Spare Room: a twisty dark psychological thriller

by Dreda Say Mitchell

  ‘Do you mind if I ask why the previous tenant left?’

  ‘Previous tenant?’ He cocks his head to the side as he peers at me, minus his smile. ‘What makes you think someone else might’ve lived here?’

  ‘I just wondered why anyone would leave such a gorgeous room.’

  His smile jumps back. ‘There hasn’t been another tenant, Lisa. You’re the first to sample! Do you want to see the kitchen and dining room?’

  As we leave I can’t help having one final long glance at the room.

  The dining room is forgettable, its décor neglected, dominated by a 1990s clunky wooden table, chairs and cabinet. My mother would be scandalised. Her dining room is her pride and joy. A place where her family sits down to share, laugh and be together. An old-style notion to many, but for Mum, traditions are important.

  The kitchen is a great size. Looks new but rather jerry-built. I guess that might be Jack’s work; he doesn’t look like the careful sort. Jack explains he’ll allot me some space in the fridge. His voice goes on and on, but I’m not really listening. I’m staring out of the glass in the top half of the back door.

  The garden seems to be never-ending. It’s thickly coated with trees, tall bushes and patches of lawn interspersed with overgrown paths. Judging by the distance to the next house at the rear, the garden could be a hundred yards long, but with so much greenery, it’s impossible to tell.

  I try the back door.

  Jack roughly pulls my hand off the handle. I flinch back in surprise.

  ‘Woah, woah, woah,’ rushes out of his mouth.

  My heart beats wildly. Maybe Jack wasn’t so charmless and harmless after all. Maybe he was a charmless serial killer.

  He holds his hands up as a sign of peace. ‘Didn’t mean to startle you. The garden’s our private space.’ He eases off the acceleration in his voice, slowing way down. ‘You know, you’ve got to have something just for yourself when you’re renting a room out in your house, don’t you think?’

  Then he adds hopefully, ‘If sunbathing is your thing, there’s plenty of space out front. Although I see you’ve got a peaches and cream complexion anyway, so perhaps the sun’s not your thing. Very wise; melanoma and all that.’

  I rub my wrist where he’d grabbed me, although it doesn’t really hurt. I swallow convulsively, my heart rate going crazy. All he had to say was that the garden is off-limits. No need for him to be so physically forceful. I know he’s apologised, still…

  ‘Lisa, isn’t it?’ A new voice distracts me from Jack.

  An older woman of average height stands in the doorway. She’s dressed in an elegant black trouser suit, sky-high heels and has the painful thinness of someone recovering from a long illness or an unhealthy commitment to diets. She’s probably in her early fifties although it doesn’t look as if she’s going into middle age quietly. Her face is a study in fine bone structure but the skin has a stretched, immovable Botox-filler quality. Only those green eyes that flash at Jack, not me, suggest what a beautiful woman she once must have been. And still is, in a way.

  I answer as I step back from Jack. I can still feel the urgent flesh of his hand on me. ‘Yes, I’ve come to look at the room.’ I give Jack a quick glance; I’m pleased to see he looks uncomfortable too. ‘Your son has been showing me around your gorgeous house.’

  Strangely she doesn’t respond. Instead there’s the click-click of her heels against the worn flagstone floor as she moves towards Jack. She leans up and kisses him – on the mouth.

  Oops! Slap to the forehead moment! Mortification overheats my cheeks. I want the ground to swallow me. I should’ve remembered that the ad stated the house is owned by a couple, not a mother and son. For pity’s sake, they don’t even resemble each other. Anxiety creeps back; she’s going to show me the door. I can’t lose the room.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ I sputter. Shut up. Shut up, you’re making a real dog’s dinner of it.

  Jack’s wife waves my words away as she approaches and sticks out her hand. ‘I’m Martha.’

  Her grip is firm, the skin smooth; not a woman who’s had to work too hard in life. Expensive perfume settles delicately around me.

  She gives her husband a beaming smile. ‘Why don’t you cut down some green beans for dinner tonight?’

  With a simple nod in my direction, Jack is only too eager to escape into the garden I’m not permitted into.

  ‘He didn’t mean to grab you.’ I switch my attention to Martha. ‘He’s a touch possessive of the garden. Grows all sorts out there.’ Her voice lowers to a tone shared between close friends. ‘Between you and me, he frowns at me sometimes when I go out there. Shall I make some tea and we can chat in the lounge?’

  Tea sounds lovely but… ‘Sorry, I’m on a tight schedule. Another time.’

  She holds my gaze. ‘And will there be a next time? Did Jack offer you the room?’

  ‘We hadn’t got to that part of the conversation.’

  ‘If I say it’s yours will you take it?’

  I hesitate as I remember his hand on me. I shake the memory off.

  ‘I’d be delighted to be the tenant in your spare room.’

  I leave the house wearing an upbeat smile, feeling Martha’s eyes on my back as I go. As soon as the door closes, I let out a huge puff of air and have the strong urge to sag against something.

  ‘Had a good laugh at my expense, did you?’

  I’m startled by the voice coming from my left. There’s an old woman wearing a brown woolly hat with a mauve knit flower on the front peering hard at me from next door’s front garden. She’s pointing a pair of garden scissors with an attitude that screams she’s ready to use them on me.

  I step back. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Pointing and chuckling a bellyful at my garden. And it is my bloody garden.’

  I’m completely bemused. ‘Sorry… I don’t…’

  She doesn’t let me finish, but sweeps back into her house, followed by two cats. The door slams behind her.

  Chapter 2

  After leaving Jack and Martha’s house I sit in my car. I’m shaking and grip the wheel in an attempt to stop. But can’t. I open the glove compartment, pull out my bottle of anti-depressants, dry-swallow two. I close my eyes as I wait for their magic to start. I lean back and gently place my fingertips to my temple. Rub. Inhale deeply. Use my internal breathing technique to quiet my mind.

  One, two, buckle my shoe.

  Three, four, knock at the door.

  Five, six…

  Slow and easy does it.

  Once the tension within disappears I check my watch. Half past four and I’ve still got another visit to make today. My parents are expecting me to put in an appearance this evening at their home in Surrey. In normal circumstances, I’d cancel without hesitation, but these aren’t normal circumstances. If I don’t go or don’t appear, they’ll panic, alert the relatives. Worse still, the police. The last thing I need is a posse of my nearest and dearest or the law on my tail.

  I get the car going and head off. The roads are clogged, jammed, which is good. I have to concentrate on the wheel. No time for disordered, self-doubting thoughts. When I leave the M25, I drive through the Mole Valley and its fat green fields with fat cows and fat sheep. Its plump villages with plump houses and plump four-wheel drives parked outside. This is the England I grew up in. And nothing could be more English than the house my parents own. It’s an old vicarage that’s smaller than the house with the spare room but just as grand in its way. And nothing could be more English than my parents themselves, who are waiting for me at the front door. They will have seen me coming up the long drive before I reached the house. It’s that sort of place.

  My dad knows how to hold himself with ramrod straightness, giving him a height that makes the eye linger. A silver fox is what mum teasingly calls him, a nod to his mostly grey hair. Before retiring he was an eminent doctor in London, and towards the end of his career owned his own private practice. He’s the kind of man you don’
t meet much anymore. The strong silent type. Stoical I suppose is the correct word.

  Mum is shorter, her ear-hugging hair more white than grey. Age has taken its rightful place on her face; scars and lines don’t scare her, I know that first hand. She’s the kind of woman you don’t meet much anymore either. The kind who takes immense pride in her husband’s and her only child’s achievements but prefers to clap from the sidelines. She’s certainly not the kind of woman who gets mistaken for her husband’s mother.

  He’s Edward and she’s Barbara. That’s Barbara – never Babs. They both wear sensible country clothes. I don’t know if they’re tweed but it feels like they should be. A solid couple, married for six months shy of thirty-five years. A solidness I yearn to find with a man too. Naturally Alex pops into my head. I ruthlessly push him away.

  ‘Hello, dear!’

  My dad’s greeting is warm, at the same time laced with a gruffness that’s a warning of what’s yet to come. No embrace, no lips meeting cheek. Instead he brushes back a lock of my hair just like he did when I was small.

  Mum gives me one of her sunshine smiles as she kisses me on the cheek. She doesn’t let go, running her palms feverishly up and down my covered arms. Her gaze runs over me, searching for changes. I wish she wouldn’t; it makes me so uncomfortable.

  When we walk through the house, I notice, as I always do, that the old vicarage is smothered with photos of me. Me winning prizes at school, receiving my first-class honours degree in mathematics, me winning gymkhana competitions and me with my arms around various horses’ necks. It’s all rather embarrassing but there’s a discordant note in all these pictures too. An invisible fracture. There are no friends posing with me, no boyfriends either. And I’m thin, painfully so. I make Martha look like she could do with losing a few pounds. And I know too that all the photos of me at my thinnest – jutting bones, a face full of large eyes – are all discreetly locked away.

  There aren’t any photos on display of me as a baby. Mum said they were stolen along with so many other items during a burglary at a house they lived in when I was really small, a house I don’t remember. The only other prominent photo is one of Dad in his young days at medical school. It’s a boozy picture of him posing with two fellow medical students, all raising pints to the lens and wearing surgical masks as a joke.

  We enter the tranquil, well-loved garden. A great spread of Mum’s homemade shortbread, cinnamon biscuits and fruitcake with a pot of tea waits on the wrought-iron table near the scent and bloom of Dad’s prized multi-coloured carnations.

  Mum deliberately places a slice of cake onto my tea plate first. It’s more of a slab really, her silent way of keeping me fattened up. Her gaze locks hard on me as she waits for the moment. The moment I tear off a corner and pop it in my mouth, which I dutifully do. I chew.

  ‘Great cake, Mum.’ I dramatically lick my lips. ‘You’ll be giving Mary Berry a run for her money.’

  Mum looks ecstatic, a glow of pleasure warming her eyes. If she were anyone else, she’d probably be clapping her hands in feverish delight like a meme recycled across social media. I’m lying of course. The cake has the consistency and taste of a congealed mass of sugar and fat mixed with Plasticine.

  Tea is poured and my parents indulge in idle chit-chat about the warm weather, the neighbours, Dad’s exploits at the golf club. But it’s all fake. I know what we’re really here to talk about. It’s as predictable as my parent’s visits to the parish church on Sundays. I don’t miss the pointed glances they exchange with each other.

  My dad starts the ball rolling. ‘So, how are you today, my dear?’

  He uses the same line he no doubt did with his patients.

  I take a gulp of lukewarm tea before answering. ‘I’m fine.’

  And so it goes on with my mum joining in. ‘Are you eating properly?’

  ‘Yes. Three meals a day, the well-balanced way.’ I shove more sugar, fat and Plasticine, stuffed with currants and sultanas, into my mouth to underline my response. This time the cake sticks to the back of my bottom front teeth.

  ‘And you’re sleeping OK?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Coiled turmoil twists my tummy. I don’t blame them for what they’re doing, but being put under a microscope is no fun. It’s bloody irritating. My tongue manages to dislodge mashed cake from my teeth but there’s a stubborn bit that refuses to budge.

  ‘You’re sure?’ Mum this time. My parents are a tag team who won’t let up.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So, you’re still taking your medication at the right time?’

  ‘Yes, I am still taking my anti-depressants.’

  Mum winces like I knew she would. She can’t cope with the word ‘depressed’ being attached to her only child. I don’t like to torment her with it, but it’s the only way to change the direction of our way too personal conversations sometimes.

  It works; she starts asking about my job. That’s usually safe ground; they know how hard I work and how well I’m doing. I tell them I’m probably going to be promoted again and headhunters are sniffing around, offering me jobs with bigger bucks. My parents beam with pride. I beam with satisfaction too. Why not? I’m good at my job. Too good, some might say, because I don’t have any close friends at work. I don’t have any close friends.

  Then my mum pretends to remember something. She slips her cup onto its saucer. ‘Oh, by the way, dear, have you had a chance to go and see Doctor Wilson yet?’

  I nod, pushing my plate with the majority of cake still on it to the side. ‘I’ve seen him a couple of times.’

  My parents exchange glances again, this time worried ones. My dad looks off into the distance, to the weather-beaten yellow swing at the bottom of the garden. That swing is my definition of happy. My dad pushing with care while I go up and down, higher and higher, squealing as my hands cling on for dear life.

  My dad turns back to the table, eyes darkened with pain.

  Mum’s eyebrows arch, her face a picture of concerned confusion. ‘That’s strange, dear, because your father met Doctor Wilson at a dinner recently and he said that you hadn’t been in touch yet.’

  If there’s one thing I hate more than lying to my parents it’s being caught out lying to them. Shamefaced, I mutter under my breath, ‘Yes, well, I’ve been very busy.’

  ‘Your father and I,’ Mum presses on, as if I’m still the kid in the swing who needs to know when it’s time to come back down to earth, ‘really think it would be a good idea to go and see him. He’s an old friend of your father’s. They were at medical school together. He’s one of the most eminent psychiatrists in London. People pay good money for a consultation.’

  If she’d left it at that, I’d have thrown in the towel and consented to seeing Doctor Wilson. Unfortunately, she adds, ‘Especially after what’s just happened.’

  I forget all about the unwritten rule of not losing your temper in families like mine. It’s vulgar, not the done thing. I crack. Don’t remember picking up the cake. Mum’s precious cake flies through the air, lands on the grass, breaking apart. As broken as I feel.

  ‘What happened four months ago was a mix-up, easily done. OK?’ It doesn’t sound like words coming out of my mouth, but the bawling of a child who wants to be heard, desperate to be held. ‘How many more times! I didn’t mean to do it deliberately!’ I quiver with rage. I want to stop, but can’t. ‘For sodding hell’s sake! Ask the quacks at the sodding hospital, it was a sodding mistake!’

  My mother shakes with horror, her disbelieving gaze darting to the empty cake stand and back up at me again. My dad has his stern face on. I can easily see how scared his medical students must have been of him back in the day.

  His voice is harsh and grim. ‘I’ll thank you for not using that kind of language in this house, Lisa. I’ll thank you for not insulting your mother when she’s only trying to help you. And I’ll thank you for not referring to members of my former profession as quacks.’

  My head hangs in shame. Tears s
ting the bottom of my eyes. Why can’t I just be like everyone else? I see the way my colleagues secretly look at me at work. Lisa the machine who doesn’t even take lunch breaks most days; she can’t be human. Be normal.

  ‘Ed.’ My mother speaks quietly, almost serenely. ‘Give her some space.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I blurt out, finally lifting my head to make eye contact with the two people who love me most in the world.

  My mother composes herself. Calmly takes the reins. ‘It’s fine dear; you’re upset, we understand. No one’s suggesting you…’ The next words were obviously in her mouth but she swallows them back with a bob of her throat muscles. Changes tack. ‘We know you didn’t mean for it to happen; we know that.’

  I don’t see how she could know that. Even I don’t know what I was really doing that day.

  My dad, with his medical training, does not utter a word. Sometimes it’s a mother’s tonic that is the best medicine of all.

  ‘If you went to see Doctor Wilson, he might be able to help guide you through your problems,’ Mum coaxes, ‘and offer you ways to cope with them. He’s a brilliant man, isn’t he, Edward?’

  My dad’s stern face has gone. So has his straight-backed attitude to life. His shoulders are rounded with the posture of an old man. ‘Yes. He’s brilliant.’

  I yearn to reach out to him. Touch him. Hug him tight. I’ve always been a daddy’s girl. There’s a bond between us that was forged at the bottom of the garden on a plastic swing.

  I make up my mind. Don’t have the heart to cause them any more pain.

  ‘I’ll see him. Make an appointment.’

  I don’t want to see this Doctor Wilson. Yet another member of the medical profession dissecting me. It feels like I’ve seen every counsellor, therapist, psychiatrist, psychic healer and phoney shrink within a twenty-mile radius of London. How can I forget the session with the guy swanning around in a purple kaftan, wearing a necklace comprised of shells that looked like they were hauled off Brighton Beach, who laid his sweaty, meaty hands on me to drive out my problems? That’s how desperate I had become to sort out my shit.