Shadows to Ashes

by Tori de Clare

Barely any daylight penetrated the curtains of Naomi’s room at Solomon’s house, so it was always impossible to guess the time. The blackout curtains were fittingly named. She couldn’t see her hand in front of her face at night, and by morning, light was struggling to breathe past the tiny gaps on the perimeters of the curtains. The lack of natural light drugged her sleep and she found it hard to come round Monday morning following an exhausting weekend. But she realised her phone was vibrating against the bedside cabinet, and had been for some time. It dragged her from an odd dream which involved Siobhan conducting an orchestra with her flute.

  Phone, phone. She stretched out her hand to snatch it and forced her eyes to open. It’d probably be Annabel. There’d been several missed calls the day before, but Annabel hadn’t left a message and Naomi had been unable to speak to her. In a way, it had been a relief to dodge the conversation. Words were becoming harder to find.

  As she fought to focus, one word bolted into her head suddenly. Baby. Crap! What if Annabel was in labour? The phone was vibrating in her hand. With effort, she screwed her eyes up and the caller became clearer. Not Annabel. It was the mystery person who texted her, but had never called. Of course, it was Monday! She pressed the receive button in a rush of energy and held the phone to her mouth.

  ‘Hello?’ Her voice was horribly gritty. She resisted the impulse to clear her throat.

  Whoever was on the other end, hung up. The other person has cleared.

  ‘Damn. What time is it?’ It was almost ten-fifteen. She’d slept for eleven hours and could have gone on. What had worn her out was her hotel room in London and a long night of glaring at the ceiling without sleep approaching at all.

  Then, a text. I’m watching the house. He left fifteen minutes ago. I followed him and now he’s at the club. Get into the garage right away and I’ll warn you when he leaves for home.

  Him? Solomon. She tried to shake the mist from her mind while she scrambled out of bed. She stepped into jeans and socks and threw a jumper over her head. It wasn’t until she was hurrying down the stairs with her keys that she paused to think. Why should she trust whoever was on the end of her phone? One wrong move and the deal would be off. She was on a knife edge with Vincent. Any moves had to be smart. If he caught her in prohibited areas, the consequences were unthinkable.

  Conclusion? Best not to think. Without losing another second to indecision, she rode with her curiosity and adrenaline, which carried her through the front door. She closed it carefully behind her. Then, keeping close to the walls of the house, she made her way to the garage door. She gave the street a once-over. It was quiet, in a drowsy Monday-morning sort of way.

  She pressed the remote and the garage door started to lift. She glanced over both shoulders again to find no change. When the door was open to waist height, she ducked beneath and proceeded to lower it until a couple of inches of light slashed the floor at the entrance.

  She was anxious now about what she was doing, what she’d find. Wait, was there a camera waiting for her at the top of those stone steps? That thought in mind, she hurried to the keypad and tapped in the four digits of her birthday. Shining a light on the wall now, she saw a narrow section of it drag back a few centimetres, then slide to one side to create the opening. Clever! There were the steps in front of her, empty and tantalizing, sloping off to the right. On the other hand, a huge portion of her would prefer to be enveloped by the duvet in her bed behind the locked door, safe and warm.

  Was Dan safe and warm? She doubted it. And while he wasn’t, she couldn’t rest. She was here to take risks. To gamble and to win.

  Still, unable to find the courage to step out of the garage and peer up the staircase now in view, she drew her phone and texted the mystery person. I’m at the foot of the stairs. Definitely no cameras up there?

  Correct. Don’t waste time.

  Exercising all her faith in a person she couldn’t trust – but what was new? – she willed herself to step beyond the confines of the garage and glance up the stone stairs. She calculated that there were 12-15 steps. Move it, Naomi. Her legs had turned to foam and didn’t want to climb. She was short of breath without exerting herself.

  Don’t think. Go.

  To distract herself, she climbed and counted. One, two, three, all the way to thirteen. Unlucky for some. But not for her. Vincent was the unlucky one that she’d found this place. This is what she told herself as she arrived at the top and stared at a black door with a round handle, trying to generate some courage.

  Her breath was spurting out in ragged bursts. She gripped the door handle, turned it and pushed. The door gave way without resistance. A small noise slipped past her lips but she continued to open, which forced her to step forward. She found a scentless room cloaked in darkness. There was a light switch beside the door. She flicked it down with clumsy fingers. The room was a narrow oblong shape.

  Not what she was expecting, though she couldn’t have told anyone what her expectations were. But definitely not this. No dead bodies or caged snakes or piles of rifles, but a neat, carpeted room with a table, on top of which was a sewing machine and an open box of pins and cotton and a folded pile of material. A chair sat under the table in front of the sewing machine, and a plastic manikin, headless and armless, stood at the foot of the table wearing a short-sleeved black dress. A rail of clothing lined up beside it.

  Bizarre, but then it fitted Vincent’s description of his business. This was the room of a dressmaker or someone who did alterations. Who used it? Why the secrecy? On closer inspection, she found a row of four wall-to-wall cupboards on one short end of the room.

  Inside the cupboards, she found baskets of cotton reels, material, envelopes, brown tape, boxes, labels etc. So, he sent the clothing by post? Made sense. When did he find time for this? Maybe he was in this room at times when she thought he was out.

  In a large brown envelope beneath a pile of flat boxes, she found photographs. She pulled them out. Just a handful. She was looking at a woman with fair hair, standing at a wooden easel, paintbrush in hand, her face the picture of concentration. Behind her was a pram. The baby was laid flat, one tiny hand held up as if he had a question. Vincent? A young girl on tiptoes was straining to look inside the pram. Her hands tightly gripped the pram side and a long, glossy ponytail filled her back.

  Naomi sifted through the pictures, the girl a little older now, the baby on his feet. It was unmistakably Vincent. The sky-blue eyes set in a hard stare even then. The woman, young, attractive, never looking at the camera. Now she found a man sitting in a garden, cigarette smoke curling from his mouth, streaks of sunshine misting the top of the picture. Two children were with him – the girl was holding a worm between two fingers, studying it intently, holding it up to Vincent’s face as he sat on the man’s knee, a defiant expression on his face.

  Then she discovered two pictures of three children. The girl was a lot taller now and her skirts much shorter. Vincent had grown to the height of her shoulders and there was a younger child clinging to a different woman. From the look of her clothes and her hair, the frilly curtains which dressed the window behind her and the flowery border on the wall, Naomi guessed the nineties.

  The last picture was old. A school photo, whole class, with a list of names underneath. The name James Solomon had been underlined in black ink. Another name jumped out. Henry Hamilton.

  Dad?

  She found Henry, third from the left, top row. They knew each other? Went to school together?

  Her hands were trembling. Her head was spinning. She went to put the pictures back in the envelope and noticed there were more inside, the remaining ones so big, they were almost jammed inside and were face down. With effort, she prised them out and flipped them over.

  ‘No,’ she said. Her eyesight clouded for a moment as if her mind was producing a screen to block her view. Picture after picture of Henry with the next door neighbour from Bramhall. Naomi’s mind wouldn’t clear and produce a name. Naomi stood, her body tingling with d
isbelief. Henry was hugging the girl in one, glancing down her top in another. Next, she was touching his leg, whispering in his ear. They were in car parks, sitting on comfy sofas, then the final two were shots from inside the house. Their house. In Alderley Edge. Henry following her up the stairs.

  ‘Who took these?’ rode out of her mouth in a pant. Why were they here in this sewing room?

  She shook her head, an attempt to rid herself of the images. How could Henry do this? And how could he lie? She wouldn’t let him deny it. She withdrew her phone and took some photographs for evidence, then she had to wriggle the photos back inside the tiny space, before adding the smaller ones on top. She arranged them exactly as she’d found them and closed the cupboard door.

  In that moment, a realisation crashed in on her consciousness. She seized the cupboard door handle and snatched the envelope again, tearing one corner of it as she withdrew the small pictures, found the young girl and then compared her face to the woman mauling her dad. Amber. The name arrived in a flash. This was without doubt the same person.

  The only sound in the room was Naomi’s breathing. If there were more secrets to unearth in here, she wasn’t ready for them. Light-headed now, one arm prickling aggressively as if she might lose the use and command of it, stomach creeping with lice, she returned the pictures to the envelope and the envelope to the cupboard and straightened up and turned for the door.

  Light off, she closed the door, dismounted the stairs, sealed the gap, left and locked the garage and returned to the house with her heartbeat jumping into her throat. She went to her room and lay on the bed, head full of images, fingers twitching with the urge to phone Henry and blast him until her stomach ached.

  Amber was Vincent’s sister? He’d never mentioned siblings. So Henry had found Amber the house in Bramhall, or so she’d told Annabel. What the hell was going on? With her mind chasing multiple scenarios, her phone signalled a text.

  It was the MP – mystery person. He’s just leaving the club.

  I’m back in the house.

  What did you find?

  I’m saying nothing until I know who I’m dealing with.

  A pause, then, Right now I’m the best friend you’ve got.

  I’ll be the judge of that when you tell me who you are and what you want.

  I want to help you. I’ll be in touch.

  I want to see you.

  Whoever it was didn’t want to see her because her phone remained silent. She tried to call the number and got an automated response.

  ‘Damn it.’ She flung her phone across the bed and lay, fingers twined together across her stomach until the front door opened downstairs. Vincent, returning. She wanted to talk to him urgently. Except she couldn’t – not without revealing that she’d trespassed in a forbidden room.

  Wait, he wasn’t alone. Naomi sat up and listened raptly now. Stiletto heels were striking the hall floor, echoing Vincent’s footsteps. There was the low buzz of conversation and then the footsteps seemed to disappear inside the kitchen and the door closed. She leapt from the bed and quietly opened her door and strained to hear something. Anything. The occasional peal of laughter seeped beneath the kitchen door. Always her voice, whoever she was. Naomi was curious, and agitated that she felt inquisitive. Vincent was free to do whatever he wanted.

  Still, feeling oddly threatened, and nauseous about it, she let herself into the bedroom directly above the kitchen to see if she could pick out any words or snatches of conversation. She couldn’t. Blocking the possibility was the sensual thrum of slow-pulsed jazz music which leaked through the floor beneath her and rode through her body, sending her back to the London restaurant and dinner there.

  This sparked murky memories of Vincent in the lift, in the corridor. The memories might be dull, alcohol having smudged the details, but she was struggling to evict the feelings that had surfaced that day in Venice and that, having firmly imprinted themselves upon her conscious mind, couldn’t easily be dismissed. They were like unwelcome guests now. They’d settled in, made themselves at home. How to get rid?

  Worst of all, Vincent knew.

  It had gone quiet in the kitchen, but for the music. They’d been in there for forty-one minutes and she didn’t know what they were doing. What were they doing? She hadn’t once thought about Henry during the stake-out where she lay on the floor, an ear to the ground, straining to hear the occasional rumble of words. She hadn’t thought about Annabel or the baby. Or of Dan.

  When fifty-five minutes had passed, the kitchen door opened and Naomi stood up. She traced the clipping of heels across the hall and ran to the window to look out. She hid behind a curtain and peered out. A young woman with long brown hair was trotting down the path in tight trousers, long boots. Her arm was stuck out at a right angle in front of her, a large bag draped from it. Vincent closed and locked the door and returned to the kitchen.

  Naomi ducked out of the bedroom and decided to go downstairs, just to remind him she was around. Having made it quietly out of the spare room, she then trotted unquietly downstairs, walked through the hall and let herself into the lounge and then the card room. She didn’t know what she was doing, but there was a firm awareness that it lacked logic.

  She sat in the card room, staring pathetically at the chess board with the rush of blood in her veins, willing herself to concentrate on the game. The stakes had risen over the weekend. Her bold move; his unflinching reply. So it was her turn now, and she had her eye on his black king, her white bishop very close, and she wanted so much to rattle that king with its shiny armour. To slam it in check and watch the mirrored exterior turn dull beneath the grip of Vincent’s fingers as he held the crown, searching the neighbouring squares for an escape.

  She found the perfect check without twitching a muscle. Her mind ran through the possibilities. What if I . . . and what if he . . . and then what if I can shift my knight and double my rooks and slice my queen across the board, protected by the other bishop, then he’d have nowhere to go.

  She ran through her moves again, the adrenaline building. It had been the first glimpse of the finish post. Within five moves, a victory was possible, if she could disable his power to counterattack. The ultimate fugue. Five moves. Meant she could be free and out of here in under a week.

  Footsteps crashed through her thoughts, leaving messy footprints on the pathways in her mind. The door opened behind her. She looked over her shoulder and Vincent was clogging the doorway.

  He said, ‘She’s gone.’

  Naomi shrugged. ‘So?’

  When the beginnings of a smile began to reshape his lips, she looked back at the board. He stood watching her and she stared intently at the pieces, aware of the prickle on the back of her neck where she imagined his focus to be.

  Time passed and he didn’t move and she didn’t move. On impulse, she grabbed her bishop and took one of his nearby pawns – the one guarding his polished king – and said, check.

  Then she stood up and intended to barge past him, but he stood firm, filling the doorway. When she was level with him, he loaded her with the kind of stare that weakened her joints.

  ‘That’s a very good move,’ he said, and the beginnings of any pride she felt soon died when he added, ‘From my point of view. It’s a very bad move from yours.’ She sucked in air and twisted her neck and forensically examined the board and didn’t immediately see the danger. ‘Unless of course, you’ve decided you’d rather hang around here than leave?’

  She saw it clearly now. The square she’d lunged at and where her bishop now sat was covered by a faraway black bishop of his. He wouldn’t need to move his king. He could take her bishop with his, and then his bishop would have two of her major pieces in its sights, forcing her to retreat with one and sacrifice the other, giving Solomon the first advantage.

  She looked at him again and the strength drained out of her. His eyes were unblinking. ‘Anyone would think you were distracted,’ he said.

  ‘You distracted me.’


  ‘How?’

  ‘By standing over me.’ Her pitch rose.

  ‘Did I force you to come downstairs? To make your move?’ A long pause. ‘You’re so impulsive. You’re taking risks with Dan’s future here, remember? I don’t want to win just yet. I like your company too much.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me. Give the game your best shot or I will punish you on that board.’

  ‘Luckily for you, I don’t do mercy.’ He wet his lips. ‘Why do I enjoy it so much when you threaten me? If you were anyone else I’d crush you like an insect.’ Naomi didn’t respond. He continued to look at her through his satin blue eyes. She didn’t see his hand move but she felt his fingers brush against the back of her hand. He was watching her closely. ‘Tell me something, Naomi. What comes after life?’

  What? Hardly what she was expecting while he touched her hand, but she’d trained herself not to flinch. ‘Death.’

  ‘And beyond death?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Nothing?’

  She broke eye contact and glanced out of the window. ‘How should I know?’

  The hand contact stopped and she looked at him again, watched his arm lift and his fingers slowly reach for her throat. Between his forefinger and thumb, he picked up her cross and held it. ‘You advertise this symbol twenty-four hours a day. What’s the purpose of it if there’s nothing?’

  ‘It’s sentimental.’

  His eyes flickered. ‘I’m disappointed. I wanted a story about tunnels and vivid lights and jewelled gates and you’re giving me blackness. You know, I’ve tried to imagine not existing without any success. The curse of a sharp intellect, see? Do better. Tell me a story.’

  ‘You’re in your late twenties. Why would you need a story about death?’ Her head felt light enough to float away.

  ‘We all need stories. Our entire lives are made up of stories, half of them exaggerated or misremembered. Aren’t we just one complex story, all of us? So tell me, what’s the theme of yours?’

  One word slid into her head. ‘Survival.’