I wish there was any way that I could be saying that back. ‘I just wanted to see how you were,’ I say. My brain still cannot compute that this man could be Jay. ‘I’ve only got a minute, I got somewhere to be, but I thought we … we might … that you could …’
He watches me stammer. He is still smiling, but it is morphing into something smaller. Something bitter. ‘Somewhere to be?’
I don’t know what to say to that.
He steps closer. That must be whisky on his breath. ‘Do you want to come in, Linny?’
‘Listen,’ I say, still completely shocked. The mere thought of going into that house with that man to ask him questions, feeling that door close behind us with a final click, makes my stomach quiver. A public place would be better. A much more public place. ‘I would love to, but I can’t just now. I just wanted to let you know I was back, and that we should catch up some …’
‘Everybody knows already, Linny,’ he says, swaying on his feet, reaching for the doorframe to steady himself. It seems to be a practised gesture.
The moment he realises he’s done it, he straightens as quickly as if someone slapped him, letting go of the doorframe. Trying to stand on his own two feet. He tries for a smile. It is supposed to look harmless, I think. ‘Kait’s texted the whole village. It was a wild night at the pub last night, let me tell you.’
For a moment, I see his eyes clear, see a shrewdness return to his features. He takes another step towards me. ‘The Detective Inspector was all over the place. You should have seen him. Didn’t even have time to stick his hand down some poor young thing’s pants in front of the ladies’.’
My throat is dry. He’s too close. His breath smells sharp. My mouth twitches. I hope he doesn’t realise. ‘Listen, Jacob, I am sorry I made you get up. I really do have to run now, but we should definitely catch up. Maybe in a couple of weeks? Definitely coffee …’
His hand shoots out before I can stop him. His fingers wrap around my wrist. ‘You don’t have to lie, Linn.’
I try to shake off his hand. My throat is closing up. ‘Let me go.’
His gaze goes right through me. His voice drops to a whisper. ‘Is it so bad? Do I really look so bad, Caroline?’
‘Jacob, let me go,’ I say.
He puts on another smile. It tries for jovial but ends up desperate. With a jolt, I remember that expression. That is what he looked like when he had been hurt. When he was about to lash out in return. ‘You are looking lovely, Linn, you really are,’ he says. ‘I hope you don’t swing the other way any more?’
I grit my teeth. ‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Remember what a good party we had. At mine. That night, before it … you know. Happened.’ His fingers are wrapped so tightly around my skin that his knuckles are turning white. His eyes are going in and out of focus. ‘What a comfort to finally find out why you had broken up with me, wasn’t it, when I saw you with your tongue down Anna Bohacz’s throat for the better part of the night.’
All the air is punched from my lungs. ‘Fuck off,’ I say, pulling my arm away in earnest now.
It doesn’t even seem to register with him. He is still stronger than me. ‘Just checking. Gave me a right shock. And the big O, too, you know. Oliver Dawson. He had even let you pick his perfume, remember? He smelled like something out of Mum’s Chilcott catalogue that night. I think he thought he would marry you one day.’
‘We are married. Let me go!’ Finally, I manage to tear my arm out of his grip. With shaking hands, I turn on my heels and rush to the car. I force myself not to look back even once, my nerves taut as rabbit wire, trying to get out of there as fast as possible. My legs are trembling as I push down the clutch.
When I drive past the house, Jacob is still standing in the doorway. Staring at me. All the will to hurt has vanished from his expression. He looks at the ground, hugging his jacket to his body against the cold.
Do I really look so bad?
My feet won’t stop shaking even as I speed across the bridge and out of the village. My stomach is filled with dread now, heavy, sticky dread. It is a relief to turn onto the dirt road leading up to the hollow, far away from that man who stole Jay’s name, his voice, even his eyes. The voice that used to tell me about paintings we saw in Manchester, paintings and sculptures and weird things that I didn’t think of as art. The eyes that would shine when he painted rainbows onto the concrete of the parking lot, or brim with tears that he wouldn’t let spill as I walked away from him.
I shiver. Driving past the Kenzies’, I glance down their drive. The upper curtains are drawn. I keep driving, stretching my prickling hands. And what was he talking about, anyway? I’d kissed Anna once. Twice, maybe. We’d been stupid. Fooling around. That was all. I run a hand over my mouth.
I know I will have to go back to see Jay once more to ask him about that night. But definitely in a public place. Much more public than his front door, at least. I do not think he would have seriously hurt me, but what do I know about Jacob Mason? I haven’t seen him in nineteen years.
Maybe Oliver would know. They used to be mates, Oliver and Jay, both of them on the swimming team. After it’d no longer been the four of us. Best mates even, I think.
But I cannot ask Oliver. I can’t ask him anything ever again.
The thought makes me choke up.
Turning into the hollow and driving down towards the house, I try to calm down, breathing as regularly as possible. Nobody in sight, not even a cat. It would have been nice to have a cat. Our neighbours, on the second flat where Oliver and I lived, they had one. She used to stop by at ours a lot, that beautiful cat, black body and white paws. We moved out shortly after she died.
Unloading the bags from the boot, mouth twitching, I think about the cat and how she used to love the treats I’d bake specifically for her. I was the only one who could feed her straight from the palm of my hand. I do my best to think of the cat and not of Oliver. About how he could help me if he was here. About how we would be playing karaoke tonight, if it was a regular Sunday. About the karaoke machine he had organised for our wedding. It came as such a surprise to me, me, who had dedicated almost a year to planning this wedding, sitting on the couch in the evenings as we watched TV and making our own confetti.
It was a fairly small affair, in that comfy pub in Shoreditch. It was one of my good phases, where I felt relatively stable. Relatively alive. And we didn’t need a crowd. All we needed was to sing ‘One Way or Another’ and ‘Every Breath You Take’ together and dance like silly people having a stroke. Or ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’. There were buttercups in the decorations and in my bouquet. Like our fish. The one I accidentally killed.
I lick my lips, shifting the grocery bags around. The wood creaks under my feet as I walk up the stairs to the porch. A bird is rustling through the bushes somewhere, or a rabbit. The chimes are singing in the gentle breeze.
I freeze.
Then I turn to the side.
There they are. Moving gently in the cold wind, three silver pipes on worn strings.
The chimes are back.
And even as I listen to their sounds, standing rooted to the cold white ground, I hear another sound: the engine of a car.
It’s coming towards me.
THE NEIGHBOUR
This time, when I hear her car passing along the road, I get up. When it comes into sight, I am already at the sitting-room window, peeking out through the white curtains, my desk and work abandoned.
As she drives past, I stand there, biting my lip. I know I must finish this translation by tomorrow. It is tiring, translating a government document, but it pays well. And they want their deadlines kept. It is too lucrative keeping them happy not to. At least until I hear back from the ESA.
So I turn back to the desk with a sigh. The concert is still playing over the stereo (I still use a stereo; why not? It works. Who has time to put all their CDs onto their computer, anyway?), the Swedish Radio Choir performing the Verdi Requiem. It calms me, and I try and sing along and wonder whether I could still sing properly, if I joined another choir. If I could remember the lullaby my grandmother sang to me the few times I saw her, not nearly often enough to understand why she was so gentle when she sang yet so brutal when she spoke.
I have just sat down again when I hear it:
Another car. As if following the first. As if following her.
Immediately, I am back at the window. Furrowing my brow, I stare outside. There. Up the hill it comes, a dark-green Jeep, the tyres all muddy. It almost disappears between the trees, between the evergreen of the pines and the slim trunks of the birches.
They might have turned down this road by accident. They might reverse once they have realised their mistake.
I open the window and listen to the Jeep’s engine. It continues along the road. I hear it slow down. Brake.
But it does not stop. It does not turn back. Even as the engine quietens, I hear the gravel churn. Hear it turn into her driveway.
Glancing back at my computer, I hesitate. Then I slink into the hallway. Put on my boots, pull my jacket on top of my threadbare dress and reach for the rifle by the coat rack.
Then I am out of the door.
LINN
It is a muddy Jeep coming down my driveway. I’m alone on the steps of the front porch. The handles of the shopping bags are cutting into my skin. The chimes are singing. For a moment, I think about running.
Somebody returned the chimes. Were they already here when I left for the supermarket in the morning? It’s hard to remember. Maybe I overlooked them. I could have.
The Jeep comes to a stop on the side of the driveway. The soles of my feet are curling in on themselves, pain shooting up my calves.
I see the door open. Two legs swing out. They are thin, well dressed in a pair of Paul Smith trousers and shiny riding boots. A body emerges from the car. It’s a woman in a fine suit, wearing pearl earrings and a tasteful necklace, hair freshly cut, large sunglasses sitting on top of her head. She looks incredibly put together. Like a first lady. Like a prime minister. Only her face seems very thin.
That’s how I recognise her. ‘Miss Luca?’ I say.
Her voice is exactly as I remember it, full of professional concern even when exchanging the most casual of greetings as she walks up to me. ‘Ey up, Ms Wilson!’
Her lipstick is bright in the hollow. I remember clearly that she never used to wear makeup. Even as a teenager, I admired that about her. Now, her face is perfectly painted. The tone of her lipstick. Her foundation, clearly expensive, so carefully applied. My last name is Dawson now, but I don’t correct her. ‘So it is you! When Kaitlin told me you were in town, I simply could not believe it.’
She comes to a halt in front of me. Her eyes are running all over my body, just like Kaitlin’s and Anvi’s. She is much better at hiding her shock, but it is obvious that she is just as surprised as the two of them to see me standing in front of her. When she looks at me like that, it feels like my body is taking up more space than it should.
‘I hope you don’t mind my dropping by unannounced like this. I found your note when I came home, and I was just on my way to go for a walk in the woods anyway,’ she explains. ‘So I thought: why don’t you stop by her house and see for yourself, Antonia. See about this note. See if what Kaitlin says is actually true. To be fair, though, I have never diagnosed her with mythomania.’
We both laugh at her joke, awkwardly. ‘It is me,’ I say, shifting the grocery bags around. ‘In the flesh.’
‘So it is,’ she says, still staring at my face. ‘I could not quite believe it, you know. It really is so unexpected. And your note, too.’
I guess I should have been prepared for this. They cannot have expected ever to see me again. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘Not at all,’ Miss Luca hurries to say. ‘I come by here a lot, to go out with the dog, you know.’ She points at the Jeep. I don’t see a dog. ‘Your parents were always so friendly. We had tea together sometimes, when I came back from my walks. I am so sorry for your loss. We all miss them very greatly. We were sad not to see you at the funeral.’
She is looking at me with that smile and that probing expression of hers. Making me as speechless as I was all those years ago, when I went to see her after that night, just for a few sessions. There wasn’t any time for more: Oliver and I moved away almost instantly. I had to get out of here, and he already had a place at university to train as a nurse.
Miss Luca’s eyes are still just as sharp as back then. As if her mind is going a hundred miles a minute behind the disbelieving expression she is trying to hide under a friendly smile. ‘How have you been, then?’ she prompts. ‘I cannot believe you are back, really, Ms Wilson. It is such a pleasure to see you again!’
I can’t believe how old she’s grown. If Kaitlin’s got fat, Miss Luca has turned into paper. You cannot see it in her face, because of all the makeup. But there are the wrinkles on her throat, on the backs of her hands, her skin like blotting paper. It feels like all you’d need to do is run a finger along her throat to take off the skin. But she still looks so collected. Nothing could unsettle her, not Miss Luca.
For a moment, I wonder what I must look like to her. Would she have recognised me if she had not known I was back? The person I am now cannot have anything to do with the young woman she knew. If you’d told that young woman her story would turn into mine, she’d have laughed at you. It’s up to me what my story is, she’d have said, then grinned and hopped onto her bike without a helmet to pick up her two best friends. That is how people must remember me here: a young woman, strong-willed, stars in her eyes, dreamer and troublemaker. Her and her two friends, the three inseparables: Anna and Teo and me.
One of whom the police suspected.
It is that thought which helps take me back to the present. It is a godsend that Miss Luca came straight by. I have so many questions, all warring in my head, not knowing where to start. Perhaps that is why the first I blurt out is: ‘Did you see the chimes?’
Her brow furrows for a split second. ‘Pardon?’
I take a deep breath. The chimes suddenly returned. As if someone’s watching me. ‘Just, on your walks through the woods, recently, I wondered whether …’ This is silly. I fiddle once more with the grocery bags. They are growing heavy. ‘Oh, never mind. I’m glad you came by! How have you been?’
‘Oh,’ she says with a laugh. ‘You know us. Life moves slowly out here. Nothing much new, I suppose. Even after such a long time, really! Gosh, let me think … Well, you’re back, for one. And Teo Dündar, of course.’
I am about to ask her about that, about him, when something flashes in the corner of my eye. My head shoots around.
Miss Luca’s brow furrows again. She takes a step towards me. ‘Ms Wilson? Are you all right?’
I look for the movement but can’t spot anything. ‘Yes. Sorry. You were saying …’
She takes another step closer. ‘I was surprised to hear that you were back. Happy, though. Did you ever approach any of my colleagues in London?’
