The New Neighbors

by Simon Lelic

  He moves again, more abruptly this time—and that’s when I pull out the knife.

  And this part, this is something I didn’t expect. I feel the way I imagine he does. With the knife in my hand, all I want to do is start slashing. Because if his anger’s been festering, so has mine. I’ve been picturing this moment since I was nine years old, preparing for it one way or another since the day I was born. I thought I’d exorcized this feeling, banished it, but it turns out it’s stronger now than ever.

  And he sees it, I can tell. He appears encouraged by it. Invigorated, almost. Watching me struggle to control my hatred helps him somehow to contain his.

  He pauses and I realize that whatever advantage I might have held, I’ve managed to pass it back to him.

  His fingers tap a rhythm against his leg. “So that’s why I’m here,” he says. “I did wonder.”

  This time when he moves, he moves sideways. He reaches a hand toward the surface of my dressing table and selects one of the numerous little pots. My face cream, I think. After that he picks up my hairbrush, raises the bristles to his nose. His eyes lock on mine as he breathes in.

  “So talk me through it,” he says, setting the brush down again in the same spot it was before. “You stab me,” he says, “obviously. Kill me, I’m assuming is your plan. Then—what? Claim self-defense?”

  He’s daring me to answer but I stay silent, watching him as he checks around the room. He notices my phone on the bedside table. It’s just a throwaway, not even a smartphone—a cheap replacement for my broken iPhone. Without breaking eye contact with me, my father moves to pick it up.

  “There’s no one listening in, if that’s what you’re wondering,” I tell him.

  My father raises the phone level with his chin, so that as he checks the call list he can keep watching me. “Maybe not,” he says and I can tell he’s found what he was looking for. “But it seems we won’t have quite as long to get reacquainted as I’d hoped.”

  The knife wavers in my hand. I’ve got the cuffs of my sweatshirt pulled down over my palms and I adjust my grip on the handle.

  The movement catches my father’s eye.

  “Is that a kitchen knife?” he asks me, smiling now. He puts the phone back down on the bedside table and moves back to where he was standing before. “It doesn’t look very sharp, Maggie. Are you sure it’s up to the job?”

  I glance at the blade. Before it felt as substantial as a broadsword. Now, with my father’s looming form right in front of me, it feels about as threatening as a toothpick.

  “I’m surprised you don’t recognize it,” I say, attempting to ape my father’s tone. “It’s the same knife you used to murder Sean Payne. Apparently it was sharp enough for him.”

  My father looks more closely at the blade. His smile broadens. “Of course it is. Now how on earth, I wonder, did you manage to get hold of that?”

  The knife quivers again and I bite down to try to stop myself shaking.

  My father’s fiddling with my hairbrush again. He’s growing restless once more, his fingers itching beneath those gloves.

  “By the way,” he says, “it was an interesting theory you presented to the police. It’s just a shame they didn’t believe you. That they arrested your boyfriend instead. It’s Jack, isn’t it?”

  I could. I could stab him now and there’s no reason it wouldn’t work out the way he said it would.

  “That must have been hard on you,” my father goes on. “Although I suppose it’s not that surprising. That you should find yourself attracted to violent men. Unless . . .” He looks up. “Oh Maggie. Oh I see.” He laughs, genuinely delighted. “Oh my goodness, what have I done to you?” He says it like a boast. As though he’s as pleased with himself as he is with me.

  “So this way,” he says, working it out, “it’s murder and attempted murder they convict me of. Posthumously, obviously.” He nods his head. “Very smart,” he judges. “Very poetic.”

  He gives me barely a moment to try to work out what he means. He sets aside the hairbrush and reaches once again into his inside pocket. When he withdraws his hand this time he’s holding a white plastic bottle. He sets it down on my dressing table and turns it so the label is toward me. I can’t read it from where I’m standing but the bottle looks familiar to me from just its shape and color.

  “What am I supposed to do with those?”

  My father slides the bottle of sleeping pills across the dressing table toward me, like a chess player positioning his rook.

  “You think I’m going to swallow a load of sleeping pills just because you tell me to?”

  “Not because I tell you to,” my father replies. “Because you’re . . . depressed, let’s say. Because you’re twenty-eight years old and the only man you’ve ever loved is probably going to spend the rest of his life in prison.”

  I flinch at that. I can’t help it.

  “Plus,” my father adds, “you always have been a little disturbed. It’s not as though it would be entirely out of character.”

  A car passes in the street outside, its headlights sweeping like a search beam across the room. For a moment I see my father more clearly and what strikes me is that he looks so normal. It’s the thing I’ve always struggled most to comprehend. How on the outside he could look the way he does but on the inside he could be so hideously disfigured.

  “Of course, you’ll have to cancel that 999 call you made before I got here. Or at least wait until the police have made themselves scarce.”

  Enough, I tell myself. What are you waiting for? If you’re going to do this, do it.

  “It’s a shame really,” my father says. “I was so hoping to stay and watch.”

  My hand tightens around the knife. I try to estimate how much time has passed since I heard my father on the stairs and put in the call to the police. There are no sirens yet but perhaps there won’t be. Although that makes me wonder whether the police are coming at all.

  I start toward my father but stop again when he holds up a finger.

  “Before you do anything rash,” he says, “think for a moment about Jack. I can get to him, Maggie. I’ve got friends who can, thanks to you.”

  My father sees something in my expression that he enjoys.

  “What?” he says. “Did you think that by staying away from him you could fool me into thinking you didn’t care about him? Or that you’d stop me from finding out where he was? I know about him, about little Elsie.”

  Again he watches my reaction. Again I fail to conceal it.

  My father looks ostentatiously at his watch. “We’re running out of time, Maggie. And you’ve got a choice to make. It’s you or the people you claim to care about.”

  And there it is: my father’s endgame. I always knew he would want to use what I loved against me. I just wasn’t sure until now exactly how.

  I shake my head. “You’re forgetting,” I say. “Jack’s not staying in prison. And you can’t get to anyone if you’re dead.” Because at the moment that’s the way this is heading. That rage inside me I thought I had tethered? It’s coming loose.

  My father shows how afraid he is by stepping toward me. He’s grown. Has he grown? Or is it merely that in his presence I’ve become smaller? I don’t want to but I find myself retreating. The only place for me to go is the narrow space between the wall and the bed.

  “You know, your sister was never this obstinate,” my father says. He stops an outstretched arm’s length away from me. Stabbing distance, just. “Jessica never defied me the way you’re doing. When she found herself presented with the choice you have, she made her decision in an instant.”

  The knife is suddenly heavy in my hand. “What did you say?”

  My father tips his head. “You didn’t know,” he says, “did you? I always wondered whether I’d got through to you.”

  There’s a sense of something c
hurning behind my eyes, like that rush you get when you stand up too quickly. Blood, oxygen, understanding—a swirling cocktail that has me reaching for the wall.

  “The pills she took. Jessica. You made her take them?”

  All at once I can picture it: my little sister cowering before my father in precisely the way I’m cowering now. Being offered the same choice I’m being offered. And Jessica, sweet Jessica, making it.

  “But why? She was never a threat to you. She was eleven.”

  For the first time I see a flash of my father’s disfigurement. “Because you ran,” he says. “Because you left, and no one was allowed to leave.”

  I can feel my breath becoming jagged, the pressure that’s building in my lungs.

  “What did you say to her? Who was it you threatened? Not Mum. She would have known it was too late to do anything to stop you hurting Mum.”

  “Who do you think?” My father gives me time to catch up. Me. He threatened me. He told Jessica he’d come after me and that when he found me he’d be sure to make me pay.

  My hand tightens on the knife handle. I can feel the ache building in my knuckles.

  “She cared about you, Maggie. In a way you never cared about her.”

  I lunge before I even know I’m doing it. I’m being reckless, risking everything. But at the moment all I want to do is draw blood. I drive the knife forward like a lance, aiming squarely for my father’s sternum. But I’d settle for anywhere: his throat, his gut, his groin. I’ll slice him up piece by piece if I have to.

  But I’m too slow. As I move my father sidesteps and his fist hammers into my stomach. My legs give way as though they’ve been punctured and the kitchen knife spills from my hand. It clatters off somewhere I can’t see it, into the void beneath the bed.

  My father, standing over me, is flexing his knuckles. “I’m not going to lie to you. I’m glad you did that. It’s just a shame we have to stop there. Although . . .” His hand closes around my windpipe and slowly, steadily, he begins to squeeze. “. . . I am tempted, you know. So. Very. Tempted.” He grips a little harder on each word—but then releases me before I begin to bruise. “But we wouldn’t want you damaged when the police arrive.”

  He lets me drop, leaving me coughing on all fours. The pain is blooming in my stomach and there’s water building in my eyes. I can see the knife now—it’s within my reach—but my father is already beside the door.

  In the distance, finally, comes the sound of sirens.

  “That’s my cue, I fear,” my father says. He shrugs his suit jacket straighter. “It seems I’ve got a few phone calls to make and you . . . Well. You need to catch up on your sleep.”

  “Wait.” The tears are softening my vision and my fingers are flailing for the knife.

  “Sorry, Maggie. Got to run. Remember, though, that I can always come back—assuming you decide to stick around. And next time, I promise you, I’ll make sure we get to spend more time together.”

  “Wait!”

  I sense rather than see my father halt. My left hand closes on what it’s groping for and with my right I wipe the water from my eyes. The sirens are distant but closing.

  My father catches sight of what I’m holding. I’m watching his expression as I move, waiting for understanding to finally dawn. Because he was right to be so confident before: in a fight I never had a chance. That’s why stabbing him—killing him—wasn’t ever what I intended.

  “Oh Maggie,” he says. “Oh Maggie you clever girl, what have you done?”

  When my hand slips from the knife, my first thought is that using it wasn’t as difficult as I assumed it would be. I feel elated, initially, until I notice the blood. It flows quickly, determinedly. It stains my sweatshirt, my trousers, even the floor, and that’s when my elation turns to fear. It’s gone wrong, I realize. This thing I’ve planned for so carefully. It has all gone drastically, horribly wrong.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  JACK

  I’M IN A room I’ve never seen before. Not a cell, not someone’s office. It’s nothing fancy—painted walls, nylon carpet tiles, a wooden table and some chairs with padded seats—but it’s the kind of room I imagine they take visitors to usually, not prisoners. And maybe I’m reading too much into it, but there’s no way my being here can be a good sign.

  Forty-five minutes I’ve been waiting. One day, nine hours and forty-five minutes, actually, if you count from the moment I was first informed. I say informed. The truth is that they’ve barely told me anything. Syd’s been hurt is all I know. Badly. So badly that when I spoke to the governor (you see, Mum? Turns out I got to meet the governor after all), he couldn’t even tell me whether she was going to be OK. She’s in hospital, and the staff there are doing all they can. And in the meantime the only thing I can do is fixate on what little I’ve been told.

  Forty-nine minutes.

  I’ve been staring at the clock on the wall so much that I know the second hand gives a little jerk each time it passes the number seven. It’s like the walls in my cell. I could recite every piece of graffiti, pinpoint every boot mark, paint drip and scrape. It’s funny how the little things are all your brain is able to process when you’re stuck waiting for news about something big.

  Fifty-two min—

  The door opens and I spin. I’m expecting . . . I don’t know. The governor again, maybe. The guard who brought me here, perhaps. Anyone other than the person who walks in.

  “Hello, Jack. I’m sorry to have kept you.”

  If it were anyone else, I would already be asking for news about Syd. At the sight of Inspector Leigh, however, my limbs, my tongue, my brain, every part of me locks.

  “How are you, Jack?” she asks me.

  I blink and I find myself freed. “What are you doing here?”

  The inspector closes the door behind her. She crosses the room and stops four carpet tiles away from me. “Shall we sit?” she says, gesturing to the table.

  “Is Syd OK?” I respond without moving. “Is there any news?”

  “Jack, please. I really think it would be better if you sit down.”

  Oh God, I’m thinking. Oh please God no.

  “Just tell me! Can’t you?”

  “I will, Jack. I promise. I’ll tell you everything you want to know.” The inspector takes a chair on the window side and gestures again to the seat across from her.

  I move reluctantly and lower myself into it. I perch on the edge, my palms clammy against my thighs.

  Inspector Leigh exhales deeply before she speaks again.

  “They told you Syd was hurt,” she says. “Did they tell you how?”

  Frantically I shake my head. “They said there’d been an ‘incident,’ that’s all. That everyone was still trying to get to the bottom of what had happened. Literally, that’s all I know.”

  The inspector nods, as though rather than information that’s worse than useless, this is actually a reasonable summary.

  “Syd was attacked, Jack. Stabbed. That’s the way it’s looking right now.”

  “Stabbed? Jesus Christ!” All at once I’ve got so many questions there’s a blockage and none can get out. “But is she . . . I mean, will she . . .”

  “I’m not going to lie to you,” the inspector says, and I feel a vacuum begin to form in my stomach. “She’s been very badly hurt. She lost a lot of blood and . . . well, for a while it was touch and go.”

  “For a while?” I echo. “You mean . . .”

  “I mean she’s stable,” the inspector says. “The doctors tell me that she’s stable.”

  “Oh thank Christ.” I let my head come down onto the table. It barely touches before I’m lifting it up again. “So she’s . . . I mean, stable’s good. Right? Stable means she’s getting better?”

  “She’s not out of danger,” says Inspector Leigh. “All it really means is that she’s not get
ting any worse. But the doctors I spoke to, they’re optimistic.”

  I cover my open mouth with my hand. I want to smile, but I’m scared to.

  “I need to see her,” I say. “When can I see her?”

  “Soon enough,” the inspector answers.

  “What? Really? When?”

  “Today, hopefully. Just as soon as your release paperwork has been processed.”

  The inspector’s watching for my reaction.

  “I’m being released? As in . . .”

  “As in all charges dropped,” says Inspector Leigh.

  “But that’s . . .” I shake my head. That’s impossible. Isn’t it? I’m in shock—to the extent that I don’t actually believe it. “Is this a trick?”

  “No trick, Jack. It seems your story wasn’t quite as far-fetched as I first assumed.”

  “You mean . . . Syd’s father. He was the one who attacked her?”

  “So it would seem.”

  “And have you caught him? Has he been arrested?”

  “He has.”

  Shit, I’m thinking. Just . . . shit. It’s as close as I can get to putting what I’m feeling into words. “Where is he? I mean, what happened? I mean . . . you’ve told me what happened. What I mean is, how?”

  “Ms. Baker . . . Syd. She reported a break-in, told the operator she’d heard someone in the house. When the response team reached the address in question—your address, Jack—they apprehended a man trying to flee the scene. They found your girlfriend upstairs in one of the bedrooms. Wounded. Fatally, they tell me they thought at first.”

  “Fatally?”

  “I told you, Jack. Syd was very seriously hurt.”

  “But you said she’s OK? Right? You said before she’s going to be OK?”

  “I said she was stable. Right now that’s the best I can offer you. But even for me to be able to say that means Syd’s been incredibly lucky. In fact, if you had to choose where to get a knife wound in your abdomen, you’d struggle to pinpoint a safer spot.”