by C. L. Taylor
That way, it seems to whisper as it points in the direction of her house. He went that way.
‘He’s not there,’ she tells the grass but as she waits for its answer the blades fade and swirl, drifting and twisting and then vanishing completely. Her eyes flicker open and she blinks, still trapped in the arms of the dream. There’s a length of dark material a metre or so from her head. She stares at it, wondering why there’s a curtain on the beach, then jolts at the sound of a creaking floorboard.
There’s someone in her room; a dark shape, a man, standing next to her chest of drawers, going through her stuff. Ed. He’s so absorbed in what he’s doing that he hasn’t noticed that she’s awake. Her lips part, but terror has stolen her voice and all she can do is watch as he moves silently from the chest of drawers to the pile of clothes draped over the chair in the corner of the room. She forgot to prop it up against the door before she fell asleep. Edward keeps his back to her as he picks up her sweatshirt and wriggles a hand into the pocket. He discards it, then picks up her jogging bottoms and does the same. Her heart pounds, urging her to run. But Ursula can’t move. She’s barely breathing. So instead of running she pretends to be asleep.
I’ll scream, she tells herself as she closes her eyes and sweat prickles on her temples. I’ll fight. If he so much as touches me I will fight back. She mentally scans her room, searching it for weapons to use in self-defence. There’s an umbrella propped up against the chest of drawers, the tip hard and pointed. But even as she wills herself to open her eyes, get off the bed and grab the umbrella, she can’t move. She feels like a shop mannequin tipped onto its side: rigid, cold and immobile.
A floorboard creaks, then there’s silence. She hears Edward breathing, a short, sharp snort of irritation. Then there’s a soft click and the room falls silent again. She waits, her damp T-shirt clinging to her back, the muscles in her arms and legs aching. What if Edward closed the door to trick her into thinking he’d gone? What if, right now, he’s standing beside her and when she opens her eyes his face is millimetres from hers?
I have to open my eyes, she tells herself. I WILL open my eyes. In three … two … one …
Her eyelids fly open and she throws her hands up by her face but there’s no one to protect herself from, no slight figure with dusty blonde hair and intense eyes standing beside her bed. She flips over and looks towards the door. Closed. He’s definitely gone … unless …
An image flashes into her mind, of a woman in an episode of Luther, swinging her legs over the side of her bed only to have her ankles grabbed by a man hiding beneath it. Ursula lies very still, holding her breath, listening for sounds of life in the room. Logically she knows it’s unlikely that Edward slid under her bed without making a sound. But what if he did? What if the click she heard wasn’t the bedroom door closing but the blade of a Stanley knife being extended?
She stares up at the ceiling, listening, skin prickling and her heart thumping against her ribs, forcing her to take a breath. Did Edward just hear that – the gasp of air entering her lungs? Is he smiling up at the springs, his hand gripping the knife?
Ursula, stop it! she tells herself.
Girding herself, she sits up sharply. She imagines Edward, beneath her, sucking in his breath as the springs sag towards him.
He’s not under there, she tells herself but a louder voice tells her to run. You can get to the door faster than he can wriggle out from under the bed.
He’s not under there. The click you heard was the door.
I don’t …
CHECK UNDER THE BED!
As adrenaline surges through her, she grips the edge of the bed and peers underneath. Her imagination fills the dark space beneath and she sees Edward’s face, leering out at her, the glint of a blade in his hand. Then he vanishes. Other than a few dust balls and a scrunched tissue, there’s nothing, and no one, there. She collapses back against the pillows and runs her hands over her face. She feels sick. Her heart’s still pounding so much she can feel it in her throat. She knew it was a risk, moving in with a stranger and taking a room with no lock on the door, but she’d convinced herself she was safe. She hit six foot three the year she turned sixteen and for half her life she’s towered over almost every man she’s met. She’s never clutched her keys between her fingers when walking home from a pub alone late at night. She’s never had a man press up against her in a crowded train or crossed the street when a man was walking behind her. Charlotte was aghast when they discussed it once and Ursula had looked at her blankly and said, ‘Why would I do that?’ She hadn’t been brought up to be afraid of men. Her six foot six father had drummed it into her from an early age that she should be proud of her height, not an apologist for it; that she should walk with her shoulders back and her head held high. She’s lost count of the number of men who’ve jumped when they turn from a bar, pints in their hands, to see her standing behind them, waiting to be served. She’s been ridiculed and laughed at, pointed at and mocked.
Regret courses through her as she reruns what just happened. Why did she pretend to be asleep? Why didn’t she just sit up in bed and scream at him to get out? She was passive, a victim, letting him invade her room, allowing him to be the one in control. She hears her dad’s voice in her head, bellowing over her thoughts. ‘No one has the right to make you feel inferior, Ursula. No one should make you apologise for the space you take up or the person you are. You are many things, my dear, but you are not weak and you are certainly not an apologist. Stop slouching, stop crying and push your shoulders back and raise your chin. You are Ursula Andrews; be proud of who you are.’
A sudden spike of rage slices through her. This isn’t about her and how she should have acted or reacted. It’s about him. How dare he go into her room while she was sleeping and sift through her personal belongings? How dare he make her feel so afraid!
She reaches under her pillow and pulls out the newspaper clipping she rescued from the landing earlier, then crosses the room to the window and pulls back the curtain. It’s 6.02 a.m. and the sky outside is marbled with orange and pink.
‘Who are you?’ she whispers to the black-and-white image.
The man in the photograph says nothing. He stares up at her, all big grin and mischievous eyes. Whoever he was, or is, he’s important to Ed. Ursula looks back at her heavily taped bedroom door. The sensible thing to do now would be to pack up her stuff and move out. If Charlotte were in the same situation she’d rather forgo the £500 rent and deposit she’ll never get back and spend the rest of her life living in the back of the van than spend another night under Edward’s roof. But Ursula is not Charlotte. Whatever it is that her landlord’s up to, she’s going to find out. She is Ursula Andrews and no one gets to make her feel small.
Chapter 17
Gareth
Wednesday
As Gareth marches up the broad driveway that leads to an impressive detached Georgian-style house, he presses a hand to his stomach, not because he’s nervous but because he hasn’t had breakfast yet. He lifts the heavy brass knocker on William Mackesy’s door. He tried ringing the man several times last night after he found the note on the flowers, but there was no reply and there’s no way Gareth can do a full day at work without answers. He’d been a fool to think his dad might still be alive, that he was wandering through the Meads looking for his son, when all along it was obvious who was behind the postcard. Bloody William Mackesy. Not content with extorting money from the desperate and the grieving, now he was branching out and sending postcards from the dead. It was an idiotic thing to do. No one with healthy neurons would ever believe a dead relative had magicked words onto a card then floated it into a postbox, and even his own mother, with her protein-coated cells and her withered synapses, thought the card was from a living person. Was Mackesy trying to befuddle her to work his way into her will somehow? His visits certainly seemed to have increased in frequency recently, if Sally’s reports were anything to go by.
Bang
Gareth br
ings the knocker down hard.
Bang
Bang
He steels himself, pushing back his shoulders and drawing himself up to his full five foot seven. Dogs – at least two or three – respond by barking frantically. The sound has a strange echoey quality. Gareth has never been to William Mackesy’s house before but it didn’t take much to persuade the church secretary to hand over his address. After all, hadn’t Joan made such a generous donation?
‘Hello?’ The door opens to reveal a man not much taller than Gareth with thinning grey hair, wire-framed glasses and a face that wouldn’t be out of place on an ageing game show host. ‘Oh.’ He looks Gareth up and down, struggling to place him.
‘I’m Joan Filer’s son,’ Gareth says. ‘We met briefly at one of your … events … about a year ago.’
‘Joan’s son. Oh, of course!’ Mackesy holds out his right hand. ‘To what do I owe this unexpected early visit … er …?’
Gareth doesn’t tell him his name, nor does he shake the proffered hand. Instead he nods his head towards the cavernous hallway behind Mackesy and says, ‘I’d like to come in if I could.’
The older man’s eyes widen and he glances behind him. ‘One second. I’ll just shut the dogs in the utility room.’
And the door closes in Gareth’s face.
‘So …’ William Mackesy says, his elbows on the mahogany desk that separates him from Gareth, an expression of utmost compassion on his face (faked, Gareth thinks bitterly). ‘What can I do you for?’
They’re in his office, a large book-lined room, twice the size of Gareth’s bedroom with a massive computer screen on the desk, various expensive-looking ornaments dotted around and an enormous pot-plant-cum-tree in the corner of the room.
‘Two things,’ Gareth says. ‘Firstly, I would appreciate it if you didn’t tell my mother upsetting messages from …’ he forms quotation marks with his fingers ‘… the other side.’
Mackesy shakes his head lightly. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’
‘You told her that someone close to me would cause me …’ Gareth falters as an image of Liam Dunford, propped up against the wall outside his office with a smug look on his face, pops into his head. If by ‘close’ Mackesy had meant proximity then maybe he wasn’t a million miles off target with his little prophecy. No. Gareth dismisses the thought. Pure coincidence.
‘Anyway,’ he continues. ‘Stop telling her things that might upset or worry her. She’s not well.’
Mackesy holds out his hands, palms out. ‘I only tell people what the departed tell me, but I take your point.’
Gareth reaches into his pocket and slides the white card that was attached to his mother’s flowers across the desk. ‘The other thing I wanted to talk to you about is this.’
Mackesy picks up the card, nods, then looks back at him. ‘I sent your mother flowers to thank her for her donation. Is there a problem?’
‘That depends on how big the donation was.’
The other man shrugs. ‘I’m not sure I can tell you off the top of my head. Sheila, my wife, deals with that side of things. Our parishioners are so … so very generous. We receive a lot of help. We couldn’t keep the church going without it.’
Can’t tell you off the top of my head my arse. Gareth grits his teeth. William Mackesy is lying. He knows exactly how much Joan donated, he just doesn’t want to tell him. Gareth’s mum had no idea what he was talking about when he asked her about it and he hasn’t got power of attorney over her affairs which means he can’t legally access her bank account. She still receives a paper statement every month but the last one arrived three weeks ago so he’ll have to wait another seven days if he wants to take a look at her outgoings.
‘Do a lot of your parishioners suffer from dementia then?’ he asks, his hands curled into fists beneath the desk.
‘I’m sorry.’ Mackesy tilts his head to one side. ‘I’m not sure what you’re implying.’
‘Aren’t you? Well let me spell it out for you then. Somehow you’ve managed to wheedle money out of my mum. As soon as I get hold of her bank statement I’m going to the police.’
Gareth waits, expectantly and slightly gleefully, for a reaction, for horror to register on the other man’s face and for his hands to fly up in repentance. Instead his continues to sit stock-still, the only movement in his entire body the slight arch of one eyebrow.
‘Is that so?’
‘Yes, it is. I think they might be interested to know that you’re sending vulnerable older people postcards from their dead relatives in an effort to extort money from them.’
Now Mackesy reacts. He recoils, pulling his hands away from the desk, more of the whites of his eyes visible beneath the glint of his glasses.
‘What postcards?’
‘This one.’ Gareth reaches into his coat pocket and pulls out the postcard. He slides it across the desk so it sits alongside the florist’s card.
Mackesy snatches it up, his brow creasing as he reads it, then flips it over. ‘Who’s John?’
Gareth laughs lightly. ‘John? My dad. The one that talks to you and tells you how cold he is?’
‘Oh … well …’ Mackesy looks from the postcard to Gareth. ‘Yes, of course but … but your dad’s dead.’
‘Yes. He is. Which makes what you’re doing really bloody twisted.’
‘I didn’t send this.’
‘Are you sure about that? Because it’s a bit of a coincidence that it arrived on Monday and your flowers thanking Mum for her donation arrived yesterday.’
‘Quite sure.’ Mackesy tosses the postcard onto the table then shoves it towards Gareth. ‘Whoever sent that to your mother it’s got nothing to do with me. Ask Sheila. I’ve been in Brighton for a Mind, Body and Spirit Fayre since last Friday. You’re lucky to catch me. I only got home forty-five minutes ago. Want me to call her? She keeps my diary. She could show it to you if you’d like.’
‘Don’t bother,’ Gareth snaps. ‘I’ve heard enough bullshit for one day.’
Brighton or not, he could still have sent the postcard. Or Sheila could. With the postmark partly smudged there’s no way of knowing where it was sent. Gareth flexes his fingers and runs his damp palms up and down the cheap material of his work trousers. Every cell in his body is screaming at him to stand up, lean over the table, grab Mackesy by the collar and drive his fist straight into his smug face, but he can’t get out of his chair. He can’t do anything but stare at the man he despises and will all the shit in the world to come crashing down over his shiny, comb-over head.
‘If that’s everything,’ Mackesy says, standing up. He walks around the desk and heads for the door. At one point he’s so close that Gareth could shoot out a hand and grab him. But he doesn’t. Instead he stands up, pulls back his shoulders and follows him out into the hall, the sound of whining, barking dogs drifting from somewhere in the depths of the house. As Mackesy opens the front door, standing back to allow him through, Gareth pauses and turns to face him.
‘Leave my mum alone. Don’t call her, don’t drop in and if you take another penny of her money, then I’ll …’ He tails off. ‘Just leave her alone. Okay?’
As he steps through the door he hears Mackesy say his name under his breath and turns sharply. ‘What was that?’
The other man presses a hand to the side of his head and narrows his eyes, staring off into the distance. ‘Yes …’ he says. ‘Okay. Yes.’
For a moment Gareth has no idea what’s going on, then it’s all he can do not to roll his eyes. Mackesy’s communing with the dead. Of course he is.
‘He’s proud of you.’ Mackesy looks him straight in the eye. ‘Your dad. He wanted me to tell you.’
Gareth takes a deep breath and stares at the grey clouds rolling over head. A cold breeze whips at the thin cotton of his shirt and he shivers. The air smells different, sweet and earthy, he needs to get back to his car before it starts to rain.
‘Did you hear me?’ Mackesy shouts after him as he jogs back down the dr
iveway. ‘He’s proud of you, your dad. He said it was important that you knew that.’
‘Fraud!’ Gareth shouts, not slowing his pace as the first spots of rain land on his nose and cheeks. If he ever had any doubt about William Mackesy’s abilities, he certainly doesn’t now.
Chapter 18
Alice
YOU’RE NOT LISTENING.
The three words have been going round and round Alice’s head all morning. It wasn’t a horrible dream; ‘YOU’RE NOT LISTENING’ was still scratched into the side of the car when she left the house in the morning and it’ll still be there when she gets home. She rang DC Mitchell last night with Simon beside her, an arm over her shoulder, pulling her close. But the call went straight to voicemail so she left a message and rang 101 instead. She was told they wouldn’t be sending anyone out to investigate but to take a photo and they’d file a crime report. When she told them that she’d previously reported an assault and creepy messages to DC Mitchell they said they’d pass on the details of the vandalism. Alice did as she was told, blinking as the flash on her phone camera lit up the side of the car, then looked at Simon, unsure what to do next.
‘You don’t want to get in, do you?’ he said, sensing her hesitation.
Alice shook her head.
‘I’d offer to drive but I’m over the limit.’
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘It’s not though, is it?’ He squeezed her shoulder. ‘Want me to come with you? I could get a taxi home from yours.’
She couldn’t say yes fast enough.
Neither of them said very much on the journey back to Kingswood. Alice tried, half-heartedly, to strike up conversation a couple of times but she was so distracted she barely heard a word Simon said in reply. By the time she parked the car outside her flat a strange, stultifying atmosphere had settled between them, all the joy and excitement of earlier in the evening a distant memory. Simon followed her into the silent flat, Emily long gone, and hovered in the kitchen as she made coffee. Even with her back turned Alice could feel his presence in the room. He filled so much of the tiny space and she wasn’t used to having a man in the house. Simon obviously felt as uncomfortable as she did; she could see him out of the corner of her eye as she filled the kettle, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, crossing and uncrossing his arms. He barely had more than two or three sips of coffee before his phone vibrated with a call. His taxi had arrived.
