The Woman in the Dark

by Vanessa Savage

  When we went to the bank to apply for our first mortgage and he realized a terraced suburban new-build was all we could afford, he shrank a bit, defeat dragging him down.

  “This should be mine,” he said, the first time he showed me the house he’d grown up in, before that poor family was killed there. Its big bay windows offered panoramic sea views and Patrick would describe the apple tree in the back garden he used to climb. Who was living there then? Was it them—a young couple like us, children little more than babies, no idea how short their future was?

  I asked him, last night as we lay in bed, what he wanted from this house, why he was so desperate to see it again.

  I just want it back, he said. Not only the house but the town, the whole life I had there. The life I should have had. There was something in his face, a fierceness and a vulnerability I’m not used to seeing.

  So here we are. I’m not sure what we’re doing, really, beyond indulging a fantasy. Is it nostalgia? Our finances are not much different than they were when we bought the house we’re in now, so it’s not like we’re any closer to living in one of his seafront dream houses. I think Patrick just needs to look, to have this moment of hope. And it’s the least I can do for him after all I’ve put him through, even if I don’t share the dream.

  I look toward the faded Welsh seaside town he loves so much, remembering the scruffy cafés, seaside shops selling buckets and spades, the dingy pub, and, in the distance, the fairground, ancient and rickety when I was nineteen. God knows the state of it now. I look back at the house and, hard as I try, I can’t see what he does.

  He finds me on the beach and jogs over, an envelope of keys in his hand. “We’ve got an hour,” he says. Seagulls circle above us, adding their lonely cries to the crashing of the waves.

  “I was born in this house,” he says as he struggles to unlock the front door. “My mother waited too long to leave for the hospital.”

  Patrick was born in winter and I picture a dark night, a winter storm, the house battered by winds as his mother screamed inside.

  “It should never have left the family,” he continues as the key turns and he pushes the door open.

  The hall is long and dark and cold, all the doors leading off it closed. A dim light from some unseen upstairs window illuminates the stairs, but all I notice are the hidden corners, dark spots perfect for lurking ghosts. I reach for the light switch but the electricity is off. I shiver as Patrick closes the door behind him, shutting us into the Murder House.

  I reach for the first door on the right, but Patrick puts his hand over mine, stops me opening the door. “That’s the cellar,” he says. “I don’t want the first room you see to be the cellar.”

  He pushes open the door to the kitchen instead and I follow him in. It’s twice the size of ours at home. There’s a small window with peeling paint overlooking a long back garden choked with weeds, mismatched pine units, dusty gaps for appliances. The light from the window is inadequate for this big, cold room. The floor is covered with dirty linoleum that’s warped and curling at the edges. Even though there’s no stove here, the room smells of old fat and moldy food.

  Still, I turn slowly, forcing myself to ignore the smells and the dust, taking in the space. I try to imagine Patrick’s happy life here. I picture everything I’ve always envied from the pages of Good Homes magazine and more. How wonderful it would be to have a kitchen where it’s not a struggle to squeeze a family of four around the table. When I lift a corner of the linoleum, there are black-and-white ceramic tiles underneath. Some are chipped and cracked, but I can imagine the broken ones replaced, how once the floor must have stretched out, shiny and beautiful.

  “This is not what it was like,” he says, shoulders slumped. “I remember it as warm and bright and homey. I wish you could have seen it like it was.” He rubs his eyes. “God, they kept it so beautifully,” he says, and there’s longing in his voice. “Nothing out of place, no mess anywhere.”

  I try not to hear, in this, a criticism of my own habit of shoving messes into cupboards or under furniture and calling the house tidy. “I’m sure it must have been messy sometimes,” I say. “I imagine you filled it with Legos and your beloved Star Wars toys.”

  He laughs. “God, no! Heaven forbid I should leave a toy lying around. You knew my mother. It was spotless.”

  “It was a long time ago,” I say, walking over to hug him. “It’s still the same space as the house you loved; it just hasn’t had the right kind of attention over the years.” I stop myself from saying anything about the murders.

  He drops a kiss on the top of my head and smiles. “You’re right,” he says. “Picture this: a range stove and a big wooden table over there. We’ll get new tiles for the floor and the window replaced.” He steps over to it and looks out. “The back garden’s huge—I remember how far back it goes. We could get an extension built, have those folding doors that open right up.”

  He sounds serious. I look down at the estate agent’s details in my hand. According to Patrick, it’s been hugely undervalued—advertised cheap so buyers will look beyond its history. But the house is already way beyond our budget, even undervalued, even in this state with all its original features hidden by fiberboard and woodchip. Patrick’s talking about new kitchens and extensions as if we’ve won the lottery, when on his salary we’d struggle even to pay the mortgage.

  He carries on like this as he walks around the house, planning built-in storage in the living room bay window, a window seat for looking out at the sea. There’s original parquet wood under the rotting carpet in the living room and it’s fun to think about having that restored, the fireplace unboarded, a crackling fire lighting the polished wood. Oh, to have a home like that—the idea makes my heart flutter and soar. I join in the game, picturing new bathrooms, new carpets upstairs, having it decorated throughout. I get better at ignoring the rotting wooden window frames, the icy wind rattling through the gaps, the black spots of mold in the corners, the uneven walls and floors, the cracks and creaks.

  Until we walk into the smallest of three bedrooms. “This was my room,” he says. It overlooks the back garden and a tall tree blocks most of the light, leaving it darker and colder than the rest of the house. The smell of dampness is stronger in here too, a musty tang that clings to the back of my throat.

  “I hope it was warmer then,” I say, rubbing my arms to chase away the goose bumps as a gust of wind sets the branches of the tree tapping on the glass. Did the tree do that when Patrick was a boy? Middle of the night, curtains closed, something tap-tapping on the window…

  “Not really. The heat never seemed to work.” He walks over to the window and peers out. “But I could get out by climbing down the tree.”

  “Sneaking out to meet girls?”

  He glances at me with a half-smile. “Maybe. You jealous?”

  I stand next to him, trying to imagine a teenage Patrick sneaking out to meet a girlfriend for moonlit walks on the beach.

  “Come and look at this room,” he says, holding out his hand. I notice he closes the door of his old bedroom as we leave. All the other doors he’s left wide open, but this one he closes tight.

  We stand together in one of the bedrooms at the front of the house, looking out the window. The sun has come out and, reflected by the sky, the sea looks blue rather than its usual churning gray-green. It’s like Patrick ordered this weather especially.

  “Can you picture it, Sarah?” he says, reaching for my hand again. “Everything you’ve gone through in the last year—everything we’ve gone through—it would all be wiped away if we moved here. No reminders, a fresh start.”

  “A fresh start? Here? I know this was your home and I see that it could be so beautiful, but how can you get past what happened here? Can you forget that people… that that family was…” I swallow my words.

  He studies my face for a few moments too long, and then his smile is back. “It was a tragedy, I know. A horrible, horrible tragedy. But it was such a lon
g time ago. The house is just a house, Sarah. What—do you expect their killer to come back fifteen years later?” He laughs and looks around the room. “You think he’s still hiding in a cupboard somewhere?”

  My smile in response is halfhearted, reluctant. He’s right, of course he is. But still…

  “Just think: this would be our room. This would be the view we’d wake up to every day. It could be like your doll’s house—remember?”

  Of course I remember. My dad gave me a secondhand doll’s house for my eighth birthday, a beautiful, old-fashioned wooden doll’s house. But when I opened it, the walls had been scribbled on by its previous owner, and there was no furniture, no family of dolls to inhabit it.

  Don’t worry, my dad said. We can make the inside as beautiful as the outside. And we did. Dad painted all the walls in soft, warm colors. He varnished the floors to look like they were made of polished wood. I made little rugs and curtains from scraps of material Mum gave me. That Christmas, a little wooden family appeared under the tree: a wooden mum, dad, and two wooden children. And each time Dad came back from one of his sales trips, he’d bring a new piece of furniture.

  I’d stopped playing with it by the time Dad left when I was twelve. But in those horrible years after, when we were scraping by on benefits and Mum was barely functioning, I’d sit in front of that doll’s house and stare at all those perfect rooms and the perfect wooden family and wish that was my real life.

  And here’s Patrick telling me it’s possible. We could paint those walls and floors, fill this house with beautiful furniture bought one piece at a time, chase away the bad memories, give ourselves, and this house, a new start. We could be the perfect wooden family.

  I close my eyes and for a second, I can picture it. I hear the faint sound of a wind chime. I see myself waking up in a room like this, sun streaming in; I see myself on the window seat Patrick’s going to build. Curled up, watching the sea, watching the seasons pass, a fire in the winter, candles burning on the mantelpiece, windows open in the summer, the smell of the sea and the cries of the seagulls drifting in. If we lived somewhere like this, the children would lose their suburban pallor, get some color in their cheeks. For a moment, I do see this as Patrick’s house, the house he was born in, the house he’s always loved.

  When we lived in Patrick’s old apartment, and Joe was a baby, he used to laugh at my obsession with magazines like Good Homes and House Beautiful. I’d spend hours drooling over pictures of Victorian houses just like this one, all polished wood and open fireplaces. Alcoves with built-in shelving and heritage colors on the walls. Patrick would tell me stories of his childhood and the yearning would become a physical ache. When did I stop buying those magazines? Was it when we moved into our current house, so bland and boxy?

  “I’ve missed this,” I say, opening my eyes.

  “What?”

  “You. Like this. All enthusiastic and passionate—it reminds me of when we first met.”

  “Before the drudgery of careers and mortgages and children, you mean?” he says, eyebrows raised.

  “No, that’s not it… It’s me as well, not only you. I miss… that freedom we used to have together, the moments of saying, ‘Screw it, let’s do it anyway.’” I glance at him.

  He looks away from me and back out at the sea. All that yearning is right there on his face and, like the other morning when he bent to kiss me, I wonder again how long it’s been since that look made me drag him to the nearest bed.

  “Screw it,” he mutters, squeezing my hand.

  “What?”

  “You’re right. Let’s do it. Let’s say screw it and do it anyway. What do you say, Sarah? Another adventure?”

  I blink. Wait. That’s not what I meant. The Murder House isn’t the adventure I’m after. It wouldn’t be a roller-coaster ride—this would be a ride on the ghost train. I shake my head. “We can’t. We can’t possibly afford it.”

  He’s still looking at the view, but even from the side I can see the way his face changes. “There’s your mother’s money.”

  No. In that moment, that gap, all the adventures I’ve ever dreamed of hover there. My mother didn’t have vast amounts of money to leave. She didn’t own her own home, but she did save small amounts over decades and decades for God knows what because she never went anywhere, never did anything. When the money came through after she died, I looked at that fucking savings book and cried for hours. What was it all for? A hundred pounds a month, every month for nearly two decades. A little over twenty grand and she never touched any of it. It broke my heart, and I got so sad and so angry with myself for not knowing, for not being there enough to understand her longing, to the point of trying to tear up that damn savings book. Patrick had to wrestle it out of my hands as I cried and raged. What was it bloody for?

  I’m not going to do the same. I’m not going to let my mother’s money stagnate in a mediocre-interest savings account. I’m going to have an adventure. I like to think that’s what Mum meant it for. I’ve spent months looking through the travel brochures that Caroline brings me, reading itineraries of safari tours, cruises to see the Northern Lights, deserted beaches, and hot, crowded cities. I want to do it all. Me, Patrick, Joe, and Mia. We’re going to have the kind of adventures we’ll always remember, together as a family.

  The only thing holding me back, besides the push and pull of everyday life, is… how do you choose? All the places, the whole world, how do you choose when you’ve never been anywhere before? I want to sink my toes into white sand on a deserted beach, swim naked in the sea, jostle my way through all the sights and sounds and tastes of a foreign marketplace, sweating and claustrophobic, buzzing and alive. Six months on, the money is still sitting there, untouched. Maybe that’s what my mother did. Dad left when I was twelve, walked out without a word and never came back. Is that when she started saving? Hoping she’d head off on some grand adventure, where she’d get to the middle of the deepest rain forest and there he’d be: my dad, her missing husband, waiting?

  I don’t know yet what our adventure is going to be, but it won’t be this house. No matter what dreams you pour into it, this is still the Murder House. How would we ever get past that? How could any of us forget? Someone died in this room—not just died: they were murdered. A whole family. Butchered, ripped apart, blood on the walls. Every wall that’s been repainted, I would know what’s underneath, what they had to cover up.

  “I can’t live here,” I say.

  Patrick’s blue eyes stop shining.

  CHAPTER 3

  “Mum?”

  The bruise has darkened overnight, changing from a red mark to a faint blue, deepening to purple. It’s like a painting I once did of the Northern Lights, the aurora borealis there under my skin. I watch it, waiting for it to flicker and flash and change color right in front of my eyes.

  “Mum?”

  Mia touches my shoulder and I jump. I blink away the light show.

  She’s dressed for school, a familiar scowl on her face. “Where’s my PE uniform?”

  “PE uniform?”

  “For God’s sake, Mum, you said you’d wash it for me. I’ll get a stupid bloody detention if I don’t take it.” She whirls around to storm out but stops, staring at my arm. Did the bruise change color again?

  “Where did you get that?” she asks, a different edge to her voice.

  “I hit it on the door handle,” I say. I’d gotten up last night and stumbled, bashed into the door in the dark. We’d argued, Patrick and I. He’d stopped at the garage on the way back from the house viewing and bought a copy of Good Homes. He flicked through the pages, pointing out all those perfect period homes, telling me all his plans and ideas, and then I called it the Murder House, baiting him, bitchy after three glasses of wine and still raw from his wanting to use my mother’s money.

  “Maybe you should lay off the bloody wine,” Mia says, half in and half out of the room, and I hear disgust in her voice, a coldness that never used to be there.
<
br />   “Mia, will you just stop—” My voice is sharp.

  “Stop what?” There’s a challenge in her voice. She’s doing what I did to Patrick—baiting me. She wants me to call her out, so she can let rip with the simmering resentment that’s been building in her ever since my mother died and I fell apart. At fifteen she’s growing up so fast, and while I try to cling to the mother-daughter bond, she seems to want to hack it apart as bloodily as possible. She’s hurting, I remind myself. Because of me. She attacks because she’s scared. Me shouting back won’t help.

  “Nothing, forget it,” I say, and her shoulders slump as she turns away.

  “Mia?” I call as she moves off. I’m looking for my little girl underneath the stretched gawkiness of a too-fast growth spurt. “Want to go shopping on Saturday?”

  “Saturday? I can’t. It’s Lara’s birthday. Dad’s promised to take me for lunch, and I’m going to the movies with the girls before the party.”

  “Okay. Never mind. It’s been a while, that’s all. Another time.”

  She hesitates in the doorway. I see the conflict in her face, the teetering between her spoiling for a fight and the temptation of my peace offering of a shopping trip. “But I could do with something new to wear for Lara’s party.” She grins. “Dad said he’d get me something, but he’d probably take me to Laura Ashley.”

  Her grin is for Patrick, not me, but I smile back. She’s right—Patrick wants her still to be seven, wearing frilly party dresses. “He probably would.”

  She chews the ends of her hair and I wait.