QUIET NEIGHBOURS an unputdownable psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist

by MCPHERSON, CATRIONA

  “Tom and Bernie never looked upstairs?” Jude knew ambulancemen. It was second nature to check a premises when they were called out.

  “That’s their story and they’re sticking to it,” Raminder said. “Said they were concerned for my safety, what with me being a colleague. If they’d known he was there, they’d never have left him … like that, you know?” She paused, chewing her lip. “If you back me up, we’re all okay.”

  “Back you up …?”

  “I’ve told the cops you left before it kicked off between Max and me.”

  “But one of the neighbours saw me leaving.”

  “That’s right,” Raminder said. “I told the cops you left and that’s when Max went to bed and pushed past me and I fell down the stairs, just had time to dial 999 and say he shoved me before I passed out. Neighbour hears Jade crying, sees you leaving, bit later sees an ambulance turn up. There’s no loose ends.”

  “You don’t seem—I mean, are you okay? You seem okay.” In the depths of the house, Jude was aware of the doorbell, but she ignored it. “I mean, he’s dead, right? And you loved him.”

  “Must have, innit?” Raminder said, hollowly. “I went against my family, broke up a marriage. If I didn’t love him that’d make me a bit of a bitch.” She looked down again and this time crunched herself over so she could kiss the side of Jade’s head. The baby was lolling, sated already, and Raminder pulled her gently away from her breast, with a soft sound like a small pebble falling into water. Jude took her eyes away after just a glimpse of a dark egg-shaped blotch and a sharp black nipple. Raminder was still smiling. “I can’t regret anything I did,” she said, “or I’m wishing this little one away.”

  Jude was speaking before she knew what she would say. “I don’t regret anything you did either. Choice between living in London still married to Max and being here? Easy.”

  Raminder nodded, rhythmically. She looked almost as sleepy as the baby, blinking slowly.

  “How did you get here?” Jude asked her. “Did you drive?”

  Raminder nodded again. Jade was snoring.

  “Do you want to go upstairs and rest?” Jude asked. “First left at the top’s a spare. Bathroom’s the one with the etched glass.”

  Raminder got to her feet and pushed her car keys across the table. “Don’t suppose you’d slip out and get her changing bag?” she said.

  “Course,” said Jude. Raminder’s words were still ringing in her ears. They’d never have left him … like that, you know. “Hey, can I ask you something?” she said. Raminder was walking slowly, carrying the sleeping baby like a ticking bomb, Jude thought. “Was that his first slip? Since you two got together?”

  Raminder snorted. “You’re kidding, aren’t you? That was his fourth ‘slip.’ First time since Jade was born, though.”

  “I remember that,” Jude said. “First time this year, first time this holiday, first time since the last time.”

  Raminder gave a ghost of a laugh, just a lift of her chin and a single breath. The weariness couldn’t all be from her long drive and the broken sleep that comes with a baby.

  She knew, Jude thought. She’d been three times round the merry-go-round Jude had been round so many times she couldn’t count anymore. She definitely knew.

  “No regrets,” Raminder said, reading her mind. “No complaints. My parents have forgiven me. Well, this one helps.” She lifted the baby a little and then let her settle again.

  Jude was dazed when she walked back into the dining room. Liam and Terry were dusting books now and Eddy was sitting in one of the armchairs in the window staring at her phone. Lowell stood with his back to the fireplace, hands in his pockets, sorting his change. In the two carver chairs at either end of the long sideboard sat Maureen Bell and Jackie MacLennan.

  “Hey!” said Jude, rushing over and taking both Jackie’s hands. “You look fantastic. But what are you doing out?”

  “Out of the hospital or out in the rain?” said Jackie. Her voice was rough and she had bags under her eyes, but she gripped Jude firmly. “Billy told me you’d been round so I asked Mo here if she’d give me a lift. See if we couldn’t set things straight somehow.”

  Maureen shifted in her seat and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry I was a wee bit thon way last time,” she said.

  Jude managed to smile without her eyebrows rising, but she couldn’t forget Maureen’s jabbing finger and her voice snapping Out! like a dog’s bark.

  “You’ve nothing to be sorry for,” she said. “I raked up old hurts.”

  “It was a terrible time,” Maureen said. “We’d always been such a friendly wee town and then suddenly everyone was looking sideways at everyone else.”

  “Aye well, it was us MacLennans that started it,” said Jackie. “That besom putting poor Auntie Lorna in a home. Like kenneling a dog.”

  “And what with this trouble that’s come to you now,” Maureen went on, with a glance at Eddy, “I was glad Jack asked me to bring her. Gave me the excuse to say sorry and let’s just forget it happened, eh?”

  Lowell was frowning deeply. “That’s very generous of you both,” he said, “but you’re not in full possession of the facts.”

  “Lowell,” said Jude, flashing a desperate message at him with her eyes. “They’re not facts. They’re suppositions. And Maureen and Jackie want to let it drop.”

  He was going to fall on his sword if she didn’t stop him. He was going to tell the world his father was a killer and do no one any good—not the relatives, not himself, not the town that was already reeling.

  If she could take what Raminder offered, Jude thought, then Lowell could grab this chance that the two women were holding out to him now.

  “Since it was me who opened up the can of worms,” she went on, “flying around dropping names, it should be me who gets to close it again.”

  “My father—” Lowell began.

  “If you want to be generous,” Jude cut in, “be generous about the cottage. Let the question of who set the fire quietly die.”

  “I was in HDU,” said Jackie.

  “I was upstairs with my curtains drawn,” said Maureen. “You’ll have to take my word for it.”

  “My dear,” said Lowell, “I shouldn’t dream of accusing you. I rather like my original idea: that some young scamps took the chance to make mischief.”

  It was an uneasy truce, but when they left minutes later, Jackie suddenly pale from exertion, they were agreed.

  “Our family gets more and more baroque,” Lowell said watching them drive away. “Your ex-husband’s widow and child tipped us over into soap opera territory anyway, but my father the serial killer? Well, we’re squarely in the horror genre now, aren’t we?”

  “If you’re not a horror fan,” said Terry, “don’t join a fecking book club.” He finished with the volume he was wiping and added it to the top of a pile.

  Jude and Lowell both turned to stare at him.

  “What?” Jude asked.

  “Well, look,” said Terry. “Speaks for itself, doesn’t it?”

  Jude blinked and gazed down the length of the long dining table at the piles of books laid out like a 3-D chart there.

  “Norma, Elsie, Archie, Etta, and Todd,” Terry said. “Eddy explained it all and showed us pics of the gravestones. They were all in the book club. And they were all still alive when Ulysses was pick of the month. Look. Five copies. Number 45 and they’re all alive.”

  “Then Norma died and by number 48, we’re down to four Mockingbirds. Four, four, four, and then bam! Elsie Day died and there’s only three copies of On the Beach.”

  “So what?” said Eddy. “God, you’re as bad as them! Books, books, books. Of course they stopped getting books. They were dead! Even the fucking hundred-books book club’s got a clue in the name.”

  Lowell was shaking his head, the picture of patience. “My dear child,” he said. “One doesn’t stop getting book club choices, magazine offers, or gas bills merely because one is dead.”

&nbs
p; “And anyway,” Jude said, “isn’t it a bit weird for all of them to be in the same book club?”

  “Five random old identikit people?” said Eddy. “No.”

  “And then two,” said Terry in a very small voice and with a wary look at Eddy. “Just two copies of Lolita. One was Todd’s with his name in and his notes in the back, and the other one was probably Etta’s.”

  “You’ve no need to pander to her, my dear boy,” Lowell said. “I shan’t let her … I hardly know how to express it.”

  “Dick us about?” suggested Liam.

  Eddy, in spite of herself, snorted with laughter.

  “And then one,” Jude said. “What’s the last one?”

  “Last we found is two number 61s,” said Terry. “Virginia Woolf.”

  Jude opened one copy of To the Lighthouse again and read Todd’s words. “I asked after Etta. M. said she can’t keep anything down. It’ll only be days. Sometimes folk can’t see what’s right in front of them. So we’ve missed one,” she said. “Lowell, didn’t you put any of the cleared-out books on the shelves? Were they all in the dead room?”

  “Every one. I didn’t want to upset the relatives,” he said. “As I told you.”

  “Seems like smart thinking,” said Liam. “If one of the relatives has started burning down houses they might start bumping off old people again.”

  “It was my father who did the first round of bumping off,” Lowell said. “I assumed Eddy would have told you.”

  “That’s my granddad!” Eddy said. “I didn’t want them getting weird about my genes.”

  “But didn’t you say the egg came from a lawyer?” Jude asked.

  “Yeah,” said Eddy. “Yeah, I did say that. Well, it didn’t.”

  “Was your father still alive in the mid-nineties?” said Liam.

  “He wasn’t,” Lowell said. “But had he been, your inference is quite right. He attended home births quite readily.”

  “Not like that arse you’ve got now,” Eddy said, missing the point. “I thought I’d had the last load of nagging after Mum—Miranda—died. She was insane about it, Liam. It was her right blind spot. Get into hospital, Eddy, do what the doctors tell you, Eddy. Promise me if I’m not here you won’t listen to anyone in the Community. Promise me you’ll get to the maternity wing in Derry. Cross your heart and hope to die.”

  Jude stood up and, giving Lowell’s hand a quick squeeze, she left the room, going as fast as she could without alarming them. She took a mackintosh from the coat pegs at the back door and let herself out, sliding on the cobbles and then slopping and skidding over the soaked grass towards the bedraggled asparagus bed, where the white tent had been.

  “Knock knock,” she said, opening Mrs. Hewston’s kitchen door. The television through in the front room snapped off. “Only me,” she added, kicking off her clogs and folding her mackintosh over the back of one of the chairs to drip harmlessly on the lino.

  Mrs. Hewston was sitting in her upright armchair with her spectacles case clutched in one hand, the remote in the other. “You again!” she said. “I told that inspector everything I know. What do you want?”

  “I couldn’t work out why you kept the secret,” Jude said. “A baby born and stolen away and a body buried in your garden? Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

  “It was none of my business,” said Mrs. Hewston, sitting back a little, not even pretending she didn’t know about the body, not even bothering to tell her placenta story now.

  “No, that’s not it,” said Jude. “It was quid pro quo. Miranda wanted the baby. She kept her mouth shut about you, and you kept your mouth shut about her.”

  “About what about me?” said Mrs. Hewston, and Jude could see her chest rising and falling.

  “She came to you, didn’t she? She asked you for help and you refused to attend.”

  “Nonsense!”

  “You let Inez struggle away on her own and you let her die.”

  “She should have been in the hospital. I knew nothing about it.”

  “Of course she should have, but by the time Miranda knew she was in danger, she was too scared to call an ambulance. She thought the courts would take one look at Inez—trying to give birth on her own—and take the baby away.”

  “And how could anyone blame them!” said Mrs. Hewston. “The girl wasn’t fit. None of them were good for anything, lying around the garden playing so-called music and taking those daft pictures with nothing in them.”

  “But you should have helped her.”

  “I didn’t know it was happening until it was too late,” said Mrs. Hewston. Her voice rang with outraged indignation. “First I knew, it was too late!”

  “But why did you keep quiet?” asked Jude. “If you weren’t at fault, what did you have to gain?”

  “It was none of my business,” said Mrs. Hewston again, and would say no more.

  The rest of the day went past a long way from Jude somehow. She was back in that clouded-glass paperweight again. She could see Liam and Terry taking turns holding Jade, see Raminder flirting with them, and Eddy’s wide eyes when she caught sight of one of Raminder’s enormous nipples. She could see Lowell at the head of the dinner table looking up and down both sides, beaming.

  It was winter and everyone except Eddy was older and sadder than anyone in 1994, but the house was full again, people were in love or falling in love, one baby was passed around, the other kicked and punched and everyone took a turn to feel it, standing with a hand on Eddy’s belly, heads cocked and eyes focussed on the distance, like safebreakers. Raminder talked about the ambulance service, telling funny stories. Eddy talked about Jolly’s Cottage and the attic rooms, where she should settle. Where the baby would be best when they came over to visit.

  “Shame about that bungalow,” Liam said.

  “No shifting Mrs. H.,” said Eddy. “She’ll live forever.”

  Through it all, Jude was silent. Once, in the hothouse at the botanic gardens at Kew she had brushed her hand across a cactus. A proper Desperate Dan cactus. She had brought away hundreds of fine hairs stuck in her skin, transferring to her clothes and back to her skin in new places, one near her eye, one on her lip. For days afterwards she had kept finding those tiny needle-hairs all over her.

  They were back now, the ghosts of them, piercing her in fifty different places. Where was the last hundred-books book? Why did Mrs. Hewston keep quiet? Who started the fire?

  “You were solemn tonight,” Lowell said once they were in their room. Liam and Terry were still up, but Raminder had lain down with Jade and fallen asleep, and Eddy, gravid now, had gone to bed at nine. “Was it the picture?”

  Jude shook her head. Lowell had decided to donate his collection to a museum of photography, with the condition that they would not be on open view but only available to scholars by consultation. The brown paper parcels were on the side table in the vestibule ready to go to the Post Office. Jude had only asked to look at one—the still girl and her blurred parents.

  “Are you sure?” she had asked Lowell. “She looks so perfect.”

  “That’s the problem,” Lowell had said. “That’s the clue. Life is so very far from perfect, my dearest. Life is filthy, ludicrous, perplexing chaos.”

  He emptied his pockets out onto the dressing table and yawned. “Is it hard seeing the little one?” he asked.

  “Jade? No. It’s not even hard seeing Raminder. Strangely.”

  “Hmph,” Lowell said. He was undressing, laying his clothes over the chair but putting his shirt and underpants in the basket, after Eddy’s nagging. He was bathing more too and shaving closely. Catching on quick, really. “I can’t say I care for her greatly. She’s rather abrasive.” Catching on very quick, Jude thought, smiling. Bitching up the new wife was basic boyfriend good manners. She wondered if he had read an article or if Eddy had coached him.

  “I’m just a bit done in with it all,” she said. Lowell nodded and got calmly into bed beside her in his striped pyjamas, lifting his book and settl
ing his spectacles.

  “You should read,” he said. “A quiet book is better than a tranquiliser. Young Eddy has been asking for a television in her bedroom, but that’s a dreadful idea. I shall select some bedside reading for her instead. Or you can.” He nodded at the little pile on her table. O. Douglas, Rebecca, the Allingham, Midnight’s Children, and the downed plane with the rugged chap and his love interest. Jude turned to them. It felt like a year since she laid them beside her bed upstairs in the pink room. They had followed her to Jolly’s Cottage, back here to the room across the landing, and finally to Lowell’s bed, and she’d never so much as glanced at any of them.

  She pulled the whole pile onto her lap. Allingham’s Beckoning Lady started with a corpse. No good for her tonight. Rebecca too, with its lost woman and all its secrets, was far from what she wanted. And O. Douglas was too much the other way. Too sweet and light, too far to bridge from her life to that world. That left the ripping yarn—but it made anguish and disaster seem like such a jape—and so it came down to Midnight’s Children. She opened it to read the jacket copy and her breath died in her throat. There it was in the flyleaf. T. Jolly. She flipped to the back.

  “Gosh, never had you down as one of those,” murmured Lowell beside her.

  Etta is gone, Todd had written. M. says heart this time. Her heart was stronger than mine. I’m not going to say anything. I want to end my days here in my own house with my quiet neighbours. But when I’m gone someone should know what happened here and so I’ll write it down. She thinks getting rid of us will bring her what she wants, but she’s wrong. He doesn’t love her.

  “Lowell,” Jude said. “You know when Begbie went to interview Mrs. Hewston?”

  “Mm?” said Lowell, deep in his book.

  “I went out to the kitchen to fetch you a glass of water and I missed the bit when they asked for her full name. They always do that, though, don’t they? Ask for your full name.”