She slumps into a reclining armchair and I’m left with one end of the sofa as Neil takes the other. There’s a pile of unopened cards on the living room table, with a couple on the floor.
‘For Ethan,’ Jo says, answering the question to which I’d already guessed the answer. ‘How are things with the funeral?’ she asks, changing tack so quickly that, at first, I don’t realise she’s talking about my dad.
‘It’s sorted,’ I say. ‘It’s going to be on Friday. Just a small thing. Not many people.’
It doesn’t seem as if Jo has listened. She looks across to Neil and then nods at me. ‘This is Abi,’ she says, holding up her crossed fingers. ‘We were like that at school. Best friends.’
I nod as if to confirm it.
‘This is Neil,’ she says, nodding to the other end of the sofa.
We turn to each other and he squeezes my hand too hard when we shake. The unrelenting eye contact is more unnerving, as if he’s trying to read my thoughts.
‘I’m going to the garage,’ Neil says, talking to me, before turning to Jo. ‘Is that okay?’
‘You don’t need my permission.’
‘I just thought—’
‘Yeah, well, don’t.’
He nods meekly and then disappears out of the room. There’s a clunk and the sound of a door closing. Jo waits for a moment, with the only noise coming from the muffled music above.
‘He’s always tinkering with his car,’ Jo says. ‘He’s banned from driving, but that doesn’t stop him messing around.’
I play along. ‘Why’s he banned?’
‘Because he’s a dickhead.’ Jo spits the word and then rubs her head again. ‘Speeding,’ she adds, calmer this time. ‘Stitch-up job. One of those mobile speed-camera things. All about getting money out of decent folks like you and me.’
‘How fast was he going?’
‘Forty in a thirty.’
‘They banned him for that?’
I know it must only be part of the story. Nobody is banned for a one-time thing unless the speed is really excessive.
Jo turns away a little and, for a moment, I think I’ve asked too much. It’s none of my business and hardly the point, considering her son is currently in intensive care. There’s a large clunk from the other side of the house and it seems to spur Jo into answering.
‘Him and that damned car,’ she says. ‘He’d been caught speeding twice before. I told him to slow down, but then he went and did it again.’ She pauses, then adds, ‘Still a stitch-up job, though. Worst thing is he’s always home now.’
‘Because he can’t drive?’
She shakes her head. ‘Lost his job at Hendo’s before that.’
‘Oh… I heard it might be closing…?’
‘That’s what they say. Got rid of a bunch of managers about four months ago. Neil was the first they let go.’
She says it in a way that makes it sound like I should read something into it. As if there was a reason he went first. It’s not something I feel like I can follow up and we’re interrupted by another clunk from the direction of the garage anyway.
Moments later, Neil reappears in the doorway. ‘Did you do something with my car?’ he asks, sounding annoyed.
‘Like what? I’ve been at the hospital. Why would I do something to your car?’
‘All the mirrors have been moved around.’
‘You can’t drive it anyway. What does it matter? I don’t know why you spend so much time in there with it.’
Neil hovers in the doorway for a moment, staring at Jo. His fists are clenched and, for a moment, it feels like things are about to launch into a full-blown row. He’s on his tiptoes and I wonder if it’s my presence that makes him sink down once more. He nods slowly and then apparently decides he has nothing else to say. He spins and disappears back to the garage, leaving us alone.
Jo is scratching her knuckles again, and even from a distance I can see the red sores starting to form.
‘How could someone drive off?’ she says, more to herself than me. ‘Wait till I get my hands on him. They should bring back hanging. I’d do it myself.’
I let her fume, though it’s hard not to wonder whether it’d be more productive to focus on her son in the hospital than it is on vengeance. I suppose there is no normal in this. It’s not like I have children to know an acceptable way of reacting. Even if I did, everyone is different. It does feel like a big assumption that it’s a ‘him’, though. Perhaps hit-and-run drivers are statistically more likely to be men? I have no idea – but I doubt Jo does either.
‘Can I get a drink?’ I ask, holding up my near empty bottle.
‘There’s vodka in the cupboard,’ Jo replies quickly, pointing towards a cabinet on the back wall.
‘Just water.’
‘There’s a jug in the fridge… or there should be if Neil remembered to fill it up.’
She speaks with such spitting hostility that I wonder if this is always the nature of their relationship, or if what happened to Ethan has brought it on. Or if it’s because Neil lost his job. Anyone would be under stress, but I don’t know her well enough to have any certainty.
‘Do you want anything?’ I ask.
She eyes the cabinet with the vodka but shakes her head.
In the kitchen, I finish the contents of my bottle, rinse it in the sink, and then fill it with water from the fridge. There was a full jug, after all. I can still hear Jo muttering to herself from the other room, though can’t make out the exact words.
I rest against the counter and enjoy the cool drink – which is when I notice the child through the window. He’s in Jo’s back garden, hovering close to the door. He can’t be older than ten, wearing a hoody despite the summer weather, and is staring at his phone. When he looks up and sees me, he blinks, shrinks away in the way anyone would if they were caught somewhere they shouldn’t, and then tucks himself in behind a wheelie bin.
I continue watching as he peeps around the corner. When he sees I haven’t moved, he ducks away once more. He doesn’t leave the garden, however.
I call out for Jo.
‘You all right in there?’ she asks.
‘There’s a kid in your back garden.’
There’s a shuffling from the living room and then Jo hurries into the kitchen. She heads directly for the back door, using the key to unlock it and then standing on the precipice.
‘Petey?’
The boy reappears from behind the bin and heads to the back door. Jo says something to him, but I don’t catch it because she’s lowered her voice. Because of the angle through the window, it’s hard to see precisely what’s happening – although I definitely see Jo reaching into the pocket of her trousers and then passing him something. It’s only when he counts the notes that I realise it’s money. He puts it into his hoody pocket and then passes her something back. She says something else to him and then he turns, risks one more glance towards me through the window, and heads for the back gate.
Jo waits out of sight in the alcove by the back door for a moment. It’s only when Petey is through the gate that she re-emerges into the main area of the kitchen.
‘Find the water all right?’ she asks, with a forced breeziness.
I offer up my bottle to show that I found the fridge and Jo nods through to the living room. I take a couple of steps in that direction and then glance over my shoulder in time to spot her slipping something into the bread bin. It’s hardly a covert military operation, but I don’t think she realises I’ve seen her.
Back in the living room, we revert to our original seats. Jo obviously realises there are unanswered questions, so she pre-empts them. ‘That was Petey,’ she says. ‘Ethan was on his way back from Petey’s house when he got hit. They’re friends.’ She nods upwards. ‘Petey’s sister is Owen’s girlfriend, Beth. Well, I assume they’re going out. He’s never said, but they’re together all the time.’
It does help some of the pieces slot together. When I saw them by the bench last night, Owe
n said he’d been with Beth when Jo was trying to get hold of him after Ethan was hit. It still doesn’t explain what Petey was doing at the back door, nor why Jo gave him money or what she snuck into her bread bin. It’s none of my business, but I’m intrigued.
‘I just want Ethan back home,’ Jo says out of nothing. ‘Where he belongs.’
‘I’m sure everyone at the hospital is doing all they can.’
‘I know…’
She glances towards the vodka cabinet again but says nothing.
‘I’m glad you’re back,’ she says.
‘I, um—’
‘It’ll be like the old days. Remember what we were all like? We practically ran this town.’
‘We were only teenagers.’
‘I know but… me and Holly haven’t been talking that much recently…’
That’s news to me considering I was with Holly earlier – and so was Jo. And because Holly said they were talking about me and the old days ‘the other week’.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
‘Things,’ Jo replies cryptically as she stares into the distance. ‘We were always best friends, though, weren’t we? You and me. It wasn’t the same with Hols.’
I suppose there’s a degree of truth in that Jo and I were friends before we got to know Holly – but it’s the childish way Jo says it that leaves me worrying. I’ve not thought about a ‘best friend’ since I left school.
There’s no chance to follow it up because there’s a momentary blast of music and then footsteps on the stairs. Owen soon appears in the doorway, focusing on his mum.
‘Where’d the police officer go?’ he asks.
‘I sent her home.’
Owen opens his mouth but doesn’t say anything, not at first. He nods along and then tries again. ‘Can I visit Ethan with you in the morning?’
‘They said not too many visitors.’
‘That’s why I’m asking. I want to go.’
‘We’ll see. I don’t want him being crowded.’
Owen nods along glumly.
Holly said her son, Rob, would be off to university soon – and, though Owen must be around the same age, it doesn’t feel as if he’s anywhere near that point in his life. He seems the sort who could still be living here at thirty.
Owen glances to me but says nothing as he steps back into the hall. He’s out of sight when Jo calls after him and he reappears in the doorway.
‘Petey says Beth’s not taking it well…?’ Jo says.
It sounds like a question, though it is hard to know for sure.
Owen purses his lips, considering what’s just been said. ‘Where’d you see Petey?’ he asks.
‘Never you mind.’
There’s a small moment of stand-off before Owen spins and heads out of the room, without answering his mother’s question.
Jo waits until a door closes upstairs. ‘Something’s going on with him,’ she says.
‘Like what?’
A pause and then: ‘Who knows? Something. I hope he’s not got that girl pregnant. That’s the last thing I need.’
Thirteen
I’ve decided to stop kidding myself that the house will ever be anything other than Dad’s. It certainly doesn’t feel like mine, regardless of what it might say on the deed. I wonder if I might have been happier if he’d left it to some charity, like those mad cat women who put their pets in their will. My life was hardly brimming with success away from here – and it isn’t like I had to drop much to return – but I never had the sense of being trapped that I do now. I don’t want the house, but it’s some sort of home when it doesn’t feel as if anywhere else will have me.
I press my forehead to the front door and whisper to myself that all I have to do is put the key into the lock. It’s something I’d do day after day anywhere else, but, here, it feels like an effort. I tell myself I could get back on the bus and leave. I have some savings and don’t desperately need to jump into a job, here or anywhere. Even as the thought appears, I know I won’t disappear a second time. Not right now, in any case. Perhaps it’s because I’m the one who found Ethan, but I suspect it’s more than that. I’m invested and involved again in this place now. Elwood has a way of sinking its claws into the people who come from here, and it doesn’t like to let go.
The key slips easily into the lock and I push open the door. I am only half a step inside when I’m frozen by the gentle undercurrent of Old Spice. It must have been there before, but I’d somehow not noticed. Dad washed with it every day of his life, even back in the period when it was a kitsch brand associated with old blokes. I’m not sure how they managed to repackage it to still be around now, but they did. I can imagine him being delighted when he no longer had to go hunting through pound-shop shelves for end-of-line stock and could instead find it anywhere.
There’s an air freshener on the windowsill and I empty a good quarter of the can into the hallway, backing into the kitchen as I do so. Once properly inside, I go for the liquor case at the back of the living room. I grab another bottle of the knock-off cheap vodka and then head upstairs.
The shower is another ordeal of not wanting to touch anything and somehow feeling unclean, even when I’m directly under the water. This whole room needs to be ripped out and replaced with literally anything that isn’t this. A leaking pipe would be better than the current state of things.
I stop outside my father’s bedroom door again and try to make myself go inside. It’ll have to happen sooner or later – although ‘later’ definitely seems like a better option for the moment. For the ‘sooner’, that bottle of vodka has my name on it.
Despite the situation, there is something delightfully satisfying about drinking vodka straight from the bottle while sitting in my childhood bed, covered with my childhood Garfield bedding. I don’t even bother getting undressed and, before I know it, I’m pressed into the corner giggling to myself.
I own a house outright!
My dad’s funeral is in two days!
I’m back home after twenty years!
I’ve spent much of the day with my old best friends!
It’s only when I remember Ethan in that ditch that I stop sniggering to myself.
I have another sip from the bottle as a pipe clangs overhead. When I was a girl, the noisy central heating would wake me up in the night. I was convinced there was a burglar in the attic and would lie awake for hours. Each time I almost fell back to sleep, there would be another clink and I’d end up staring at the ceiling, wondering what might be coming.
Imaginary burglars were the least of my worries, of course.
From nowhere, I start to yawn. One becomes two becomes ten. Yawns are like chocolate Hobnobs: one is never enough. I rest my head on the pillow and close my eyes, listening as the pipes continue to chime a melody that might usually be associated with a hyperactive kid who has a set of saucepans and a wooden spoon. Unlike in those years before, it’s calming. Comforting company in a place where nothing and yet everything feels familiar.
When I next check my phone, it’s a little after one in the morning. Two hours have passed in a blink. The pipes are silent, but when I close my eyes again, there’s something there. A sort of… scratching.
I sit up and open my eyes properly. I’ve not closed the curtains and, though it’s dark outside, the glow of the street lights from the back of the house is sending an orangey haze across the room. When I swing myself out of bed, my foot slips across the empty bottle that’s lying on its side. It rolls under the bed and tinkles into something.
The scratching continues… but it might be more of a tapping. Perhaps someone knocking gently on the window next to the front door? There’s a gap of a few seconds in between each noise. It’s only as I slip into my shoes that it occurs to me it might not be someone tapping on the window, it might be someone trying to open a window.
I peep through the glass down to the garden below. I’ve not been out there since returning and it’s more of a forest than a yard. The grass
is up to around waist height and it’s unclear where that ends and the line of hedges at the back begins. There’s a path somewhere, but it would barely be visible, even if it wasn’t for the murky mix of moon and street light.
The noise is back – definitely a mix of scratching and tapping. It’s not coming from the pipes above, it’s from below.
I suppose the obvious thing to do is turn on some lights and make a noise, but I’m not sure if I’ve ever been the obvious type. Instead, I creep onto the landing and start down the stairs. A cricket bat is leaning in the corner of the stairwell, a reminder that Dad did once used to play. Or so he said – he never did so when I was old enough to understand. All his glories were before I came along to ruin everything. I grab the bat and continue down to the ground floor, pausing in the hall and waiting until…
Scritch-scritch-scritch.
It’s not coming from the front of the house.
I inch open the kitchen door and creep into the darkness. The blinds are drawn here, though I don’t remember closing them. Dim light edges through the slats, leaving a lattice pattern across the tiled floor. The sink is still filled with dishes and, as best I can tell, everything else is as it was.
The door to the living room is open and I duck my head inside, looking from one end to the other, although there’s nothing new to see. It’s as I move back into the kitchen that something passes across the window. The light that’s splayed across the floor is momentarily blacked out by whatever’s on the other side of the window.
Scritch-scritch-scritch.
I can’t figure out what the noise might be. It’s definitely not someone knocking. I can’t remember whether the window was closed and don’t think I noticed in the first place anyway. The weather has been warm, so there’s every chance it’s been ajar since before the time I arrived. If it is a little open, it could be someone trying to lever it wider.
I move quickly across the floor, not bothering to be quiet now. The key is already in the back door, but I fumble by turning it the wrong way at first, before finally getting the door open. There’s a small porch area, which is filled with a stack of buckets, two ladders, a rusted barbecue and all sorts of other clutter. By the time I get past all that, I know it’s too late. There’s a rustling from the far end of the garden, a flurry of movement among the shadows near the back gate and then a distant scrape of footsteps on crumbling tarmac.
The Child Across the Street: An unputdownable and absolutely gripping psychological thriller Page 7
