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

by Simon Lelic

  ‘Oh Elsie.’

  I want to hold her but the bed makes it impossible so I grip her hand, tighter now, and I stroke her cheek, her forehead, her tears – only occasionally breaking off to wipe away mine.

  ‘Oh God, Elsie. Look at us. What a pair.’

  Which makes her smile, which in turn only makes her cry more.

  ‘I hated him, Syd,’ she tells me. ‘I did. I really did. But …’

  We’re both doing our best to get a grip on ourselves.

  ‘… but I didn’t want to,’ Elsie says. ‘You know? I only hated him because he hated me first.’

  She says it like it’s something she’s ashamed of. Like it’s her fault – all of it. And I can’t have that.

  ‘Elsie, listen to me.’

  She looks up.

  ‘You did nothing wrong,’ I tell her. ‘Nothing. Do you hear me?’ I wait for her to nod. ‘The hard part for you, Elsie: it starts now. I’m not belittling what you’ve been through. I’m the last person who would ever do that. But it’s what comes next that will be the real test. Do you understand what it is I’m trying to say?’

  She doesn’t answer. But I can tell from the fear I see that she understands perfectly. Better than I ever did anyway.

  ‘You’re free now, Elsie. You’re safe. But it might not … it might not always feel like you are. There are ways you can still let him win. It’s important to remember that. He’s gone but he’s still playing. This game, once it starts …’ I swallow. ‘It never stops.’

  God, I hate myself. I hate who I am, who I’ve had to become. Maggie Robinson, Sydney Baker. They’re the same and I hate them both.

  ‘You’ll help me, though,’ says Elsie, ‘won’t you? You’re not going anywhere, are you?’

  ‘Elsie, I …’

  ‘Please, Syd.’ She’s gripping my hand so tightly I can feel the sharp ends of her fingernails. Before her accident they were always bitten to the quick.

  ‘I’ll help you if I can, Elsie, of course I will.’

  ‘Because I don’t want to feel the way I used to. I don’t want to do … what I did.’

  ‘You won’t,’ I tell her. ‘If you remember what I told you, you won’t.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  I look at her. I wait until I’m sure she’s looking properly at me.

  ‘Because I know you, Elsie. I’ve seen how strong you are. How brave.’

  ‘Like your sister,’ Elsie says. ‘Like Jessica.’

  I shake my head at that. ‘Jessica was … trapped. It was brave, what she did. I mean … I always thought it was. But only because I could never do it myself.’ I’m looking at my hands, I realize, and I raise my head. ‘The thing is, Elsie, you’re braver than both of us. And carrying on, being the person you want to be: I think that’s the bravest thing of all.’

  ‘Like you, then,’ Elsie says. ‘Isn’t that what you’ve done?’

  I smile at her sadly. ‘It’s maybe what I tried to do,’ I say. ‘What I thought I was doing. But I don’t think that’s quite the same thing.’

  I’m talking in riddles now. Not helping at all.

  I reach towards the floor and into my handbag. ‘I almost forgot,’ I say. ‘I brought you these.’ I hand Elsie the packet of Fruit Pastilles I picked up from the little Sainsbury’s on my way in.

  Elsie laughs. ‘For a moment I thought you were going to give me cigarettes.’

  I laugh too. ‘I’d probably get arrested if I tried.’

  My laughter withers.

  ‘Listen, Elsie … when they told you about what happened to your father,’ I say. ‘Did they … I mean … what did they …’

  Elsie’s fingers interlock with mine. ‘I know what you’re going to say, Syd.’

  If she does she’s doing better than I am.

  ‘You’re going to tell me it wasn’t Jack. Right?’

  I barely hesitate. ‘Right,’ I say.

  Elsie looks at her bedcovers. ‘I thought at first that’s why you were staying away,’ she says at last. ‘You know. When they told me who they’d arrested.’

  Did she speak to Inspector Leigh, I wonder? I hope so. I liked her, even if I gave the impression I didn’t. And I know she would have been kind.

  ‘But then … I don’t know. I kept thinking about when the woman … the policewoman … about when she was talking to me. It was like she didn’t believe what she was saying. Like … like she had to tell me what she was telling me but she didn’t want to. Does that even make sense?’

  It does and it gives me hope. Precious, dangerous hope.

  ‘I swear to you, Elsie: Jack would never hurt anyone. Whatever happens, whatever people say, please don’t ever think that it was him.’

  All the reassurance I’ve offered Elsie, assuming I’ve actually offered any, it comes undone. ‘What do you mean? What’s going to happen?’

  I open my mouth to respond but all of a sudden there’s movement in the room and I spin, startled. I’ve let my guard down. I can’t think when I even last checked the door.

  But it’s just a nurse. She slips into the room with a tight, don’t mind me little smile and makes herself busy with the equipment that surrounds Elsie’s bed.

  ‘I should go,’ I say. I stand and kiss Elsie on the forehead. Her skin is warm, alive, and that kiss has power like you’d read about in a fairy tale.

  ‘Syd? What’s going to happen?’

  I glance at the nurse, who has her back turned. I adjust Elsie’s cover, so that the Fruit Pastilles I brought her are tucked out of sight.

  ‘I’ll see you soon, Elsie,’ I say. ‘OK? I’ll be back soon.’ And with that kiss still lingering on my lips, the power I’ve drawn from Elsie’s skin, for an instant I almost believe it.

  When I walk out of the hospital I walk out openly. There’s no more hiding. No turning back. I’m not sure I’m ready because I’ll never be ready but I’m as prepared as I’m ever going to be. And I’m tired of waiting. My father’s been more patient than I gave him credit for but I don’t doubt he’s had enough too.

  So let’s just finish this, shall we?

  For Elsie’s sake, for Jack’s: let him come.

  Sydney

  I’m lying in bed when I hear the house begin to shift. I’m attuned by now to every creak and there are so many in this old building of ours that I’ve come to understand how Jack, back at the start of this, must have felt when he thought he heard someone walking around. The feeling, it’s almost electric: the same sensation you get when you’re being watched.

  The noises I hear are coming from the staircase. I almost panic then but I still have time and actually, anyway, the adrenaline helps. I was worried that when it came to it I would freeze. That’s what used to happen when I was young. At the sound of my father’s footsteps, his voice calling me if I’d done something he’d perceived as being wrong, my muscles would seize, tense up, so abruptly and so hard that my entire body would permanently ache.

  I place my phone face up on the bedside table and slip quietly from beneath the bedcovers. Deliberately I position myself in a corner, trapping myself in case I feel the urge to run. I’m in my pyjamas, as I would be, but also the hoodie I wear sometimes when I’m ill. The black one, with the deep, double-width pockets.

  When the door begins to open I edge away from it. I can’t stop myself. It’s how I’ve been programmed, like a pet that flinches whenever its owner raises a hand.

  The light enters the room as my father does.

  ‘Sydney Baker, I presume.’

  Up close I see he looks almost exactly the way he did when I was young. A little greyer, perhaps, but trimmer and if his hair is thinning it isn’t doing so from his temples. He’s a handspan taller than me, two shoulders broader and, as ever, he wears a suit.

  And that voice. As before it hits me like a spell, paralysing me for an instant the way I thought the fear would. I forget to breathe.

  My father steps warily into the room. This is new: my father being cautious. Be
fore he always behaved like he had no need, that more important than being careful was being clever. Perhaps he’s both now. Perhaps that’s something he’s learned in prison. Should I be worried? Has this old dog acquired new tricks?

  ‘It’s a little gloomy in here,’ he says. ‘I can’t even get a proper look at you.’

  He’s beside the light switch but he doesn’t flick it on. The window is on my side of the room and I’ve deliberately left the curtains open. Given the hour there’s unlikely to be anyone in the street but even my father in his more brazen days wouldn’t have taken the risk. The dark suits him as much as it does me.

  I edge into the light even so – mainly, ridiculously, because I don’t want my father thinking I’m afraid.

  I catch the outline of his smile, feel his eyes crawl greedily over me. He steps forward and I feel my heels touch the skirting.

  ‘It was kind of you to leave the back door open for me,’ he says. ‘I was half expecting to have to knock. I presume by now you’ve changed the locks?’

  We have. We got someone in the day we emptied out the house. It was a case of horses, stable doors, but there was no way Jack would have let us stay here until it was done.

  With a gloved hand my father pulls out a set of keys from his jacket’s inside pocket. The set of keys, I assume, he got from Evan. ‘I suppose technically these belong to you.’ He tosses them and I let them hit me, let them fall.

  So much for my father being cautious. This time when he steps I catch that circular movement of his thumb and index finger and I realize that, for all his outward calm, the truth is he’s struggling to control himself. Like the way he looked at me when I stepped into the light: there was hunger plain to see in his gaze. It’s hardly surprising. Fourteen years he’s been waiting. I cost him his family, his fortune, his freedom. Regardless of what he might have had planned before he came here, what he most wants to do probably is beat me bloody.

  He moves again, more abruptly this time – and that’s when I pull out the knife.

  And this part: this is something I didn’t expect. I feel the way I imagine he does. With the knife in my hand, all I want to do is start slashing. Because if his anger’s been festering, so has mine. I’ve been picturing this moment since I was nine years old, preparing for it one way or another since the day I was born. I thought I’d exorcized this feeling, banished it, but it turns out it’s stronger now than ever.

  And he sees it, I can tell. He appears encouraged by it. Invigorated, almost. Watching me struggle to control my hatred helps him somehow to contain his.

  He pauses, and I realize that whatever advantage I might have held, I’ve managed to pass it back to him.

  His fingers tap a rhythm against his leg. ‘So that’s why I’m here,’ he says. ‘I did wonder.’

  This time when he moves, he moves sideways. He reaches a hand towards the surface of my dressing table and selects one of the numerous little pots. My face cream, I think. After that he picks up my hairbrush, raises the bristles to his nose. His eyes lock on mine as he breathes in.

  ‘So talk me through it,’ he says, setting the brush down again in exactly the spot it was before. ‘You stab me,’ he says, ‘obviously. Kill me, I’m assuming is your plan. Then – what? Claim self-defence?’

  He’s daring me to answer but I stay silent, watching him as he checks around the room. He notices my phone on the bedside table. It’s just a throwaway, not even a smartphone – a cheap replacement for my broken iPhone. Without breaking eye contact with me, my father moves to pick it up.

  ‘There’s no one listening in, if that’s what you’re wondering,’ I tell him.

  My father raises the phone level with his chin, so that as he checks the call list he can keep watching me. ‘Maybe not,’ he says and I can tell he’s found what he was looking for. ‘But it seems we won’t have quite as long to get reacquainted as I’d hoped.’

  The knife wavers in my hand. I’ve got the cuffs of my sweatshirt pulled down over my palms and I adjust my grip on the handle.

  The movement catches my father’s eye.

  ‘Is that a kitchen knife?’ he asks me, smiling now. He puts the phone back down on the bedside table and moves back to where he was standing before. ‘It doesn’t look very sharp, Maggie. Are you sure it’s up to the job?’

  I glance at the blade. Before it felt as substantial as a broadsword. Now, with my father’s looming form right in front of me, it feels about as threatening as a toothpick.

  ‘I’m surprised you don’t recognize it,’ I say, attempting to ape my father’s tone. ‘It’s the same knife you used to murder Sean Payne. Apparently it was sharp enough for him.’

  My father looks more closely at the blade. His smile broadens. ‘Of course it is. Now how on earth, I wonder, did you manage to get hold of that?’

  The knife quivers again and I bite down to try and stop myself shaking.

  My father’s fiddling with my hairbrush again. He’s growing restless once more, his fingers itching beneath those gloves.

  ‘By the way,’ he says, ‘it was an interesting theory you presented to the police. It’s just a shame they didn’t believe you. That they arrested your boyfriend instead. It’s Jack, isn’t it?’

  I could: I could stab him now, and there’s no reason it wouldn’t work out the way he said it would.

  ‘That must have been hard on you,’ my father goes on. ‘Although I suppose it’s not that surprising. That you should find yourself attracted to violent men. Unless …’ He looks up. ‘Oh Maggie. Oh I see.’ He laughs, genuinely delighted. ‘Oh my goodness, what have I done to you?’ He says it like a boast. As though he’s as pleased with himself as he is with me.

  ‘So this way,’ he says, working it out, ‘it’s murder and attempted murder they convict me of. Posthumously, obviously.’ He nods his head. ‘Very smart,’ he judges. ‘Very poetic.’

  He gives me barely a moment to try and work out what he means. He sets aside the hairbrush and reaches once again into his inside pocket. When he withdraws his hand this time he’s holding a white plastic bottle. He sets it down on my dressing table and turns it so the label is towards me. I can’t read it from where I’m standing but the bottle looks familiar to me from just its shape and colour.

  ‘What exactly am I supposed to do with those?’

  My father slides the bottle of sleeping pills across the dressing table towards me, like a chess player positioning his rook.

  ‘You think I’m going to swallow a load of sleeping pills just because you tell me to?’

  ‘Not because I tell you to,’ my father replies. ‘Because you’re … depressed, let’s say. Because you’re twenty-eight years old and the only man you’ve ever loved is probably going to spend the rest of his life in prison.’

  I flinch at that. I can’t help it.

  ‘Plus,’ my father adds, ‘you always have been a little disturbed. It’s not as though it would be entirely out of character.’

  A car passes in the street outside, its headlights sweeping like a search beam across the room. For a moment I see my father more clearly and what strikes me is that he looks so normal. It’s the thing I’ve always struggled most to comprehend. How on the outside he could look the way he does but on the inside he could be so hideously disfigured.

  ‘Of course, you’ll have to cancel that 999 call you made before I got here. Or at least wait until the police have made themselves scarce.’

  Enough, I tell myself. What are you waiting for? If you’re going to do this, do it.

  ‘It’s a shame really,’ my father says. ‘I was so hoping to stay and watch.’

  My hand tightens around the knife. I try and estimate how much time has passed since I heard my father on the stairs and put in the call to the police. There are no sirens yet but perhaps there won’t be. Although that makes me wonder whether the police are coming at all.

  I start towards my father but stop again when he holds up a finger.

  ‘Before you do
anything rash,’ he says, ‘think for a moment about Jack. I can get to him, Maggie. I’ve got friends who can, thanks to you.’

  My father sees something in my expression that he enjoys.

  ‘What?’ he says. ‘Did you think that by staying away from him you could fool me into thinking you didn’t care about him? Or that you’d stop me from finding out where he was? I know about him, about little Elsie.’

  Again he watches my reaction. Again I fail to conceal it.

  My father looks ostentatiously at his watch. ‘We’re running out of time, Maggie. And you’ve got a choice to make. It’s you or the people you claim to care about.’

  And there it is: my father’s endgame. I always knew he would want to use what I loved against me. I just wasn’t sure until now exactly how.

  I shake my head. ‘You’re forgetting,’ I say. ‘Jack’s not staying in prison. And you can’t get to anyone if you’re dead.’ Because at that moment that’s the way this is heading. That rage inside me I thought I had tethered? It’s coming loose.

  My father shows how afraid he is by stepping towards me. He’s grown. Has he grown? Or is it merely that in his presence I’ve become smaller? I don’t want to but I find myself retreating. The only place for me to go is the narrow space between the wall and the bed.

  ‘You know, your sister was never this obstinate,’ my father says. He stops an outstretched arm’s length away from me. Stabbing distance, just. ‘Jessica never defied me the way you’re doing. When she found herself presented with the choice you have, she made her decision in an instant.’

  The knife is suddenly heavy in my hand. ‘What did you say?’

  My father tips his head. ‘You didn’t know,’ he says, ‘did you? I always wondered whether I’d got through to you.’

  There’s a sense of something churning behind my eyes, like that rush you get when you stand up too quickly. Blood, oxygen, understanding: a swirling cocktail that has me reaching for the wall.