The Visitor: A psychological thriller with a breathtaking twist

by K. L. Slater

  ‘But why? Why would Emily do that?’ the woman had demanded, clutching her throat as if she couldn’t get her breath. ‘She was so conscientious.’

  Holly had to be careful how she phrased what had happened, just in case one of the customers repeated something to Josh. She had to keep the pleasure off her face.

  ‘I’m sure she had her reasons,’ she said sadly. ‘I was so shocked when she led everyone to believe I had damaged the vase, and then… well, I can’t say too much, but when the flowers were found in her handbag, thank goodness I was cleared of suspicion.’

  Mrs Fenwick gasped at Emily’s treachery.

  ‘You poor girl.’ Mr Fenwick shook his head. ‘What on earth must have got into Emily, to pull a stunt like that?’

  ‘It’s very sad.’ Mrs Fenwick nodded. ‘Emily always took such good care of us here, but…’ she grasped Holly’s hand and smiled at her husband, ‘I just know that Holly is going to do an even better job. Am I right?’

  ‘Of course.’ Holly beamed. ‘I’d be honoured to look after you from now on.’

  And that had been the sum of it. Thanks to the Fenwicks’ superficiality, Emily was swiftly forgotten and it was business as usual.

  Half an hour after Holly’s short conversation with them, the Fenwicks had spent another few hundred pounds in the store and Holly’s commission pot had risen yet another notch.

  After the couple had left, Holly made a cup of tea and took it to her desk so she could complete the paperwork from their purchases.

  On her way back across the showroom, she spotted that Martyn was free. She walked over to him.

  ‘How’s things?’

  He looked up from his phone and smiled at her. ‘Good, thanks.’

  She wasn’t quite sure how to broach the subject so decided to just jump in with both feet. ‘Listen, did you know the girl in the job before I joined?’

  His smile faded. ‘Lynette, yeah. Only as a colleague, but… She was OK. Nice girl.’ He tapped his fingertips on the table next to him.

  ‘She left the job quickly, as I understand it.’ It was obvious Martyn felt a bit awkward, but she had to know. ‘What happened?’

  Martyn looked at the stairs and back down to the floor.

  ‘We were told never to speak about it or it’d be a disciplinary,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Holly.’

  ‘Come on, you know I won’t say anything,’ she pressed him.

  He glanced at the stairs again.

  ‘Look, you didn’t hear it from me but basically, Josh was shagging her.’

  Holly’s mouth fell open. Josh? She would never have had him down as a sleazeball.

  ‘Emily told me she got rid of her. How did she do that… and why?’

  ‘Let’s just say things got complicated.’ Martyn sighed.

  ‘Complicated how?’

  ‘You don’t give up, do you?’ He laughed but shuffled on his feet. ‘Josh was… well, he was also shagging Emily. Neither of them knew about the other one.’

  ‘Josh was… with Emily?’ Holly also recalled that Josh was married. ‘What a rat!’

  ‘Yeah, I know. She was less of a dragon then. We suspected something was going on between them, but they were quite discreet.’ Martyn glanced around the showroom yet again, obviously nervous of Josh somehow gathering that he was gossiping. ‘Then Lynette came to work here and he started his double game.’

  ‘And Emily found out?’

  ‘She followed him after work, apparently. Watched as he met Lynette in a bar in town and screamed the place down, we heard.’

  ‘Did she make Lynette’s life hell, then?’ Holly shuddered, able to imagine just how miserable Emily Beech could make you if she set her mind to it.

  ‘Well… Lynette left under a bit of a cloud. She was found to be stealing. Items from the shop-floor displays were found in her car.’

  Holly could hardly believe her ears.

  ‘Pretty much the same method Emily tried to use on me.’ She frowned. ‘Trying to convince everyone I’d broken the vase.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Martyn shrugged.

  ‘Pity everybody seemed to believe her at the time,’ Holly said acidly. ‘Still, the truth shone through, thankfully.’

  Martyn looked relieved when she moved away. She stood near the window and sipped her tea, watching as the traffic crawled by, still in shock that she’d been such a bad judge of character with Josh.

  The previous day, after clearing it with Josh, she’d transferred the contents of her own drawers over to the larger desk that sat close to the window. Emily’s old workstation. Josh had arranged for a couple of the warehouse men to relocate her computer there too.

  It was a much nicer spot. From here she had an excellent view of the entrance doors, and it was easy to identify the genuinely interested window browsers and know what they had their eye on before they even entered the shop.

  She had to hand it to Emily, she had been even cleverer than Holly had given her credit for. But now even Emily knew that things didn’t always go her way. She hadn’t been able to dispose of Holly quite as efficiently as poor Lynette.

  Holly tapped at her calculator and happily added the day’s sales figures to a piece of paper. She was just leafing through a product brochure to find a particular code when, for no apparent reason, the hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

  She stopped working and looked up, just in time to see a woman in jeans and a hooded sweatshirt turn and walk briskly away from the window. Had she been watching Holly working?

  As soon as the woman was out of sight, the creepy feeling left her. It had been impossible to see any identifying features from the back, but the woman had been around the same height and stature as Geraldine. Or even Emily, without her heels.

  If only she’d glanced up a couple of seconds earlier.

  Holly knew that David finished his shift at one, so at twelve thirty she slipped out of the back entrance to visit his office, as he seemed insistent on calling it.

  ‘Holly,’ he beamed, putting down his flask. ‘How was your morning?’

  ‘Have you seen anyone skulking around here at all?’ She swallowed. ‘I thought I saw Emily just now, at the front window.’

  David frowned. ‘Emily doesn’t work here any more. Josh told me to revoke her staff parking rights.’

  Holly shook her head in frustration. Why did he always have to take everything so damn literally?

  ‘I’m fully aware she doesn’t work here any more, David. That’s my point. She shouldn’t be anywhere around here.’

  He reached for his jacket. ‘I ought to tell Mr Kellington she’s been seen trespassing.’

  ‘No! I don’t want you to do that because I’m not sure it was her; it might have been… Oh, never mind!’

  ‘I’ll be round later to do some jobs for Mrs Barrett,’ she heard him call after her. ‘Will you be in?’

  That was all she needed, David and Cora rattling on all evening. She needed space to get her head straight.

  The awful thoughts had started to come back with a vengeance. She could feel them.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  David

  I lie in bed, turning this way and then that, but every muscle in my body feels stretched to its limit. My neck and shoulders tense and burn, my face and hands are sticky.

  The glaring red digits on my clock inform me it is 1.30 a.m.

  I wonder if Holly is sleeping soundly, just across the way. She was agitated when she came to speak to me at lunchtime. She even snapped at me a couple of times.

  I know she didn’t mean it. It will be the goings-on on the shop floor. I’ve heard all sorts of unsavoury rumours about who is getting up to what.

  It feels like I haven’t been in bed that long, but I came up at the normal time, I’m sure of it. My head feels full of fuzz, so I lie still for a few minutes in the hope it might dissipate.

  It doesn’t.

  I get out of bed and crack the window open slightly, stand there a moment to enjoy the trickle of t
he cool breeze that filters through.

  A cat walks nonchalantly across the grass and the outside sensors activate. It disappears into the hedge, and a few seconds later the lights go off again.

  That’s when I see that the Browns are still up.

  As their house sits on the bend of the crescent, I can partially see the back of the property if I lean out of the window.

  Their lounge is situated at the rear, unlike ours and the lights are still on… at this hour! Although the curtains are pulled to, they’re of poor quality and don’t quite meet in the middle.

  With the aid of the binoculars, I see Mr Brown’s feet and his striped-pyjama-clad legs. A light flickers within as the television bathes the room with its flashing images.

  Upstairs, the curtains are closed and their bedroom is in darkness.

  I’ve seen Mrs Brown drawing the curtains in there at bedtime, but I’ve never seen him. I wonder if they’re sleeping in separate rooms. I ought to try and ascertain this, because if so, when put together with the other information I know about the Browns, it could be a sign that trouble is brewing again.

  This time, I know I can do nothing about it. I won’t get involved but I might call the police.

  A slipper hangs off Mr Brown’s foot, and as I watch, it falls to the floor, but his leg still doesn’t move. He must have fallen asleep in front of the television again.

  It’s been proven that sleep quality is impaired when you’re not properly relaxed in bed, and he does that regularly.

  The image of him talking to Holly in Mrs Barrett’s garden flashes into my mind again. What was he speaking to her about? I tried raising it with Holly, but she just batted the subject away.

  She’s naïve, and as I know only too well, he’s the sort of man to take advantage, if there’s any chance he can.

  I switch on my lamp and flip the Rolodex until I get to the Browns’ details. I turn on my mobile phone and tap in the landline number, switching off my lamp again before it starts to ring.

  When the Neighbourhood Watch scheme was first launched in the area, members of the committee and residents – myself included – wrote down their contact details and a very useful list was circulated.

  Holding the phone to my ear with one hand and waiting for the shrill ring to begin at the other end, I pick up the binoculars again with my other hand and watch as Mr Brown’s leg jerks up in shock at the noise. Then he jumps up off the sofa.

  His shadow darts across the room, magnified against the unlined curtains.

  ‘Hello?’ he breathes at the end of the line. ‘Hello?’

  I wait a second or two and then end the call. I put down my phone, still watching.

  He sits back down on the edge of the sofa this time, the gap in the curtains revealing that his elbows are on his knees and his bowed head is in his hands.

  Mr Brown looks to me like a man with considerable problems. Problems he’s not entirely sure how to solve. I wonder if regrets over what happened lie heavy on his shoulders in the early hours, when the world around him is quiet.

  I suppose if I’m honest, I like to think of myself as a fixer. I wonder what might happen if I went around there right now and surprised him, caught him totally off guard.

  He might make a cup of tea and we could talk, man to man.

  A wry smile plays on my lips. That could never happen now.

  The morning after Della walked by me in the street, she visited Mr Brown again. This time I didn’t bother calling into work, but I didn’t go for my usual bus. I could hardly say I had another ailment that meant I’d be late in.

  I waited at the end of the street again. This time, it was barely half an hour before I saw the front door open. Della rushed out and Mr Brown stood on the step, his hands laced on top of his head.

  ‘Della… I’m sorry!’ he called, but she didn’t look back.

  I waited in the shadows until he’d gone back into the house, and this time, when she drew level with me, I spoke to her.

  ‘Are… are you all right?’ I asked. I reached out and touched her arm, just very lightly, but it startled her all the same.

  ‘Who are you? Get off me.’ She pulled her arm away, her eyes wide.

  Her skin was smooth, like porcelain. Pale curls framed eyes that were the colour of cornflowers. I’d never been as close to someone so beautiful.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean any harm,’ I said quickly. ‘You just looked upset.’

  ‘I’m fine.’ She scowled and stomped past. When she reached the main road, she turned and glanced back at me, but she didn’t smile.

  I didn’t go to work that day. I walked back to the house and for some reason stopped outside Mr Brown’s gate. I walked up his path and found myself knocking at the door.

  What am I doing? I remember thinking, but by that time it was too late. The door flew open and his hopeful, relieved smile turned into a frown.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘I… I just saw… I wondered if everything was OK.’

  I watched as his expression moved from puzzled through realisation to pure annoyance. He leaned out of the door and looked up the crescent, but there was no sign of Della by this time.

  ‘Your friend looked upset,’ I said.

  ‘Keep your nose out of my bloody business,’ he snapped, his face puce.

  The next thing, I was looking at a closed door again.

  The following morning, Della didn’t come. I didn’t go to work. I watched Mr Brown in the garden. But he wasn’t gardening as such; he was on more of a rampage.

  He arbitrarily pulled out flowers and plants and tossed them aside to die in the sun. He lugged the mower out from the shed like a man possessed and tramped up and down one narrow piece of lawn repeatedly until not a blade of grass remained.

  It occurred to me that he must really be very fond of Della. But Mr Brown was a married man and Della obviously wasn’t that keen on him any more.

  But she might want another man to take care of her. Someone who was available, I thought.

  I suppose that was the point when my thinking changed. When I became very interested in Della. Some might say obsessed.

  I’ve never had an apology from Mr Brown even after all this time, and it’s hard to forgive that, but I feel so much better about my life since Holly appeared on the scene.

  I’d like a chat with him; a conversation might clear the air, though only if he was prepared to listen, and I’m not all sure he would.

  I look down at my phone and am considering whether to call his house again when his arm reaches over for the remote and the flickering light of the television ceases. A minute or two later, the lights in the living room go off.

  I stand there a little longer, watching the upstairs window, but no faint hallway light enters the space as he opens the door. There is no sign that he has entered the main bedroom.

  I fear my suspicions about the Browns sleeping in separate bedrooms may be proven right. My fears seem more real when I think about him whispering to Holly.

  The seed of an idea begins to form in my mind, but it’s late and I can think about that more tomorrow, I decide.

  Back in bed, the restlessness returns to my body. I throw the quilt off and then pull it back on when my skin cools. I shove the pillows away and lie staring up at the ceiling, although I can see barely anything in the dark.

  Holly is mere yards away from me in the next house. I wonder if she is feeling restless too.

  Some people believe that if you focus on another person and send direct thoughts their way, they are received telepathically on some level.

  I sit up in bed and stare at the faint shadow of the wall in front of me.

  I’ve seen inside Mrs Barrett’s back bedroom. I know that the bed is pushed up against the outside wall. Holly’s headboard is directly in front of my outstretched legs.

  I imagine for a moment beams of light leaving my eyes and travelling effortlessly through the brickwork into Holly’s bedroom. The beams of light enter
the top of her head and fill her with a reassuring warmth that I am here, looking out for her.

  Even if she doesn’t know the feeling comes from me, it doesn’t matter. Maybe on one level she will feel it, know that I am thinking of her right now.

  I blow out air, only realising now that I’ve been holding my breath, and then slip out of bed and walk to the wall opposite.

  There is a chest of drawers there. I open the bottom drawer and place my hands flat on the clothes that Holly cast out to the bin on her first day at Mrs Barrett’s. I pick up a T-shirt and hold it to my face, inhale the faint floral scent still lingering around the neckline and then sniff the acrid tang of sweat under the arms.

  I close the drawer and squeeze in between the side of it and the edge of the wardrobe. I press my face and chest against the wall, spreading my arms wide. I splay my sticky fingers and push my palms against the cool plaster.

  ‘Holly,’ I whisper, closing my eyes and visualising her soft skin, her light breaths against my face.

  I imagine, for a moment, that the wall is dissolving away so I find myself there in the room with her.

  My breath catches in my throat and I let my hands fall, stepping away from the wall.

  We are meant to be together. I can feel it.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Holly

  When Holly first heard the noise, she was still dreaming. In her dream, she was standing in the middle of woodland with nothing on but her nightdress.

  There was a shuffling, scraping sound behind her… and then it flipped so it was somewhere in front of her.

  Her dream self whirled around, bare-footed and frantic, trying to see into the dark spaces between the ghostly pale tree trunks.

  When she snapped awake, the woodland had disappeared, replaced again by the four bedroom walls.

  The dream had dissolved but she could still hear the noise.

  Holly held her breath and listened for a few more moments. The glowing digits on the bedside table read 2.01.

  She quickly identified that the noise was coming from down in the garden. Just under her window. She sat up and swung her feet down to the floor. Her head thumped dully from the drink she’d had before bed.