The Stranger in Our Home Read online

  ‘I suppose so.’

  ‘Great. I’m going to book a flight. We can do the sales. The shops are pretty good in Derby, or there’s Nottingham. We can have some fun, like we said we would!’ Steph sounded happy.

  ‘Sure,’ I said, wondering why I felt less than enthusiastic.

  It was mid-morning. I wanted to draw, to immerse myself in a story, someone else’s story, images running in my head, clashing one with another, bursting like fireworks across my thoughts.

  I’d always been obsessed, notebooks stuffed in my handbag, my phone full of photos. It was the small details that caught my eye, the cracks on a window pane, dirt clinging to the glass of a lamp, the ambiguous reflections in a murky puddle of rain. I had a particular thing about insects, dead insects, the articulated segments of a woodlouse lying on its back, the long legs of a spider tangled in the dust, the ladybirds that clung to the window frames in winter, a narrow line of red and black climbing up the hinge, their colours fading and dry.

  I sketched angrily, exploring ideas for the book. Wide sweeping black charcoal strokes, monsters, dragons and gothic arches rising from the mist, morphing into writhing lizards. I’d get it out of my system if it killed me, my fingers black from the dust, a pile of broken charcoal sticks accumulating beside me. Perhaps it was the concussion from yesterday, or the cumulative effect of being here in this house, seeing and touching familiar things. Perhaps it was the shock of seeing the boy with the pear drum. In London my paintings had been brighter and more childlike, colours splashed on the page like exotic fruit spilling on the ground, but here, in Derbyshire, everything was darker, denser. Pandora’s box was open, the one in my head, and with each sketch, scenes from my childhood were peeling their fingers around the gap.

  Like the day my sister left home, when I was nine. It wasn’t a memory I cherished, but now it slid into my thoughts.

  Elizabeth had been wearing one of those retro sixties-style dresses, a high scooped neckline and bare arms. Steph was standing on the doorstep, a beat-up old Ford Focus running its engine on the drive, a young man slouched behind the steering wheel. Already, at sixteen, Steph was leggy and chic, in a way that made heads turn. I admired her cool beauty. She was arguing with Elizabeth. They seemed to argue a lot.

  I couldn’t hear all the words, but the gist of it was Steph was leaving.

  My sister thrust a small package into my hands.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s a leaving present, Caro.’

  ‘Sorry’ seemed an odd thing to say as you gave someone a present. But I knew what she meant. We’d never been close, but now it felt like she was abandoning me.

  ‘Thanks, Steph,’ I said.

  The package rustled beneath my fingers, there was tissue underneath the wrapping paper. Something girly? My nine-year-old self was curious.

  ‘Don’t let her get to you,’ she said. ‘Stick up for yourself.’

  There was something about the urgency of her tone, but an underlying excitement too. She cast her eyes towards the car and the lanky teenager at the wheel. I felt a pang of jealousy. She had a chance to get away, to start afresh, what wouldn’t I have given to do that? I took a step forward towards Steph.

  ‘Take me with you!’ I said.

  Steph stared at me as if taken aback, and with an expression I didn’t quite recognise.

  ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I’m not allowed to.’

  At nine, I didn’t understand what she meant by that.

  ‘But you’re my sister!’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Her eyes flickered across my face.

  There it was again, those words, a phrase that could mean so much, or so little.

  Then she raised her voice so Elizabeth could hear.

  ‘Goodbye.’

  Steph hesitated, waiting for Elizabeth’s reply, but there was none.

  Her lips tightened and she stepped towards the car and climbed inside. The car door slammed after her and the car rolled away.

  My stepmother didn’t wait to watch it go. Her face was a closed book, the kind with no real content, like lists or timetables or scientific reference charts. She turned on her heels and went back into the house.

  I stood for longer, gazing across to the road at the bottom of the track, a black line winding down between the green fields. A breeze caught my skirt, cool around my legs, and there was a whiff of wood smoke drifting from the chimney at the top of our house. I’d been too young to go with her, I understood that now – but then, it had felt as if I’d been left behind deliberately: the sacrifice that allowed Steph to escape.

  Later, in my bedroom, I’d torn open the paper and looked at Steph’s gift. It was a small mirror framed in cheap plastic. The kind you put in your handbag. A freebie from a Christmas cracker. My face scowled back at me in the glass. I hadn’t realised then that I wouldn’t see Steph for nearly twenty years. She really had abandoned me. And as the years passed, I had felt more and more bitter, as if I’d somehow believed she would come back for me. But then, I acknowledged, as time went by, had I even cared? Had anyone ever cared?

  I painted the lane in front of the house, a girl standing bold against the wind. In her hand was the mirror, in the mirror was the face of the girl, in her eyes was the reflection of a bird, its talons outstretched, its beak wide open, its tongue flickering like a snake’s.

  I went to bed early that night, my head throbbing. It was so cold and I planned to snuggle up in a proper bed with a book. My laptop hadn’t turned up, I’d searched and searched, but hadn’t been able to find it. It made me feel even more isolated than before. What was wrong with me? I’d look again in the morning. I filled a hot water bottle and placed it in the bed not far from the pillow, under the covers to warm the sheets. I stripped off, throwing my clothes onto the floor and padding my way to the bathroom. I stepped into the shower and pulled on the taps to release the water. It sprayed down over my head as I tilted it to avoid the cut, warm water rolling over my shoulder, steam rapidly fogging up the screen. I leant against the tiles, letting the heat slowly bring my body back to life.

  Tomorrow I’d clear the attic. Tomorrow I’d do at least one more painting. Maybe I’d work on that picture for Steph, the one I thought I’d do for her for Christmas. I was still struggling for ideas. I reached for the soap, vaguely aware of the bathroom door nudging open from a draught.

  A few minutes later I stepped out of the shower. My hair was slicked back against my neck, dripping down my spine. I pulled a towel around my chest, tucking it in under my arms. I felt warm and clean, the blood coursing through my veins. I stepped over to the sink to brush my teeth. Tomorrow I should go through my father’s old study. I’d avoided it so far, because of its associations. I coughed, filling a glass with water and swilling it round my mouth. I wasn’t taking enough care of myself. I closed my eyes and gargled. A breeze lifted the corner of the net curtains at the window.

  When I was done, I walked over to the window. I hadn’t closed the main curtains, there was no point here in the middle of nowhere, out in the Derbyshire wilds. I pushed the nets to one side, wiping the condensation from the glass, staring at the blue night outside, the garden with its white covering, the contrasting shapes of the trees and hedges beyond. Something moved beneath the branches of the trees in front of the summerhouse. A fall of snow, slip-sliding onto the ground beneath. I was warm enough now and I let the towel drop to the bathroom floor.

  I made my way back to the bedroom, bending down to snatch up my clothes. I stood up and made to chuck them on the bed. My hand froze in mid-air.

  The covers had been pulled down. I hadn’t done that. And the hot water bottle was on the floor. On the sheet below the pillow, exactly where my shoulders would lie, was a black and bloodied shape. A rat. A dead rat.

  Its tail had been cut off. It lay against the sheet, a long tapering tallow-coloured tail lined up against the body. The greasy fur was matted and wet, crimson red staining the sheet, and the mouth was fixed apart, the two incisors to
p and bottom meeting in the middle. Yellow and bloodied and brown.

  I clutched my mouth, the rank stench of the creature’s flesh making me gag. I ran to the bathroom and only just reached the sink in time. But I couldn’t bear to face the wall, my naked back open and vulnerable. I snatched up a T-shirt, pulling it over my head. When I turned around, the cat was sitting in the bathroom doorway, looking smug and well-fed. I hadn’t seen her in a while and now she was here – with a gift.

  I screeched at her, shooing her down the stairs and out the kitchen door. Then I grabbed a hand towel from the laundry basket, running into the bedroom to the bed. The rat was still there, its eyes open but clouded over, claws pulled in, pathetic in its solitude, lying there frigid on the sheets.

  There had been another rat. It came to me now, a memory so strong I wanted to be sick again. I wasn’t sure when. It was in the exact same spot, well almost, in my bed, a different bed. I could hear my little girl screams. Someone was looking in from the outside. Someone was watching me, tracking my movements across the room, laughing at me. He had a crown upon his head, his two hands drawn together like an animal’s front paws, his jaw thrust forward and teeth chattering.

  For a moment I rocked on my feet. Was this really a memory? It felt more like a flashback to a scene in a horror movie. Was my imagination confusing me? Playing back some film clip that had scared me when I was small? Like hiding from the Daleks in Dr Who. Was this a genuine memory from when I was little? Before Steph had left? Before even the pear drum?

  I dragged my eyes down to the creature on my bed. The rat in my head had been disembowelled, this one was still intact. But both of them had their tails cut off in exactly the same way – did cats do that? I didn’t think so. The sense of déjà vu was overwhelming and I stumbled backwards, my hand flying once more to my mouth. I spun on my heels and made another dash to the bathroom.

  I couldn’t sleep in the bed that night. I couldn’t sleep in any of the beds that night. I sat in the kitchen for a while nursing a hot drink. I thought about why I was here, the inheritance, was it really worth all this? Wouldn’t it be easier just to let someone else deal with the house, pick up my old life and forget about Larkstone Farm? And everything that came with it.

  But I realised I didn’t want my old life. There was no way I’d go back to Paul or London, and where else would I go? I could land on Harriet’s doorstep in Berlin, I supposed, but I didn’t want to impose on her again. It wasn’t like she was family. But then, I thought, a wave of bitterness washing over me, what did family mean? This house was mine now, almost. I was entitled to be here, wasn’t I? Why should I let the old feelings of alienation and fear take over me? Besides, I was stuck, at least for a while, snow or no snow, trust or no trust. I couldn’t justify moving into a hotel even if Briscoe lent me the money. My emotions were all over the place. There was the commission too – I’d lose so much time if I upped sticks and had to search for a new place to live. I needed to figure out what I really wanted to do, where I really wanted to be.

  And there was the pear drum. It was still skulking at the back of my mind. I didn’t want to leave it unopened. But I didn’t want to open it myself. Wasn’t that the truth of it?

  I stood up and moved into the sitting room, curling up on the settee with the television on full blast. Anything to break the silence in the house. When I got bored of that, I left the room, leaving the TV on and the door wide open for company. I perched on my stool at the kitchen table, the one I used for painting, and I drew. This was a drawing for me, anything I liked. Not the commission, not work, nor even the picture for Steph, not yet. But a way to get things out of my head, whatever they may be.

  I drew an ugly sabre-toothed beast, hiding in the bushes beside the front door of the house. Its yellow eyes were burning from the paper. Was that Elizabeth? Steph? Or was it me? I drew a field full of indifferent cows. They were munching on grass, scattered in twos and threes across the turf. In the middle was a single tree, rising up towards the sky, its long branches coiled and bare, as naked as I had been. Hanging down was a body. A woman. Her hair was tipped to one side, trailing down her back, her feet pointing down. Her face was turned away, gazing in another direction, but I could tell it was me that I’d drawn. It was as if I could feel the rope taut like wire around her neck.

  I kept on drawing all night. Until the paper lay in swathes about the table and the day dawned crisp and bright. I got up and stood at the kitchen window, shrugging and rubbing my neck, looking out over the lawn towards the trees that shaded the summerhouse. There had been a swing there once, underneath the biggest tree. I could remember using it, hour after hour, rain or sun, feeling the wind on my face, my hair whipping back and forth, my legs swinging forward and behind, my body thrown each way with the movement of the swing. The rhythmic sway soothed me, the blood pumping in my veins till it made my feet tingle and my hands glow warm.

  I sat down again. This time I drew myself as I might have been then, sitting on the swing, in mid-backwards flight, hair damp and swept against my cheeks, eyes huge and bleeding.

  The images frightened me. Why was there so much pain in these drawings? What was wrong with me? Or was I this pathetic twisted thing, channelling malevolent thoughts into my paintings like some psychotic patient playing at art therapy? It was still there, that blank wall, like a giant black speaker box, thundering out a heavy beat. Impenetrable, inescapable. The more I tried to remember, the more images and snatches of memory broke through then faded from sight, the more it felt like I was a wild animal scratching and clawing at a wound I could not reach.

  CHAPTER 18

  I was brain dead from lack of sleep. The idea of clearing the attic wasn’t very appealing, but it had to be done sooner or later. The house was getting to me; being here was more disturbing than I liked to admit. Sorting the rooms weighed heavily on my thoughts and the sooner I got it done, the better.

  It was bright daylight, the snow reflecting back the sun. Perhaps by facing my demons head on, I would feel better by evening. I climbed the wooden steps from the top landing into the little room. The window was still jammed shut and stripes of dust-sparkled light illuminated the space between the rafters. Now that the window was shut, it smelt of dank, neglected fabrics and prickling overtones of rat urine.

  I started by dragging the blankets off, pulling each item down the steps, piling them up in the hall beneath. There were suitcases, cardboard boxes, the old fan and the mannequin. But there was no way I was going to touch the pear drum. So it stayed there in the attic, alone in the middle of the floorboards, as I scooted down the steps, dragged the attic door shut and locked it securely.

  The hall was a mess, most of the stuff destined for the tip. The suitcases were mainly empty, but there was a hatbox too. I opened it to find a vintage black pillbox hat. I lifted it out. It looked scarcely used, with a short black veil. I held it with one hand, twirling it around. My forehead creased, I’d seen this before, I knew I had. I closed my eyes. A faint hint of perfume clung to the hat. Her perfume, and flowers too, the delicate scent of roses, too many roses all in the same place at the same time. What made me think that? And something else, another smell, strong and sweet and cloying.

  It came to me, the black dress. This was the hat to match the dress. Elizabeth often went to church wearing a hat. I remembered seeing her in that dress wearing that hat, her fingers clasping a black and silver bag. She was staring out in front of her towards the altar, not even blinking. There was a coffin laid out between the choir stalls. It was a funeral – my father’s funeral? Roses lay all around. They were on the coffin lid, on the floor, in baskets on the steps. People were carrying them too – the church was filled with people. The smell of incense mingled with the roses. I was right at the back, my hand held tight by another woman, for the life of me I couldn’t say who she was. My fingers were crushed, the woman’s face fiercely stern. She didn’t speak or even look at me.

  The members of the congregation seemed res
tless, many of them twisting around to look – at me in the back, and then my stepmother at the front. I heard one of them whispering.

  ‘Such a wicked child. An ungrateful, dreadful, wicked child.’

  ‘How does she put up with it?’

  ‘I couldn’t bear it if it were me. So brave.’

  This last woman had lowered her head, her eyes sliding to glare at me, like the woman in the butcher’s shop, their words sinking into the flesh of my chest with the swift accuracy of a sharpened filleting knife.

  I went into my father’s old study. For so many years, the room had been a place of dread, the only memory I associated with it being that of the pear drum and my stepmother’s punishments. I stood in the middle of the room contemplating the corner where the crate had been all the time I had lived there. There was still an imprint on the carpet where its weight had crushed the pile. At what point had she moved it to the attic?

  I couldn’t picture my father. I’d been too young, somehow that had left me feeling even more bereft. And yet there must be a picture of him somewhere – surely my stepmother would have had photos of him? A wedding photo, holiday snaps, the kind of pictures any wife would have held onto, especially after the death of her husband. In all this time, it hadn’t occurred to me that such things were missing from the house.

  I let my hands trail upon the furniture – my father’s chair, the bookcase, the desk. I opened the drawers and pulled out the books from their shelves, searching for anything, papers, files, boxes that might contain any clue as to what he’d been like. But there was nothing. Just dust and cobwebs and the dead remains of insects and mites that thrived upon old paper. I turned back towards the corner, to the rectangular shape on the carpet. I dropped to my knees. The edge had lifted away, blackened with dust that had never been hoovered so close to the wall. Perhaps it had been disturbed by the dragging of the crate. I pulled the carpet up. My fingers caught upon the gripper rod and I gave a sharp cry, pulling my hand away to rub finger against thumb. Something caught my eye. An envelope, crushed from long years under the carpet trapped beneath the crate.