The Stranger in Our Home Read online

  But the man followed me. He caught up, walking alongside without a word. I tried to walk faster, but he kept pace. I stopped.

  ‘What do you want?’ I said.

  ‘I want to know that you’re okay.’

  ‘I’m okay, now go away.’ I bit my lip at my rudeness.

  ‘You’re staying at Elizabeth Crowther’s old house, aren’t you?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with you? You know her?’ That second sentence was a mistake, an invitation for him to engage.

  ‘Knew her, yes.’

  I nodded, acknowledging the correction. But you weren’t at the funeral, I thought. At least, I didn’t remember seeing him there.

  ‘We were neighbours. Let me introduce myself. I’m Craig. And you must be Elizabeth’s daughter, Caroline?’ He held out a hand.

  I ignored it.

  ‘I was her stepdaughter, and it’s Caro, actually.’

  I’d always hated Caroline, Elizabeth had called me that. I started walking again.

  ‘I live at Lavender Cottage, it’s further up the lane, past your drive.’

  So that explained why he’d appeared to follow me the first night. I didn’t reply.

  ‘Look, that guy was pretty nasty, back there—’

  ‘Who was he?’ I saw his flash of irritation at my interruption.

  ‘Angus McCready.’ He gave a sigh. ‘Let me make it up to you. Let me buy you a cup of coffee. There,’ he pointed to a coffee shop on the other side of the road, all big chunky wooden tables and artsy ironwork chairs.

  ‘Thanks, I appreciate your help, really, but my parking’s about to run out.’

  A white lie.

  He looked taken aback. Maybe he wasn’t used to being blown off by a girl. He was, after all, quite good-looking.

  ‘No problem,’ he said. He stopped walking. ‘Drive carefully!’

  His words were softly ironic. But I wasn’t listening, I was already heading back up the hill to my car.

  The drive home seemed painfully long, though in reality, speeding, it must have been no more than fifteen minutes. The lane was overhung with trees, the headlamps of my car picking up the droplets of water clinging to the roadside grass. I kept looking in the rear-view mirror, expecting to see the jeep with its dog hanging out of the window. But the road was empty and I noticed the remains of the dead sheep near the house had gone.

  I couldn’t wait to get inside. I shoved the key in the lock, leaning against the door as it clicked shut. I turned around holding out one hand, fingers straight but trembling. I snapped the chain into place on the door, reaching up to bolt it top and bottom. Only then did I draw breath.

  Okay, there were plenty of men like Angus, bullying creeps who couldn’t even show a bit of respect for a stranger, let alone offer up some sympathy for a brief moment of clumsiness. But since I’d dumped Paul, I’d been reluctant to admit even to myself how I felt about men.

  Paul had been a nice guy, too nice. At the beginning. Not that nice wasn’t good – I really wasn’t into the exciting, dangerous type – safe was good, safe was safe. I’d barely dated anyone for longer than a week until Paul. As time went by, I was drawn into his friendship. We met for dinner, we went to the theatre, we headed out of London for day trips to Brighton and the seaside town of Southwold. Then he asked me to spend the weekend with him in Bath. I knew what that meant. Here was someone that wanted me, we had a future, didn’t we? I’d never thought that might happen, I wasn’t the glamorous type, the kind of woman most men went for. I didn’t see what was coming.

  ‘Limpy, lumpy Caroline!’

  The words punched into my brain from nowhere and I sucked in my breath. A little boy voice – another memory from school? Where had that come from? I leaned my head against the front door of the house, feeling the wind outside battering against the wood, roaring through the gap at my feet, the iron bolt cold beneath my fingers.

  I made for the kitchen. With unsteady hands I reached for a bottle of wine skulking in a corner of the worktop. I poured it out into a mug and sat down.

  I didn’t normally drink, perhaps the odd glass in front of the TV once I’d finished work. The liquid seemed to move in the middle, a regular ripple, circling out from the centre of the mug. It shone under the bright kitchen lights, my heartbeat reflected in the liquid, the beat transferring from hand to drink.

  I lifted the mug to my lips and drank it down in one swift, grateful, needy gulp.

  CHAPTER 6

  I had to choose a bedroom – I couldn’t carry on like this, what was wrong with me? The sofa, which on my first night had seemed so inviting, was now excruciating, the cushions hard and lumpy, the ridges of the seams digging into my hips. I tucked the blankets under me and rolled over, one hand flung out, feet hitting the armrest. I resolved to sort out a proper bed in the morning.

  The house was quiet, except for the tick of the clock in the hallway and the wind rattling down the chimney and buffeting the windows. I’d left the curtains open and snowflakes lightly touched the glass, slipping down as they melted. I lay on my side and drifted off, only to wake again some time later in a pleasantly floating state, aware, yet limbs hypnotically frozen in sleep.

  Clack, clack, clack. The noise pierced my slumberous state. The wind had died down and it was a sharp, staccato sound, at odds with the peacefulness of the house.

  Clack, clack, clack.

  I moaned, unwilling to relinquish my warm, now comfortable position. But the noise penetrated, demanding a response. I’d had some kind of dream, something to do with a bird stuck in the chimney of my old bedroom, black feathers covered in soot clouding my vision, choking in my throat. It had left me on edge and in my sleepy daze the clacking sound momentarily sent shivers down my back.

  I rolled onto my feet, dragging the blanket about my body. It was cold, far colder than normal, even in this house. I reached for the lamp, but it didn’t come on. A power cut? I looked towards the window. The air was thick with wide, slow-falling snowflakes, this time the kind that really settles. Snow was rapidly building up on the ground, the front drive white, the low walls too, and an eerie blue light filled the room. I knew what was coming, it had happened so many times before, when I was a child. I made a mental check of the fridge. There was enough food for a few days and for a moment I quite liked the idea of being snowed in, up here on the hill, cut off from the world in my snowy kingdom. Except it hadn’t been like that before, with Elizabeth.

  But where was that noise coming from? I wondered if it was the boiler, something that had worked itself loose, or pipes contracting in the cold. Had the boiler broken down too? I pushed on my slippers and padded through to the kitchen.

  I started to fill the kettle. Then I berated myself – no electricity, remember? I turned to the Aga; it was oil-fired and still warm, thank God for that – heat and something to cook by. I filled a saucepan and set it down on a hotplate.

  A flurry of wind caught the side of the house, whipping the branches of a tree, clattering against the window frame. Was that the noise? By now I was too awake to sleep again. It was relatively pleasant in the kitchen and the sitting room felt uninviting. I rifled in a drawer where I thought I’d seen a hot water bottle and pulled it out. I fished out a candle too, jamming it into the empty wine bottle from the day before. I sat down on a chair to wait for the water to boil.

  My thoughts turned to the man in the jeep. My rescuer, Craig. There was something about him. Maybe it was his height, or the way his hair grew, unkempt, curling at the back. Why was I even thinking about him? Just because he’d taken an interest in me. The cottage had always been empty in my childhood. I bit my lip; I hadn’t banked on a neighbour that close, I’d been looking forward to the isolation. I stood up to peer out of the hall window. I could see the cottage he lived in, further up the road, its roof snuggled close to the ground where the road climbed and fell away.

  I returned to the kitchen. My phone was still on the table, where I’d left it after drawing the swan princ
e. Reading from my phone wasn’t quite the same as reading a physical book. I thought of all those stories where the moonlight on a particular night could make the letters of a book come alive, or reveal the secret opening of a door cut into rock, shimmering, brightening, an arc of light bursting into life as the door magically opened onto a world of princesses and fairies, goblins and monsters, promises broken and resolved.

  I’d stolen a book once – why had I only just remembered that? – from the mobile library van, in the days when they still had such things. I’d loved it so much I couldn’t bring myself to return it. Thief. I rolled the word around in my head. That was me. The sense of guilt gave me a brief shiver.

  I picked up the phone, swiping the screen until the file jumped into life. I looked down the list of stories in the commission:

  The Foundling.

  King Rat. I knew that one – wasn’t that about a boy who liked to play jokes? He got turned into a rat at the end of the story.

  The Stubborn Child.

  I almost laughed when I read this one – with satisfaction, not humour. A snippet of a tale in the way that some folk tales were – short and ambiguous. Perfect for me to put my own stamp on. The water was boiling, I filled my hot water bottle and made myself a cup of tea. Hugging both, I sat at the table, pulling the candle closer. Reaching for a pencil and paper, I began to draw. The old house empty around me, the wind struggling at its walls, the snow like cold fingers clawing at the windows, the clacking in the distance, it all merged within my head. And I was there, an uneven sequence of sketches sprawling across the page.

  In a graveyard, a woman dressed in black stood watching. She was standing beside a mound of newly dug earth, her head bowed, her hair caught beneath a long black veil. The grave was small, a scaled-down stone at its head. In the fading light, the letters were unclear.

  The ground was moving at the woman’s feet, the earth breaking, cracking. Something thrust out from beneath. A hand, a small white arm, the black soil clinging to its skin. The fist was closed tight, the whole thing stiff with rage.

  The mother stepped backwards in alarm, her feet neatly booted. The child’s arm stretched out, the fingers uncurled, feeling for her legs. But the mother wasn’t having it and she kicked the hand away.

  The hand reached out again, scrabbling for a hold in the dirt. This time, the mother bent, batting it down and stamping on it. She picked up a branch fallen from the trees. The child’s hand moved once more, persistent and imploring, stubborn. Now the mother lifted up her branch and brought it whipping down upon the arm.

  The arm shot back into the ground, shrivelling from sight. The soil folded into place and the grave fell quiet.

  What kind of story was that? These stories were intriguing, like little windows into human weakness – mothers don’t always love their children, I knew that. What made a mother anyway? An accident of birth, marriage or an inner instinct to love and care? And who knew what was behind this story? Perhaps the boy deserved his fate? Perhaps he was a fairy child, a changeling, substituted into the mother’s family to torment her? As the thoughts passed through my mind I picked up a stick of charcoal and began to draw again.

  The last picture lay before me, the lines so heavily smudged that my fingers were ingrained with black. It was a grave. But this grave was ripped apart, the soil piled high on either side. A tall yew hedge stood behind, each branch, each twig bending in the same direction. Line after line, twig after twig. So close together, it seemed as dense as the earth beneath. At the bottom of the hole was a child, a boy, his eyes wide open. The hole was too deep for his escape. He was sitting, his knees pulled tight under his chin, his arms wrapped around his legs. It was a young boy, maybe nine years old? Defiance etched onto his face. Then he moved, one arm reaching out. Upwards. Towards his mother. Towards me.

  I let the stick of charcoal drop to the table as if it stung. It broke in two. I had become completely immersed in my drawing, my interpretation of the story, and the image was so austere, so … disturbing … moving. Why did I think that?

  CHAPTER 7

  Clack, clack, clack.

  The noise broke into my thoughts. Where was that stupid sound coming from? I leapt to my feet. It wasn’t the Aga, or the trees outside. It was coming from somewhere else in the house – upstairs. I thought maybe one of the bedrooms on the first floor.

  I turned towards the stairs. I didn’t want to go up there. I was okay down here, where the rooms were familiar, where the outside was easily accessed. But at night, upstairs was something else. Even my old room. Unexplored rooms that hadn’t been used for all those years, their memories struggling under a thick layer of dust.

  There it went again, louder and more persistent. The noise. I couldn’t ignore it.

  I climbed the stairs, one step at a time, one hand sliding on the banister. It was a long way down, the grand height of the building soaring over my head and beneath too. The wood was smooth beneath my touch and as I reached the first floor, the point where my stepmother had fallen, I gave a small cry and snatched my hand away. A large splinter stuck out from the fleshy part of my palm. I stared down at the banister. I hadn’t noticed before that it was scratched. I pulled the splinter out and sucked my hand. But now the bare wood jarred against the finely polished surface. Had that been something to do with Elizabeth’s accident?

  My other hand reached for the wall switch, flicking it on/off, on/off … the electricity still wasn’t working. It seemed deliberate, vengeful – why would I think that?

  Clack, clack. Don’t be ridiculous, I thought. It’s only a noise, a branch against a window, a pipe knocking in the wall. Suddenly, the hall flooded with light, the power back on, and I blinked. I looked down. Even from the first-floor landing, the drop to the hall below seemed dizzying. There was the front door, the table by the wall, the space on the floor where the rug had been, the ground still bearing a faint tell-tale stain of red.

  Then I heard a different sound. The familiar ping of an incoming Skype call, my laptop in the kitchen. I almost skipped down the stairs, dashing into the kitchen, grabbing for the mouse to answer the call, cursing as my mug of tea crashed to the ground.

  ‘Hi, Sis.’ It was Steph. ‘Sorry it’s so early.’ Her face quivered into focus on the screen.

  I didn’t reply. I looked at the clock. It was almost seven in the morning. Dawn wasn’t far off. It would be two am in New York.

  ‘Caro? Are you there? I saw you were online – I’ve just got in from a night out. Thought I’d see if the connection worked. Are you okay?’

  ‘Yes … no, really I’m fine.’

  I spoke too quickly, actually not sure that I was. But I was pleased to hear her voice. The electricity coming back on must have triggered a reconnection to Skype. Blood welled slowly from my palm and I was unsettled.

  ‘How’s it going?’ she said.

  ‘Okay – well sort of. There was this guy in Ashbourne who was a bit nasty.’

  ‘Nasty? Oh Caro, what happened?’

  I gave her a potted history of the incident outside of the artists’ shop.

  ‘That’s horrible, some people are prats. Don’t let it get to you. But this man who tried to help, he sounds nice – what did you say his name was?’

  ‘Craig something. He said he’s my neighbour, the cottage down the road.’

  ‘Oh, I think I know that name.’

  ‘You know him?’

  ‘Sort of. That sounds like Craig Atherton.’

  I waited, expecting to hear more. ‘And?’

  ‘Well, there’s not much to say. I remember him from school. He was cool. You won’t have known him, he’d have been in the older class. I heard he’s a carpenter now, he’s on Facebook.’

  The village school had been tiny, only two classes, that much I did remember. And Steph was right, I had no memory of a Craig Atherton. I tried to picture the man as a boy, kicking a ball around in the playground with his mates … No, it didn’t gel – I couldn’t remember him at
all. But that didn’t surprise me, most of the kids had kept their distance, I’d always been the outsider.

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Steph was before me.

  ‘Look Caro, I’ve gotta go, it’s really late over here. I just rang to check in with you. I wanted to know that you’re alright.’

  I felt the warmth of her voice enclose me. Only Steph could have understood how I must be feeling, back here in this house.

  ‘I’ll call again, if you like, tomorrow evening, your time. Take care of yourself. Bye!’

  ‘Bye!’ I said.

  I felt unexpectedly bereft. But Steph had already signed off.

  As the morning progressed, the weather didn’t improve. The sky was heavy and grey and whirling with large snowflakes. The house was like a fridge and I went to find another jumper. When I got back to the kitchen my mobile rang.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Miss Crowther? Is that Miss Caroline Crowther?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hello, Gareth Briscoe here, from Briscoe, Williams and Patterson.’

  ‘Oh, hi.’

  I gripped the phone and sat down. It was the lawyers, the ones who were handling probate. They were Elizabeth’s lawyers really and it had been Briscoe who’d organised everything. His voice was low and deep. I imagined a portly fellow, propping up the bar at his gentleman’s club, cracking open another bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

  ‘I understand you’re now at the house.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And all is well, you have what you need to settle in?’

  ‘Oh, yes, thank you. Everything’s fine.’ Sort of.

  ‘Wonderful.’

  Briscoe sounded uncomfortable, I wasn’t sure why.

  ‘I’m glad you felt able to move in for a while,’ he carried on. ‘And deal with the contents, it’s not an easy job after losing a loved one.’

  Loved one – didn’t he realise? Probably not and why would he? I’d never met him, and it didn’t seem likely that Elizabeth would have ever discussed with him the exact nature of our relationship.