by cass green
When she has finished she allows herself to finally take stock of the room.
There is a pine table, on which sits a small pile of junk mail and newspapers, and a decent cooker that must have been about forty years younger than the rest of the kitchen.
Neve starts to shiver and, opening up her rucksack, begins pulling out clothes. It’s so cold in here that the only possible course of action is to layer as many items on top of each other as she can. The over-imaginative voice at the back of her brain says this will also make it harder to stab her, when the knife-wielding maniac currently lurking upstairs decides to make his move. Then she remembers there is no upstairs and can’t decide if this is reassuring or even scarier.
Fewer nooks and crannies for an axe-wielding rapist to hide in.
But an even smaller space in which to be trapped with him.
‘Stop it,’ she says out loud, even though the sound of her voice ringing out in the silent house frightens her even more.
Neve roughly swipes her eyes and her fear begins to shift into something else.
She is sick of herself, sick of still being scared of the dark at thirty years old. What would Lou do if she was here right now? Neve pictures warmth and light and the reassuring sound of a kettle boiling for a hot, comforting drink. Lou wouldn’t be afraid.
That’s when she notices a plastic A4 file has slipped onto the floor under the table. Reaching for it she sees the words ‘PETTY WHIN COTTAGE. ESSENTIAL INFORMATION’ printed on the first page.
How strange to imagine Isabelle Shawcross writing this. Had she written it in anticipation of her own death? If so, Neve thinks, why leave the place in such a horrible state?
A hard shiver, of cold this time, ripples down her arms and back. Neve flicks through the pages, quickly looking for information about heating.
It is all there, under ‘ESSENTIALS’.
The heating system is a bit ancient, she reads, but it works perfectly well once you get the hang of it. Look in the cupboard in the hallway and you will see a boiler. There is a torch on the shelf to your left. You need to light the pilot light first by holding down the red button for at least 25 seconds. You might have to do this a couple of times!
Reading these words from beyond the grave, written in such a clear and friendly voice, feels almost indecent now and Neve once again registers the odd contrast between this helpfulness and the disgusting state of the place.
With a sense of purpose, she goes to the stair cupboard. It’s much larger than she first realized and recessed back into the wall. There seems to be a pile of blankets in there, presumably spare bedding. There is no cupboard light, but there is a small Maglite torch, which, thankfully, works. She painstakingly follows the instructions to light the boiler, which looks like a relic from a different era.
It takes her three attempts before a tiny blue light starts to lick at the small glass window on the front.
Triumphantly, Neve places the torch back on the shelf and closes the door to the cupboard. Rattling, clanking radiators begin to come to life around the property and a smell of hot dust begins to fill the air.
This small achievement attained, she takes a deep breath and begins to investigate the rooms.
The floor is filthy and gritty but Neve decides she will find a Hoover and do a thorough cleaning job first thing in the morning. She’ll just have to keep her shoes on tonight. There is no prospect that she would be removing any clothes anyway.
A bedroom, a bathroom and small study lead off the narrow hallway. The bedroom appears quite neat and tidy, to her relief, but when she opens the bathroom door, she grimaces at the sight of the toilet. ‘Oh yuck,’ she says out loud, reaching over and flushing away the dark mass that had been lurking there. There’s a worrying clunking sound as she flushes. She washes her hands.
Neve now looks properly around the bathroom. It’s quite big, with an avocado-coloured bath and toilet. But there’s a surprisingly modern addition in the form of a cubicle with a decent-looking shower. Neve can’t imagine the cottage ever being warm enough for this, but takes it to be an encouraging sign for the morning.
Inside the bedroom she realizes two things simultaneously: it’s a perfectly nice room, and yet there is no way she is going to be able to sleep in here tonight.
The thought of climbing into that bed, which might still retain the shape of Isabelle’s body – might hold the smell of her – is too downright creepy. Again, she wishes fervently that she was a practical sort of woman who didn’t knock on wood for luck, or sometimes avoid cracks in the pavement.
No, the only thing for it, she thinks, is to grab some blankets and try to sleep somewhere else.
The small study is filled with a desk, some bookcases and a large metal filing cabinet. She had at least hoped for a futon.
Feeling a little calmer now, Neve goes back to the kitchen and resolves to investigate whether there is anything to eat or drink.
The fridge, which she notices is also relatively new, is empty and pristine, smelling of lemony detergent. This seems strange, considering the mess elsewhere. But at least there are no mouldering yoghurts or liquefied vegetables of the sort frequently found in her student fridge.
What was going through Isabelle Shawcross’s mind, the last time she looked around this kitchen? Neve wonders. Did she know she was never coming back?
A thought strikes her then and she goes to the table, reaching for the newspaper on top of the pile. It’s a local paper, The Truro Advertiser, and the date reads 13th December 2016.
That was the week before she killed herself.
A woozy feeling passes over her.
Food. She needs something to eat, having only had a sandwich and a chocolate bar since she left London. Her hangover is gone but a bone-deep weariness drags at her limbs as she begins to investigate the contents of cupboards.
There isn’t much here; just a small tin of tomatoes, and handful of dried pasta, the bag folded over and resealed. Some peanut butter. On the counter top there is a container of decent coffee to Neve’s surprise, and while she doesn’t normally drink it black, she makes herself a cup and loads it with sugar from a small, chipped bowl.
A short while later she sits at the table and starts on her small meal of pasta with tinned tomatoes. It’s bland and unpleasant but she is hungry so she eats every mouthful and then has a few spoonfuls of peanut butter straight out of the jar.
Once she has finished eating she goes to plug in her phone, leaving it on the counter and knowing it will take some time to show signs of life again. Her battered old iPad, with its cracked screen, is also dead but she only has one charger. The phone is the priority right now.
Investigating the living room, she discovers that there is no television and her stomach gives a little flop of disquiet. Surely everyone has a telly? Sighing, she studies the bookshelves and finds a copy of Jane Eyre which she has read several times before.
There are a few photos on the mantelpiece and Neve studies them now.
One shows a small blonde girl, smiling toothily with her arm slung around the neck of a large, golden Labrador, who seems to be grinning up at something to the left. It’s hard to tell whether this is Isabelle. Neve wishes she had concentrated more on that oh-so-brief exchange on the bridge. It doesn’t seem right that she is in the other woman’s house when she can barely even remember what she looked like.
Another picture is in black and white. A couple in full evening dress smile into the camera. The woman is tall and blonde and the man dark; slightly shorter than her. The woman has a merry look about her, but he appears more severe.
Neve feels sure these are Isabelle’s parents. She wonders when they died. And then she looks more closely at the picture and her heart seems to tumble over in her chest.
The woman is wearing a dress that looks very like the one Isabelle wore when she jumped to her death. Could it be the same dress? It’s a little more fitting on this woman, who has a more voluptuous figure, but the colour is the sam
e, perhaps a little brighter. Age will have faded it somewhat, she is certain. But there’s something about the way it flows around the woman’s hips and thighs that feels so familiar. Neve takes a step back and blows air out through her cheeks.
She imagines this woman – Isabelle’s mum – getting dressed all those years ago; dabbing perfume on her wrists, maybe asking her husband to help put on the pearl necklace that lies on her collarbone. Perhaps excited about the glamorous evening ahead of her.
And then she pictures Isabelle Shawcross painstakingly sewing lead lining into the hem. Then, on that freezing night, gazing down at the viciously cold water rolling beneath the bridge before taking her own life. Maybe wearing the dress gave her comfort in some way. As though her mother were there with her, embracing her as she fell, as she would have once rocked her small body in her arms.
Neve closes her eyes for a moment and finds she has made a small sound of distress. This feels like the saddest thing in the world. She suddenly thinks of her own mum’s clothing; shapeless jumpers and Marks and Spencer slacks that smelled of Comfort fabric conditioner and whatever it was that made her mother indescribably herself. She sways with the pain for a few moments until she has ridden it out. Here, at last, is something she has in common with her benefactor.
Then she forces herself to look at the next picture. It is of a woman in her sixties, with short grey hair and glasses. She is sitting on a bench with her hands in her lap and a wall covered in roses behind her. She has a basket of flowers and some gardening gloves next to her on the bench.
Neve turns her full attention to the final photograph now.
It shows a tiny girl with cherubic blonde curls, who is sitting on a flagstone floor, surrounded by Lego. She has a neat little pinafore on, with a daisy on the chest and a look of concentration on her face as she attempts to click two pieces together.
Neve smiles at the picture and suddenly remembers sitting like this as a toddler herself. They had similar tiles when she and Lou were little, in their first house. Her earliest memory is of running her tricycle into the kitchen table and cutting her head. She remembers sitting on those tiles and howling with outrage and pain at the blood.
Lou, no doubt, was off doing something benign and helpful, she thinks.
Moving away from the mantelpiece, she finds a radio, a modern DAB one that is already tuned to Radio 6. It has been left on; the button turned almost but not quite to the off position.
Neve turns it on and tries to settle in the chair as an old Pulp song begins to play.
Despite the coffee and the adrenaline still fizzing around her body, she begins to feel sleepy, and, gathering the blankets she’d found earlier around her, attempts to snuggle down and read on the sofa. There are two lamps that throw soft light across the room and it is almost cosy.
It’s really quite comfortable and she is almost getting warm. She opens the copy of Jane Eyre and begins to read.
She is aware of a heaviness dragging at her eyes after a couple of chapters and resolves to close them for just a minute or two.
After all, everything is far too weird for her to sleep.
She comes to with a violent start, certain something is on her face. With a squeal she dashes it away, realizing it is her own hair.
But then her brain registers something else that’s wrong.
She is in total, thick darkness.
Shock pings her upright on the sofa.
With a drench of pure, cold terror, Neve realizes there is someone else in the room.
15
There is another noise then, a quick, soft thump. Neve’s on her feet and reaching for the nearest object, which happens to be the empty coffee mug. An involuntary sob rips from her throat.
‘Who’s there?’ she forces out. ‘What do you want?’
Something warm and bony brushes past her leg. Shrieking, she stumbles towards the door, painfully slamming her knee against the coffee table on the way. Her body braces with the expectation of being yanked backwards by the arm, or hair, as she crashes into the hallway.
She stops, still braced, but her head is full of the whoosh of her own blood, furiously pumping around her body.
Then she hears it. A deep throbbing. It’s something motorized and living all at the same time.
It takes a moment for understanding to seep in and then she starts to laugh.
‘What the hell?’ she says. ‘How did you get in, you stupid bloody cat?’
Reaching down, she lifts up the heavy, warm animal and holds it to her chest.
‘Were you here all along? Eh?’ she says and rubs her face on its soft head. The relief is only temporary though because the darkness crowds in all around her. The sound of her breathing and the cat’s purring is loud in the hallway.
Neve holds the cat like a living shield to her chest, and forces herself to walk to the hall cupboard. Inside it, her fingers close gratefully around the rubbery handle of the torch and she switches it on, eyes greedy for light.
The cat struggles and jumps from her arms, landing squarely and silently, before scurrying back towards the sitting room.
She tries to breathe slowly and think encouraging thoughts as she heads into the kitchen to find the folder.
There is a perfectly reasonable explanation for the lights going off.
This is the countryside. Things are different here. More … unreliable.
If only she had done the sensible thing and read the folder from cover to cover on arrival, instead of glazing over at all the practical information, this wouldn’t have happened.
No one has cut the lights.
No one is waiting in the house to slash her with a knife, rape, or strangle her.
All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well, she repeats an old saying of her father’s inside her head as she walks on trembling legs down the terrifying hallway and into the kitchen.
Flicking through the folder she quickly finds what she needs to know.
The electricity is on a Pay as you Go scheme. There’s a key on the shelf under the stairs and you can get it charged at most Post Offices. There is currently enough on there to last a week or so.
Neve thinks about the radio, which Isabelle must have left on. That was probably draining the meter.
Wearily, she looks under the kitchen sink and is relieved to find a number of small tea lights and a box of Cook’s matches. Glancing at her phone on the side she presses the home button and sees it managed to reach thirty-seven per cent battery life before the electricity died.
She carries her small mercies – candles, matches, phone – back into the sitting room, then lights the five tea lights and places them on the mantelpiece.
The room is all shadows and flickering flame but Neve is surprised to realize she is no longer spooked. The grim arrival, then being plunged into darkness and the surprise feline visitor, have exhausted her adrenaline stocks for the night. She’s too tired to be afraid now. She pulls the blanket around herself.
The cat comes purring into the room again and jumps up onto her lap, where it proceeds to knead her leg with curved needle claws. Neve rubs its head, grateful for the companionship. She’s always been a dog person but this animal is a comfort.
Her phone must have found a signal in this spot because she now sees there are several missed calls from Lou, plus a series of texts saying things like Where R U? and Pls call me. Resolving to ring first thing in the morning, she pulls the blanket, which smells faintly of washing powder, around her body and waits for daylight to come.
She doesn’t know how long she has slept for, but when she wakes, pearly grey light is seeping through the curtains. Her neck is stiff and her mouth feels foul. Her knee throbs and at first she can’t think why, then she remembers the drama in the middle of the night. Looking around she sees the cat has gone. It almost feels like a dream now, like there never was a real, breathing cat purring like a furry engine in her arms at all.
Blinking gritty eyes, s
he looks around the room, seeing it in daylight for the first time.
The surfaces have a few old-fashioned trinkets on them; brasses and a couple of small, ceramic dogs. It feels like a room belonging to a very old person.
Depressing.
But then she notices something odd.
Frowning, she gets creakily to her feet and walks over to the window that must face out onto the front of the cottage. It is small and bubbly with age and there are sprigged white curtains at the sides.
But this isn’t like any cottage window she’s seen before.
The glass is covered in metal bars.
The incongruity of bars on a window in the middle of nowhere feels like a problem too strange for her tired brain to compute. She stands there for a moment, trying to shake off the last clinging moments of uneasy sleep.
It is bitterly cold again and she wonders if the heating has gone off. But when she gets to the cupboard in the hallway and checks, the pilot light is still flickering away like a blue tongue.
She opens the door to the bedroom and the first thing she notices now is that this room also has bars on the windows. Hurrying to the study, she finds the same thing.
Neve stands in the doorway, chewing her lips uneasily.
Surely this isn’t normal for the countryside?
She and Daniel once lived opposite drug dealers, whose front door had an extra layer of bars. But even there, in a dodgy bit of central London, they hadn’t felt the need to bar their own windows.
This is the middle of nowhere. What possible reason could there be for such high security?
Something unpleasant occurs to her as she remembers all the locks on the front door.
Isabelle must have been frightened to go to these lengths. Of what though? Or who?
