The Woman in the Dark

by Vanessa Savage

  “How’s he been?” Patrick asks when he comes in, glancing up the stairs toward Joe’s closed door.

  “Fine,” I say. I can’t bear to look at him.

  “Good,” Patrick says, taking off his jacket and hooking it over the banister.

  I follow him through to the kitchen, my hands clenched into fists. “Patrick? That’s not true. He’s not fine at all.”

  He sighs. “What’s the problem? This will blow over. He’s a teenager, that’s all. He probably got dumped by a—a girlfriend.”

  You know, I want to scream. You’ve known for months he’s gay. You knew why he crashed your car and you’ve never said a word to me.

  “I think it’s more serious than a teenage tantrum,” I say, my voice rising in disbelief.

  Patrick moves to the sink to fill the kettle. “Half of his problems are down to worrying about you. If you’re fussing and stressing all the time, how is that supposed to help him?”

  “But—”

  “It makes him weak. Everyone has problems and everyone else deals with them without carving themselves up. This is down to where he came from and who he was before he was ours. We need to help him by being strong. Joe will be fine. Let your damn therapist do her job. Give him some space.”

  I step back from his rising voice. Careful. I have to be careful. He turns to face me and I can’t help but recoil.

  “For Christ’s sake, Sarah, what is this?”

  “Joe said someone else was there. When he got attacked. A witness. A watcher.”

  What’s that look on his face? Is it fear? It’s gone now, replaced by tight-lipped anger, a tic going in his cheek. I take another step back.

  “Enough,” Patrick says. “I can’t deal with all this imagined nonsense right now.”

  Imagined? Are the scars on Joe’s arms imagined? His fractured bones? The fact that he’s refusing to go back to school?

  I want to ask him about Caroline. I want to confront him. I want to ask him where he was while our son was being beaten up. But I can’t.

  It feels like there’s ice trickling in my veins. This is my husband, the man I’ve loved for seventeen years, and I can’t ask him because I’m scared of his reaction. I’m scared of what he might do.

  There’s a new lock on the cellar. Last time she opened the door, I saw it, shining silver, incongruous in the dull hallway. When I was here before, when it was just a house, there was no lock on it. You took it off. You laughed and told me you snuck down in the middle of the night and unscrewed the whole lock. You buried it deep in the back garden. You laughed as you told me about your dad’s ranting confusion, how, because he woke up and saw his tools lying around, he thought he’d done it himself. You managed to convince him he was sleepwalking. Doing fucking DIY in his sleep.

  “Why did you bother?” I asked. “It was just a rusty lock, wasn’t it?”

  You had that frown on, the bone-deep one. “Not just a lock,” you said. “It’s a lock that shouldn’t be there, should never have been on that door.”

  CHAPTER 20

  I’m trying to work Anna out as she paces on the sand, dressed all in black, her hair cropped even shorter than before. Joe was sleeping, so I brought her down onto the beach, where we’re still in view of the house. It’s been a week since the attack and this is the first time I’ve felt able to leave him.

  “Are you okay?” she says, and she’s looking at my hands, at the nails I’ve bitten so much the tips of my fingers are bleeding. I pull down my sleeves to hide them.

  “Just worried about Joe,” I say. “And Mia. And other things.” I don’t want to tell her about the cellar, or Caroline, or about Patrick’s trouble at work. I don’t think he’d like me telling other people about that. Anna stops pacing and reaches over to squeeze my hand.

  “I’m so sorry about Joe. I know I said it before, but I wanted to say it again. It was awful. I saw him staggering onto the path, and I thought he was just some drunk kid, then he stopped under the streetlight and I saw the blood and I recognized him from your sketches. I’m still shaky remembering him there—God knows how you must be feeling.”

  “I wish we’d never moved here,” I say, under my breath, not wanting to confess too loudly in case the sea breeze picks up my words and carries them to Patrick. “I’ve tried. I’ve tried really hard to make the house beautiful, but everything keeps going wrong. All Patrick wants is the perfect house he remembers—it’s no wonder he’s on edge.”

  “Perfect?”

  I turn to face her. “Like it was when Patrick lived here before.”

  She sits down on a rock, starts scraping at the bark on a piece of driftwood. The noise of her nail on the wood sets my teeth on edge.

  “I can’t imagine it ever being perfect,” she says, flicking a sliver of wood off the edge of her nail. “Not with the state of it before you moved in.”

  “He’s told me what it was like.” If I close my eyes, I can almost see the house as it was. Patrick has told me about it so many times: the soft, muted colors bathed in flickering firelight, the smells, fresh flowers and furniture polish.

  “Still, anyone would be edgy, wouldn’t they?” she says. “With so much to do to make the house perfect.”

  How much do I want to say here? Will voicing my hidden fears make them bigger? But she’s smiling at me so warmly, and she brought flowers with her today, a huge bunch of sweetpeas, whose heady scent is now filling the house. “A couple of times, he’s gotten a little… upset.”

  “Upset?” She raises her eyebrows.

  “It’s nothing, really. Like I said, he’s been on edge.”

  “Do the police have any idea what happened to Joe?” she asks as I perch on a rock next to her.

  “He thought it was a mugging, a random attack.” Anna doesn’t need to know.

  “Do you think he really doesn’t remember? Or is it that he doesn’t want to remember?”

  Unease is making the hairs on my arms rise. “Why do you care so much?”

  She shrugs. “I can see the worry on your face every time you talk about Joe.”

  “Joe thought he saw someone—someone watching him get attacked—and I worried, for a while, if Patrick might have been there.”

  “Patrick?”

  I nod.

  “Because he was upset?” she says. “By upset, do you mean angry? Angry enough to go chasing after Joe? For what?”

  “Not like that… I’m wrong. I’m being silly. Joe was half-conscious. He doesn’t properly remember anything. And, besides, you were there, weren’t you? Joe probably saw you and—”

  “I didn’t see the attack, Sarah. I saw Joe collapse, but I didn’t see anything else.”

  I shouldn’t have said anything. What I’m insinuating is… It’s monstrous. No wonder Anna’s looking at me like I’m bloody mad. Do I really believe Patrick would have been there and done nothing? Before the move, I would have said it was impossible. Patrick doesn’t lose his temper. Patrick doesn’t lose control. But, here, I can’t help wondering what he’d have done if he had followed Joe that night and found him with a boy again.

  No. God, better it be Ian Hooper watching. Anyone but Patrick.

  Anna stares at me and her foot digs into the sand. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Sarah, but I used to have this boyfriend,” she says. “He’d get… upset and he’d hit me. It got to the stage where I knew—I knew—if I didn’t leave, he’d end up killing me. I see you, and you have the same look in your eyes that greeted me in the mirror every day. Have you gotten to that stage?”

  “No, he’s never…”

  “I used to pretend it wasn’t happening too. Pretend every time was a one-off, pretend every time was the last time because every time he promised he’d never do it again. I let him hit me for too long, but if I’d had kids, I’d never have let him hurt them.”

  It’s like a slap in the face and I gasp, sucking in the sand her foot sent spinning. “I haven’t let him—”

  “Why don’t y
ou leave?”

  “What?”

  “Why don’t you take your kids and leave? Stay with a friend, go to a shelter—whatever.”

  “I can’t. I don’t need to. God, Anna, he’s never hit us. He never would. Never. He’s stressed, that’s all, with the house and Joe and… other things. He needs help, not all of us abandoning him.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re going to sit here in the Murder House, waiting for him to put your kids in the hospital again?”

  “No—of course not. He didn’t do anything. He swore—”

  “But you thought he could have. Might have.”

  I shake my head in denial but don’t say anything else in protest because I have been wondering that, haven’t I? I lie awake at night wondering about it, wondering about his growing fear and paranoia, wondering about the cellar. I imagine him lurking in the shadows, watching Joe kiss a boy and I wonder… God, I think the worst things.

  “I can see the fear in your face. You have to find a way to do something about it before something really does happen. Because, Sarah? I know this—I’ve been there. Something worse always happens.”

  Anna pulls up her sleeves and turns her arms over to show me two silvery white scars running up her wrists and forearms. “It all got to be too much one day and I decided I’d rather be dead than keep living like that. God, he’d reduced me so much that killing myself seemed an easier option than leaving him.” She looks up at me. “Don’t ever let a man reduce you to that, Sarah.”

  My throat closes at the sight of those thin white scars. “It’s not like that for me,” I say. “I think it’s the move. This house, that’s all.”

  She leans forward and I recoil from her scarred arms, as if they might be catching. “You really believe it’s all because of the house?”

  “I want to move, but Patrick won’t even consider it.”

  “Then maybe it’s time you considered moving without Patrick. After your exhibition, take any money you make and go.”

  I know she means well, but Joe’s not mine. If I leave, my mind whispers, Patrick will tell Joe the truth and I’ll lose my boy.

  A gust of wind tugs at her scarf and she ties it tighter. It’s the black scarf with the white stars. I remember her picking me up the night Joe got attacked. She was wearing it and it had come untied. It floated in my face as she pulled me up.

  “What were you doing?”

  She frowns at me. “What?”

  “The night Joe got attacked. You were there; you called the ambulance. What were you doing outside our house?”

  She leans back and pulls down her sleeves. “Don’t make me the villain of this, Sarah.”

  I check on Joe when I get back to the house. He’s still sleeping, hunched on his side. I wonder if he’s managing to sleep at night or if, like Mia, bad dreams make it impossible. I tiptoe downstairs to the hall. Patrick has left the key in the cellar door. I haven’t painted all week because I’ve been staying at home with Joe. The exhibition is looming closer. The canvases Patrick put down in the cellar: I saw them stacked in the corner the night I caught him painting the walls. I need to get them to the studio. I rummage in the hall table drawer for a flashlight.

  It’s only mid-afternoon, but I still look out of the window for Patrick’s car before I open the cellar door. It’s not that it’s out of bounds for any reason, but I’ve been careful not to mention my canvases since the day he burned my sketchbooks, and without confessing about the exhibition, how would I explain what I was doing in a cellar I’ve so far done all I can to avoid visiting?

  I feel sick when I go down the stairs—three of the four walls are now painted, the floor’s been swept and most of the rubbish stacked against the unpainted wall. When had he done the rest? How many nights has he been sneaking down here, painting walls? And why? Why the cellar when there’s a whole house that needs painting?

  Under the fresh paint, though, there’s still the smell of damp, a fusty, unmistakable mix of mildew and ammonia. When I get closer to the first wall he painted and shine the flashlight on it, my breath comes out in a whoosh. It’s worse, so much worse. Before Patrick painted, the walls had brown water stains, like tide marks, and a few darker spots in the corners. Now, against the white, great black-and-green flowers of mold bloom, as if the paint has made everything worse, not better. The walls are cold and it feels as if there’s only a thin layer of paint between my hand and running water.

  I step away from the wall and try to imagine bringing him down here later, pointing out how he wasted his time, how he gave up a whole night’s sleep for nothing. As I turn away to find the canvases, the flashlight’s thin beam hits the base of the wall he’s yet to paint. I step closer. What did I see?

  There’s an old wooden table stacked with boxes pushed against the wall. Above the table, it is beige and damp-spotted, like the others were. But the flashlight beam caught something else in its low sweep.

  I crouch and duck under the table. The cellar seems to get colder as the light shines on the wall. It’s writing—the same words written over and over again in the same childish hand.

  I’ve been bad. I’ve been very bad. I’ve been bad. I’ve been very bad.

  I think of the kids who lived in this house before as I shine the light along the wall. The back of my neck prickles, hairs rising. It’s written all the way along, fifteen feet of wall. I’ve been bad. I’ve been very bad.

  Did Patrick see this? Is this why he stopped painting? As I straighten up and brush dust off my jeans, all I can think about is the height chart, the cold spots, toys that appear from nowhere. As I run up the stairs and lock the cellar door, I’m followed by a ghost’s voice whispering those words. A little boy’s voice. I’ve been bad. I’ve been very bad.

  CHAPTER 21

  I trip over Mia’s schoolbag as I step into the hall. I didn’t hear her come in—did she see me in the cellar? I run upstairs, cold from finding the writing on the wall. The bathroom door is closed, but Mia’s is ajar and I can see clothes scattered across her floor. Did she realize I was down in the cellar and come up here to hide? No—it can’t be her writing on the cellar wall. Why would she? But the jittery fear won’t go as I gather up the clothes, frowning at how much there is I don’t recognize.

  There’s money on her dressing-table too—coins in small piles and some crumpled notes. More than fifty pounds in fives and tens. I think of my mother’s jewelry box. She wouldn’t. But if not Mia, then who? Patrick?

  “What are you doing?”

  I spin around. Mia is all scowls, folded arms, and hunched shoulders. But underneath the truculent teenager pose, she’s pale and tired. Her nails are as bitten-down as mine and her eyes are red-rimmed.

  “I was picking up your laundry and I saw…” I nod at the money and she pushes past me, picking up the notes and stuffing them into her pocket.

  “Where did you get it?” I say.

  “What’s it got to do with you?”

  “I want to know how my fifteen-year-old daughter has this much money lying around when I know damn well it didn’t come from me.”

  She laughs. “Oh, right—I get it. You think I stole it? You think I’ve been going through your purse?”

  “I didn’t say that. I’m asking where it came from because there’s clearly something going on and after Joe…”

  Her head jerks at my mention of Joe’s name and mutters something I don’t hear.

  “What?”

  “Dad gave it to me.”

  Patrick hasn’t said anything. I told him about my mother’s jewelry. I told him my concerns about Mia and her new clothes, and he hasn’t said a word about giving her money.

  “Why?”

  “Because he cares, that’s why. Because he gives a shit about me.”

  But why hasn’t he mentioned it? That’s what I’m really asking. Why hasn’t he mentioned it when we’re so skint he frowns if I come back from the superm
arket with too many bags?

  Mia won’t meet my eyes as she sweeps up the piles of coins. I reach out and put a hand over hers, but she pulls away.

  “Can you get out of my room, please?” she mutters.

  Joe comes in as I turn toward the door. “What’s going on?”

  He still looks so bruised and fragile. I want to ask them both if they’ve been down in the cellar, but then I’d have to tell them about the writing and I can’t. I can’t add my fears to theirs.

  We freeze as the front door opens and we hear Patrick calling up.

  “Mum was just leaving—weren’t you, Mum?” Mia says.

  She barely waits for me to step onto the landing before she slams the door.

  Patrick’s standing in front of the locked cellar door, a plastic-wrapped roller and tray in one hand, a can of white paint in the other. From the top of the stairs, I can see the edge of light around the door frame. Shit. I left the cellar light on, left the flashlight sitting on the hall table.

  “Have you been in the cellar?”

  “I thought I could continue with the painting,” I say, avoiding his stare as I come down the stairs.

  My heart’s thumping as he puts down the paint and unlocks the door. Why did I lie? He’s going to see I haven’t done anything. He’s going to see my footprints in the dust by the unpainted wall.

  I think of this morning, when he was struggling with that bloody window in the kitchen and the handle came off in his hand. His rage… Disproportionate, it shocked Mia, who cringed away when he flung the damn thing toward the bin. It went nowhere near her, of course, but… That was just a window handle.

  “Wait,” I say, following him in. “I found something.”

  I go down the stairs ahead of him, switch on the flashlight, and shine it onto the wall he’d left unpainted. The damp, clinging and cold, creeps into my veins when the light shines on the scribbled words.