A Stranger's House

by Clare Chase

  At the first stage I came to, a woman with long black hair, save for one pronounced streak of grey, was dancing alone. She nodded to the music, dipping her knees in time to the beat. As I watched, one of the bangles she was wearing slipped from her wrist onto the ground, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  I needed to eat, and staying out here to get something seemed preferable to going back inside and brooding over everything that had happened that day. I went to join the queue for crêpes, peering round at River House as I stepped over a guy rope holding up one of the tents. I was keeping it in sight, complying with the letter of Damien Newbold’s instructions. The bottom half of the house was masked by a caravan, a tent and a bouncy castle, deserted now in the gathering dusk. Even so, there were still a number of people around, and it didn’t seem likely that anyone would do anything worse than having a pee in the front garden. The queues for the Portaloos were still long. All that beer had to go somewhere.

  At last I reached the front of the crêpes queue and watched as the lady running the stall poured the batter over a large, round hotplate, swishing the mixture neatly into shape with her spatula. Hot fat hissed and steamed into the cooling air. She filled my crêpe with cheese and mushrooms and, as soon as I’d handed over my money, I turned to face towards the house again. I could move just a little closer, then eat and watch the world go by at the same time.

  I sat down on the grass, hard up against a tent in my own little space, away from a group who were lying on their backs, looking up at the sky, passing a cigarette between them. The smell of canvas, crêpe and tobacco filled my nostrils.

  Suddenly my attention was caught by a couple holding hands. The female half was the girl with curly blonde hair from next door. She leant her head against her boyfriend’s shoulder like someone who’d had too much of a good thing. I glanced around, but I couldn’t see the sad housemate with the long, dark hair. My mind flicked to Mr Herringbone Suit. Perhaps she was holed up with him, somewhere in that big house of theirs. I pictured her – rather fascinated by his seriousness and maturity – and him … Well, I knew what he would be fascinated by.

  The noise of someone throwing up jolted me out of my reverie; the sound was uncomfortably close to where I was sitting. I glanced round and shifted further way. Thank God I’d already finished my crêpe.

  In spite of everything going on around me, the text message kept creeping back into my mind. I should never have looked. It was as though I’d walked into Damien Newbold’s life – stepped into his shoes almost – and I wasn’t enjoying it. Should I dial the message sender when I got back? Not using my mobile, certainly; that wasn’t a direct link I wanted to set up. I could use the house phone. But then whoever had sent the package would assume that Damien was there, and had got the message. If they answered, I could tell them what was going on, and where to stuff it, but if they just let it ring they’d be thinking they’d won, and he’d taken their bait.

  And then maybe they’d make their next move …

  Always assuming the message had been meant for him. At the back of my mind something nagged. Could someone have known I was coming? Someone who sent the package knowing that Damien Newbold was never going to be the one receiving the parcel, getting woken by the alarm?

  It was time to go back to the house really, but I put it off, and went to get myself a hot chocolate from one of the vans. The woman at the hatch yawned as she took my money, rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand before chucking the coins into a tin. The wind was high now, making me shiver, and I cupped my hands around the drink, grateful for its warmth.

  I was being paranoid. It was unlikely that Damien had bothered to tell any of his contacts I was at River House, and Steph was the only person I’d told. Other than that it was just Nate who knew.

  But still I wondered. Made you look. It was the wording that did it. Damien Newbold would have been bound to look. There would have been no triumph for the sender in achieving that end. What else was he going to do? If he’d opened the thing at all he’d quickly have seen all there was to see.

  But in my case it was different. The package hadn’t even been addressed to me and, as a result, the alarm had worked a treat. And then I’d been unable to resist opening it up at last; reading the message, allowing myself to get intimidated. Now that was a reason for the sender to crow.

  Made you look.

  And suddenly I thought of Luke. It was his fault I was stuck here, the stupid, shallow, selfish little shit. So on top of everything else, for whatever reason, I was now starting to feel scared. My eyes stung, and I blinked away the beginnings of tears as I finished my drink. My watch said quarter to ten. It really was time to be getting back.

  Moments later I was standing at the top of the steps to the door of River House, fumbling with the lock. Inside, my hand hovered over the keypad for the alarm, my brain trying to make sense of something that jarred.

  It took me a second to get it. The alarm wasn’t sounding its warning beep, the one that tells you you need to key in the number to deactivate the system.

  I paused there in the doorway, my brain trying to make sense of the situation. I couldn’t have set it when I went out. Except I was sure that I had.

  I looked around the hallway in the gloom. Everything was still. Perhaps the alarm had malfunctioned. Well, that would be just typical. I smiled inwardly. That must be it, because I was damn sure I had set it.

  I closed the door behind me and switched on the hall light, taking off my boots and tucking them under the side table.

  It was as I put my jacket back on the coat stand that I heard the noise. The tiniest sound: the faint creak of a floorboard. I stood motionless. Someone was in the house.

  I was still within a few feet of the front door. I could make a dash for it. Get outside and use my mobile to call the police. I was turning on the ball of one foot, trying not to make a sound, when the study door started to open, slowly, silent on its hinges.

  A woman stood looking at me: long, wild dark hair, her eyes flashing with amusement and malice. She held a cigarette in one hand, and a torn scrap of paper in the other. ‘So I know who you are now,’ she said, waving her cigarette in the direction of my file of information from Nate Bastable, which sat on the hall table.

  And I knew who she was too. Woman number four. The woman not to be messed with. This was the woman in the portrait at the head of Damien Newbold’s bed.

  Chapter Seven

  ‘I’m so glad we’re talking in person this time,’ the woman said, ‘rather than over the phone. Much more convivial.’

  She was wearing an arty, black cotton dress with a plunging neckline, and a large, green, perspex ring on the middle finger of her right hand.

  ‘I had no idea Damien Newbold had left his mobile here until you called last night,’ I said, catching up with the implication of her words. I hadn’t recognised her voice, although I might have guessed if my adrenaline levels hadn’t been distracting me.

  ‘Damien Newbold, eh? Very formal. You’ve never met him then?’ She didn’t wait for an answer, but went on: ‘I already knew he’d gone away. Told me he would, but neglected to mention where to, or that he was cutting off communications.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘I didn’t know he’d installed you, though. When I watched you coming out of the house earlier I was quite convinced he was here after all, and he’d just told me he was going to put me off the scent. Thought I’d come on in and give the faithless bastard what for.’

  ‘Well, now you know it’s not what you think.’ She didn’t seem in any hurry to go and I badly wanted her out. ‘And if you’ve read my house-sitting file, you’ll be aware that I’m not allowed to let any visitors in without the owner’s prior consent.’

  ‘All right, all right,’ she said, waving the cigarette again. It now had a centimetre of ash on the end. ‘I don’t need to be here any more anyway, so there’s no need to get your knickers in a twist.’ She put the scrap of paper she’d been holding into her pocket. ‘I’ve
got what I came for, and I can let myself out.’

  ‘I’m Ruby, by the way,’ I said.

  ‘Are you now?’ the woman replied. ‘How nice for you.’

  As she walked through the hall I said on impulse, ‘You didn’t send Damien Newbold a parcel, did you? It arrived yesterday.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘I’d hardly be likely to, would I, given that I knew he was going to be away?’

  And then she walked out through the front door, without me even discovering her name. Though Damien Newbold would know who she was, of course, once I’d been through the embarrassing process of explaining what had happened to Nate Bastable.

  Mechanically, I went to find a dustpan and brush from the under-stairs cupboard and swept up the spilt ash. Then logic reasserted itself and I went to bolt the front door so that any other girlfriends with keys wouldn’t have the range of the house. My legs suddenly felt like jelly, and I sat myself down at Damien Newbold’s study desk.

  What kind of a man leaves a house-sitter in charge without bothering to warn her that other people might come barging in? A man just like Damien, of course: selfish, thoughtless – used to getting his own wishes granted without considering anyone else’s needs.

  And if he was so concerned about security, why give girlfriends he was going to upset his house keys and even the code to his burglar alarm, for heaven’s sake? Presumably he’d done it in the first flush of the relationship, when things were still rosy.

  If he’d only warned me I could have stayed in. Or surely the alarm code could have been changed. So? Well, presumably he hadn’t cared if she did turn up. All very well for him; for me personally, I’d have preferred not to have come face to face with her like that. I glanced at my watch. Eleven thirty. At least Damien Newbold’s attitude helped me make up my mind about whether to leave calling Nate until the morning. He clearly hadn’t cared about the possibility of his girlfriend popping in, so I assumed it wasn’t an emergency to let him know his defences had been breached.

  In front of me on the desk the A4, leather-bound address book I’d noticed earlier was still present, but now it was open, its pages held wide by a stapler, used as a makeshift paperweight. Down the inside of its spine lay one of those tassels publishers sometimes attach to books as a built-in bookmark. The page marked was for contacts beginning with E, and there was only one official entry there: an Elizabeth Edmunds, with an address in Newmarket written neatly in blue ink. Off this entry, though, a line had been drawn leading to another address, scribbled in black biro: The Cottage, Burnham End, Little Boxham. I knew Little Boxham was near Newmarket. The same black biro had underlined Elizabeth Edmunds’s phone number a couple of times, as though the pen holder had been doodling, perhaps whilst talking to the said Elizabeth on the phone. Next to the address for the cottage was scribbled: available Weds 3rd June.

  Glancing across the desk I noticed Damien Newbold’s blotter pad. One corner of the paper had been ripped off, revealing the black leather underneath. The woman had found everything she’d needed here, even stationery to hand. She’d got what she’d come looking for all right; no doubt drawing just the same conclusions as I was now. Elizabeth Edmunds was clearly a contact of Damien’s with a cottage to let, and that was where Damien Newbold was now. Simple as.

  I was awake by seven the following morning but put off calling Nate until half-past. He answered on the second ring; the sound of Dave Brubeck floated down the line.

  ‘Morning, Ruby,’ he said. ‘Something tells me you’re not calling about a blocked drain at this hour.’

  I wondered how long he’d been up. ‘Your instincts haven’t let you down,’ I said, and filled him in. There was no way of skirting over the details, and his reaction was much as I’d feared.

  ‘This isn’t making me feel any better about you being there,’ he said at last. ‘I’m going to take it up with Newbold right now, but then you and I have to talk.’

  I sat there stewing, trying to eat some Weetabix, but it seemed to stick in my throat. I looked at my options. Inevitably, my mind strayed to my grandparents first. It was over ten years since I’d lost them, but the grief felt as raw as ever. I took a deep breath and tried to focus on the here and now. Other than Steph, it was really only my mother who could put me up, and that would never work. Even if she had a room spare, I couldn’t face sharing her place with the bunch of eccentric house guests she’d collected. As for my father, well, if I’d ever known who he was, he might have been a possibility.

  One way or another, I needed to make independent plans. I hadn’t currently got enough money to rent somewhere if Nate cancelled the job. Certainly not anywhere near Cambridge, that was for sure. My mind flicked to ways of boosting my financial situation. The one thing of value I had to sell was my Mini, but the moment the possibility of parting with it crossed my mind I felt tears well up. Crazy. As though I was considering selling a beloved pet, rather than a car. That’s the trouble with Minis, of course – they are lovable.

  My nerves were jangling, and I really wanted to offload. By nine forty-five I decided I could risk calling Steph without waking her.

  ‘So sorry,’ I said, after I’d given her the gist. ‘I really need to talk to someone.’

  ‘Well, of course you do,’ she said, her voice almost brimming over with enthusiasm, ‘and that person’s definitely me.’ Gossip gathering was, admittedly, one of her favourite roles. ‘Who’d have thought a simple move to the city would put you at the centre of such intrigue,’ she added, a touch of envy in her tone. I think that, for a moment, she’d forgotten the reason behind my change of location.

  It seemed that talking over the phone wouldn’t do from her point of view. ‘Robin’s gone off to play five-a-side with the gang from Elm Heath, so I’m stuck here on my lonesome anyway. I can pop over to you and still be back home in time for a late lunch. Then we can chew everything over properly.’

  Whilst I was waiting for her to turn up, Nate rang back.

  ‘What did Newbold say?’ I asked.

  ‘I might as well tell you about it when we meet.’

  ‘We’re going to meet?’ That smacked of a serious set to, where he could tell me the bad news.

  ‘Newbold wants the locks changed today, so I’ll come over with the locksmith around four and catch you then. Okay?’

  I was glad Steph would be gone again by that time. If Nate was going to boot me out I needed to be able to deal with it on my own. Tea and sympathy can occasionally make things worse, I find.

  She arrived all in a bustle, as though she might have missed some new development. ‘I’ve brought chocolate digestives,’ she said as she pulled off her shoes. She always likes to intensify the pleasure of a good gossip by accompanying it with food, and who am I to argue?

  ‘So first those weird nude paintings,’ she said, marching into the kitchen and hunting for a plate, ‘and then the photo in the DVD cupboard and the funny phone call.’ She tipped the digestives out and put the lot on the table. ‘And then the mobile that was set to wake you up at four a.m., not to mention the accompanying text message, and now this rough woman turning up unannounced.’ She sat down and helped herself to a biscuit. ‘You could have called me sooner to tell me about the latest stuff, you know.’

  ‘I was rather busy dealing with it,’ I said. ‘Tea?’

  ‘Please.’ She waved the biscuit at me. ‘You had all day yesterday to give me the goods on the package and the phone call.’

  ‘Well, if things are going to happen this often it’s probably best if I save it all up for an omnibus edition every couple of days.’

  It was clear she didn’t agree, but she let it rest. ‘So, now you’ve had a chance to think it all through, what do you reckon?’ she asked.

  I poured boiling water onto the teabags and shrugged. ‘That there’s something going on I don’t get.’

  ‘No shit Sherlock!’

  I pulled a face. ‘The nudes and the photo are beyond me, apart from the fact that I’d say Damien N
ewbold’s a misogynistic git, but I don’t suppose I’d get a prize for coming to that conclusion.’ I went to get the milk from the fridge.

  ‘And did you believe the rough woman when she said she didn’t send Damien Newbold the mysterious mobile?’

  I paused, the milk suspended above my mug. ‘Probably. She said she knew he’d be away, so why would she bother? In the ordinary way it would just have gone back to the post office and bonged to itself each night.’

  Steph leant back as I put her mug down in front of her. ‘Thanks. But you said she’d begun to suspect he hadn’t gone away at all, but was holed up here with you.’

  ‘Yes.’ I sat down. ‘But by the time my presence aroused her suspicions the parcel had already been sent, so that doesn’t really alter things.’

  She sighed. ‘You’re right.’

  ‘I bet she’s responsible for the broken glass I told you about in the wheelie bin though. She looks just the sort to throw a whisky tumbler in anger. And then perhaps Damien announced he was going away in retaliation. Not that I think he was frightened into hiding – he’s clearly not the type. My guess is it amused him to go and leave his girlfriend dangling. And for all I know the woman who owns the cottage he’s renting is another lover. I’m sure that would add to the entertainment.’

  ‘No doubt. And then last night?’

  ‘Last night the regular lover turns up wanting to find him, and stumbles across his address book, sitting conveniently in what was probably the first place she looked. She wouldn’t have had to do much searching.’

  Steph glanced up at me over the top of her mug. ‘You think he wanted her to find it?’