The Child Across the Street: An unputdownable and absolutely gripping psychological thriller

by Kerry Wilkinson

  I look up to the house, but there’s a blinking red dot in the corner of my vision and my legs suddenly feel like they can’t hold me up any longer. I fumble with the key, scratching around the lock and probably scarring the door itself until I eventually bundle myself into the house. I slam the door and lock it, before rushing through to the kitchen. Sweat is pouring from my head, jabbing into my eyes with stinging tendrils. Trying to rub it away only makes it worse.

  It’s only as I go to drink from it that I realise my bottle is no longer in my hand. I reach for it on the side, but it isn’t there either.

  There’s nothing quite like that moment of panic when reaching for something like keys or a phone and realising it isn’t there. I must have left my bottle in the pub.

  I start for the front door again, but then remember the pub was closing as I was leaving. It’s only a bottle – and Holly spilled the contents anyway – but it feels like more.

  I’ve closed my eyes at some point and, when I open them again, I see my phone number on the fridge. Perhaps it’s that and the thought that my father died here alone, or maybe it’s the loss of my bottle. One thing should be more important than the other – but I’m not sure it is. Either way, there are tears rolling down my face and a sinking, longing in my chest that feels like it might never fully be gone.

  Twenty-Nine

  SATURDAY

  I wake in my own bed, though my lower back and neck aches from having contorted myself into some sort of coiled position. I’m way too old for all this. The curtains at the back of the room are open and light bursts across the floor. My mouth is dry, with a bitter, earthy taste lingering. The jingly jangle of ‘Greensleeves’ sounds from somewhere outside, though it takes me a few seconds to realise it must be coming from an ice cream van.

  At some point last night, I took off all my clothes, put myself to bed and plugged in my phone to charge. I remember none of it – but then I’m a good drunk.

  My phone says it’s Saturday and after midday. It’s the day of the fete and town life is continuing without my father and without Ethan.

  I head onto the landing, past my father’s door, and into the bathroom. I wince every time I see the state of the place, but it’s this or nothing. I brush my teeth and shower, then get dressed and head downstairs. The sink filled with dishes is testament to the truth that I’m never going to do anything about cleaning the house. There’s a somewhat childish instinct of it not being my mess to begin with – but there’s also the fact that I simply don’t want to do it. It’s one of the great underrated benefits of being an adult that, if you don’t want to do something, you can simply say no.

  Next to Dad’s newspaper stack is a pile of phone books going back at least a decade. I don’t touch them, but it does give me the idea to Google local home clearance. I call the first company listed, something called AAA Trash Bang Wallop. It’s answered on the second ring by a man who sounds like he’s in the middle of doing something else while talking. He introduces himself as Gav.

  ‘Do you clear entire houses?’ I ask.

  Gav replies with a laugh and ‘every day’.

  ‘How much does it cost?’

  ‘Depends on the house. Depends on the contents.’

  ‘My dad died. There’s so much he left. If you leave the appliances, you can keep more or less anything you want.’

  The sound is muffled for a moment as Gav says something away from the speaker. When he talks again, there’s unquestionably more enthusiasm in his tone.

  ‘Anything?’ he asks.

  ‘I just want it gone.’

  ‘How about Monday?’

  ‘Perfect.’

  He takes my address, wishes me a belated sorry for my loss, and then hangs up.

  Little things can make such a difference. Nothing has changed, not really, and yet the short conversation makes me feel like I’ve achieved something. As soon as the clearance guy has been, I’ll contact some deep cleaners – and then the house will go up for sale. That’s it. The Coyle family – and me especially – will officially be done with Elwood.

  I fill a mug with water and drink it down, watching my fingers tremble as I hold the cup. I’m on a second mugful when I realise I’m not missing my bottle. It was almost an extension of me for a while but, now the funeral is done, perhaps it wasn’t about me after all.

  It feels like a waste to be inside today, so I find my shoes and head out. Upbeat pop music hangs in the air and I follow it around the corner, along Beverly Close, past Ethan’s blanket of tributes, and onto the park.

  The stalls are all along the far side of the green and, with the big marquee at the High Street end, this side is free for people to claim their patch of England. There’s a dad playing cricket with his sons over near the trees. Three short stumps have been jammed into the ground and I watch as he smashes the ball back over one of the children’s heads, before setting off to run to another stump and back again. He completes five runs before the boys manage to get the ball back – and then he doubles over, trying to get his breath.

  Around the rest of the park, families, couples and groups of young people have laid down blankets, camp chairs or clothes to mark their territory. I weave around six or seven sunbathing teenage girls who’ve set up their encampment on top of their towels. A similar-sized group of teenage boys are a short distance away, watching the girls, while half-heartedly kicking around a football.

  I continue on towards the stalls, stepping around a family of four who have cracked open a picnic basket and are passing around a plastic tub of cocktail sausages. On past them, and I’m two-thirds of the way across the park when everything stops. It’s like someone’s pressed pause. The trees aren’t swaying, people are standing still, the music is mute… except that’s not what’s happening. Everyone else is continuing to move and it’s me who’s paralysed.

  I’ve gone back in time as the sickly-sweet smell of candyfloss drifts across from the row of stalls. The memory appears from nowhere of a summer fete here with Mum, Dad and me. The three of us were on a blanket over near the trees, sitting and waiting for the late-night fireworks. Dad bought me candyfloss and we walked across the park together, to get back to where Mum was waiting on the blanket for us.

  It must’ve been thirty years ago. More – but, all of a sudden, it feels like it’s now. When I think of family, I never think of happiness. The two things are opposites… and yet I suppose we were happy at one point.

  Everything speeds up again and I blink back to the now. There’s a big wheel next to the stalls that hasn’t stopped turning. A bouncy castle next to that, on which kids continue to bump around. Over near the marquee, someone’s lugging a giant marrow or cucumber inside, ready to be judged.

  I’m thrown by the memory, wondering whether it’s real, or if I’ve concocted it myself. I turn away from the direction of the candyfloss and start to move towards the man playing cricket with his boys and it’s as I’m getting my bearings that I almost walk into Jo.

  I don’t recognise her at first, mainly because of the large sunglasses that encompass half her face. It’s only the people around her that make me notice. There is the same reporter who was talking to Kevin in the pub yesterday, along with a small phalanx of women. There are six people in total, with no sign of Neil or Owen.

  ‘Ethan loved the bouncy castle,’ Jo says, speaking with a volume that’s above what she would need to be heard by the reporter. He is at her side, holding his phone out towards her. ‘I told him I’d get him one for his next birthday party.’

  ‘Do you come to the fete every year?’ the reporter asks.

  ‘I’ve never missed one,’ Jo says. ‘Even when I was a girl, Mum would never book holidays for this week.’

  ‘And you’ve lived here your whole life?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Jo and her entourage are almost past me when she stops and notices. ‘Oh my God!’ she exclaims. ‘This is my best friend, Abi.’

  Before I can move, she has her arms ar
ound me. Her skin is clammy and hot and, when she pulls away, her gaze is unfocused. It’s the opposite of how she was with Diane.

  ‘He’s writing a story about me,’ Jo says, turning to the reporter. She sounds so much more excited than she should.

  ‘More about Ethan,’ the reporter says.

  He narrows his eyes, trying to place me, but not quite able to. The train of women around him who’ve been following Jo all look at me with suspicion that I might be about to steal their apparent fame. I don’t know any of them and I doubt there’s a single one who’s older than thirty. At least one is young enough to be Jo’s daughter.

  ‘Remember when we were kids?’ Jo says to me. ‘On fete day, there used to be one of those slides with all the bumps on the way down. We’d try to run up it and then slide back down. You, me and Holly.’

  The reporter seems uninterested in this, but Jo doesn’t realise as she turns to him and points towards the bouncy castle. ‘It was right there.’

  ‘I remember,’ I say, which isn’t true, although there seems no point in getting hung up on it.

  Jo isn’t listening anyway as she half talks to the reporter – ‘It was her dad’s funeral yesterday’ – then to me: ‘How was it?’

  The way everyone including the reporter angles away from me makes it clear that it’s only Jo who doesn’t pick up on my unease.

  ‘It was what it was,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, darling…’

  She puts her arm around me once more, but she’s even hotter now. There is sweat pooling around her hairline and a small damp patch seeping through the navel area of her top.

  ‘How’s Ethan?’ I ask.

  She glances to the reporter and raises her voice slightly. ‘I spent three hours with him this morning. I’ll be going back after this. I just wanted to come to the fete and see what it was like. For him really. I’ll tell him about it later.’

  ‘But how is he?’

  She almost shrugs. I see her arms tense, but then she catches herself. ‘No change.’

  Before I can ask anything else, a young woman appears at my side. She’s around twenty, in a short dress – with a boyfriend standing a little further away, watching us awkwardly.

  ‘Excuse me,’ the woman says. ‘Are you Ethan’s mum?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jo replies.

  The woman giggles nervously and then speaks at a pace that’s so quick, it sounds like a foreign language at first. ‘I was just saying to my boyfriend that it was you. I saw you on the TV yesterday with Diane Young. She’s amazing, isn’t she? You were amazing. Gosh, poor Ethan. How is he? How are you? I hope he gets well soon. And that they catch the driver. Have you heard anything? Not that you could tell me if you had, of course. Oh, God, I can’t believe it’s you.’

  It takes a moment for everything to sink in, but, by the time anyone has understood what she’s saying, the woman has held up her phone.

  ‘Could I get a pic?’

  Jo seems momentarily confused, but then breaks into a smile. ‘Sure.’

  The women pose together, each giving a thumbs-up for the camera before the picture-taker steps away with another burst of thank yous. If it wasn’t for her boyfriend, she’d have almost certainly latched onto the group.

  I feel out of breath having only watched the interaction, but Jo is already set to move on.

  ‘I’ll show you the big wheel,’ she says to the reporter, while needlessly pointing towards it. ‘Ethan went on it last year.’

  Jo takes a step away and then nods back to me.

  ‘Come on,’ she adds, leaving me little option other than to join the ever-growing crowd.

  I have no idea from which publication the reporter comes, nor what he’s supposed to be writing, but I can tell from the attention he’s paying that he hadn’t come for a tour of every mundane part of Elwood’s Summer Fete.

  Jo leads us around the field, pointing out everything from a tree under which she once had a sandwich, to an old toilet block where Ethan is forbidden to go. All the while, people continue to approach, partly to ask after Ethan – but also to have their moment with the woman who was on TV the day before. I wonder what the reporter is making of it. It would be hard to miss that Jo is a person who is enjoying the attention a little too much.

  After a slow lap of the park, we end up close to the flowers that are marking the spot where I found Ethan. Jo talks and talks, and it’s hard not to wince when she says she wishes people had donated money instead of the flowers. The reporter asks what she means and she tries to right the moment by saying Ethan didn’t like flowers – though I fear the damage is done. I know what she meant and I suspect the reporter does too. Whether he’ll write that is another question.

  It’s not long before he says he has to go, and Jo replies she needs to get back to the hospital. Over the course of the walk, the group of women have dissipated back to wherever they came – and, at the mention of hospital, the final one drifts back towards the main area of the park as well. As the reporter heads onto the back streets, it leaves just Jo and myself next to the flowers.

  ‘A photographer was round this morning to take pictures,’ Jo says. ‘He came to the house and then the hospital. I think it’s going to be a big piece in the weekend magazine.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ I say, not knowing how else to reply.

  She turns in a circle. ‘Can’t remember where I parked the car. I’ve got to get going.’

  She eventually decides her car is over towards the bus station and hurries away while looking at her phone. I watch her go and then realise it isn’t only me who’s keeping an eye on her. Off to the side, half hidden behind a lamp post, is her other son. She walked past him without noticing.

  When Owen realises I’ve clocked him, he turns to walk away, only stopping when I call his name.

  ‘How’s your brother?’ I ask when I get to him.

  Owen’s typing something into his phone and takes his time to look up: ‘Didn’t Mum tell you?’

  ‘She said she’d been at the hospital – but not how Ethan was.’ Owen rolls his eyes and I quickly add: ‘I think she has a lot on her mind at the moment.’

  Owen snorts at this. ‘Yeah…’ He seems to catch himself and adds: ‘Nobody seems to care how Ethan’s doing. He’s not getting worse, but he’s not getting better. They said these things can turn in a second. Like, one minute he’s on the machine like he is and then he’s fine.’ Owen clicks his fingers to make the point.

  ‘Your mum seems…’

  ‘Up and down. I know.’

  ‘What about Neil?’

  ‘What about him?’

  I think about playing it straight and asking how he’s been coping with Ethan in hospital and Jo’s mood swings. Instead, without planning it, I go for broke. ‘I heard he might be driving, even though he’s banned…?’

  Owen doesn’t reply at first. He glances down to the phone in his hand again and then looks sideways towards where a couple are heading off into the trees.

  ‘I’ve never seen that,’ he says.

  ‘But you’ve heard it…?’

  There’s another gap as Owen sucks on his teeth, weighing up a reply or, perhaps, deciding whether to reply at all.

  ‘Neil didn’t hit Ethan,’ Owen says.

  ‘How do you know?’

  Owen’s phone dings and he looks sideways again. This time, instead of the disappearing couple, Beth is standing by herself in a floaty, long green dress with her phone in her hand.

  ‘I have to go,’ Owen says.

  He doesn’t wait for a reply, rushing across to Beth before they both turn to walk away together.

  Beth stops for a second to look over her shoulder, perhaps wondering if I’m following. When it’s clear I’m not, she turns back and continues at Owen’s side. They’re not holding hands, or acting like a couple might – but I suppose that doesn’t mean much. Some couples can’t keep their hands off one another in public; others act as if they’re complete strangers.

  Moments lat
er, they’re swallowed by the crowd and out of sight.

  It’s only when they’re gone that I realise that, while he was talking to me, Owen was texting Beth to come and save him.

  The exact reason is unclear – except, of course, that I know both Owen and Beth are lying about where he was at the time Ethan was hit.

  Thirty

  I almost forget that I’ve not really spent any time exploring the fete itself. The tour with Jo and the reporter was more point and look. When I was a child, my least favourite aspect was the food judging that happened in the giant marquee. This was mainly because I couldn’t understand why I wasn’t allowed to taste the food. How was I supposed to know one piece of fruit was better than another if I was unable to try it myself?

  It could be proof I’ve grown up, but I find myself in the tent at the same time as they’re announcing the results of this year’s ‘best carrot’. An older woman whoops and punches the air as they announce she’s the champion. She then rushes to the stage to collect a rosette. It’s probably the most British thing I’ve ever seen.

  On a loop of the tent, I spot a first-prize rosette on the biggest parsnip I could have imagined, wonder how on earth someone gets interested in growing beetroots and cucumbers, and then park myself close to the cheeses. Carrots are one thing – but cheese is something with which I can get on board.

  The serenity of the moment is lost with the sound of shouting from the other side of the display. I follow the voices until I get to a small semicircle of people underneath a large banner that reads ‘Sponsored by Hendo’s’. There’s a mix of people hanging around close to rows of breads off to the side – and I can’t figure out what’s happening at first. There’s a tall man in a suit who stands out simply because he’s so overdressed compared to everyone else’s summer clothes. He’s standing upright, with his arms defensively across his front as Neil squares up to him.

  ‘You’re spending money on this?’ Neil gives it the full finger point as his words slur drunkenly into one another.