She hears some movement inside – the sound of running footsteps – and she pulls her shoulders back a little, listening closely.
A voice comes through the door in a fierce whisper: ‘This is a very strange house right now.’
She can’t tell if it’s George or Sophie speaking but she does know it’s one of the children. She frowns and crouches down a little, hoping it will help her hear better. ‘Why?’ she asks.
‘Sophie, get over here,’ she hears George shout from further away, and then there are footsteps as Sophie moves away from the door.
Gladys stands up straight and once again thinks about ringing the bell.
Then she hears the peephole open again and waits in case it’s Katherine, and in case she wants to say something. She stands still for a moment, a smile plastered on her face, but when nothing else is said she feels silly and turns around. She takes a couple of steps and waits again, but when there is only silence, she goes back down the stone path to the front gate. She walks slowly but is aware of feeling like she needs to move quickly. She feels like she’s being watched. The hair on her arms stands up and even in the strong morning heat, she feels cold. Something is not right inside that house. She’s sure of it.
Back in her own kitchen she puts on the kettle to make herself a cup of tea and then immediately switches it off again. She doesn’t know what she should do or why she feels so strange about what just happened. It was probably just a joke, just Sophie being silly.
‘Gladys,’ calls Lou from the living room, ‘Gladys, where are you?’ He sounds frantic, as he does whenever he wakes up and can’t find her.
‘I’m here, Lou,’ she calls. Before he retired, she used to call him at lunchtime every day and he would say, ‘Now don’t you worry, sweet pea, I’ll be home at six on the dot and I won’t smile at any woman except you.’ It always made her laugh. He doesn’t make jokes anymore.
In the living room, she fixes the pillow behind his back. He has slumped sideways a little in his sleep and she tries to right him, but he pushes at her to get her to step away from him.
‘Stop fussing. Where were you?’
She steps back and folds her arms to stop herself from smoothing down his hair for him. ‘Just in the kitchen, Lou, just making tea. Where else would I be?’
He gives her a look and she sits down in her chair. ‘Truthfully, I went over to check on them.’ She picks up her book from the small table next to her chair where she has left it and opens it, staring down at the pages.
‘Ha, I knew you would, and I bet everything is fine and now they think you’re an interfering old woman.’
Gladys closes the book, knowing that reading will not be possible. ‘Don’t be rude, Lou.’ She debates with herself for a moment over whether to tell him anything or not but she needs to say something. ‘Actually, everything is not fine. I don’t think it is at all.’ She shakes her head as Lou folds his hands in his lap and waits for her to go on. ‘Katherine wouldn’t open the door and then Sophie whispered to me that there was something strange going on in the house.’
‘Probably just messing about.’ Lou picks up the remote control for the television, pointing it at the screen.
‘I don’t think so. I think something may be a little bit wrong.’
‘What could possibly be wrong?’ he asks.
‘I don’t know, they seem unhappy sometimes – her and John, I mean.’
He shrugs his shoulders and then lifts his glasses onto his face. ‘You can’t judge someone else’s marriage, Gladys. It’s not your business.’
Lou switches on the TV, turning it to the news. The face of a pretty young woman flashes up on the screen.
‘A young woman has been badly beaten and left for dead in her apartment,’ drones the newsreader. ‘It is believed that the victim knew her attacker although enquiries are still in the early stages. Police are interviewing neighbours and have established a crime scene.’
On the screen is a glaring shot of an ambulance surrounded by police holding up blankets to shield someone from the prying eyes of the media as they are being brought out on a stretcher.
‘People are just terrible,’ says Lou, shaking his head.
‘Yes,’ she agrees. ‘Who would want to hurt such a pretty young girl? And in her own home too. Home should be a place where you’re safe. It really should be.’ She finds herself tearing up a little with no real idea why it’s upset her so much.
‘Weren’t you making tea?’ he asks, but he asks politely and she knows it’s because she’s scolded him for being abrupt with her.
‘Of course,’ she says and she smiles to let him know he’s forgiven. He would make the tea if he could but his hands shake too much for him to perform this simple task now. Having to have a thick mug instead of the delicate cups he prefers is difficult enough for him to deal with. She stands up, grateful to have this task to perform as she mulls over her strange experience at Katherine’s house.
In the kitchen she looks out at the garden, and she struggles to pinpoint her unease. Home should be a place you feel secure and her home has always felt that way. But after yesterday and Katherine’s strange behaviour today, it feels as though something has changed in the neighbourhood, as though the safe place she has lived for decades is suddenly less secure. That’s what this strange feeling inside her is. For the first time, she feels unsafe.
7
‘You really should know how to discipline these kids better,’ I say to her.
‘Oh,’ she says, reaching out to me where I have a hold of Sophie, my hands in her hair. Up close it smells like coconut.
She is hopping from one foot to another as though trying to stand up taller so the way I’m pulling her hair hurts less. ‘Ow, ow, ow.’ Her voice is high and distressed and it should bother me more than it does, I guess.
Sophie shouldn’t have run off to the door. I have expressly forbidden them from moving. I would have thought that she would listen to my instructions but she didn’t. I feel anger surge inside me, and as I pull on her hair, and her face turns pale with pain, I wonder how hard I would have to pull to just yank out a clump of it. A shiver runs down my spine in the warm room as I watch the way her small face contorts. I should feel something but I don’t and I don’t know why. But I do know it’s not my fault. I wasn’t always this way.
‘Stop wriggling or I will pull out your hair!’ I yell and she stands still. I take a deep breath, and my thoughts stray to myself at this age, at five, and then at ten because ten is when I started to become this person, this man standing here, capable of hurting this child and feeling… nothing. When I was ten, everything began to change. I felt it, heard it and I watched it happen – slowly and painfully.
My parents finally got divorced when I was twelve years old. I remember the horrible sadness that hung in the air in our house – after they told me what was happening, but before he actually left. For the first time in a couple of years the house was quiet when they were both home. I was used to angry sniping and snide comments from them. Shouting and crying from her. Lies and denial from him. Both of them kept reassuring me that they loved me and that my life wasn’t going to change at all and that the divorce was not my fault. There was obviously some stupid manual they’d read. My life wasn’t going to change except my father would no longer be living with us. My life wasn’t going to change except my mother and I had to move into a small flat where my bedroom wasn’t actually a bedroom but rather an alcove with a hastily thrown up Gyproc wall. My life wasn’t going to change except I would now spend every second weekend with my father at his own hideous small flat where we would consume vast amounts of junk food and he would engage in a campaign against my mother that was so pervasive, it’s a wonder I ever agreed to go home again.
The reasons for their split have never been fully explained to me but I do know that it involved my father cheating more than once. I do know that money that was supposed to be for our family was used for other women, for gifts and expensive ho
tels. One Monday afternoon my mother and I stood at the checkout at the supermarket with a week’s worth of groceries only for my mother to be told she had insufficient funds to pay for the food. I remember her face, the way her eyes dropped to the ground and she flushed a bright red. Behind us a line of impatient shoppers sighed and clicked their tongues. ‘But… I just got paid,’ she said. She was working part time in a delicatessen, just to bring in some extra cash, and she was good at keeping track of her money. Not good enough though.
‘What do you want me to do?’ the woman at the checkout said, boredom painted across her face.
My mother grabbed my hand and pulled me out of the store, leaving all the groceries sitting in bags at the checkout. I felt sorry for her. But I was also angry at her for allowing it.
‘He’s such a bastard,’ she muttered as we drove home. What did she expect me to say to that? How was I supposed to answer her?
She was waiting for him as he walked through the door, crouched in her anger, and she leapt as he said, ‘Hello.’
He apologised. He always did, his shoulders rounding and his mouth drooping at the edges. But she was humiliated and furious and she wouldn’t let it go even though he got in the car and went late-night grocery shopping with another card. That night the fight went on for hours. I put on my headphones and cranked up my music, disappeared into another space so I didn’t have to listen. I hated them both.
Every time I heard them fight, I vowed that my life would be different. I was going to be a different man to my father and I was going to marry a woman vastly different to my mother, who seemed to me to be filled with pretty words about her love for me and empty gestures.
My dad wanted me to come and live with him.
‘If you lived with me,’ he would say, ‘you would be able to eat whatever you want. I wouldn’t care about homework; you’d be able to game as long as you wanted.’ It sounded as though living with him would be paradise. I was a thirteen-year-old kid. I didn’t know any better.
‘I want to live with Dad,’ I said to my mother. ‘He’s lonely.’
‘He’s not capable of taking care of you. He’s lonely and I understand that, but it wouldn’t be a good idea.’ She used her patient voice when she said this. I hated that voice, that smooth, quiet voice that meant she was trying to control herself.
‘Dad lets me game as long as I want to.’
‘That’s exactly why you shouldn’t live with him. Rules are there for a reason. You have to get through school and get into university.’ There was an edge to her voice as she struggled to keep herself from yelling.
‘I hate you.’
That always stopped her in her tracks. I would watch her bite down on her lip and shake her head, holding back on all the things she wanted to say to me. I knew the one thing she really wanted to say was, ‘I hate you too.’ I felt it coming off her. It was in the air.
Eventually all we did was fight. She wanted to keep me on the straight and narrow. She preached about school and grades and healthy food and he told me that life would be one big party, and even though I had some idea that it couldn’t just be a party, he was very persuasive. I kept at her.
When I was fourteen, she gave in. ‘Just six months,’ she said. ‘And you need to call me every day and come and visit every weekend.’ She dropped her eyes and I saw defeat.
I was so excited on the first night when I moved in. He ordered pizza and let me drink a whole beer. We talked about how great it would be to be together all the time. ‘Your life is your responsibility. If you want to attend school and do the work, that’s up to you. If you don’t, that’s fine. You clean up your own mess and you live your life.’ I was in heaven.
I went to school while he went to work, because it was something to do. I was happy. My friends thought I was the luckiest kid they knew, even if my clothes weren’t always clean. She rang me every night, and sometimes I took the call and sometimes I didn’t. When I didn’t, I would see a smile on his face, a small one like he was trying to hide it, but it was there. I understood on some level that he was using me to get at her and it was working, because she asked me to come home every single time, begged me, cried when I hadn’t spoken to her for days.
And then he lost his job and it all went to shit.
‘Please d––’ Sophie moans, her hands reaching for mine as my fist clamps tighter around her hair. Her voice is desperate and there is something, a small tug, a tiny spark of something inside me. But I know if she thinks Sophie has gotten to me, she’ll use that. I know her. And I need to know what Sophie said. I need to know if she was clever enough to say something when she ran to the door. Because if she was… Her soft curls are making my hand sweat but I can’t let go until I get the truth.
8
Katherine
‘Please just… please…’ says Katherine, because she has no idea what else to say. His hands are tangled in Sophie’s hair, yanking and hurting her.
‘What did you do?’ he spits. ‘What did you say to that nosy old woman?’
‘I didn’t say anything,’ Sophie says, tears on her cheeks, her hands raised to try and stop him pulling her hair.
‘Let her go, let her go,’ Katherine says, trying to inject strength into her voice as she rises off the sofa, but he pulls her daughter’s hair harder, bunches it in his fist. ‘Sit down now,’ he says and he points the gun, not at her because it would be fine if it were at her. But he knows better than that. He points the gun at Sophie – small, struggling Sophie, whose tears are streaking down her cheeks.
Katherine feels her body sink back down onto the sofa, the blue sofa that she chose with such care and admired every time she came into this room. This is her favourite room in the house. She loves the family photos everywhere and the large window that looks out onto the garden. When the twins were babies, she and John would sometimes find themselves asleep down here next to two baby rockers vibrating the children to sleep as the sun rose on another day. This is where the twins watch their movies and where she and John binge-watch television series together.
This was her favourite room in the house.
She is fighting a surging anger at Gladys for coming over and making things so much worse, and at the same time she feels a small flicker of hope that the older woman might have been suspicious, might have picked up on what Sophie said, although she has no idea what that might have been. Would her daughter have known to tell Gladys to call the police?
He watches her, a ghost of a smile on his face. He is enjoying her pain. She can see that. He is enjoying all of their pain, and it makes her feel sick.
‘I’m sitting, see, I’m sitting,’ she says, even though it’s obvious. But she needs to distract him, to keep him focused on her. Her daughter’s brown curls are tightly gripped in his hands and Katherine watches Sophie’s hand open and close to try and stop the pain. Her child, her baby. She wants to leap off the sofa and scratch his eyes out, rip at his face.
‘She didn’t say anything,’ says George, quietly.
‘No one asked you to speak. And we all know she said something. Now, Sophie, listen to me,’ he says. ‘You’re going to tell me what you said to her or I’m going to rip all of your pretty hair right out of your head.’
‘I said I wanted chocolate cake,’ says Sophie, her voice thick with tears and pain. Katherine knows she is lying and she is proud of her little girl. Never mind what she has always told them about telling the truth. The rules don’t apply today. All the rules have already been broken.
But he believes her. ‘Stupid kid,’ he laughs and he lets go of her hair and shoves her back towards Katherine, who opens her arms and wraps them tightly around her daughter as she sobs. She feels George start patting Sophie on the back, desperate to help, to somehow make things better, and she reaches out and grabs him to her too.
‘Just shut up,’ he hisses.
Sophie gulps and swallows the last of her sobs. The room is beginning to smell. The air conditioner is old and doesn’t work
well in here, not well enough for this terrible heat, and Katherine and her children are sweating out their terror.
‘They need something to eat,’ she says, a plan forming in her mind. If they can all get to the kitchen, if they can get there quickly enough, then maybe they can get out of the back door. ‘Please, let me take them and get them some food,’ she says again because he hasn’t said no, which she thinks means he is considering it.
He rubs at his face. They’ve only been in this room for hours but it feels like days.
‘Fine, they can get some food,’ he finally replies.
‘Let me go with them,’ she says, hoping that she has kept the eagerness out of her voice.
‘Why don’t you go alone and leave them here with me.’ He grins as though he has made a considerate suggestion.
She takes a breath, wondering what would happen if she did run. His anger is for her, not them, but… he will hurt them to punish her. He will. She knows he will.
‘No, no… George, you go, take Sophie, have some… some fruit before you eat anything else.’
George gets up. She catches his eye, stares and nods slightly at him. Will he know to just leave, to just open the back door and run? If George and Sophie are safe, then she can deal with this. She can stay here all day, all night. He can kill her. She doesn’t care. She just needs her children to be safe.
George nods back and he takes his sister’s hand.
‘Oh, and George,’ he says casually as they get to the door of the family room. Her son doesn’t say anything but he stops dead-still. ‘If you don’t come back in five minutes, I will shoot your mum in the head.’ He sounds so matter-of-fact. So cold. She cannot believe that this is who he really is. She doesn’t want to believe it.
George casts a quick glance back at her and she nods her head again, hoping that he will disobey and leave, just leave, but from the way her little boy looks back at her, she knows he’s made a decision. She drops her gaze and stares at her hands where she is twisting the simple gold band on her finger, twisting it round and round as though she could unscrew it from her very being.
The Family Across the Street Page 6
