The Stranger in Our Home Read online

  ‘Craig … what’s going on? Are you … are you with her?’ I could scarcely speak.

  He didn’t reply. He gripped my arm tighter. Another warning?

  ‘Of course we’re still together!’ Steph’s voice rose. ‘We’ve always been together. I needed him to help you remember. And you’re no better than your mother, fucking someone else’s husband!’

  I looked up at Craig, but he didn’t meet my eyes.

  ‘This is the end of the road, Caro.’ Steph spoke again. ‘You took my brother’s life. You made my mother hate me. You ruined my life! Now it’s my turn – to make you suffer as I did, to take your life from you!’

  I could scarcely believe what she was saying.

  Except she was right, wasn’t she? I had killed our brother – her brother – and if Elizabeth had hated her, wasn’t that my fault, just like she’d said?

  Five million pounds, she’d told Craig – double her share.

  ‘That was her money, not yours.’ Steph knew what I was thinking. She meant Elizabeth of course. ‘You were nothing more than a bastard child, foisted upon our family.’

  ‘If you want the money, the house – you can have it! I never expected a thing!’

  ‘Do you think I care about the money?’ Steph spat the words. ‘It’s about so much more than money, Caro.’

  Her face was contorted, pure rage twisting her features into a parody of her face.

  ‘Oh, I’ll take the money – all of the money. Because it’s mine. I’m entitled to it. But you be sure now, Caro, to understand that this is not about the money!’ Her voice deepened. ‘So tell me, did you open the pear drum?’

  She didn’t wait for my reply.

  ‘Elizabeth was very clever, wasn’t she! She couldn’t hurt you, she couldn’t punish you, not properly, after Danny died. There were too many people watching us, the family, the psychiatrist, the social workers, the village even. And we were forbidden to remind you exactly what you’d done in case you were even more traumatised!’

  Her voice shook with virulent scorn.

  ‘Hah! She had to be clever. So she told you that story, worked on your conscience, building an image of your wickedness for all to see! And you soaked it all up like a sponge, didn’t you – you loved your stories! But she took it out on me too. She never forgave me. I was supposed to be babysitting you both, but I was on the phone, talking to my boyfriend. When I got to the summerhouse, it was too late. She hated me after that.’

  Steph’s voice faltered. I saw her pain. It was true: the day Danny died, Steph’s life had fallen apart. Because Elizabeth had blamed Steph every bit as much as she did me.

  ‘I’ve waited a very long time for this – for you to remember,’ Steph continued. ‘Where do you think your latest commission came from?’

  What was she talking about now? The Pear Drum and Other Dark Tales from the Nursery? Cuillin Books – was that her? Steph had commissioned my illustrations for the book?

  ‘Got it yet, have you? I chose the stories – with The Pear Drum at the top, of course. Elizabeth had you round her little finger with The Pear Drum. It used to make me laugh, to see how scared of it you were. Did you open it, Caro, did you finally open the pear drum? I knew it would work.’

  My realisation grew. She’d planned it all right from the start. The commission, persuading me to return home to Larkstone, then somehow planting the clues, the tricks, the clacking window and strange noises, the rat in the attic and on my bed, moving the pear drum downstairs – whatever it took to freak me out, to soften me up, to make me remember. The photo of Danny in the garden, the one ripped in half – had she arranged for me to ‘find’ that too? In amongst the photos of my mum, hidden in Dad’s old study? She would have known they’d be hard to resist. Had she found them when she moved the crate with the pear drum to the attic?

  And the stories – each of them carefully chosen to prod my memory, mirroring my family circumstances, unravelling my buried sense of guilt until I opened the pear drum. Had she known what was inside? Had she put the letter there herself?

  All the time Steph had said she was in New York, she’d been in Derbyshire, watching me, pulling the strings, pressing my buttons …

  My eyes flew to Craig, my face a mute plea for help, a way to understand what was going on. But his fingers around my arms gripped like steel and his features were expressionless.

  ‘Don’t think that he’s going to help you!’ Steph nodded towards Craig. ‘It was never real, you and him. He was using you, just like I was.’

  What did she mean? But I knew what she meant – that he’d been a means to report back, to manipulate my reactions, to torment me on my journey to remembering. Steph was watching me with glee, loving every moment of my doubt. Her cruelty took my breath away. I’d lost my sister again, and now I’d lost Craig too. I felt the truth of it shoot through me.

  I struggled against Craig’s hold. I tried to kick and bite, but he swung me up against the hall table, the glass bowl sliding off the edge. Pain crunched into my body and I saw the bowl crash onto the ground, splintering into three jagged pieces. I screamed. Suddenly my night terrors were coming back to life, the falling glass in the summerhouse, my nostrils filled with the earthy stench of Danny’s blood, the taste of bile fresh in my mouth, Danny’s eyes flaring as they flew from the spike in his chest to my empty hand, my fingers splayed and shaking, my mouth wide open.

  ‘You killed my brother!’ Steph screamed. ‘Now it’s your turn!’

  ‘No! Steph, no!’ I could scarcely take in what she was saying. ‘You’re not a murderer! You couldn’t kill me!’

  ‘You think not? Think about it, Caro. Carsington.’

  Carsington? What did she know about Carsington? I tried to picture it. There had been no one, just me and my own stupidity … and the runner beckoning in the fog. I’d thought it was to help me. My head flew up. Steph was grinning now, enjoying my confusion.

  The runner had been Steph, pointing to the lake, sending me in the wrong direction. Had Craig told her where I was? And she’d decided to follow me. Why? Because she was obsessed? What had been her plan? Had she even had a plan?

  ‘Penny dropped yet, sister?’

  Then the fog had descended upon us and she’d seen her opportunity, to send me to my death in the lake. Had she really meant for me to die?

  ‘I’ve waited a very long time for this, believe me. I almost messed up that day. It was too tempting, you were such a fool!’ Steph’s voice was ice cold now.

  I had lived. Craig had called for help and I’d lived. My head swung back to Craig. Why had he done that? His face was impassive, his fingers digging into my arms.

  ‘But why – why now? If you were going to kill me, why not earlier? Months ago? Years ago, even?’

  I urgently racked my brain. Had my memory loss protected me in more ways than one? Or had Elizabeth’s death somehow been the trigger? I didn’t understand. I couldn’t believe what was happening.

  Then my eyes swung back to Steph. Elizabeth. Suddenly I knew, from the gleam in Steph’s eye to the excited pout of her lips. It had been her. Steph had killed Elizabeth!

  She’d seen my recognition. She looked up at the stairwell over our heads.

  ‘People don’t just fall over a banister, do they? Not without a little help!’

  Oh God, what was she saying?

  ‘She was standing right there, by the rail.’ She nodded. ‘All it took was one little push.’

  ‘The police said it was an accident.’ I willed my voice to be steady. Perhaps I could talk her out of this.

  ‘No,’ replied Steph. ‘It was no more an accident than your accident with Danny!’

  She seemed to want me to know what she was capable of.

  ‘I went to see Elizabeth that morning. She’d been ill a long time – did you know that? I’d thought, why don’t we talk properly, the two of us, on our own? I wanted to tell her how I felt, how much I’d loved Danny too, and her. She never seemed to understand that. I
t was always about him, her son.’

  I could hear the anguish in Steph’s voice.

  ‘But it all went wrong. She’d been remembering, drinking, drowning her grief. Instead of welcoming me, she screamed abuse from the stairs outside her room. You killed him too, she kept saying. You killed him too! I loved her – I swear, I loved her. After I married Craig, I thought maybe she’d start to love me again. She had a soft spot for Craig. But she turned her back on me. She chose Danny, her dead child, over me, her living one. She deserved to die.’

  She sucked in her breath and lowered her voice.

  ‘There was a toolbox left at the bottom of the stairs in the hallway. I picked up a spanner and threw it at her head. It missed. There was a hammer too but she swayed backwards and it bounced off the banister.’

  The splinter in the wood – was that how it happened? Horror at her own act seemed to momentarily flit across Steph’s face. Then she was herself again, fury spitting out the words.

  ‘I raced up to her. She was still shrieking. Then I realised how easy it would be, she was so close to the rail. One push, one solid shove and she fell. The sound of her body broke my heart.’

  Those last words were laced with sarcasm.

  ‘That’s when I decided. I must have fantasised about it a thousand times over the years, killing you. I just had to wait a little longer, for you to remember, for you to suffer the same torment that I went through, for you to understand why.’

  CHAPTER 51

  Craig dragged me up the stairs, along the landing and up the next flight of stairs, hauling me kicking and yelling but there was no one else to hear – only Steph, following us right to the top. The door to the attic juddered open and Craig thrust me tumbling inside.

  ‘Craig, what are you doing? Please …’

  ‘If you have any sense, Caro, shut up.’

  The door slammed to and the key cranked in the lock.

  I lay sprawled on the steps. My head was numb and I reached up to feel the stickiness of blood on my forehead. I stared at the strip of light under the door, bewilderment flooding me. Had Craig been helping Steph in her plan to make me remember Danny? And her plans to punish me for what I’d done? And now … to do what?

  Angus. All I could think of was that Angus was dead. He had been there.

  Had he been in the barn, cutting up fitments for the bathroom, or on a break, his van off the drive and out of sight? Had Steph not realised till after she’d killed Elizabeth? He must have seen or heard something. A witness. But he hadn’t reported it. Why? And now Angus was dead.

  Steph’s face loomed large in my head, the venom burning in her eyes. Why had they locked me in here? What were they waiting for? Steph’s words rang in my ears. I knew they’d been no idle threat.

  I tried to dredge up every memory of Steph that I could think of. To make sense of what I now saw. As I pulled myself up from the floor and crouched against the wall, there was one that bubbled up, a memory I realised was so traumatic, I’d always tried to forget, like the repressed memories of Danny. Hadn’t the psychiatrist said that could happen?

  Except this one was different, it had stayed with me, not as a specific event, but as an overwhelming sense of horror, a strength of emotion that I’d never quite understood, attached to every time Elizabeth had said those words; Have you been bad enough?

  Jolted by my new awareness of the truth, it came bursting into my head.

  I’d told Steph the story of the pear drum. She’d seen Elizabeth taking me to one side that first day, when I was six, in our father’s study. It was after Danny’s funeral, I knew that now. Steph must have been listening at the door and couldn’t pick it all up. So she’d waited till after Elizabeth had finished, until later when I was in my bedroom. She’d asked me what the story was about. She’d laughed when I got to the end.

  ‘Shall we be naughty then, Caro? You and me? Come on!’

  There was a gleam in her eye, a flash of something I didn’t recognise.

  She caught my hand and dragged me down the stairs and out the house, crossing the courtyard towards the two barns. She was twice the size of me, thirteen to my six years, I couldn’t fight her. She pushed open the door of the first barn and the smell of sweet stagnant hay assailed me. Bales were piled up in great stacks. The floor of the barn was strewn with more hay and on one side lay an old Belfast sink, brown and thick with grime. On the other side was a stone circular wall, denoting a well. I knew about the well. It was forbidden. A wire grille had been screwed tightly to the top.

  Steph let go of my hand and I staggered to a halt. In a corner by the lowest hay bale, there was a pile of sacking. It was moving, small black objects crawling one over the other. I gave a cry of joy and ran over to it.

  ‘Kittens! Is that Tabitha’s kittens?’

  I stepped towards them, excitement illuminating my face. Tabitha was the farm cat.

  ‘Can I pick one up?’

  ‘Course you can,’ said Steph.

  She leaned forward, scooping up one small wriggling bundle. She dropped it into my lap. The little thing was still blind, its ears folded back, a small white mark on its front paw. It gave a series of scrawny mews, mouth opening and closing as it sought to be reunited with its mother.

  Steph had another one in her hand, its legs dangling beneath, its short damp fur wrinkled under her grasp. She lifted it level with her face, grinning at it and then me.

  ‘Isn’t it cute, Caro!’

  She waggled the kitten so that its back legs waved back and forth. It mewled painfully.

  ‘Do you remember the story, Caro?’

  I looked at her in confusion.

  ‘Turkey and Blue-eyes and the pear drum.’

  I nodded.

  ‘What did they do? Do you remember?’

  I blinked and nodded again.

  ‘What? Tell me, Caro.’

  ‘They put salt in the stew.’

  ‘And …?’

  I hesitated. ‘Broke the furniture.’

  Steph sighed exaggeratedly, ‘Oh come on, Caro, what else?’

  I looked at the kitten in her hand.

  ‘They killed the chicken.’

  ‘And …?’

  ‘And the kitten.’ I lowered my eyes to the floor.

  ‘Come on then.’

  She turned away from the sacking, moving across the barn towards the well.

  ‘We don’t have to do it like in the story,’ she said.

  My shoulders slumped in relief.

  ‘But look!’ she said, her free hand clasping the metal grille on the well.

  Her fingers curled around the thick wires and she jiggled it. The grille held firm. She turned back towards me.

  ‘What do you reckon, Caro, do you think the kitten will pass through the gap?’

  The gap in the grille, she meant. Dawning spread over me like a storm cloud rising over the valley.

  ‘Have you been bad enough, Caroline?’ She mimicked my stepmother’s voice.

  I could feel Steph’s spite, her hatred – for me or her mother? She wanted to get me into trouble.

  ‘Have you been bad enough, Caro?’ she repeated.

  Had I been bad enough?

  ‘No!’ I said.

  I dropped the kitten in my hand back onto the floor. It landed clumsily on its feet and I shooed it away with my palms. It sniffed the air and staggered slowly back towards the sacking. I followed it, shielding it from Steph with my body.

  ‘Oh, come on, why not?’ Steph reached out to haul me back.

  I started to struggle, pulling this way and that, but Steph’s grip was too strong. She forced me round to face the well. She plucked my hand from my chest, thrusting her kitten into my fingers. Her hand closed around mine, holding the kitten in place as she guided it towards the grille.

  ‘How does it go? Let me think … Ding, dong, bell, Pussy’s in the well.’

  The kitten began to squirm furiously.

  ‘Who put her in? Little Johnny Flynn.’


  I screeched, pulling my head away, sobbing against Steph’s arm.

  ‘Who pulled her out? Little Tommy Stout.’

  The kitten’s head was between the wire grille, paws scrabbling in thin air. I looked back at Steph, she was teasing me, she wouldn’t really …

  ‘What a naughty boy was that, to try to drown poor pussy cat, who never did him any harm but killed all the mice in the farmer’s barn.’

  The kitten’s body passed through the grille, my hand cold against the updraught.

  ‘You have to let go, Caro. Now, Caro,’ Steph hissed in my ear.

  I gave a sob, and Steph shook my hand. My little fingers were too small, the kitten too wriggly. My fingers opened.

  ‘What do you think, Caro? Have you been bad enough?’

  CHAPTER 52

  This was the Steph I knew. The one whose voice instilled me with fear.

  Have you been bad enough? That’s what my stepmother would say.

  But it hadn’t just been her. Later, after my stepmother had left me alone, Steph would repeat the very same words, watching my reaction.

  Have you been bad enough, Caroline? Followed by that strange kind of laugh.

  She’d set me up, with that incident with the kitten. To make sure that Elizabeth’s words struck home. Because even though my conscious mind had tried to forget it, my hands would remember, the feeling of the little kitten slipping from my grasp. My lips would quiver, unable to speak, and the tears would come.

  Have you been bad enough?

  My sister’s sweet good-girl voice.

  Have you been bad enough, Caro? CARO!

  This was the real Steph.

  At last I understood the way my own memory had deceived me, like the leaves of an old book, some pages half torn, some re-written with the passage of time, others completely missing. Open to poor interpretation, the reader unable to see the truth behind the words.

  I scrambled to my feet, rushing to the door, pulling on it to no effect. I hammered uselessly at the panels, then felt for the light switch. I flicked it on but nothing happened. I tried again, off, on, off, on, but still it failed to work. I hadn’t replaced the bulb.