The Glass House

by Eve Chase

  ‘Questions, questions.’ She lurches forward. ‘Who are you?’

  I back away, shocked by the pent-up aggression in the woman’s scrunched face. The urge to run away is overwhelming. I glance at the door. I’d be out of here in three springy steps. ‘I was found …’ I begin, struggling to say it out loud to a stranger after a lifetime of being unable to talk about it even with close friends. The words dry in my mouth. ‘As a baby …’ I try again. It doesn’t work.

  ‘What? Didn’t catch that?’ She puts a hand behind one huge ear, bending the pink flesh towards me.

  ‘Sylvie.’ I burrow back to a safer place. ‘I’m Sylvie Broom. My mother used to work for a local family, the Harringtons, as a nanny, one summer many years ago. Her name’s Rita. Rita Murphy.’

  Marge’s face changes before my eyes: it’s like a cupboard door opening and everything tumbling out. ‘Gordon Bennett. Not Big Rita?’ she wheezes.

  ‘I’ve not heard her called that.’ The name makes me smile. Growing up, I loved having a giantess as a mother. It made me feel safe. ‘She’s pretty tall, though.’

  ‘Well I never.’ Marge sits back in her chair, aghast. Two scones arrive, jam and cream dolloped on the side. She stares at the plate, as if they’ve dropped there from outer space.

  ‘So you know her.’

  She nods dumbly.

  ‘Don’t tell me you were the housekeeper?’ I say, half joking. ‘At Foxcote Manor?’

  Her eyes agitate in their sockets. She opens her mouth to say something, then thinks better of it. She was. She bloody well was, I think.

  My blood whooshes in my ears. ‘Mum stayed down here in August 1971.’

  ‘1971?’ As her face opened a few seconds ago, it closes again. Her eyes glint metallically. The big jaw tenses. ‘You’re the police, aren’t you? Not Rita’s daughter at all.’ With some effort, she creaks down to look under the table at my legs and nods, something affirmed. ‘Too short to be Rita’s daughter.’

  ‘I’m not a policewoman. I give you my word.’

  But it’s too late. She’s standing up, walking stick stuck out, a proboscis.

  ‘But you haven’t eaten your cream tea.’

  She snatches a scone off the plate, and tosses it into her shopping bag.

  I slap a ten-pound note on the table and follow her outside, as Casey watches, bemused.

  It’s raining now, splashy earth-smelling drops. Marge may be old, but she’s determined, and makes steady progress down the street, pretending I’m not there. After a minute or two, we arrive at a row of small cottages, their pebbledash dirty, melancholy in the rain. She stands outside the most rundown of the lot. Grubby nets hang at the window. I notice a man’s bicycle leaning up against the wall.

  Her hand flails about in her leatherette handbag for her key. ‘You’ve got no business here.’

  ‘Actually …’ But I can’t say it. My denial is so ingrained, pressed into me like whorls in wood.

  ‘There. Thought so,’ says Marge with a note of triumph. ‘You lot always give yourselves away. Children playing at cops, the lot of you.’

  But something beats inside me. I think of Steve, all the years of marriage, in which he’d say, ‘You’re a Broom now. Don’t taint Annie with your history.’ Don’t put our friends off their dinner. Okay, he didn’t say the last line. But he may as well have. I think of the newspaper cuttings my mother stashed away. And I feel more determined than ever. ‘I’m just trying to find out about what happened that summer.’

  ‘Oh, you’re only about forty years too late! Haven’t you got proper crimes to solve?’ She stabs her key in the door. ‘We’ve had three robberies in six months. No one arrested for those!’

  ‘Marge, I am Rita’s daughter. Her adopted daughter.’

  ‘Adopted, eh?’ I wonder if something’s slipping into place or if it’s my imagination. Her eyes narrow again. ‘Not one of them reporters?’

  A gaggle of geese fly above us. ‘I’m a make-up artist.’

  She huffs disparagingly. ‘And I’m Princess Margaret.’

  ‘Off duty.’ I smile, trying to get her onside. ‘But I do have a large box of false eyelashes of varying lengths in the boot of my car for emergencies. Do you want to see them? I also have a couple of new tester lipsticks in my handbag. Here. Look. Brand new. I’ve not used them.’ I pull out one from my handbag pocket, retro, in a satisfying silvery case. ‘Would you like it?’

  ‘Bribery now, is it?’ She looks at it hungrily.

  ‘You’d suit this shade. It’d bring out your eyes.’

  ‘Oh, get inside, then. Watch the packing boxes.’ She whips the lipstick from my hand, clunks the front door shut behind us and shouts shrilly into the small dark house, ‘Fingers! Put the kettle on. We’ve got company.’

  40

  Rita

  The evening with Robbie returns to Rita in small aftershocks, ricocheting up her thighs, across her hipbones. Her body’s still humming, despite the terrible sight on the living-room floor. If the terrarium’s wanton destruction had happened earlier in the day she’d have splintered into fragments too. But right now? A feather pillow seems to be wedged between her and the universe.

  After bathing Teddy and putting him to bed, Rita’s calmed down a bit. (It’s hard to stay upset and angry when Teddy’s making fart noises with a wet flannel.) Petty and violent, that’s what Don is. Nothing more. The smallest of men. She’ll spell things out when she sees him, that’s for sure. He’ll have to leave. She’ll say to Jeannie, It’s him or me. Enough’s enough.

  Rita presses her nose to the hall’s cool window glass, squinting through the gaps in the ivy. She wonders where Don has got to. Probably weaving his way back from the pub through the gloaming on ale-legs. Or chatting up a forest girl by the bar. Damn him.

  She bends down to the skirting board for Robbie’s boots, the ones that started everything, thrilling slightly as she points her socked foot and slowly slips it into the soft, leathery interior.

  ‘Thanks for coming with me, Big Rita,’ Hera says, watching as Rita tightens the laces. ‘When I find the thing I shot I’ll feel better. Promise I’ll go to bed then.’

  ‘Don’t worry. We’ll find it,’ whispers Rita, not wanting to disturb Jeannie and the baby, who are dozing upstairs. She wishes she didn’t have to go out again, that she could stay and attend to her terrarium plants, pick the glass shards off bit by bit, like fleas from a beloved pet. She also rather hopes any deer is dead, that she won’t have the grim duty of putting the poor creature out of its misery. ‘Come on.’

  Outside, Rita’s not seen a night sky so pretty, all velvety folds backlit by a harvest moon, with a pale gold corona. A mist is starting to stream along the ground. The forest’s never looked more magical or benign, a place of sanctuary, not a mass of trees of different species, but a sentient ancient being, with its own moods and soul. She catches herself and smiles. Where’s the old Rita gone? She should be peering into these forest shadows, sensing watching eyes and gnashing teeth and hearing the sound of her parents’ car crashing over and over again. She inwardly jolts, as you do at the odd moment when one version of yourself becomes another, and you grow up not incrementally but in one unexpected gliding-forward leap, as if taking a step on the moon.

  ‘The logs, yes, we went past the log pile.’ Hera tugs on her arm, drawing her out of her thoughts. ‘I think it was this way.’

  As they walk Rita feels an unexpected surge of elation. Possibility. The future is pliable. Something she can shape, as Robbie can bend steamed wood. The malignant thing that’s squatted over her for years, the burden of her shameful secret, has lifted. Nan warned her against telling anyone. ‘Not even friends, who’ll tittle-tattle,’ she’d say, and ruin her reputation. But in telling Robbie, opening up, although she’s not removed it, she’s taken away much of its power and weight. She’s considering this revelation when she sees movement, a flicker of someone in the trees. ‘Don?’ she calls. Nothing. She turns to Hera. ‘Did you see someone
too?’

  Hera shakes her head and stares into the gloom, her round face mushroom-pale. The mist licks their ankles.

  ‘Don? Are you there? Are you lost?’

  Again, silence. Whoever was there has gone. Or doesn’t want to be found. Maybe it wasn’t him. Fingers? Unease slides silkily over her skin. Her confidence wavers. ‘Let’s go home, Hera. It’s too late for this. We can come back in the morning.’

  ‘Just as far as the stream? Then we’ll turn back. Please.’

  They carry on walking until they can hear the sound of rushing water. It sounds louder in the dark, like a river. ‘I really don’t think you hit anything, Hera. And if you did, it’s trotted merrily home.’ She takes Hera’s warm, pudgy hand. ‘Let’s loop along the other path. Quicker back that way.’

  A round black cloud slips over the moon, like a sunglasses lens. Oh, for a torch. Still, if they keep going, they’ll see Foxcote’s brightly lit windows soon enough. And she’s not scared. Not even nervous! It’s like when pain stops and, even though it was excruciating at the time, you can no longer recall it. She wonders if she could live in the forest after all, with Robbie, in his sweet, scuffed cottage, rather than move back to the London house. And she’s thinking, Yes, maybe I could, when her foot lands on something soft and fleshy and Hera screams and screams, and all those lovely possibilities, all those other Ritas, powder to dust.

  41

  Hera

  Don’s eyes are open, staring at the star-spattered sky. Big Rita’s boot has left a muddy imprint on his cheek. Blood blooms on his safari shirt, on the left-hand chest pocket. An owl hoots. Once. Twice. A death warning come too late. Big Rita touches the side of his neck and gasps, snatching away her hand.

  ‘Don’t look.’ She presses my face to her cardigan.

  But I peer down, fascinated and horrified. The problem of Don has gone. But Don is dead. Dead. He no longer exists. My stomach flips.

  ‘We need …’ Her heart ba-booms against my cheek. ‘We need to get help.’

  As if she’s summoned it, there’s a noise behind us. ‘There you are!’ Mother’s voice rings out, a laugh inside it.

  I can feel Big Rita’s heart banging harder.

  ‘Is the rascal drunk?’ Mother asks, walking towards us, smoothing her hair, trying to make herself pretty. Her dress glitters, the teeny mirror chips trailing light. ‘I should have known he’d hunt down a pint in the end, not a pheasant.’

  Big Rita says softly, ‘Jeannie …’ then covers her mouth with her hand because she can’t say it. And neither can I. We stare at my mother, pitched on the edge, her last sweet moment of not knowing.

  ‘Why are you looking at me like that? What’s going on?’ She runs towards him and kneels down and holds his face, smacking his cheeks. ‘Wake up, my love …’ It’s as though she can’t see the blood at all. ‘It’s me. Your Jeannie. Don … Don … Please.’

  Big Rita puts an arm around her shoulders. ‘He’s gone, Jeannie.’

  She lets out a noise that isn’t like Mother. It isn’t human. I cover my ears with my hands. Her face is a mask, stiff and white, the mouth turned down. Sinking to the ground, she curls around his body. Don’s blood glistens in her hair, like one of her jewelled hair slides.

  ‘I don’t understand. I don’t …’ Mother’s voice is a rasp. A whisper. A ghost. ‘How?’

  The forest stills. Big Rita says nothing. She doesn’t even glance at me. And I know this means she isn’t going to mention my name, or that I thought I’d shot something. Not someone. I could get away with it. Mother never need know. This makes it worse. And I think how all the thoughts and noises and smells that were Don have gone for ever. How I’ve wanted to kill him for days. ‘I didn’t mean to do it.’

  42

  Rita

  Rita watches Hera run, legs flashing, until the mist rubs her away. A volt of shock travels down her spine. The nightmare on the ground flashes, pulses – real, unreal. Her brain can’t register it. Don is marble-white. A fallen statue. Jeannie’s cradled over him, mewling, the chips of mirror-work on her dress glinting, dark stars.

  Rita’s mind loops, trying to find a way out. Don is dead. Hera thinks she did it. And Rita can smell blood. Meat. Like Fred’s butcher’s shop counter. And something sweeter, riper, draining out of his body, sinking into the earth. A stag beetle is already investigating Don’s outstretched hand, the stiffening fingers curling inwards.

  She shudders and tries to collect herself. But she can’t think straight. Jeannie is groaning, shaking. The temperature of the air seems to plunge. Rita kneels down, hugging Jeannie’s shoulders. She can feel Jeannie’s goosebumps against her own skin, a birdlike tremble in her bones. ‘Jeannie,’ she whispers. She can’t think of what else to say, how to make things better. ‘Jeannie …’

  Very slowly, Jeannie looks up, her face contorted and ugly with grief. ‘Hera did it?’ she breathes, gagging her sobs with cupped hands.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t … know.’ And Rita doesn’t. She truly can’t believe it. ‘She thought she was shooting a deer …’ The words buckle.

  ‘It … it looks bad,’ stammers Jeannie.

  Rita can’t deny this.

  ‘Hera will be sent to an institution.’ Jeannie covers her mouth with a hand, and groans, that sound again, deep and raw, coming from a place Rita isn’t sure she’s been. ‘Like The Lawns. Or worse, much worse. Oh, God.’

  Rita’s horror at Don’s death tips into something else. Fear for those left behind. Hera wouldn’t survive such a place. She wouldn’t last a week. The beetle is on his arm now, a moving black spot.

  ‘The gun?’ Something’s changed, sharpened, in Jeannie’s face. ‘Where’s the gun?’

  ‘Hera dropped it.’ Rita’s teeth start to chatter involuntarily. ‘I – I don’t know where.’

  ‘We must dig!’ Jeannie grabs Rita’s arm, her fingernails biting sickles into Rita’s skin. Her eyes grow wild. ‘Come on.’ She stands up, pulling Rita with her.

  ‘Dig?’ The word curdles sickeningly. ‘What … what do you mean?’

  ‘Bury him. We’ll say he left. Arabia. Yes, yes,’ jabbers Jeannie, manically. ‘He left for Arabia yesterday.’

  Rita blinks. She feels cornered. Snared. Her power draining away. Fred was right: she’s going down with their ship.

  ‘Hera’s life is ahead of her. Don’s gone. But we can save Hera. We must, Rita.’ Jeannie glances about in a frenzy. ‘No one has seen us. No one will ever know. You’ll help me, won’t you? For Hera’s sake? I can’t lose everyone I love. I can’t, Rita. For pity’s sake, help me.’

  Rita agitates at the edge of acquiescence. The urge to say yes, and relieve some of Jeannie’s agony, is overwhelming. And yet. Something inside – forged in the heat of her evening with Robbie, a tiny granite fragment – resists.

  ‘Rita?’ Jeannie begs. She shakes her by the arms, back and forth. ‘You are so strong. I can’t do this on my own. Please.’

  The trees seem to lean towards Rita then, narrowing the night sky, entombing her in the dark. She thinks of her mother inside the glowing lantern of the blazing car, her hands splayed on the glass; her mother dying, not growing, like the plants Rita’s nurtured all these years, trying, she suddenly realizes, to reverse those forces. The joy she finds in small things. A fern frond unfurling. A crystal of sea salt on the tip of her tongue. New socks.

  Her life is insignificant, she knows that. One of a plain single woman, lacking riches or status, never to have a family of her own, or anyone to mourn or miss her. But dare she risk that life, however small and modest, for a prison cell? For the Harringtons?

  ‘We need spades.’ Jeannie tugs her harder now. ‘Come on.’

  ‘I can’t bury him, Jeannie.’ The hardest thing she’s ever said. Tears slide down her cheeks. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘What?’ gasps Jeannie. ‘But you have to – I’m telling you …’

  And then they hear it. The sound of something in the trees. Twig-snaps. Footsteps. Voices
. Oh, God. Voices. Rita puts a finger to her lips. They stand rigid, not daring to exhale. And just when they think the people have gone, a beam of torchlight reaches towards them through the swirling mist, like a jailer’s arm.

  43

  Sylvie

  ‘Good riddance, that’s what we said.’ Marge sips her sherry, and splutters on it, with a small laugh. The residue gleams greasily on her upper lip. She’s enjoying an audience. ‘Didn’t we, Fingers?’

  ‘No, Marge,’ Fingers hisses, through gritted teeth and a rictus smile. ‘Rest in peace. That’s what we said when Armstrong got tragically shot, Marge. Rest in peace.’

  The live-in carer is odder than his name, tall, shoelace thin, with a shock of ice-white hair and a pearly translucence to his face and eyes. Unable to stay still, he stalks around Marge’s living room, like an agitated survivor of a hideous natural disaster. ‘She gets in a right muddle.’ He makes an exaggerated whirly sign with a finger at his temple, which only makes everything else seem even more unhinged. He offers me the plate of biscuits. ‘Another fig roll?’

  I shake my head, unable to rip my eyes from the old woman in the chintz armchair, holding the silver-cased lipstick aloft, moving it back and forth for a long-sighted inspection, and murmuring, ‘Looks just like a bullet, come to think of it.’

  Fingers stiffens at her side and lets out a strangled laugh.

  ‘I married a man just like Armstrong,’ Marge continues blithely. She takes the lid off the lipstick and sniffs. ‘Bastard. Lived a double life. Didn’t give a damn who he hurt. This does smell fancy.’

  ‘Who did it?’ I ask, trying to fill in the headlines of an imaginary newspaper article. My mind winds back to the pap-snap of a broken-looking Walter Harrington, hurrying from courthouse to car. ‘Who shot Armstrong, Marge?’

  To my astonishment, Marge starts to giggle. Fingers looks like he might grab a cushion and smother his charge at any moment. A chilling thought streaks through my head: he did it.