In Spite: A terrifying psychological thriller with a shocking twist you won't see coming

by Collette Heather

  If it’s so great, then why did you move away, the first chance you got? I think, but don’t say.

  I feel that it would be disrespectful to his parents’ memory to contradict him, as they only died two years ago. Lung cancer took his mother and a heart attack his father. They died mere months apart.

  I have often wondered, over the years, why Marks’ parents saw fit to stay in Broadgate, why they were so attached to the place. They were educated, bright, mostly kind people, even if they did possess a certain cool detachment towards their only child. Andrew – Mark’s father – was a Social Science Professor at Canterbury University, and used to argue that children had to make their own decisions in life, coming down firmly on the side of nature, rather than nurture. He believed that a personality was largely set at birth, and, short of abuse, nothing would derail that person from becoming what they were supposed to be, sooner or later. He did believe that a decent education would give them a head start in life, however, so Mark went to the best boarding school in the country, his argument being that he would evolve into his true self ‘sooner’ rather than ‘later’.

  Mark’s mother wasn’t the warmest person either, although she was kind to my mother, and they struck up the most unlikely of friendships. I never took her to her, though, and didn’t really have much to do with her after my mother passed away seven years ago of Emphysema during a horrific bout of Pneumonia, having been a heavy smoker all her life.

  “Look, Claire, I have to go. So, I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Or maybe not, probably the day after.”

  His casualness causes me further pain. “Yeah. I guess so.”

  “I cannot wait for you to meet her. Take care, okay? Bye.”

  He hangs up before I even have a chance to respond. I remove the smartphone from my ear, and stare stupidly down at it, my heart physically aching.

  The truth is, the not-so-deep-down reason I hang on here in this godforsaken town is on the off-chance that Mark will finally notice me on one of his rare visits, and we will then live together happily ever after.

  But clearly, the chances of that happening are now smaller than ever.

  “It’s just you and me, isn’t boy?” I say to Bertie, my elderly, Yorkshire Terrier who is sleeping in his basket by the patio doors. Not even he is paying me any attention because he’s had his morning walk, and he’s been fed and watered.

  Sadness descends over me, because right then, I really do feel that I am going to die alone and lonely.

  Oh, why doesn’t he love me?

  TWO

  Later That Day

  I like this time of the year. I am tired by the time Autumn rocks around and I am glad for the respite. Off season is definitely my best season. By now, I am sick of the smell of frying bacon that seeps into my very pores. I am sick of waiting around for bookings that never show and I am sick of the demanding – and at times flat-out obnoxious, arrogant and disgusting – guests.

  Some people are nice enough, I suppose, but it’s safe to say that the majority aren’t. I guess I’m not really much of a people-person, which, as the proprietor of a guesthouse, puts me squarely in the wrong trade.

  But now, as I lay in Mark Patterson’s double bed in his darkened bedroom, the curtains drawn against the low evening sun, I am happy. And I am happy because Mark is coming home. God, I haven’t seen him in so long, not since Christmas. I miss him so much. His absence is a constant, aching hole in my heart, an empty void of longing that only his quirkily handsome, most cherished face can fill.

  And maybe this time he’s missed me, too. Maybe these ten months away from me have made him realise that he has been in love with me his whole life and has only just realised it…

  Yeah, right. But a girl can always dream, can’t she? Besides, it would seem that someone else has well and truly got her claws into him now.

  Sighing, I sit up on the bed, gazing around the darkened room. The décor has remained untouched for the best part of twenty-one years. When I say untouched, I mean it hasn’t changed in style, but it has had touch-ups here and there. A fresh lick of paint. The damp and mould seen to. Regular cleaning and airing.

  Most of Mark’s stuff has long gone from this room. There was never much of Mark in this room, anyway, seeing as he spent almost the entirety of his adolescence at boarding school, only coming home for holidays. There is even less of him in here now. But I can still feel him, the ghost of the boy he used to be.

  As a child, he never got the chance to put his personal stamp on his bedroom, as he was very rarely in it. As such, the room has always been very grown-up in tone. The walls are whitewashed, the floorboards bare, the furniture sturdy, beautifully restored pieces that are at least one-hundred years old. At least his dark blue, zigzag duvet still adorns the bed. I wash it every few weeks or more, alternating it with his other, childhood duvet covers, depending on how often I have been lying on it. It is the only bit of the room that even hints that a teenaged boy may have once resided in here.

  I could stay here for hours more yet – I often do – but I need to get back. Mark is coming home tomorrow, I remind myself, my stomach lurching in excitement. And, as such, I must spend the night preparing. Not his house, or my own, but myself. I look a mess, I decide. It’s small wonder he’s never fancied me.

  He usually goes for statuesque brunettes with more than a hint of the exotic, and I am a pear-shaped, vertically-challenged, dishwater blonde. I have recently lightened my fine, shoulder-length hair, but I can’t say that I now suddenly feel like a blonde bombshell. Also, my pale complexion is all-but allergic to the sun’s rays. In fact, I think I am allergic. I just have to look at the sun and I break out in a heat rash and start blistering. My skin is almost transparent, which, I suppose, is fitting, because I am completely invisible in the romantic sense to the only man I have ever loved.

  I stand up and catch sight of my reflection in the full-length mirror on the dark wardrobe door. I am as pale as a ghost, my face plain and mournful. I am not wearing any makeup today, and I fancy that right then I look much older than my thirty-five years. I wouldn’t say that I am ugly, per se, but my features are bland. My eyes – the same shade of pale blue as Mark’s – are perhaps my most striking feature, but that’s not saying much. There is nothing remarkable about them; they aren’t too wideset, close together, or especially large. My nose is short and kind of puddingy, my lips quite thin, yet with a slightly protruding bottom lip, giving me the appearance of a constant state of petulance when my face is in repose. My jawline is narrow, my cheekbones flat and my forehead large, which I disguise with a wispy fringe – the fringe only being wispy because I don’t have any choice in the matter, it is just the way my hair is. There is a bland softness about my face, a lack of definition that makes me feel very ordinary. Occasionally, some kind men have described my face as delicate and ethereal, as possessing an endearing childlike quality – but I think they were only being kind because they were horny that day and figured they’d had a chance of bedding me.

  Invariably, they figured wrong, for I only have eyes for Mark.

  I wander out into the hallway, keen to get away from my dreary reflection, my footsteps inordinately loud to my own ears in the long and wide hallway. Mark’s house – or rather, Mark’s dead parents’ house, is only two doors down from mine. All the houses along Grange Road are three-stories and Edwardian. My place is a six-bedroomed Bed and Breakfast with separate living accommodation for me downstairs, the size of which equates to the equivalent of a small, one-bedroomed flat that occupies a good portion of the downstairs floor. The Patterson’s place is four-bedroomed, but that’s only because Mark’s folks renovated the house and they knocked through two of the bedrooms.

  It is also a hell of a lot grander. Out in the hallway, the floor is the same gleaming dark oak that runs through the entirety of the house, save for the downstairs hallway which is comprised of black and white tiles. A chandelier hangs from the high ceiling – there are chandeliers everywhere
in this house, apart from in Mark’s old bedroom and the room he now uses as a studio.

  All the houses along Grange Road were built with sweeping staircases, and Mark’s is especially exquisite. The steps of my staircase at home are pale wood, the bannister simple in design and painted white. But in Mark’s house, the steps have been stripped back to the original stone and gleam as if lit from within, looking more like they should belong in The Tate Modern, rather than an ordinary home. I also remember, when I had been ten to Mark’s eleven, his parents had installed the beautiful, elaborately-carved, wrought-iron bannister that had cost more than my mum made in a year with The Atlantic View.

  But I ignore the beginning of the grand, sweeping staircase, my feet instead instinctively carrying me to the largest room on this second floor – the room which Mark uses as a studio.

  Large bay windows are situated at both ends of the room, one side of which overlooks the main road and the ocean. He says that he likes this knocked-through room for painting in because it offers the best natural light in the house.

  I think I like being in Mark’s studio even more than I like being in Mark’s bedroom. I feel like there is more of him in here. Okay, so he hasn’t been in here for ten months now, but the large, whitewashed space is still crammed with his paintings. They are oils, mostly, unframed and stacked up against the walls. I love the messy workbenches and paint-splattered easels, the plastic containers crammed with tubes of paints and the vast array of coffee jars stuffed full of paintbrushes of various sizes.

  The majority of his work is in his main studio in London, but there are still one-hundred-and-seven paintings in this room, most of them large. Yes, I have counted them. The bulk of these paintings are of his now trademark scenes, consisting of mostly abandoned and disused buildings – factories and warehouses and the like. He has become known as the Urban Wasteland Guy, and his work fetches five figures.

  I flick on the overhead, fluorescent strip-lighting and wander over to the largest stack of paintings by the bay window – a window whose transparent white curtains are drawn against the darkening sky. I peel back one of the curtains and gaze out over the Atlantic.

  It is a clear evening, and not a single cloud or breath of wind stirs the sky. Despite it only being eight o’clock, the stars are bright – much brighter than usual. My gaze is drawn to the thin slither of moon hanging low over the calm ocean. In fact, I don’t think that I have ever seen Broadgate sea so calm. It is positively eerie, the way the ocean is so flat and motionless, and I feel as if I am looking at one of Mark’s paintings, or a photograph.

  It is then that I hear the strangest noise and I spin around guiltily on the spot, deeply startled, even though I have every right to be here. I concede, perhaps I shouldn’t be here in quite this capacity, as in, just aimlessly wandering around and daydreaming about the only man I have ever loved, but technically I am airing the place.

  I stand stock still, straining my ears, but that weird clunking noise doesn’t come again.

  It’s just the heating, I tell myself. Mark pays me to come into his home to keep an eye on things. This involves a spot of hoovering, dusting, airing – which I am doing now – washing soft furnishings if they start to smell fusty, and putting the heat on, as necessary. This I have been doing a lot the past few weeks as the days are growing significantly chillier with winter approaching. And that clanking noise had to be the heating – just the pipes readjusting to being on again after the summer hiatus…

  I tell myself this, but a chill has settled over me. There’s no getting away from it – I’ve gone and thoroughly spooked myself.

  I shrug off the strange feeling and decide that it’s probably time I went home.

  THREE

  Third Quarter or Last Quarter

  On the day of the Third Quarter Phase, the moon will rise around midnight on the eastern horizon and set in the west around noon the next day. In the days following the Third Quarter Phase, the Moon’s illumination will decrease each day until the New Moon.

  8th October

  It’s six p.m. and there’s still no sign of him. He said in our brief exchange of messages this morning that he intends to arrive in Broadgate around early evening today, rather than tomorrow. Also, he has invited me to dinner tomorrow night to meet Holly. He is unlikely to knock on my door tonight, I do know this, but I’ve still made a monumental effort with my appearance, just in case.

  In fact, I feel like Miss bloody Havisham, eternally – and fruitlessly – waiting at the window for the love of my life, dressed in my finery.

  Not that what I’m wearing is exactly finery, but it’s smart, for me. I have on my favourite, knee-length, red and black flowery skirt, flared at the hemline in the manner of a 1950s skirt, as all my skirts and dresses are because I’m conscious of my sturdy hips and bottom. I’m not fat by any means – I’m a svelte, size six to eight up top with a nicely-shaped, B cup chest that I’m secretly quite happy with, but I’m a good size twelve from the hips down. Because of this most annoying, stereotypical, English pear shape, I like to wear tight tops to show off my small waist, and wide skirts to disguise my hips – it’s how you’ll usually find me dressed.

  “Come on Mark,” I mutter. “Where are you?”

  Bertie, who is curled up on his bone-patterned blanket on the blue cloth sofa opposite makes a funny, woofing grunting sound that sounds more like a grumbling old man talking to himself than a dog.

  “I know, he’s late.”

  Sighing heavily, I let the slat of the pale, beechwood blind snap back into place, and flop into the comfortable, faded, Laura Ashley armchair in the bay window. Seeing as it feels like I spend half my life staring out this window to keep an eye on my ever-ringing doorbell, especially in the summer months, I figured that I may as well make my little spying corner comfortable.

  As soon as my backside connects with the seat, I hear a car pull up and I spring to my feet, heart hammering against my sternum.

  But it isn’t him; it’s just a random, parking car. I don’t recognise the older woman who emerges from the blue Fiat – Grange Road is a long street, and lots of people come and go. In total, there are one-hundred-and-fifty, large, Edwardian houses on this main road into Broadgate overlooking the ocean.

  Broadgate isn’t exactly a thriving metropolis, and this is the beginning of winter, but a car still whooshes by every few seconds in the rain on this damp, dark evening.

  Feeling distinctly jittery, I sit back down again, ready to spring into action should I hear a car parking…

  I gaze forlornly around my living room – or bedsit, as I like to think of it. Technically, at this time of the year, I could spread out into one of the six guest bedrooms arranged over the top two floors of this three-storied house. But I never do. I am settled in here, and it would be too much hassle to move. When I was growing up, my mum had done what I’m doing now, sleeping in the living room while I had taken one of the bedrooms on the top floor.

  Anyway, it looks okay in here, and I happen to like it. The simple, pale-blue sofa is my pull-out bed, and on the far wall opposite the window in which I sit are two doors – one for the en-suite bathroom, and the other a large cupboard that has been converted into a walk-in wardrobe, which is also where I stash my bedding. I guess it looks pleasant in here because there is no attached kitchenette – I always eat in the kitchen, even when I have guests.

  Like the rest of the house, the room is bright and cheerful. I love bright colours and simplicity. The floorboards throughout the house are the palest beechwood, and I have a thing for plain, but brightly-coloured walls. In here, the walls are sunshine yellow. On these yellow walls are sunny, bright, abstract oils, most of which have been painted by Mark especially for the B and B, free of charge. Now that he’s such a raging success, I guess I can always sell them if I fall on hard times. Not that I ever would sell them, for these paintings mean the word to me. They are all bright, abstract oils depicting the ocean, some with jolly little, white-sailed boa
ts in the distance on the waves.

  A swirling, yellow and blue rug draws the room nicely together, or so I think anyway. I fancy that the place has a beachy, almost Scandinavian vibe to it, partly because every piece of furniture I own is painted white. The décor is a far cry from when my mum, Felicity, was alive and everything about The Atlantic View was a lot darker, old-fashioned and dowdier.

  My ears prick up when I hear the purr of an engine beyond the window, and the wet crunch of the wheels slowing on the rain-soaked road.

  Someone is parking.

  Instantly, my heart is hammering afresh, and my mouth is sucked dry of all moisture. I jump to my feet, circling around the white-painted, little round table in the window next to the armchair, so I can peer out of the righthand pane of the bay window.

  To my left, in just over half a mile, the town of Broadgate begins, in that, the ratio of shops to houses becomes more shop and less house. The gently sloping cliff that Grange Road is built upon flattens out and Broadgate Sands appears, behind which is the typically sleazy – or eclectic perhaps – selection of British seafront shops and arcades.

  Mark is arriving from the right.

  I watch the car parking on the street, two doors down from me. I am not immediately sure if it’s him, for the car’s headlights are on, shining in my window and throwing the details of the car’s body into shadows. Plus, the vehicles parked in front are obscuring my view.

  But it sure looks like him, as the car has a slightly higher roof than the other cars. It feels like the damn car is just parking there for an eternity, engine running, windscreen wipers going, headlights on. After an age, the engine is killed and the lights go black and sure enough, it is most definitely Mark’s light-blue Citroen Berlingo.

  The driver’s door opens during a break in the traffic, and my heart is slamming painfully hard in my chest. Out climbs the unmistakable form of Mark, and I stare in rapt attention through the tiniest chink in the blinds, drinking in the sight of his familiar, gangly body as he hurries around the front of the car to the pavement.