by Ben J Henry
She shuddered inwardly, took a breath and turned towards the paintings behind her. On her mother’s side of the bed hung the portrait that Alicia had painted of them both. Pocketing the poster, she stepped up to the painting, smiling at the immature strokes of her fourteen-year-old self. Dark hair fell down her face, parted symmetrically across her forehead like a waterfall broken by an overhanging rock. Her large eyes, a malachite green, beamed back at her in almost Disneyesque proportions. Alicia sat with her mother behind her, their heads facing forward and their bodies at a forty-five-degree angle. Anna’s cropped blonde hair was a field of gold: wild sunflowers and wheat. Her young, elfin face was as pale as Alicia’s.
‘You have your mother’s talent,’ said her father, her teachers, her friends. Her mother’s talent was what Alicia admired above all else, and she considered it outlandish that anyone might compare the two, as though by complimenting Alicia they were failing to see the beauty that Anna had uncovered. Only in her prouder moments could Alicia see the humour she had caught in her mother’s wild black eyes: the promise that nothing is as serious as the world wants us to believe.
Wrinkling her brow, Alicia bent over the bedside table and brushed a finger against a spot of white paint on the spine of her mother’s book, Lucid Dreaming: A Beginner’s Guide. The tiny speck, no larger than a poppy seed, smudged against the pad of her forefinger.
In the absence of her father, Alicia shot an accusatory glare in the direction of his face on the canvas above his side of the bed. Patches of the white wall appeared to be wet. She stepped around the bed and her fingers lifted to the canvas, tracing her father’s cheek, as though by following each brushstroke she might discern how her mother had captured that look of innocence that defied adulthood. Beneath ruddy cheeks, Rory’s complexion was at odds with his Irish heritage, tan where his children were pale. From him they had inherited only his dark hair, which—considering a summary of his characteristics—Anna joked was a blessing.
And then there was David. How accurately had her mother replicated each freckle on her brother’s cheeks? She would like to position him beside the portrait with his back to the wall—and surely, at twelve-years-old, he would stand as tall as it now—in order to compare the image with reality. When painting David’s eyes, had her mother made a conscious decision for them to look directly at the viewer, or had this white lie been born unwittingly?
Where are you hiding? She did not voice this thought aloud. David and Alicia had often played hide and seek when he was an infant and she was approaching the age of ten. As a blind child, David was notoriously bad at finding places to hide. He struggled with the concept of glass, and Alicia had laughed tears when she found him crouched behind the patio doors at their grandmother’s house, for all the world to see.
‘I’m eighteen on Wednesday,’ she whispered to her brother’s portrait. ‘That’s two birthday presents you owe me.’ Tapping a finger against his chin, she continued: ‘I tell you what, come home and we’ll call it even.’
Carefully, she gripped the sides of the portrait and lifted it from the wall, angled towards her so that nothing fell from behind it. She took the poster from her pocket and placed it in the recess behind the painting, where it crunched against the others. She then lifted the painting back against the wall.
When her mother had first come home with a poster that she had pulled from the window of a newsagent in Guildford, Alicia had been speechless. She had been unable to articulate the words to express her anger. An hour later, she had stepped into her parents’ bedroom and managed to utter three words: ‘Put it back.’
Anna had shaken her head, sighed and reasoned that it had been over a year since David’s disappearance: everybody in Godalming—everybody in Surrey—knew her brother’s face. The posters served no purpose other than to fade in shop windows as a constant reminder that the police had failed to find him. Alicia did not argue with her mother, but when she found the poster in the bin, she decided that was not its rightful place. She would store them for David and show him when he returned, if only so he knew what trouble he had caused.
Her attention was snagged by a muddy mark on the pillowcase. She leaned closer to look at what appeared to be a footprint, igniting her curiosity as to what her father had been up to while she was at school.
The scent of paint was heavy in the air; she stepped up to the window and opened both panes outwards. A full moon hung in a clear sky, so bright that the black canvas upon which it lay was starless and empty. Alicia set her elbows on the windowsill and gazed at the moon. With an absent mother, a missing brother and a sleeping father, she was afforded a level of independence that other teenagers could only yearn for. An overwhelming loneliness rose within her, as though the moon were all that remained in an empty sky, and she all that remained in an abandoned household. Was it this oppressive tranquillity that drove solitary wolves to raise their heads and howl?
Her gaze drifted to the neighbouring house, where lights were on in two of the windows. It had been two years since David’s disappearance and eighteen months since the family next door had deemed the neighbourhood unsafe for their young daughter. The house had remained empty until the previous day.
When Alicia’s eyes found the front lawn, two things struck her as unusual. The first was that the vehicle in the driveway was a police car. The second was that the roof of the vehicle appeared to be glowing green. She then spotted a similar illumination on the tip of her finger. The paint was not white: it was glow-in-the-dark.
Her pulse quickened as she turned to face the wet marks above her parents’ headboard. Suddenly, the muddy footprint on the pillow was not clumsy, but sinister. Striding through each heartbeat, she crossed the carpet and reached for the switch by the door. Her finger paused for a half a second before she turned out the lights.
In bold capital letters, a single word glowed bright against the darkness.
MURDERER.
Dollhouse
Gus Crow had spent several hours over the past year faced with teaching staff and school counsellors exasperated by his profound indifference to education. But to be summoned to the headmistress’s office on his first full day at a new school? That was a record. The girl beside him appeared as apathetic to her plight as he was, watching the headmistress as though she were a vaguely interesting cartoon. Yesterday had been a memorable start to life in Godalming and today was promising to follow suit.
‘You told your uncle that the paint was your idea?’ asked Melissa Lawson in a monotone. At forty years old, she was relatively young for her position at the prestigious school, though her grey eyes were as distant as a veteran’s. The office reflected her sombre character: no paintings from infant pupils dotted the walls, no inspirational quotes urging everybody to keep calm and do something comical. All that had caught Gus’s eye as he took a seat at the mahogany desk was an old dollhouse on a table in the corner of the room. The intricately carved wooden structure appeared to have been attacked with a sledgehammer and meticulously reassembled. With sky-blue paint peeling on cracked panels and bay windows missing tiny panes of glass, the quaint artefact struck such a contrast to the utilitarian office that it looked like an item confiscated rather than displayed.
‘I thought she had thrown paint over his car,’ said Gus in a soft, Southern-Irish accent. ‘Not plastered Murderer across my neighbour’s bedroom wall.’
The previous morning, Gus had strolled across the uncut grass to assess the damage to the police car and stood beside the young woman, who had not moved from her position at the corner of the lawn. He watched the bag slide off her shoulder and was about to ask why she had taken such spectacularly bold action against the authorities when a guttural cursing issued from the front door. Dressed only in boxer shorts, Sergeant Crow had demanded that the pair step forward and explain themselves. At the sight of the furious middle-aged man in his underwear, Gus and Winter had exchanged a smirk as they approached the house.
Gus had mistaken her open-mout
hed silence for bewilderment, and he respected the rebel for not bolting down the street. In casual defiance, he said that it had been his idea to paint the car. The baffled police officer had scratched his bald head, asked for Winter’s name and dismissed her abruptly, perhaps realising that he was in his boxers.
‘Look at me making friends.’ Gus had grinned as Winter tossed the paintbrush into the wheelie bin and disappeared around the corner. His uncle had taken him inside to pursue a line of inquiry that had gotten him nowhere, and Gus was sent to school that afternoon.
‘Why would you say that you were involved?’ asked the headmistress. Her blonde hair was pulled into a chignon bun at the back of her head, so tight that the skin was stretched thin and bloodless across her narrow face. With the white suit jacket and matching trousers, she could have passed for a marble statue at a war memorial.
Gus shrugged. ‘It seemed like fun.’
Melissa Lawson studied the boy across her desk: the collar on his polo shirt half-up, half-down like a dog that had cocked one ear. Beneath a tangle of dark hair, green eyes met hers with a cheerful confidence. She had received a telephone call from Sergeant Crow last night, informing her that Winter Hazelby had allegedly written a threatening message on the wall of her art teacher’s bedroom. Melissa explained the situation between Anna Harrington and Winter, and had offered to deal with it personally. Sergeant Crow considered this an excellent idea, and had asked that she speak with Gus as well. Melissa had found the request odd: the new boy was likely trying to cover for Winter, as had dozens before him. But now she saw why the police officer wanted someone else to attempt a conversation with his nephew.
The headmistress opened her mouth to try another angle, but her phone rang in the pocket of her trousers. She held the device in both hands and two shrill rings sounded as she stared at the name on the screen. Tightening the bun at the back of her head, Melissa stepped out into the hall and closed the door behind her, leaving the pair alone in the office.
Gus shifted in his seat to face Winter, who remained silent. She pulled a slim denim satchel from the floor and flicked it onto the desk where it landed with a thud. She unbuckled the clasp with delicate fingers, her nails long and unpainted. Thick hair tumbled against her white cardigan like liquid ebony. One glance at those fierce eyes and tightly drawn lips and you knew where you stood with Winter: well beneath her.
He had been at school for five minutes yesterday when he first heard mention of her name. Arriving at the end of lunch, he had made straight for the canteen, where a pair of blonde twins were perched either end of a bench straining beneath the weight of the rugby team. Over the boys’ heads, the girls exchanged theatrical whispers over Winter’s whereabouts. Nearby students paused with cheeseburgers floating before their mouths, staring at their plates and listening intently as the twins warped whatever Winter had told them about her absence.
‘When they arrested her,’ one girl surreptitiously declared, ‘the ash from the burning car fell on her hair like snow.’
As Gus rounded the table on the way to the food counter, one of the rugby boys caught his eye. A loud voice cut through the twins’ reconstruction of Winter’s struggle in handcuffs.
‘Hey, new kid!’
There was the look that Gus had seen before on the faces of the popular and slow-witted, as the boy raked his body in search of a comment that might impress his peers: ‘Your shoes are crap!’
Gus had glanced down at his tattered trainers, raised his eyes and winked.
‘Your opinion says more about your character than it does about my shoes.’
‘What?’
But Gus had strolled off to find a sandwich.
In the toilets and on the back benches, Winter’s name circulated the school, spoken with shock and awe, but never scorn. In history class, a thin, breadstick of a boy had told Gus that Winter’s attack on the police car was obviously a publicity stunt, since Winter was in the process of renaming the planet. At his locker, he overheard a girl with a voice so plummy it sounded as though she had burned her tongue suggest that Winter had committed the crime in blind rage: the police refused to believe that Anna Harrington had anything to do with the death of her boyfriend.
Now Gus watched Winter open her notebook and continue to brainstorm what appeared to be alternatives to ‘Earth’. Moving between three schools over the past year, he had met so many ‘Winters’ that he struggled to tell them apart. Schools were rife with teenagers desperate to model themselves on popstar Ashley L’Amour, whose latest album, NV Dis, encouraged a ruthless clamber to the top of the social ladder, setting fire to each rung you surpassed. Considering himself invulnerable to the opinion of others, Gus registered bubbles of irritation when faced with the self-obsessed. He could not understand the filters placed between what people thought and what they said, as though they believed their answers to be genuine and their images authentic. He knew that he was different; he had no expectation or desire to ‘fit in’, but at least he was not pretending.
Winter had affected a lofty, purposeful air as she added ideas to her brainstorm of new names for the planet, and was currently circling what looked like ‘Vivador’. Gus quelled the rising bubbles.
‘You’re very pretty,’ he stated.
‘You’re hopelessly odd,’ Winter replied, her eyes not moving from the page.
Gus folded his arms. ‘Is that so?’
She made no response. He leaned forward and rapped his knuckles against the edge of the desk, drawing in the scent of polished wood.
‘Why do you think Anna Harrington murdered your boyfriend?’
The scratching of the pen gave way to a pregnant silence. Winter sat back in her chair and stared in the direction of the dollhouse as she took the bait.
‘Jack was swimming in the school pool over the break, practising for Nationals. He’s the best swimmer in school. Best rugby player. And the best—well, he was. They said he drowned. They said Mrs—that woman says she found him dead in the water.’
She turned to Gus and fire blazed in those chestnut eyes.
‘She wasn’t even supposed to be in school. Alicia—her daughter—thought she was on a pottery course in Bath. Everyone knows Mrs Harrington lost the plot when David ran away. And it’s not as if she was playing with a full deck before he disappeared. If I were her kid, I’d have run away too.’
Gus’s second and final lesson the previous day had been an art class. At Valmont School, art was a compulsory subject for all year groups, with Year 13s receiving two classes a week. His peers were clearly disappointed to have a supply teacher and the air was thick with whispers: Where is Mrs Harrington? An unreliable informer whose face Gus did not recall had told him that Winter had hated the art teacher long before Jack drowned. Alicia’s eccentric mother could be harsh when she felt effort was lacking, and had said that Winter’s GCSE submission had the ‘artistic panache of a squirrel.’
Winter stared into Gus’s green eyes in an attempt to gauge whether he believed her.
‘You’re very pretty,’ he repeated. ‘On the surface, I mean. Like a cupcake with a Brussels sprout in the middle.’
Winter blinked long eyelashes.
‘Some people like Brussels sprouts,’ she said.
‘Some think they’re the epitome of evil,’ he replied.
She returned to her pad of paper.
‘Let’s imagine,’ said Gus, tracing the mahogany grain with a fingernail, ‘that Anna Harrington was so devastated by the disappearance of her son, she started drowning kids at school. You reckon painting Murderer on her bedroom wall will scare her into a confession?’
Winter sighed and continued to doodle as she spoke. ‘I don’t want to scare her. I want her to know that we know.’
‘We?’
She shrugged. ‘Everybody.’ She eyed him without moving her head. ‘This is Valmont. This is my school. And if I say that woman murdered Jack, that’s what happened.’
‘Methinks the sprout hath a high opinion of it
self. You might want to save some time there,’ he nodded at the paper, ‘and campaign to name the planet Winter.’
She dropped her pen and spun in his direction.
‘Methinks thath—Me—I will literally bite you.’
‘Well, I guess that makes me the cupcake.’
The door opened and Mrs Lawson returned to the room. The headmistress stared at the blank screen of her phone before taking her seat.
‘Back to class, Master Crow,’ she uttered with the flick of a wrist as she drew an organiser from the desk drawer and placed it before her. ‘And you’re to stay away from Alicia Harrington. She’s suffered quite enough.’
Gus frowned, rose from his seat and shouldered his rucksack. He nodded in farewell, realised that both women were studying the papers in front of them, and made his exit.
When the door closed, Melissa adopted a light tone. ‘That was our new school counsellor on the phone. I’ve booked you in for a session on Monday.’
Winter watched her make a note in the organiser with tiny neat lettering.
‘You think I’m going to sit back and listen to some hippy tell me it’s all right to cry?’
Melissa lay the pen beside the calendar and put her elbows on the mahogany desk. She placed the tips of her fingers together one by one and considered Winter across the top of them.
‘Listen, you insufferable little tart. You don’t like me and I’ve more respect for the plaque between your teeth than for attention-seekers like you. But I see no need to involve the police in this any further—an embarrassment that we both know your mother would be glad to avoid. So, you will do a session with the counsellor, we will pretend this never happened, and you can return to whatever social media platform you intend to self-combust on.’
