by Simon Lelic
Elsie was already shaking her head. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘He won’t let me.’
There was the same finality to her tone I’d noticed the only other time she’d alluded to her father. What might I have said to her right then, I wonder? How would things have turned out differently if I’d been braver?
I had an idea.
‘Have you got a torch?’ I said to Elsie.
‘What?’
‘A torch. You know.’ I mimed clicking on a button.
Elsie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I guess. Why?’
‘Do you know Morse code?’
‘Who?’
‘Morse code. It’s like a language. Like … dots and dashes.’
Elsie tucked her chin against her neck. ‘I don’t think so. Should I?’
‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘But it doesn’t matter. I don’t actually know Morse code either.’
Jack found me that night sitting in the dark beside the spare-bedroom window. I had my dressing gown across my knees and a cup of cold coffee on the floor beside me. My torch was in my lap, temporarily idle.
‘Syd? Are you in here?’
The flashes from across the way seemed to have ceased, so I picked up my torch again and echoed Elsie’s pattern. She’d drawn a flower, from what I could tell. I made mine taller, with four large petals, and then made a jagged, flighty motion that was supposed to represent a bumblebee.
‘Syd? What are you doing?’ Jack moved hesitantly towards me. He looked at me and then out of the window, where Elsie was responding with a great big tick. As big as she could manage, anyway. I was using the whole expanse of glass. Elsie’s communication was more confined, as though she were beaming out her messages hidden beneath her duvet.
‘Just chatting,’ I said to Jack. I smiled up at him and he half-smiled back.
‘Well … will you be long? It’s almost midnight.’
‘God, really?’ I checked my watch. ‘OK, OK, just one more. Last one, I promise.’
Fortunately it was my turn to draw first. I turned on my torch and swept the light from one corner of the window to the other. I covered the beam, then made the same motion across the glass starting this time from the opposite side – so that the light, as Elsie would have seen it, formed a cross. A moment passed and then Elsie signalled back with the same pattern.
‘An “X”?’ said Jack. ‘What does that mean?’
I looked at him but he really didn’t know.
‘Just saying goodnight,’ I told him. And then I rose and kissed him on the cheek.
Jack
I’d never been to Evan’s office before. Whenever we’d met previously, we’d arranged to get together at the house, so I was surprised first off by how shabby it was. I’d become accustomed to gleaming glass; to fridges stacked with bottles of sparkling water and arrays of HD television screens. Evan Cohen’s premises looked more like the estate agencies I remembered passing on the scruffy side streets of my home town. There was a window displaying the various properties up for sale, but the details had been stuck on with Blu-Tack in loose, misaligned rows. Most had yellowed. Only very few had been labelled as ‘sold’. The display more than anything suggested the building was no longer in use. If my eye hadn’t caught on the peeling gold lettering still clinging to the glass-panelled door, I would almost certainly have walked straight past.
The entrance was locked, but I noticed movement in the shadows through the window so I tapped a knuckle timidly against the glass.
‘Hello? Is anyone in there?’ I saw movement again, and then an outline, and then the door was opening wide.
Evan was fat in the way rugby players are fat: like you could tell he was overweight, but there probably wasn’t much of him that would wobble. He wore a suit, which like mine had seen better days. It was hard to judge how old he was. Whenever I’d met him previously he’d acted my age, but to me he’d always looked much older. Early forties at least. There was grey spreading from his temples and a smoker’s crimp to his pale-green eyes.
‘Yes?’
‘Er … hi,’ I said, and I waited for him to recognize me. He didn’t, clearly, but he’d twigged by now that I was expecting him to.
‘Evan? It’s Jack. Jack Walsh? You sold us the house on –’
‘Jack!’ One of his arms had been barricading the open door. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but I thought I noticed him hesitate slightly before letting it fall. ‘Come in, come in,’ he said, suddenly effusive, and he grinned at me as he gestured me inside. It was a salesman’s grin, though: one that died before it reached his eyes.
‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything.’
‘Not at all, not at all. What can I do for you? I must say I’m surprised to see you. I thought you’d be busy spending all that money you must have earned on eBay.’
He’d cracked some version of this joke every time we’d spoken since the morning we made the offer on the house. No need to worry about that mortgage, Jack. You’ll be covering the repayments purely from the money you’ll be raking in on eBay. Or, I’ve got two words for you, Jacky-boy: eBay. Stick all this rubbish online and before you know it you’ll be better off than when you started.
I trailed him into his dimly lit offices, stepping over junk mail and free sheets on the way. It was late morning on a weekday. I’d only stopped by myself on the journey between appointments for work. Business hours then, and yet Evan Cohen Estate Agents Ltd had decidedly shut up shop.
‘Are you moving premises or something?’ I asked.
Evan hesitated for half a second before answering. ‘Exactly,’ he said, ‘that’s it exactly. Moving premises,’ he echoed, as though it was a phrase he’d decided he liked the sound of. From the look of things he’d been seated at one of the desks when I’d disturbed him. His jacket was slung carelessly over the chair back and there was a copy of the Racing Post splayed on the surface, annotated here and there in blue biro. ‘So. Jack.’ He settled on the desk’s corner. ‘You’re not thinking of selling up already, I hope?’
‘No, no plans on selling,’ I told him. ‘To be honest we’ve barely moved in. I was just … I was hoping you could give me some information.’
‘Information?’ Evan repeated, looking slightly wary. Because information was something he couldn’t charge for, I assumed, and what estate agent do you know who willingly gives anything away for free? ‘What kind of information?’
‘Just, you know – about the house.’
In truth I wasn’t sure what exactly I’d come for. Since finding that box, and since that night I’d chased my shadow around the house, all I knew was that something about our new home didn’t feel right. I’d even started wondering again about the story we’d been told about the previous owner. A man in his sixties meets a woman over the Internet and, through the power of Skype, they fall in love. Maybe, at a stretch, I could believe that part. But that he would then give up everything to run off and be with her? Without the two of them ever having met? Call me a cynic (Syd has), but personally I just couldn’t see it. I mean, who does that? It was like Cocoon meets You’ve Got Mail, and about as plausible to my mind as either one.
‘Like … about the man who owned the house before us,’ I said. ‘Patrick Winters? I was hoping you could tell me something about him.’
Evan smiled then, as though it wasn’t the query he was expecting. ‘What is it about Winters you want to know?’
‘Well, just for starters … that story you told us about him leaving. Was it true?’
Evan’s smile slipped halfway to a frown. ‘Hey. I didn’t lie to you, buddy.’
‘No, I know, that’s not what I meant. What I meant was, did you believe it was true? I mean, it’s kind of weird, don’t you think? Especially … you know. Considering his age and everything.’
Those photos on the landing were mainly of Winters, I’d worked out. He’d had dark hair in his younger years, but at some point around his early forties it had fairly swiftly bleached itself whi
te. In the most recent images Winters looked decidedly older than his sixty-something years. He was still tall, but hunched, and had at some point acquired a walking cane. Not your typical inhabitant of the world of online dating, is all I’m saying.
Evan allowed himself another grin, his indignation for the time being set aside. ‘Haven’t you heard, Jacky-boy? Sixty’s the new forty. And most of these pensioners know their way around the Internet better than your average ten-year-old.’ His grin became a conspiratorial leer. ‘Twenty quid says Winters could get his hands on the good stuff before you or I could finish googling “hard core”.’
He winked then and I thought of Syd. She hates it when blokes wink. She thinks it makes us look slimy, and in Evan’s case I could hardly have disagreed. The previous times I’d met Evan I’d actually quite liked him. Syd had never much cared for him, and it was beginning to dawn on me that she’d been a far better judge of his character than I’d proved.
‘All I’m saying is we can’t begrudge the guy,’ he went on. ‘He’s all alone. He’s sitting on a pile of bricks worth more money than he’s earned in his entire lifetime. Why not take a chance with a bit of stuff he takes a fancy to in some chat room?’ He laughed then, an invitation for me to laugh with him. ‘No disrespect or anything, but blokes like Winters have to take it where they can get it. It’s either that or pay for it. Right? And why pay when you can get it for free?’
I knew exactly how Syd would have answered that. She would have called Evan an oily, misogynistic creep, and perhaps also pointed out that it was attitudes to women like his that had kept our society rooted in the dark ages and political power in the hands of the privileged, penis-wielding few. Me, however: I just smiled.
‘Hey,’ Evan said, ‘if you’re worried the deal you got was too good to be true – don’t be. You got a break, that’s all. And it’s not as though Winters didn’t come out of it all right.’
This time I shifted uncomfortably. I’d known all along that Syd and I had got the house for less than we should have, and though I’d been elated about that initially, lately I’d mainly felt guilt. Partly that was to do with work. I spent my days fighting a system that was skewed, and it didn’t seem right that I should be celebrating just because it happened to have skewed itself for once in my favour. But that wasn’t all. There was something else that was nagging at me – something which at that stage was just a feeling, but was underpinning my unease even so.
I changed the subject. ‘What about family? Did Winters have any, do you know? Like, children for example?’
I was thinking about that box again. There were signs among those photos on the landing that Winters had had relatives with kids, but no indications he’d had any himself. There was nothing to suggest he’d even been married.
‘Not that I know of,’ Evan said, shrugging. ‘But don’t take that as gospel. I only ever actually met the bloke twice.’
But what he told me tallied with what some of our neighbours had said, too. I’d asked around, you see. Just casually, and couched in more general queries about how well they’d known Winters, but nobody remembered seeing Winters other than on his own. He kept himself to himself, was the prevailing response. Which is what neighbours always say, right? He seemed harmless enough, always kept himself to himself. Even – perhaps especially – if the person in question has just murdered his entire family with an axe.
‘What about the house itself?’ I asked Evan. ‘When you were there, did anything ever strike you as … Well. As odd, I suppose. Like …’ spooky, creepy, scary ‘… unusual,’ is what I settled on.
Evan appeared bemused at first, then slowly it seemed to dawn on him what I meant. ‘What’s the matter, Jacky-boy? All those stuffed animals keeping you awake at night?’
I didn’t bother explaining that Winters’s birds, if nothing else of his, had been disposed of. Besides, Evan was more on the money than he realized, and I couldn’t help but flush.
‘No, it’s just … never mind,’ I said, shying from Evan’s grin. ‘Look, I … I don’t suppose Winters left a forwarding address or anything, did he? A mobile number or something you could let me have?’
Evan sucked air through his teeth. ‘Sorry, buddy. I couldn’t give you that type of information without the vendor’s permission. Even us estate agents have got a code of practice.’ He said this as though with another wink.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘Well. Thanks anyway.’ I didn’t know what more I could ask.
‘Hey, no problemo.’ Evan rocked on to his feet. ‘If there’s anything else that starts bugging you, just give me a shout. You know where to find me.’ He was smiling broadly now and offering his hand. I had no choice other than to take it.
‘Thanks,’ I said again, ‘I will,’ even though I had no intention at that point of ever bothering Evan Cohen again. I did go back, of course. Later. But when I did the offices were boarded up and Evan was already long gone.
I found him anyway. Patrick Winters. Through a database of council-tax records we had access to at work. The landline on file was one that had been disconnected, but there was an email address, and when I wrote to him explaining who I was, he replied within a couple of days. He even agreed to speak to me. He was living in Perth, it turned out, on the western coast of Australia, so when I called the number he’d given me at 9 a.m. my time it would have been early evening his. He didn’t sound sixty. He sounded like he had more energy than me. Which I suppose should have been my first clue, because the dating thing, the story I’d been told about him leaving – it checked out. Every bit of it.
I was on a work phone so I couldn’t speak to him for very long. But Winters was utterly convincing. The new-found love of his life was a woman called Sheila, he told me, which Winters thought was hilarious (an Australian woman called Sheila. Geddit? He was contemplating changing his name to Bruce). The only regret he had about leaving England, he said, was that he hadn’t done it sooner. No, he didn’t need or want any of his stuff. He was just sorry to have inflicted it all on me. A cat? No, he’d never owned a cat. What kind of box? He didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. Bin it, he suggested; bin it all. I had no idea, he told me, how liberating it felt to escape that feeling of ‘stuffocation’. Everything he owned now he could have fitted in a single suitcase, he said, and out there he got by with even less. A toothbrush, some flip-flops, a pair of Speedos: that was all he really needed these days. Which, setting aside the mental image his pronouncement gave rise to, I actually found somewhat inspiring. For half a dozen wistful seconds, I was almost tempted to follow his lead.
It was only as we were wrapping things up that Winters said something that brought me forward in my chair. I thanked him for his time, and then again – almost as an afterthought – for having picked me and Syd as buyers. But he turned that around, insisted he was the one who should have been thanking us. Who’d have thought, he said, that selling a house during a property boom would have proved so problematic? He was just grateful we’d come along and made an offer, because if we hadn’t there was no telling how long the process might have taken.
He hung up the phone then, and I was left staring at the receiver. Because there it was: the source of the unease I’d been struggling with before. Just lucky, I guess, Evan had told us, when Syd and I had expressed our surprise that the bid we’d made for the house had been accepted. But it wasn’t simply down to luck. It couldn’t have been, not given what Winters had just told me, and when I knew for a fact that at the open day there’d been people falling over one another to submit their offers. It was as I’d suspected: there was some other reason the house had come to us. And if that was the case, I had to wonder about something else as well. The debt we owed. Me and Syd. Because if my father had taught me anything, it was that real bargains are few and far between. Everything worth having has a price attached. It’s just a question of how and when you’re made to pay.
Jack
I almost said something. To Syd, I mean. I wanted to. The
problem was, nothing I’d discovered amounted to anything tangible, and I couldn’t think of a way of telling Syd that wouldn’t make it sound like I was jumping at shadows.
The closest I came was one evening when we were curled up together in the living room. It was the homeliest room in the house, mostly due to all the books Winters had left behind on the bookshelves, which themselves covered almost an entire wall. The heavy curtains were drawn and the sidelights were on, and the TV was babbling in the corner. I can’t recall exactly what we were watching. Some BBC2 comedy, I think, like a quiz programme or something, which normally would have had me chuckling at the very least. Not that night, though. That night Syd could have flipped over to one of those trashy American makeover shows she loves so much and I probably wouldn’t even have noticed.
‘Syd …’ I started to say.
She was nestled against me, her shoulders enfolded by my arm, and her left hand linked loosely to my right. She didn’t answer and I angled my head so I could see her.
‘Syd?’
She blinked and moved her eyes from the television screen towards mine. ‘Huh?’
It was only at that point that I realized Syd hadn’t been laughing at the comedy programme either. ‘Hey. Are you OK?’
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I was just … I’d zoned out, that’s all.’ She smiled at me weakly.
‘Is something on your mind?’ I asked her, my own preoccupations temporarily forgotten.
I felt her shoulder rise briefly into my armpit. ‘Just thinking about a friend of mine, that’s all. She’s … having a bit of trouble.’
I lifted our joined hands towards my lips and kissed Syd’s knuckles. ‘Want to talk about it?’
She considered for a moment, then shook her head. ‘That’s OK. To be honest I’m not sure what exactly there is to say.’
A corner of my mouth, at that, gave a little twitch. For a few long seconds we both stared vacantly across the living room, our minds adrift amid our thoughts.
