The House: The brilliantly tense and terrifying thriller with a shocking twist - whose story do you believe?

by Simon Lelic

  ‘What was in it?’

  I could tell from Bart’s tone that he was genuinely curious, and I was sure as well that I was about to disappoint him.

  ‘Kids’ stuff,’ I said.

  ‘Kids’ stuff? What do you mean, kids’ stuff?’

  I twitched a shoulder. ‘Like, a box full of stuff a kid would keep. A little girl, I’m guessing. You know, like a treasure box. But treasure that’s not really treasure.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Like … there were some shells in there. Like ones collected from a beach. And a bookmark, the head of some doll, some dried flowers. A Care Bear. Lots of postcards, all blank, but like a collection. Just, you know: treasure.’

  Bart was looking at me like I was talking in tongues.

  ‘You never had a treasure box?’ I asked him. ‘When you were a kid?’

  ‘No, Jack,’ Bart said. ‘I never had a treasure box. I had a money box, but it was always empty. My parents, they –’

  ‘I know, I know. Your parents fled their homeland with nothing. You’ve told me before, Bart. A thousand times, probably.’

  I was pissed off at him all of a sudden and I wasn’t sure why. I’d been expecting more of a reaction, I suppose. Or, a reaction more like mine.

  ‘OK, Jack, so you found a treasure box. What happened next?’

  And that just irritated me even more. ‘What do you mean, what happened next? Nothing happened next. That’s it. That’s the end of the story. It just … it freaked me out, that’s all. Finding a little girl’s stuff hidden away like that.’ Although that wasn’t quite true. There had been something else: one final detail I hadn’t mentioned yet.

  ‘What was it that freaked you out exactly? I mean, the doll’s head I can probably get on board with. The Care Bear, too. They’re creepy little fuckers, the lot of them.’

  Ordinarily I might have smiled at that. Probably Bart was expecting me to.

  ‘Did you show Syd?’ he asked when I didn’t, pretending too late that he was taking me seriously. ‘What did she say?’

  I didn’t like that either: that Bart should mention Syd. In part, frankly, because I’d always been a little suspicious of how well the two of them got on whenever we were all together. Not jealous exactly, just suspicious. Don’t get me wrong. Me and Syd: it’s the most secure in a relationship I’ve ever felt. But that in itself tends to make me worry, even if most of the time it might seem like there’s nothing to worry about.

  Plus, the other thing was, I hadn’t told her. Syd, I mean. I hadn’t even told her about the cat. I’d told her it was a pigeon. I don’t know why, but I thought a pigeon would upset her less than a cat would. Syd’s got this aversion to mortality. Which, to be fair, I suppose we all do, but what I mean is it’s her own personal take on my fear of spiders. Those stuffed birds she’d just about coped with, but a rotting cat, on the other side of the ceiling of the room in which she sleeps? It would have set her back months.

  ‘I didn’t want to worry her,’ I said to Bart. ‘And I didn’t want her taking the piss.’ I glared at him meaningfully.

  ‘I’m not taking the piss! Christ, Jack, when did you get so sensitive? I’m just … I’m trying to work out what the big deal is. So you found a box of stuff. So what?’

  ‘Not just stuff. A little girl’s stuff, in a house where there’s no other sign of any children and hidden in a spot where no one would ever find it. Plus, the bloke who lived there before us, he’d owned the place for thirty-odd years. There’s no way the things in the box were that old.’

  ‘But it doesn’t mean anything. Does it? Unless I’m missing something.’

  ‘How do you know? There’s hardly going to be an innocent explanation for it, is there?’

  Bart was watching me, and I expected him to roll his eyes and turn away. Instead, all of a sudden, he started laughing. A big, booming, Eddie Murphy-style laugh that for an instant made me want to punch him.

  ‘I’ll tell you what it means,’ he said. ‘It means you’ve obviously got that novel in you after all. Maybe I’d work on some of the details, maybe put some human bones in that box instead of a bunch of dried flowers. But that imagination of yours is clearly working overtime.’

  I tried to stay angry. It was hard, though, in the face of Bart’s grin. And actually I felt a measure of relief. Because I’d never wanted my friend to agree with me, I realized. I’d wanted him to laugh, to mock me in exactly the way he was doing now.

  I didn’t smile exactly, but I came as close as I could manage. I even allowed myself to believe that Bart was probably right. Probably I’d only been irritated in the first place because I recognized I was spooked over nothing. Even the bit I hadn’t mentioned yet: probably I was overreacting to that part, too. There was a name, you see, handwritten on the inside of the box. On the underside of the lid, to be precise, in felt-tip that had long ago faded.

  But it was just a name. A fairly common name at that. There’d been nothing in the contents of the box to suggest its presence was anything but a coincidence. I mean, even if Syd had seen it … if I’d let Syd see it … there was every chance she would have said the same thing.

  Sydney

  I grew up thinking love was just a lie. Not just a lie. A deception. Like Father Christmas or the Easter Bunny or God. Fibs that change how we feel, that trick us into believing the world is a better place than it really is. That distract us, in fact. Blind us, purposefully, to cold reality, so that we don’t fight the way we should and instead submit.

  It was Jack who changed that for me. Who showed me that love was really real.

  That time we met? At the conference? I’d woken up that morning and inhaled three lines of coke. In fact, once registration was over, I had it in mind to make another visit to the Ladies. Jack was the last delegate to arrive and I was sitting in the hotel lobby, tapping his unclaimed badge against the table, when finally he blustered in through the double set of doors.

  ‘Bloody trains,’ were his first words to me. ‘Has it started already? I’m so sorry I’m late.’ He looked like he’d set out that morning all neatly packaged but, like a parcel that gets waylaid en route to its destination, had somehow come unravelled on the journey. His suit was wet and his tie was crooked and his hair was a hybrid of contrasting styles – neither one of which, I later discovered, was the one he spent ten minutes every morning trying to summon from the bathroom mirror.

  ‘Mr Walsh?’

  Mr Jack Walsh, I’d imagined, was older, tireder and pastier. He wasn’t my age, like the man before me (the boy, rather, because I still hadn’t learned to think of myself as anything more evolved than a girl), and certainly he wasn’t as good-looking. I’m not talking jutting-chin and gleaming-smile good-looking: Jack was a little rougher around the edges. His ears were slightly too big, his nose a fraction too small. His eyes, though, were this deep tobacco-coloured brown. They were kind eyes. Curious too. They didn’t look cruel, or dulled, the way mine did.

  ‘Ow. Bugger.’

  He’d pricked himself on the pin on the back of his name badge. Then, when he noticed me trying not to smile, he flushed.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said again. ‘This is seriously not my morning. Should I …’ He pendulummed his finger between the two closed doors on the wall behind me.

  ‘Actually,’ I said, ‘they’re kind of halfway through the first session. Maybe you want to hang on and get a coffee?’

  We weren’t supposed to admit latecomers. I always did, but today – on a whim – I enforced the rules. He looked so crestfallen I immediately wished I’d smuggled him inside.

  I checked my watch. ‘They’ll be breaking up in fifteen minutes,’ I said. ‘And you’re not missing anything, I promise. The opening session, it’s really just an introduction.’

  I smiled and he smiled back. He went to get that coffee and even fetched one for me. A cappuccino, he’d guessed, with three packs of sugar balanced on the lid. I accepted it gratefully. I didn’t have the heart to tell h
im I drank my coffee black.

  I watched him after that through the morning sessions. Most people at these events we run, they’re only there to scam a day out of the office. Jack was actually paying attention. It’s stupid, I know, but even then – even before I really knew him – he made me feel that I was doing something worthwhile. I’d never felt that way before. I’d only taken the job because it paid well, and I’d only been offered it in the first place because the man who’d hired me had clearly valued my cleavage over what was missing from my CV. But seeing Mr Jack Walsh, social worker, sitting there scribbling earnestly in his notebook, I felt … valued, I suppose the word is. Validated. For the first time, basically, in my whole life.

  I’d never had a boyfriend before.

  If you’d asked me, I would have claimed I’d had relationships, but none had lasted more than four dates. Four dates, I’ve found, is about as much time as you can spend with a bloke before he expects you to part company with your knickers. And it’s not that I have a problem with sex. I mean, I do. Clearly I have a problem with sex, but not in the sense that I don’t like doing it. I’ve fucked plenty of men. Thirteen, in fact, not counting Jack. But fucking isn’t the same as having sex (OK, OK: making luuurve). It’s when sex becomes meaningful that I pull up the drawbridge: that moment you really let someone close. So once we’ve moved from coffee to the cinema to drinks and then maybe dinner, that’s when I invariably shut down. I become a bitch, is usually the easiest way. I’ll snipe, snigger, turn up late or, once or twice, not turn up at all. I’ll ingest a mound of coke and start babbling, not bothering to disguise the signs of my cistern-top habit – my not-so-little white lie – or I won’t take anything, not even a drink, and I’ll sit there saying nothing at all. It takes surprisingly little to scare men off, I’ve found. Sometimes all that’s required is a well-placed burp.

  I tried to play the same game with Jack. I’d allowed our run of dates to stretch to five, mainly because he managed to make me laugh so much and also because for our fifth date he’d suggested we visit London Zoo. Which is basically my favourite thing to do in the whole city. It feels innocent somehow and I craved innocence. Some people, I know, would take objection to that. There’s nothing innocent, they’d say, about keeping animals locked up in cages. But even if they’re in cages, at least they’re cared for. And what’s so fucking fabulous about the big wide world anyway? Out there it’s all about survival. Freedom: it’s just another term for living in fear.

  Plus the thing with zoos is, I like monkeys.

  And that’s where it started, as it happened. Beside the monkey cages. That’s where I almost let Jack slip away.

  ‘You know, there’s a Monkey World near where my parents live,’ Jack said. ‘We should go there some time. Take a trip.’

  ‘To Monkey World?’ I answered, already starting to feel light-headed. ‘Or to your parents’ place?’

  ‘Either,’ Jack said. ‘Both. And maybe afterwards you can tell me if you noticed any difference.’

  He was looking at the gibbons, tapping a finger against the enclosure, so he couldn’t have noticed the expression on my face.

  I turned away.

  ‘Syd?’

  We’d been sharing a stick of candy floss and I dropped the whole lot in the nearest bin.

  ‘Syd? Where are you –’

  I’d started walking. Jack hurried to catch up.

  ‘My parents aren’t that bad,’ he said, buzzing around me like a wasp with a wounded wing. ‘I mean, they are, but what I mean is you don’t have to meet them. Ever, if you like.’

  Ever. As in for ever.

  I stopped.

  ‘I’ve given you the wrong impression and I’m sorry,’ I said, which to be fair was about the most upfront in that type of situation I’d ever been.

  Jack frowned as he tried to process what was happening. For a second I thought he was going to react the same way all the others had. Stage one was confusion. After that, sometimes, was denial, but all roads eventually led to anger.

  ‘It’s fine,’ Jack said.

  I thought it was a tactic. A prelude to an onslaught of abuse. ‘What?’

  ‘I said, it’s fine. I mean, I don’t want to meet your parents either.’

  I just stared then. He wasn’t following his lines.

  ‘I’d like to hear about them,’ he went on. ‘At some point. But I’m fairly sure I wouldn’t ever want to meet them.’

  I narrowed my eyes at him. ‘You think you know me? Is that it?’

  Jack was already shaking his head. ‘I barely know myself,’ he answered. ‘But I know I like you. And I know I’m not in any hurry.’

  I laughed then, I think. I may even have put my hand on my hip. ‘Well, that’s a relief. I’d hate to think I’ve been holding you up.’

  Jack shrugged, shook his head. ‘Just the opposite,’ he said. ‘I feel like I’ve achieved more in the three weeks since I met you than I have in the past twenty-four years.’

  Which left me speechless. And – trust me – rarely am I ever speechless.

  ‘But as I say,’ Jack went on, ‘I’m not in any hurry. You know how to reach me if you change your mind.’

  He turned then and started back towards the gibbons.

  ‘Hey. Hey!’

  Jack moved to face me. ‘That was quick,’ he said, daring to grin.

  ‘Fuck you,’ I replied. Not exactly original, I realize. ‘What do you think? That time is like some magic eraser? That all you need to do is sit back and wait for a couple of weeks? You don’t know me, Jack. Even the bits you think you’ve guessed. I guarantee you haven’t got a clue.’

  He seemed to recognize that grinning at me had been the wrong thing to do. ‘Look, I … I didn’t mean to imply that I did know you. But maybe you don’t know me the way you think you do either. That’s all I’m saying.’

  I didn’t answer that. Mainly because I suspected he had a point.

  ‘I’m not after anything, Syd. I just … I like spending time with you, that’s all. Genuinely: that’s it.’

  It was like I’d attempted to slam the door but Jack had surreptitiously stuck out a foot.

  ‘Look, Jack. I’m sorry. I really am. But this is as far as I can go. I’m a mess. OK? My life: it’s a fucking mess, and I should never have implied you might become part of it.’

  ‘I’m used to mess,’ Jack answered brightly. ‘I am. I mean, come round to the flat one day and take a look at my bedroom.’

  It took him half a second or so to register what he’d said.

  ‘Shit, Syd. I didn’t mean … I just meant …’

  ‘I know what you meant, dummy.’ I kept frowning but the corners of my mouth twitched involuntarily upwards.

  ‘Look, how about we go and get a coffee or something?’ Jack tested. ‘A cappuccino, right? Three sugars?’

  It had become our first private joke. Even today if Jack’s going up somewhere to order and I tell him that’s what I want, he knows to bring me black with none.

  ‘And then what?’ I answered. I wasn’t smiling yet but I wasn’t frowning any more either.

  Again Jack shrugged. ‘And then we drink,’ he said. ‘That’s all. Today, right now, that’s all.’

  We had sex together nine months later. No: we made love. It was my first time. And for those nine months and thirty-six seconds (hey, I’m not judging. Nine months is a long time to hold it in for any man) Jack behaved like the perfect gentleman. He taught me to trust him. He taught me to trust, full stop. And I guess that’s where all of this is leading, the point I set out to make. I wished you’d trusted me, Jack. The things you found? The things you kept from me?

  I just wish you’d believed in me the way I’ve always believed in you.

  Jack

  I did keep secrets, I admit – though in my defence not as many as Syd thought I did at the time. And for the most part I only kept them because I was trying to protect her. That box is a perfect example. I knew she’d get upset over it, so what was
the point in opening old wounds? And the night I thought I heard someone in the house. Even if I’d told Syd about that when it happened, there’s no way she could have known what it really meant, not with the degree of certainty she has now. Probably she would have said I was imagining things; that I was just on edge because of the way I felt about the house. Which, to be fair, is exactly what I put it down to myself.

  So we’re in bed. Me and Syd. I’d been having trouble sleeping, which wasn’t like me at all. Normally I sleep for seven hours solid. No dreams, no wee breaks, nothing. Lately, though, I’d started waking up in the middle of the night. I kept imagining I was hearing things. Like … noises. Not house noises. Noises like something moving about. But it was like I said. We’d only been in the house for four or five weeks and I still hadn’t fully settled. I didn’t dislike the place as much as I had the first time I saw it, but that elation I’d experienced after we’d moved in was definitely in the process of wearing off.

  Finding that box hadn’t helped. That cat as well, which the more I thought about it, the more confused I was about how it had got up into the attic in the first place. (I’d double-checked after my conversation with Bart and there definitely wasn’t a Velux or anything, nor even a loose tile as far as I could see. Plus the cat’s legs, I was sure, had been broken.) And don’t forget too that we were still surrounded by all the former owner’s old stuff. I was beginning to wish we’d thrown everything into bin bags on the day we’d moved in, because now that Syd and I were both back at work I didn’t know when we’d next get a chance and even without the stuffed birds it was like living in a scene out of Psycho. Like in that big old house up on the hill? Or in the office. You know, when Anthony Perkins makes Janet Leigh a plate of sandwiches? And all his stuff is scattered all around them: on the walls, on the surfaces – all this weird, creepy-looking stuff, which when you see it you just know things aren’t going to end well.