by K. L. Slater
I feel so desperate to speak to Linda right now. Email is less intrusive than a phone call, but perhaps if I texted . . .
I pick up my phone and fire off a brief text explaining I’ve sent her a longer email, but asking if she could meet me ASAP as I’ve just found out about Sophie.
I don’t know where the rest of the morning goes. I feel lethargic and out of sorts and I just lie on the couch, unable to rest, unable to get anything done in the apartment.
When my phone dings signalling a text message, I grab it and see it’s a text from Linda Gent.
She’s agreed to meet me at 1 p.m. at a café just two Tube stops away.
The door of the café opens and a short, thin woman stands dithering there before stepping inside.
She reminds me of a frightened bird, the way her head is jerking this way and that as if she’s looking for danger nearby before she is willing to hedge her bets and step fully into the café.
She looks like I have started to feel myself.
I just know that this woman is her. This is Linda Gent, Sophie’s sister. She sees me looking and tentatively approaches my table.
‘Hi, is it Linda?’ She nods, relieved. ‘I’m Freya. Thanks so much for coming.’ I offer to get her a coffee, but she’s in no mood for small talk.
‘Not for me, thanks. How do you know Sophie?’
I can tell that if I admit to blurring the truth too early on in our conversation, Linda is nervous enough to walk away.
‘I think she’s the Sophie I knew a few years back but what’s reminded me, is that I think I might have moved into her old apartment on Palace Gate.’
Linda frowns. She’s going to stand up and walk out any second, I can feel it.
‘A letter came for her from an optician and your name and phone number was on there as next of kin. I just—’
‘I need to check if it’s the same place. You said you’re living on Palace Gate. Is the building called Adder House?’
‘That’s right.’ I swallow hard. ‘I live in a small top-floor apartment with my daughter, Skye.’
‘Oh God.’ Linda’s hand flies to her mouth and she squeezes her eyes shut as if she can’t bear the pictures that are flooding in. ‘This is important, Freya. How did you find out about it, the apartment? How did you know it was up for rent?’
‘It was totally by chance. I was in—’
‘A coffee shop? And Marsden happened to sit at your table by chance? Showed you his rental flyers? Asked if you wanted to view the apartment, despite it being something you could never afford to rent in a million years?’
‘Something like that, yes.’ I swallow again, wiping my damp palms on my jeans.
‘That’s exactly what happened to Sophie, and I can assure you that chance had nothing to do with it. Every single word he uttered to you was planned.’
41
This is all just starting to feel more than a bit paranoid now. Had Brenna been right about Dr Marsden all along? Linda has obviously had the most terrible experience involving her sister and young niece.
‘I’m Melissa’s legal guardian now. She’s still not sleeping through the night, still having the most awful nightmares.’ Linda stands up, wringing her hands and scanning the windows of the café. ‘Do they know you’re here? You might have been followed.’
‘It’s OK, Linda, please relax,’ I say as calmly as I can while my own heart gallops. ‘We’re quite safe, nobody knows I’m here.’
She sits but slides further down her chair as if she’s trying to hide from something . . . or someone.
I’m totally committed to finding out exactly what happened to Sophie so I can feel secure in my own home and be reassured my own daughter is safe, but now I’m thinking poor Linda seems to be more than distraught.
She seems to be unhinged, for want of a better word. I’m not judging her; tragedy can do that to a person. I’d managed to convince myself that Janine Harworth was stalking us and honestly, when I confronted her, the reaction was so genuine, I’m now pretty sure it’s all been in my head.
I don’t want to end up like Linda.
‘I changed my own name after it happened so they didn’t come after me, too,’ she says a little breathlessly. ‘I only got your email because you sent it to my old workplace and an ex-colleague forwarded it on to me. I’ve tried everything to put that place . . . Adder House . . . behind me.’
Her fear is palpable. It’s a clammy sheen on her face, a wild look in her darting eyes.
‘What happened?’ I say, suddenly desperate for some closure on the issue. ‘How did Adder House have anything to do with what happened to your sister?’
‘It had everything to do with it.’
She lets out a sad little sound. A couple at the next table glance over, but Linda makes no attempt to cover up her distress. I think she’s past controlling it at all.
‘They were so happy there at first, Sophie couldn’t believe she’d been given this amazing chance.’ I squirm a bit in my seat. ‘Truthfully, we were all very sceptical when she told us about Marsden’s offer. Until we saw the place, that is, then we were as smitten as she was.’
‘Did you visit her often there?’
‘Oh no! The landlord hates visitors, haven’t you come across that, too?’ I nod. ‘He’ll go to any lengths to make it uncomfortable for family or friends to drop by. We helped her move in, and I went over once after that when Marsden himself called me because Sophie was clearly unwell.’
So Dr Marsden had shown some concern for Sophie. Was Audrey just concerned about me, too?
Linda looks at her hands on the table and links her fingers together as if she’s trying to find the strength to carry on.
‘Anyway, Sophie was really happy for a while. I’d never seen her so bright and full of optimism for the future.’ Her face clouds over. ‘That was before things started happening there.’
‘What things?’
‘She called me a couple of times, thought she’d heard noises, knocks at the door and nobody there. Stuff that sounds like nothing, but when it’s constant, it can drive you crazy.’ Linda’s eyes are swimming and my heart is hammering. ‘I just batted away her concerns. “Who cares if someone played knock-a-door-run?” I asked her once. “You live in Kensington for a peppercorn rent, for God’s sake. Just put up with it.” I think about how I dismissed her every day. Every single day.’
‘Don’t be too hard on yourself,’ I manage to say. ‘It wouldn’t have seemed much to complain about at the time.’
‘She stopped calling me and popping around to the house as much after that.’ Linda rubbed her eyes. ‘When I bumped into her at the dental surgery, I was shocked. Sophie had always been slim, but that day she looked skeletal with these deep, dark shadows here, under her eyes.’
She touches the top of her cheeks lightly with her fingertips.
‘Her hands shook, even her voice sounded different, as if someone had sucked the very life spirit out of it. I told her to get out. I said, if this is what the place is doing to you then you need to get away from it.’ Her voice grows faint. ‘She said she’d think about it and promised to come over to my house later in the week with Melissa.’
Something about the way she says it makes my stomach curdle. ‘And did she come over, like you arranged?’
Linda’s head drops forward and I can see she’s biting back tears.
‘What happened?’
She takes a few more moments then looks straight at me.
‘She “fell” down the stairs, apparently. That’s what they told the police, anyhow. Cracked her head on the sharp edge of some metal filigree work.’
‘She . . . did she . . .’
‘Die? Yes, she died. But the fall didn’t kill her. She sustained a head injury but didn’t die in the house. She refused medical attention and went back upstairs for a few hours and then fled in the middle of the night, leaving Melissa asleep in bed. She was mowed down by a big overnight freight truck on the top road. The Dutch dr
iver said she just jumped out in front of the lorry.’ A salty track forges its way down Linda’s face. ‘She changed so much in a short time while she was living there, but I was too blind, too absorbed in my own life to fully notice. That place turned her from a gutsy young woman into a bag of nerves in record time. She must have been so low and desperate to leave Melissa alone in that house after sending me a text and asking me to look after her when she’s gone.’ She presses her phone so it lights up and a dark-haired child with ruddy cheeks and a lovely dimpled smile fills the screen. ‘This is little Melissa,’ she says, her voice full of regret. ‘Our little star.’
I look at her, wanting more, but it feels disrespectful to question her when she’s obviously still grieving and so upset.
‘She’s beautiful,’ I say softly. ‘She’s very lucky to have you.’
My stomach turns when I think what would happen to Skye if I died. She’d have Brenna and that’s it.
Linda looks at me, her bloodshot eyes pinning me down.
‘The police investigated briefly, spoke to Dr Marsden and the other residents. They said that, possibly, the head injury sustained at the house may have caused massive confusion and that’s why she ran out into the road.’ Linda wrings her hands and her voice grows louder in her desperation to make me understand. ‘I tried to tell them about the stuff that had unnerved her, the effect living there had on her, but they wouldn’t listen. The coroner reported her death as sudden and most probably suicide. Thank goodness our mum was no longer here to read it.’
‘I’m so sorry, Linda.’ I reach for her hands and hold them in my own. ‘It’s just awful, all of it. I don’t know what to say.’
‘I have no hard evidence but I know in my heart it wasn’t suicide in the truest sense of the word, Freya. Sophie didn’t plan her own death, she loved her daughter too much. She was terrified for Melissa’s safety more than for her own, and she died because she was desperately fleeing something. Sophie was driven by something or someone to take her own life.’
Up until this point Linda had really unnerved me with her descriptions of weird happenings at Adder House. I’d started to draw parallels to the incident with the flies, furniture and belongings apparently moving.
I thought she was going to say that Sophie had died in our apartment. Linda’s voice breaks my thoughts.
‘You’re probably being brainwashed, too.’ She pulls her hands gently away and takes a tissue from her sleeve. ‘You need to get out of that place as soon as you can.’
I know she’s right. We have to leave.
‘I have to go,’ I say faintly. ‘I have to think about what we need to do.’
‘That’s the easy bit, Freya. You need to get out,’ Linda says emphatically. ‘You know, I visited Sophie there once or twice. It was like Fort Knox trying to get in, that creepy landlord insisting he should know if someone so much as sneezes in there. It’s not healthy. It’s not appropriate.’
She’s right. And that sounds just like Dr Marsden.
‘Sophie and Melissa had the big apartment on the top floor. It’s the only one up there.’
‘We’re in number six on the top floor.’ I frown. ‘It’s a small apartment next to an empty one that’s being refurbished. That must have been their apartment.’
Linda frowns too. ‘There was only one door up there and you couldn’t accurately describe Sophie’s apartment as small.’
I think about the new plaster on the outside wall and the fact that our doorframe looks newer, somehow. Surely not. Surely our small apartment hasn’t been created to make two residences out of what used to be Sophie’s bigger apartment . . . that would make Dr Marsden technically right when he said we’re the first tenants to move in.
Linda stares at me for a moment and then shakes her head, as if I’m a lost cause. ‘There’s something about that place that’s just not right. I know you must feel it, too.’
I push away my latte. I can’t face its creamy sickliness any more.
42
When I get back to the house, I rush upstairs. My mouth is dry.
When I get up to the top floor, I swipe my key card at the door and step inside, relieved to be alone at last.
I’m trying to run through everything Linda has told me, to untangle the threads and make some sense of it all.
Something made Sophie turn from being a loving mother into someone who’d leave her child behind and take her own life. I have this rising panic inside that comes from our association by default with Sophie and Melissa. By choosing to live at Adder House, it’s as if their tragedy could be duplicated in our lives, too.
That by staying here, I’m sending the universe a message that I also accept a terrible fate. It might not be logical but it feels very, very real, like the inevitability of something bad happening is a real thing. My overwhelming instinct right now is that we have to get away from here.
Inside, the apartment is cool and quiet without Skye here. I’m so used to the backdrop of television or her playing a game on my iPad.
My old life feels a million miles away already. I think how Skye cried when I snapped at her this morning when she left for school. The way she looked at me when I swore to her that I hadn’t moved her toys, or ripped her painting.
I flop down on the couch, exhausted but racked with a nervous energy that refuses to let me rest. Did Sophie feel this way, too?
I’m not Sophie, I remind myself. I have a choice to get out before things get worse here. For once, I’m pleased I’ve still got so much stuff in bags and boxes. That will save us time.
I will myself to just calm down and breathe. There are decisions to make about our future, but I have a few hours to get my head straight before Skye comes home, and my body feels so worn.
At last my breathing calms, my limbs feel heavy. Blissful peace settles over me like a feather-light blanket.
I’m drifting off, floating somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, when I first hear it. The faintest wailing noise. I’m not sure if I’ve dreamed it, but it’s alarming enough for me to sit up and listen.
There’s nothing for a few minutes. I have the window open, and every now and again, I hear the faraway rumble of a big lorry passing through Palace Gate from the busy top road.
Skye’s face flits into my mind’s eye.
I sit bolt upright. There it is again . . . louder this time. A wail . . . a howl. It’s a child crying, a girl.
I jump up and run to the doorway, convinced for a moment that Skye is back, hurt or injured and crying for me outside the apartment door. But when I reach her bedroom, I stop dead, a tendril of pure dread snaking down from my scalp, all the way down my back.
The sound is coming from behind Skye’s bedroom door.
For a moment or two, I literally can’t move. My whole body feels frozen to the spot. Thoughts and possibilities zap through my mind, so quickly I can barely keep track of them.
I feel a little disorientated from my nap.
Is Skye here? Did I get confused again and she hasn’t gone to school today? Did she return while I was out? Is she hurt . . . in pain?
My hand slowly reaches for the door handle and I push down and throw the door wide open.
But Skye’s room is empty. And completely silent.
43
I stand at the bedroom door, trying to work through where else the noise could have come from, when the doorbell rings.
I rush down the hallway and fling open the door, expecting Dr Marsden to explain about the noise.
‘Freya! What’s wrong?’ It’s Lily from downstairs.
‘I’ll be fine in a minute,’ I say, relieved it’s her. ‘I just had a bit of a shock. I’m OK.’
I’d really like to confide in her, but I don’t want her to think I’m crazy and tell the other residents. I take a step back inside my apartment.
‘You don’t look OK,’ she says, laying a hand on my arm. ‘Why don’t I come in and make you a nice cup of tea?’
I haven’t got the e
nergy to fight. Part of me wants to hide away and not come out for the rest of the day. The other part of me feels like I don’t want to be alone up here.
In the end, Lilian makes the decision for me.
‘Come on, let’s get you back inside.’ She walks ahead of me, and when I’ve shuffled past her, she closes the door behind me. ‘Sit yourself down in the lounge, dear, and I’ll put the kettle on.’
She strides ahead into the kitchen and I rush past Skye’s bedroom without glancing in. I sit down on the sofa as instructed, zombie-like. A few seconds later, Lily joins me.
She perches on the edge of the cushion and turns in a little to look at me.
‘I don’t want to pry, Freya, but I can see something has upset you. The last couple of times I’ve seen you, you’ve seemed . . . a little stressed, for want of a better phrase. Don’t feel you have to tell me anything too personal but . . . are you alright?’
‘Yes!’ I say, my voice sounding slightly manic. ‘I’m fine. I just—’ Here it comes. The emotion I’ve been trying to keep down for the last few days. ‘I just . . . things are getting on top of me a bit. I don’t think we’re going to stay here, Lily,’ I splutter between sobs.
‘Oh no, come here.’ Lilian cradles her arm around my head and I just let go. I can’t stop myself. ‘That’s it, dear, let it all out. Holding stuff in never did anyone any good at all. I should know.’
Something about the kind tone of her voice gives me licence to let go. I override the feelings of shame and embarrassment and instead, I just release all the tension I’ve kept bottled up.
It goes on for a while. I hear the kettle click off in the kitchen and still Lily holds me and still the emotion comes.
Lily loosens her comforting hold and I pull gently away. ‘Better?’
I nod. ‘Thank you. I don’t know what came over me. This is not like me at all.’
‘You said you might not stay here,’ Lily says, her gentle eyes creasing with concern. ‘Why is that?’
