The Stranger in Our Home Page 14

  ‘Who knows? Perhaps he wanted to be a father to his son. Perhaps he wanted a mother for us?’ I almost spluttered. ‘Perhaps …’ and now she spoke softly, ‘perhaps he loved her, Caro.’

  ‘Where is he? Where is Danny now?’ The words hissed from my lips. ‘And why didn’t he come to the funeral?’

  ‘He’s dead, Caro. He died when he was nine. Don’t you remember that either?’ Steph’s voice crackled and broke.

  ‘No, I don’t remember.’ My own voice was rising.

  I didn’t remember. Why couldn’t I remember? My head felt like it was splitting in two. I felt overwhelmed with a sense of urgency and failure.

  I’d had a brother. How could I not remember I had a brother? But he was dead. Pain exploded in my head and the words formed like barbed wire on my lips.

  ‘How, Steph? How?’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  I opened my mouth to speak again, but Steph was talking over me.

  ‘I don’t want to talk about it any more. I’m sorry, it’s too awful. I do remember it!’

  And she put the phone down.

  I stood there, holding the phone, dumbfounded. I’d had a brother? Could I believe that? Steph had said so. The memory of the garden party, the boy with a rat, the little boy I’d conjured up in the bedroom – that had been his old bedroom, hadn’t it? The coffin at the funeral, the one with all those roses … The dismay ripped through me. How could I have forgotten that I’d had a brother and he’d died? And why had Steph never mentioned him before?

  It’s too awful. What did she mean by that?

  I had a dread feeling of unease. I remembered the laughter of the boy I now knew was Danny. The taunts, the bullying, snatches of his voice, words and phrases I couldn’t remember, that voice, its sneering tone and spite.

  I had no memory of Steph or Elizabeth ever talking about him when I was little. Nine, Steph had said – he died when he was nine, when I was six. Had I been too young to remember? I’d always tried to think about my childhood as little as possible. A great curtain of pain descended on me whenever I thought of those years. I’d blamed it on Elizabeth, her twisted punishments, the tormented story of the pear drum that she – no, I? – had been obsessed with.

  But was there something else? I thought of all those photographs I’d swept up that first night of my arrival, mainly of Elizabeth herself, or with a friend. But not us; Steph and me. That hadn’t surprised me. And no son. Whatever happened, had it left her unable to bear looking at her own son?

  I took a staggered breath. Why should I waste any time on it? He was her son. He wasn’t even my full brother. What good was it to dredge things up? I’d had no family for so long. I’d lost my parents forever. I’d almost lost my sister too. What did losing a half-brother matter to me? I didn’t want to remember him, not now. I had this conviction that I should leave well alone.

  Steph was right. I should never have come here. Being at Larkstone Farm had unleashed something, unlocking my brain to reveal a great yawning hole. Grief. Was it grief? I felt my stomach heave. Had he died in the house? Was that a ghost that I’d seen sitting on the bedroom floor? A flush of cold air swept down my back. No way did I believe in ghosts.

  But memories and hallucinations, yes, and they were bad enough.

  CHAPTER 21

  The next morning, I couldn’t bear to think about the day before. I determined to crack on and find anything that the solicitors needed to finalise probate. This new urgency, I told myself, had nothing to do with all that.

  There was a bureau in the sitting room, one of those elegant perpendicular antique desks that folds down, revealing miniature shelves and drawers. As a girl I’d been fascinated by them. I opened it and papers came tumbling down to the floor.

  There it was, my missing laptop. I lifted it out. I felt relief. But I couldn’t recall putting it there. I chewed my lip, wondering if my pathetic memory was symptomatic of something else. I shook my head.

  The bureau was stuffed full of bills from right up to the day Elizabeth had died. I began sorting them into piles, glad of the distraction – credit card receipts, household bills, paid, unpaid. There wasn’t much unpaid, Elizabeth had been a conscientious accountant, if a little haphazard.

  But it wasn’t my favourite job, sorting through bills. Sunshine streamed through the sitting room windows giving an illusion of heat on an otherwise freezing day. The hills on the far side of the valley were long shadows of pastel blue and pink, shimmering with white as the sun rose in the sky, bathing the trees and hedges in a pale, sepia-like colour. There was a stillness, as if nothing was moving in weather like this, no cars, no tractors, not even the odd bird or two. Everything hunkered down for the duration.

  The doorbell rang.

  I peered through the window in the sitting room. It was Craig. His hands were tucked into his pockets, his legs planted in the snow, waiting for me to answer the door. Patsy was with him, her tail wagging enthusiastically. I felt an unwilling lift at the sight of them.

  I closed my eyes and opened them again. He was still there and he’d seen me. He waved and smiled at me through the window.

  I took a breath and went to the door.

  ‘Hello?’

  Patsy was up at the door immediately, excited by familiar smells, or maybe simply keen to see another human being. I opened the door wider and her big lolloping body made to launch itself at me but was caught short by a quick tug on her lead from Craig.

  ‘I’m so sorry, she doesn’t see a reason to wait.’

  Why would she, I thought. It had been her home until Elizabeth had died.

  ‘I can see that.’

  I was being rude again. I tried to soften the words with a mock scowl of disapproval at the dog. Craig already had her sitting nicely on the doorstep, tongue hanging out, big eyes looking up at me, tail brushing the snow on the ground behind her.

  Craig grinned.

  ‘We’ve come to check on you,’ he said.

  ‘Oh?’ I was embarrassed at my own lack of vocabulary.

  He looked at me, his head tipped slightly to one side. His expression mirroring Patsy’s, except his eyes were sharper.

  ‘How’s your head?’

  I didn’t reply and he carried on.

  ‘I’ve brought you some lunch, see? Thought you might like some company.’ He swung his shoulders around to reveal a backpack. ‘And a bottle.’

  He grinned and patted his chest, then unzipped his jacket to pull out a bottle of wine with a suitable flourish.

  ‘Don’t have to drive, do I? I’ll cook.’

  I hesitated and then stepped aside to let him pass. Craig reached down to unleash the dog. She shook her body free of the snow and pattered across the hallway towards the kitchen, sniffing hopefully.

  Craig strode into the kitchen after Patsy. He tossed his jacket onto a chair and began unpacking his bag. There was steak, green beans, a plastic box of what looked like ready-cooked mashed potatoes and a smaller tub of sauce. I felt bemused, where had he got all this? The freezer? Expensive packets? It was another kindness from him – and wasn’t this exactly what I needed right now, a bit of a lift?

  I was feeling hungry already.

  I sat at the table watching Craig at the Aga, my hands reaching down to tickle Patsy’s head. She was sitting on her haunches to my right, looking from one to the other of us with excited canine interest.

  Craig and I had been talking about nothing very important for a while, skirting round anything personal as he cooked the food. I’d opened the bottle of wine and was happily sipping a glass. I watched his back as he worked at the stove, noting the movement of his shoulders, his arm. His hair teased into curls at the base of his neck and he moved with a simple ease that held me transfixed. Patsy watched him too. I felt the tension slip out of me and finally succumbed to my curiosity.

  ‘How did you get into carpentry?’ I asked.

  He turned to face me, as if deciding how much to say.

  ‘I mucked
about for several years after school. I never liked studying much and I’d messed up my exams. I messed up with a few friends too – and my family.’ He shrugged. ‘My dad told me to sort myself out. He was right of course, but I wasn’t listening then. I wanted to make things, to do something tangible with my hands. I took a job in a factory that manufactured excavators for the construction industry and forklift trucks, but the pay was crap and the corporate management style wasn’t for me.’

  The steaks were sizzling. Craig turned back to fork them out one after the other onto a plate. He tipped the sauce into the pan and it jumped and jittered, the microwave pinged and Craig reached up to pull out the potatoes.

  ‘For a while I couldn’t find a job I liked at all. Then I got offered a place as a mature student at Buckinghamshire College studying Furniture Design and Fine Craftsmanship. I think by then I was ready to get more serious about my life.’

  He lifted one hand to rub at his forehead.

  ‘It was a revelation, crafting beautiful, practical things and learning how to work for myself. After I graduated I set up business, here at home in Derbyshire. My parents had both died by then. Cancer, one after the other …’

  His hand moved to the meat on its plate and he prodded it without much purpose.

  ‘But people knew me, and with a small inheritance to get me started, it didn’t take very long for the business to develop.’

  ‘I’m sorry about your parents,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, me too.’ It seemed a statement loaded with regret, and he quickly moved on. ‘My bread-and-butter work is kitchens and built-in cupboards, but what I love best is making bespoke furniture and practical objects.’

  He paused, looking down at his hands as if surprised at the skilled work they could do. ‘I like to think my mum and dad would both be proud of me now.’

  He frowned, memory taking him somewhere else.

  The fat in the frying pan sizzled loudly and I heard him swear as it spat onto the back of his hand. He brought his hand up to his mouth to suck his burnt skin and grimaced at me sheepishly. I smiled and blinked sympathetically.

  His hand reached out to hover over the meat with a grinder.

  ‘Do you like pepper?’ he asked, changing the subject.

  I nodded. I watched his other hand grasping the pepper pot, the knuckles rolling under his skin emphasising the breadth of his palm.

  He served up the food. I let Patsy go, standing up to wash my hands. I had to squeeze by Craig between the stove and the table, holding my breath until I was past. It was a relief to sit down opposite him and start to eat.

  ‘What about you? How did you get into book illustration?’

  I contemplated Craig’s face, trying to assess whether he was genuinely interested. Paul had never been. Yes, I thought with a jolt of surprise, Craig really wanted to know.

  ‘I’ve always loved painting. I see things in colours – numbers, letters, emotions, all of it. Show me a piece of writing and I see a kaleidoscope of colour, but it’s not a jumbled crazy mess, they’re sweeping lines, waves if you like, leading me down a path.’

  I lowered my eyes, feeling an idiot for trying to explain it to him.

  ‘Go on,’ he said. His voice was low with interest.

  ‘I … I don’t know how else to describe it. Colour is story to me, the building blocks of mood and emotion, like words are to a writer. It’s not only about drawing a line in the right place or getting a particular shape, it’s about how you put it together, how the whole image feels. That comes from perspective and colour and texture and technique …’

  I moved my hands as if to replicate the pictures that I saw.

  ‘… it’s about what I see. Inside.’

  I drew a deep breath.

  ‘I read loads when I was a kid, anything I could get my hands on. I’d see the stories in my head, the setting, the characters – sometimes they were dancing and I’d make them leap and spin, colours spiralling from their bodies, bursting into the air …’

  My voice trailed away, until my face turned again and I saw that he was listening still. I felt a surge of confidence, he understood!

  ‘I have to go beyond the writer’s words, to find the personality in every character, even the minor ones, to root out the detail that will take the story further. It’s a bit of a compulsion. I couldn’t do anything else.’

  I stopped. I’d said enough and was slightly out of breath.

  ‘Sounds like you’re in the right job,’ Craig said. His eyes were shuttered. And then he seemed to relax again: ‘You’re lucky. It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do. I got there in the end, but some people take a lifetime to work it out.’

  I nodded. He was right about that. I was still watching his hands, imagining them at work, smoothing over the wood, grasping the tools, shaping, kneading. He wasn’t so different from me, making things, creating sense and beauty out of raw materials and imagination. I looked up. He was smiling again.

  ‘How long have you lived in London?’

  For a moment I wondered how he knew where I’d lived before. Had Elizabeth talked about me? More likely it had been the village grapevine. I gritted my teeth.

  ‘Since I left uni in Manchester – about seven years.’

  ‘Do you like it?’

  Did I? Had I? Maybe at first. I pushed my hand through my mussed-up hair.

  ‘Not really, but I thought that was where I needed to be, close to the publishers and galleries.’

  ‘And do you have someone waiting for you there?’

  The question threw me off guard.

  ‘I … that is, no. I did, for a while, but it didn’t work out.’

  I was fudging over the truth there somewhat. I dropped my eyes, unaccountably wanting to be honest with him.

  ‘He turned out not to be very nice,’ I added.

  ‘Ah.’ His hand slid across the table, flat against the wood. But he didn’t touch me.

  I held my breath.

  ‘I’m sorry. Not all men are like that,’ he said. I felt a small leap in my heart. ‘If you told him where to get off, then good for you!’

  I almost laughed at that, lifting my head.

  ‘How’s the steak?’ he said, levering himself onto his feet.

  ‘It’s good.’ Our eyes met. ‘It’s really good!’

  Later, we washed up in silence, the easy silence of friends. I felt buoyed up, surprised at my own enjoyment. When the last plate was in its cupboard, Craig put his tea towel on the counter.

  ‘Right, I’m going to let you be now, so you can get on with your work. I enjoyed our lunch, Caro.’

  He clicked his fingers to Patsy and she jumped to her feet. I had a fleeting sense that Craig liked to be in control, that maybe he had felt as unsure as I had. But I felt more relaxed than I had before, more confident. And he was going to leave. I didn’t want him to leave.

  ‘Craig?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I …’

  I gulped. I wasn’t used to this. His eyes observed me, a teasing smile spreading over his face. But he didn’t move. Patsy sat down again.

  ‘I … That is …’

  ‘Yes?’ He was smiling fully now.

  ‘Thank you. For staying and looking out for me, you know, when …’

  I stepped a little closer.

  ‘That’s okay, Caro. What are neighbours for?’

  ‘And for the lunch.’

  He moved towards me just a little. I felt the warmth of his body, even with the distance still between us. His eyes had caught mine and I was transfixed. There was an expression on his face, part amusement, part hunger and … what, self-restraint? Maybe that was it. He was a good man, I thought. Look at the way Patsy adored him. Dogs had always run a mile from Paul. Why was I wasting time thinking about Paul?

  ‘I …’

  I felt the need to say something, to fill the space between us, but what could I say? What had happened to me? Perhaps it was facing up to my past, finding out I’d had a
brother, albeit one who’d died many years ago. My world was changing, it was changing me. And this man was different, I was sure of that.

  My eyes slid over his shoulder and saw the empty wine bottle on the table. My feet shifted nervously as I tried to figure out what to do with my body. I rocked back on my heels as if to step away.

  He lifted a hand and caught my fingers. He started that thing that he did with his thumb against my wrist, still holding my gaze.

  Then he lowered his head and kissed me.

  CHAPTER 22

  Craig’s lips passed across my own with the softest pressure. This wasn’t Paul asserting his will. This wasn’t anything like how Paul had been. Craig was teasing me, his touch smooth and tantalising. My head was dizzy. It was as if the whisky from the other night still smouldered in my belly. I felt my body lift towards him and I kissed him back tentatively.

  ‘Caro,’ he said.

  His voice was guttural. He kissed me more firmly, pressing into my body, fingers pushing gently through my hair. Then he pulled away and took my hand, holding me with his eyes. We walked across the hall to the sitting room. I wanted this to be different, to erase the memory of Paul, of Elizabeth, of everyone who had ever despised me, even Danny. The flames of the fire I’d set earlier that day were still glowing in the grate and, with my hand in his, Craig rummaged in the basket to add kindling. He leaned down to blow upon the logs and I watched his lips as a small flame jumped into life.

  His thumb moved slowly against my skin. He drew me close and we kissed again. I let him lower me to the sofa and I reached up with explorative fingers, watching his eyes as they closed in pleasure.

  I awoke on the sitting room rug in a state of sated warmth. Somehow, we had progressed from the sofa to the rug and Craig’s body was tucked around mine, his nakedness like a welcome hot water bottle, drawing me to hug his back, stroking my fingers across his skin. I lay like that for a while, enjoying the tingle in my toes – no more frozen feet.

  I felt the slow movement of his breath, heard the steady rhythm of his heart. How long had it been since I’d been close enough to hear someone’s heart? The house was quiet, the wind outside was still and I lay there listening, feeling, indulging myself, drifting back to sleep.