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

by Simon Lelic

  ‘Do you know what they used to do to spies in this country?’

  Silently, slowly, I shake my head. It’s a trap, I can feel it, but I’m powerless to escape.

  My father moves the box so it is squarely in front of him. It is a rusty, pitted thing, like something dug up from the bottom of the garden. My father, though, treats it as though it is something precious – something that requires as much care in its handling as my mother would afford her finest china.

  ‘During the war,’ he says, ‘if someone was convicted of spying, they would be executed.’ He peers across at me. ‘They would be shot, Maggie.’

  He raises the lid of the rusty box. It hinges towards me, blocking my view. My father reaches in and when he shows me what is inside I hear myself gasp.

  ‘This was my grandfather’s. He used to claim he’d used it to kill six Germans.’ My father smiles slightly – in mockery or admiration, I can’t tell. ‘It’s an Enfield,’ he tells me. ‘Number two, mark one, star. Single action to allow the bearer to fire quickly.’

  He turns the revolver over in his hands, treating it with even more reverence than he did its metal case. I watch it weaving in his grip, then blink and see he’s offering me the handle.

  ‘Take it.’

  Involuntarily my head starts to shake. ‘No, I … I don’t want to.’

  ‘Take it,’ he repeats. ‘Hold it.’

  Once again he leaves no space for argument. I reach out and take the gun with both hands and still they sink floor-ward as my father relinquishes the weapon’s weight.

  ‘Point it,’ my father says.

  I’m staring at the gun in my hands. It’s cold, black and deadly heavy.

  ‘Point it,’ my father repeats. ‘Not that way,’ he says, when I raise the shaking barrel towards the window. ‘Turn it around. Point the gun towards yourself.’

  ‘What? But …’

  ‘Don’t make me tell you again, Maggie. You know I don’t like to repeat myself.’

  I obey his instructions – what choice do I have? – and my father watches me, satisfied.

  ‘Now put the barrel in your mouth.’

  I shake my head now and I realize I’m crying. He can’t mean it. Surely he can’t possibly mean it. I was only passing. I didn’t even mean to look in!

  ‘Put. The barrel in. Your mouth.’

  ‘Daddy, I’m sorry, I really am, I won’t ever spy on you again, I promise, I mean I wasn’t even, I didn’t mean to, I just …’

  He says nothing. He just waits. And still crying, my nose running, I learn the taste of cold steel.

  ‘Now pull the trigger.’

  I’m so afraid I feel about to pass out. I’m sobbing now, as quietly as I can, but still I can hear myself snivel. My vision blurs as my eyes fill with tears. The gun barrel only rests on my front teeth but even so it seems somehow to fill my throat and it’s all I can do to stop myself gagging.

  ‘Don’t worry, Maggie. It isn’t loaded. At least … I don’t think it is.’

  I feel saliva flee down my chin. I want to beg, to plead with him, but I know nothing I say will alter what happens next. And all of a sudden I feel a sense of relief, a warmness that builds from my belly. This could be over. One way or another. All I need to do is what I’ve been told to and everything – the pain, the fear, the humiliation: everything – it could all be over before my next heartbeat.

  I have to squeeze with both thumbs, with both eyes, to get the trigger to shift. I feel resistance before it starts to move, until gradually there’s a sense of momentum: movement it’s too late to stop. The hammer cocks, the barrel rotates … and the pistol emits an empty click.

  The gun is whisked from my hand before I can drop it. I’m sobbing openly now, almost wailing, whether in relief or disappointment I don’t know. I’m aware I’ve wet myself. I can feel warmth in rivulets down my ankle and dampness building in my sock. And my father’s voice, coming to me an inch from my ear and simultaneously from a thousand miles away.

  ‘Clean yourself up,’ he says. ‘Then scrub the carpet. And next time keep those busy little eyes of yours out of my office.’

  I’m thirteen. For weeks now, months, I’ve been telling myself to go. But what if he catches me before I can get away? What if he’s waiting? Watching? What if he follows? What if I tell someone but they don’t believe me or I run but there’s nowhere to hide? What if it’s safer if I stay where I am? What if, instead of running, I change? What if my father does? What if all I need to do is give him the chance? Or what if this is just the way it is, everywhere, and there is nowhere to go, nowhere safe, or any safer than the bed I’m lying in now?

  What if what if what if …

  I’m fifteen, just turned, and I think I’m free. I’m at a party, with people I mistakenly believe are my friends.

  I’ve tried cocaine tonight and I liked it and now someone’s given me acid. I like this less. Not at all, in fact. There’s something on me and I’m trying to get it off but it’s as fixed and unshakeable as a shadow.

  ‘Someone?’ I say and I hear laughing.

  ‘Seriously,’ I say and they laugh some more.

  It’s a lot of voices at first, but then it’s one and I don’t know anyone who laughs like that. And something’s definitely on me, gripping me around the fleshy part of my arm.

  That laughter. It’s his laughter. His hand that’s gripping my arm.

  ‘Guys?’ I say. ‘Get him off me!’

  Please, I want to add but now I’m swaying and there are groans as something bubbles from my mouth.

  ‘Gross,’ someone answers, finally, and then the laughter is back, further away.

  ‘Just leave her,’ someone says and I guess they do because I wake up alone a thousand hours later, my mouth stuck open in a silent scream and my hair glued to the carpet by my own puke.

  I’m nineteen and I’m fucking some guy. I only know his first name and I don’t even know if that’s real. He told me his name is Charlie but to me he looks more like a Chris. An arsehole basically. I’ve never met a Chris who wasn’t an absolute dick.

  This one, though – he’s pretty. Literally, like a girl. And I’m not into girls (I know I’m not because I’ve tried) but blokes who look like girls, they’re a different matter. Make of that what you will.

  Charlie/Chris, he’s not being rough exactly but he’s too eager. When he kisses me it’s more like he’s sucking and his hands are greedy like a child’s. They pinch like a child’s would too, bruising me, and he’s deaf to what I’m trying to tell him with mine. I can’t get away because he’s lying on me, pinning me, his hips pursuing me as I try to pull back. There’s no rhythm to what’s he’s doing. If sex at its best is like music, Charlie’s the brass section falling down the stairs.

  ‘Stop.’

  My hands are on his chest now, pushing. And I don’t know if I imagine it but he makes this noise then, his lips fat and wet near my ear. Shhh. A comforting sound, or one that’s supposed to be.

  I push harder.

  ‘Stop,’ I insist. ‘Don’t.’

  But I’m weak. Powerless. Charlie keeps thrusting, more urgently now, and it hurts, it physically hurts, and I want to shout out but I can’t find the breath, can’t keep hold of it long enough against Charlie’s shoving to turn it into words.

  I’m weeping as he comes. Silently, each tear a little acid drip of shame. As soon as he withdraws I press him backwards and I roll until I’m sitting, my legs over the side of the couch and my hair a curtain around my face.

  ‘What the fuck is wrong with you?’ Charlie says. I can see him from the corner of my eye and he’s sweating as he snarls. He doesn’t look so pretty any more. I can’t believe I ever thought he did.

  ‘That wasn’t rape,’ he says. ‘Don’t you dare try and claim that was fucking rape.’

  I shake my head, as much a shudder. ‘Just go,’ I say. Quietly but I know he hears.

  ‘You wanted it. You were practically begging for it. No way was that ever
fucking rape!’

  ‘Just go!’ I scream, spinning, and in the end it doesn’t take him long because his shoes are still on and his jeans are down around his ankles. Slag, he spits as a thank-you-for-having-me and only doesn’t slam the door, I suspect, because he’s thinking ahead now, about what it will sound like, about what the neighbours will say if anyone asks and they have the impression he left in a hurry.

  And I’m alone again. As alone as I’ll ever be. My father laughing across my shoulder. Still winning.

  I’m twenty-four and I’m together with Jack. Finally, committed, together. And that place I worried I’d never find? A safe place? This is it. My father can’t get to me here. He’s trapped outside now, on the periphery. And I can keep him there. So long as I’m with Jack there’s nothing my father can do to hurt me.

  It’s what I tell myself.

  It’s what I come to believe.

  And now Jack’s gone.

  I’m twenty-eight and I’m four, seven, nine, twelve and all those other ages all over again. I’m lost. Alone. Weak. Beaten. I’m all the things my father made me. I’m what you get when you add minus numbers, a figure less than the sum of her parts.

  And I’m not ready. I thought I could be. I thought I would be. But without Jack … I just don’t think I can handle this on my own. I forgot how strong Jack made me, what I was like before. But it’s all coming back to me. I’ve come full circle, back to how I was at the beginning. It’s like the lights have gone out and all I can do now is sit and wait, as my father draws closer through the dark.

  Jack

  ‘How could you not tell us?’

  This from my mother. So far my father has barely said a word. He’s still taking it all in, I think. Trying to. His expression is as inscrutable to me as ever, and it’s always been a thing for my old man never to appear ruffled, but I’m fairly sure if something’s going to break him, this will. At the moment, though, he’s sitting rigid in his fixed-to-the-floor plastic chair, as though he were part of the furnishings, too. We’ve pretty much got the room to ourselves, but it’s like he’s trying to avoid attracting attention. He’s always claimed he doesn’t give a toot what other people think of him (he uses that exact phrase as well: give a toot), but I’ve always sort of known that was bullshit. I admired it anyway, adopted it as a mantra for myself, but as with so many of my father’s standards, it’s one I’ve failed to live up to.

  ‘This has been coming … how long did you say? How is it you never thought to tell us?’

  My mother is dressed as though she is due to appear in court herself. My father looks smart enough, I suppose, but he looks the way he always does: like a reluctant model for the casuals section of the Marks & Spencer catalogue. My mother, on the other hand, is wearing some kind of dark beige business suit, with gold and black leather accessories that in combination scream respectable. Maybe she’s hoping some of it will rub off on me – that the guards and the other prisoners will treat me better if they realize my family is, wait for it: middle class. If that’s the case she needs to be strapped to a chair and forced to watch the entire DVD box set of Oz.

  She tsks when I don’t answer, for about the seventeenth time since she arrived, and takes another opportunity to survey the room. The visiting area isn’t all that dissimilar to an airport waiting lounge. The furniture is fixed and there are guards wandering between the rows – although they aren’t armed the way the security staff at airports are and the chairs here are clustered around tables. A school canteen, then, rather than a departure lounge. Think Scum meets Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. My mother is doing her best not to touch any of the surfaces. She keeps her hands neatly bundled in her lap.

  ‘What have you been eating?’ she asks me. ‘Will you answer me that at least?’

  ‘Just … food, Mum.’

  ‘Are you getting enough? It doesn’t look to me like they’ve been feeding you enough.’

  ‘I get what they give me.’ Which is slop and sliced bread, mainly. Probably it’s not so bad, if you’re hungry. I’ve barely eaten a thing since I was remanded in custody.

  ‘You should speak to someone if you’re going to bed hungry,’ my mother tells me. ‘Explain that you’re a growing boy, that whoever’s in charge of portion size needs to take that into account.’

  I want to laugh at that. At my mother’s hopelessly flawed perception of me, but also the idea that somewhere within these walls there’s a Head of Portion Size.

  My father answers before I do. ‘He’s twenty-eight, Penelope. He’s not a boy.’ He doesn’t look at either one of us when he speaks, though I get the sense from his tone, and from my mother’s nod of weary acceptance, that this is something else they’ve both opted to hold against me: the fact that I grew up. If I’d never had the temerity to turn eighteen, none of us would be in this mess, I imagine they’re thinking. Because that’s how they view it: like we’re all in this. Just not together.

  ‘Well,’ says my mother. ‘Even so. You should talk to Henry if no one else can help.’

  ‘Who’s Henry?’ I ask her.

  ‘Henry Graves. The governor here. Don’t tell me you haven’t met him yet?’

  ‘Of course he hasn’t met him, Penelope. He’s a prisoner.’ I look for my father’s eyes, but they skip away. That word, though, lingers, together with the disgust my father attached to it.

  ‘Well, in my judgement he’s a very reasonable man. I’m sure he’d help if you asked him nicely enough.’

  ‘You know the governor?’

  My mother’s circle of friends extends to book-group buddies and ladies who lunch, with perhaps, at its wildest reaches, the odd organic farmer. How she can possibly have an acquaintanceship with the governor of a south London prison, I can’t begin to make a guess.

  ‘We met him,’ she explains. ‘On our way in.’

  I should have realized. My mother has a way of ingratiating herself with people in authority. In any commercial encounter, for example, she is rarely more than two sentences away from demanding to talk to the Person in Charge – whereupon her tone will switch immediately to one of polite and reasonable deference. Still, we’re in a high-security prison, not the Dorchester branch of Specsavers. Even for her, given the time she would have had in which to operate, securing an audience with the governor was no mean feat.

  ‘Your mother caused a scene,’ my father offers by way of explanation. He’s still not looking at me, but the fact that he’s addressed me has to count as progress of a kind.

  ‘And it’s a good job I did,’ my mother puts in. She’s about to say something else, I think, when my father finally looks at me directly.

  ‘You know why this is happening, don’t you?’ he says. His shoulders are drawn back, but he’s leaning in slightly, speaking to me under his breath. You don’t have to whisper, Dad, I want to say. No one here gives a toot who you are or where you’re from. But I hold my tongue.

  ‘Jack? Did you hear me? I said you know why this is happening. Don’t you?’

  I’ve told him – I’ve told them both – the outline of what’s gone on, how basically I’m being screwed by Syd’s lunatic old man. I didn’t put it quite as succinctly as that, of course, and maybe I wasn’t as forthright as I was in the account we presented to Inspector Leigh (in fact I left out a few choice details: that I lost my job, for example, ridiculous as that sounds; that I stabbed my supposed victim no less than seventeen times), but I get the feeling anyway that the precise sequence of events isn’t what my father is referring to.

  ‘That … girlfriend of yours,’ he clarifies, making it sound like a swear word. ‘She’s the reason we’re all sitting where we are. It’s because of her that your mother had to get up at 4 a.m. so that she could come and visit her only son in prison!’

  People are looking. My father’s hissing probably carries further than his more regular bass-heavy mumble.

  ‘It’s not Syd’s fault, Dad,’ I say. ‘I explained to you about her father. It’s him who’s doing
this.’

  My father’s head gives a furious little quiver, like if I don’t understand now I never will. ‘We all get the family we deserve, Jack. Most of us,’ he adds, showing me his razor-raw cheek.

  ‘She’s not right for you, Jack,’ my mother chips in. ‘She never was. She’s …’ There are all sorts of words my mother would like to use here, but she’s self-aware enough – just – to recognize they’ll betray her social bigotry. So she’ll save them up and use them when she and my father are alone.

  ‘Your mother and I told you when you first brought her home,’ my father says. Brought her home: like a cat dragging in something rotten. ‘We told you then that you’d regret it.’

  ‘I’ve heard her swearing, Jack,’ my mother confides. ‘And I’ve seen those scars up and down her arms.’ She shudders, a theatrical little tremor that almost prompts me to speak up in Syd’s defence. There are two things that stop me. I’ve heard it all before, is one of them. This, my parents’ lecturing – I was expecting it. It’s almost comforting, in fact. A little reminder of being at home. It’s like if I ever needed money when I was a teenager. My parents would put me through the same ordeal, except then the subject of the sermon would be responsibility, commitment, my failure to demonstrate first one and then the other. Listening to them outline their disappointment in me: it’s the price they’ve always attached to offering me their support.

  The other thing – the real reason I’m sitting here and remaining so quiet – is that I don’t know if I’m starting to agree with them. There’s a voice inside my head, loudest after my cell door slams shut for the night, that tells me this is Syd’s fault. That I would never have got in this kind of trouble if it wasn’t for her. It’s not as though my parents haven’t been proved right about other things. About me, for example. Their disappointment in me. Syd’s always tried to boost my self-confidence, encouraged me to forget what other people think and concentrate instead on the things I think are important, and I’ve done my best to follow her advice. But look at me. Look at what I’m wearing, where I’m sitting. Clearly something went wrong somewhere, just as my parents always said it would.