The Family Next Door Read online

  “Deadly.”

  It was an unfortunate turn of phrase.

  “That’s not funny, Garrick.”

  He chuckled, a low rumble of amusement. “I wasn’t trying to be funny. But it’s true. By the time I’ve finished here, it’s going to be stunning. They’ll be queuing up to take it off our hands.”

  “I hope you’re right,” she said, the quiet voice of reason, trying not to remember all the occasions his grand plans had come to nothing. It wasn’t like they’d had a choice this time, though. This house—one of several postwar semis set on the outskirts of a nondescript Essex town—was all they could afford.

  His reply was muffled, his head buried in the cupboard under the stairs. The volume lifted as he withdrew, wandered down the hallway and pulled on the iron ring of a square door embedded in the floor. “I’d forgotten how big the cellar is. We could dig it out. Move the kitchen to the basement. Stick an extension on the side.”

  Olivia placed two glasses on the worktop and closed her eyes.

  The thud of a hatch shutting. Footsteps. And then Garrick was filling the kitchen doorway, head bent, already tapping numbers into the calculator function of his mobile phone.

  “Sounds expensive.” Her fingers loosened the wire cage on the cork. She kept her voice light. “Have we got enough money to do that?”

  He waved an airy hand. “We’ll be fine.” Gave a sheepish grin. “Actually, I’ve already submitted the plans.”

  Decent of him to discuss it with her first. How typically Garrick. She breathed out her frustration. That would explain why he’d been insistent on traveling down to view the house several times while the sale was going through.

  The cooler had not fulfilled its promise and she set down the tepid wine bottle with the same controlled care she used to ask her next question. “What about Oakhill? Have any of the flats sold yet?”

  Garrick’s expression folded in on itself before he shook his head, confirming her suspicions. Money had been tight since his investment in a “surefire” building development that was proving slow to sell. They’d been forced to downsize to loosen the bank’s stranglehold on their finances.

  Olivia had agreed to move on the understanding they would still have a garden and a minimum of three bedrooms. The Avenue had delivered that at a fraction of the price of similar properties. Both of them were banking on Garrick’s skills as an architect to inflate its value and allow them to move on.

  But now that they were standing in this house with its tired wallpaper lit by the flash of blue police lights, panic rose in her like the swell of the estuary they had spied in the distance on the car journey to their new life.

  “Do you really think someone will buy it? Did you see the police cars? The photographers?” She resisted an urge to sweep the bottle onto the tiles, to watch the glass splinter, the liquid froth and flatten into a puddle. The story of her life.

  “We bought it, didn’t we?”

  “Yes, I know, but—”

  “It’s going to be fine.”

  Olivia had lost count of the number of times he had promised her that. In fairness, she had moved here with her eyes open. Most of the neighboring properties had an air of neglect around them, as if they had once been loved but allowed to drift into a state of disrepair. And the brutal history of the place had been impossible to ignore, even if one took only a passing interest in the news. After the third murder, the TV and radio bulletins were filled with talk of serial killers for days and days. The newspapers blazed with lurid headlines. When the fourth murder happened, a few days before the Lockwoods were due to exchange contracts, she had tried to persuade Garrick to pull out, but found herself agreeing with his insistence that some morbid individual would enjoy the cachet of owning a house on this road. The Avenue had become synonymous with Cromwell Street and Rillington Place.

  But now that she was here, now that she had seen the police and the sheeted hump of a fifth body, she was convinced they had made a terrible mistake.

  “But what if we’re stuck here forever?”

  “And whose fault would that be?” Garrick’s tone was cool.

  She drew in a breath and counted to five. “Don’t start that again.”

  “I didn’t. Remember?”

  Olivia clenched her teeth until the outline of her jaw was visible through her skin. Her anger was like the strike of a match, poised to flare into life. She snuffed it out with the cold, hard facts of her guilt. Garrick’s financial incontinence may have forced them to sell their beautiful home in Cheshire, but she was the reason they had moved down south.

  Her body loosened. “I know. It’s just—”

  “Look, Liv. We both had our parts to play. This is our fresh start. Let’s not spoil it with recriminations, eh?”

  She opened her mouth to answer him, but there was nothing to say.

  “Let’s open the fizz, shall we?” His tone was placatory. “We’re here now—might as well celebrate.”

  The pop of the cork filled the silence in the kitchen. Olivia had already taken her first sip by the time she noticed Garrick’s attempt to clink glasses, and by then it was awkward and too late. She remembered all the times she had felt the tiny bubbles burst against her lips. Weddings, christenings and lunches with friends. Birthday parties. Restaurant meals.

  That last, unforgettable night.

  Garrick was fiddling with some leaflets the previous owners had left in a drawer. “Shall we order takeout? Indian? Chinese?”

  “Sure. Whatever. I’ll go and ask the children.”

  As she walked toward the kitchen door, her phone, which she had left charging by the empty fridge, began to vibrate.

  Garrick lowered the menu he had been scanning. A blush stained Olivia’s cheeks.

  “You can—I mean—I don’t mind,” she said, gesturing toward the handset, its tiny blue light flashing a warning. A trickle of sweat in the hollow between her breasts.

  Her husband took a step forward. Fidgeted. Stopped.

  “Actually,” he said, “there’s no need for that.” He made a performance of turning over the menu, a study in nonchalance. “I trust you to keep your word.”

  She smiled at him then, and the carousel in her stomach began to slow. In as casual a manner as she could muster, Olivia picked up her phone and slid it into her pocket.

  In the shadows of the hallway, her eyes scanned the message. Then she deleted it.

  5

  Now

  As each death has a taste of its own, each body reveals its peculiarities in the moment of dying.

  The twitch of an eyelid; a gasp, as if surprised to be inhaling one’s final breath; the futile lifting of a hand to reach out and hold on to life.

  I have learned that some slip away without a struggle, but for others, fear leaves its imprint in the stretched-open mouth, the eyes that do not close. That death itself is a burden, weighting down both the human shell and my soul.

  And I have learned, at great cost, that I do not enjoy blood. That spatter is like flicking a loaded paintbrush against the walls and the floor, that scrubbing with a hard brush and soap does not remove the memory of what has gone before.

  Did you ever bite the inside of your lip? Place a cut finger in your mouth and suck until the bleeding stopped? Swallow down the metallic heat of a nosebleed?

  Blood is rust and old pennies, copper wire and iron. The same, but different.

  Like fingerprints and irises.

  Like killers.

  None of us are identical.

  Some prefer to strangle their victims, gifting a necklace of bruises. The split-open-skin-and-bleed-out method of slashers. Stalkers with blunt-headed hammers. Wronged husbands and wives. Opportunistic killers who act in the heat of the moment.

  And there is me.

  I detest mess. The savagery of murder. I have witnessed it twice and I do not wish to witness it again. I crave order. Control. Social niceties. I watch, I plan and prepare.

  And when it is time, I do no
t turn away from difficult decisions. I seek out those who can no longer be permitted to live.

  Here is what else I have learned.

  The past is a place I lived in once. I buried its secrets in the dirt of my memory and I left it far behind. But it always catches up with us in the end.

  They say knowledge is power, but that is not true. When that little girl opened the chest in that toyshop, she set off a chain of events that would echo down the years, a scream that needed to be silenced. Puppets with cut strings.

  Her curiosity didn’t just kill the cat, it killed everyone else.

  6

  Sunday 29th July 2018, 7:37 P.M.

  25 The Avenue

  Evan Lockwood lay on his old bed in his new bedroom. His mother had not got around to duvet covers and pillowcases yet, but he didn’t much care. He was nine and didn’t notice whether his bedding was fresh on, three weeks old or nonexistent.

  The late-evening sun was splashing golden paint onto the walls, and he was buried inside his quilt, which smelled of home and the dirty-washing basket. The backs of his knees were sticky in the heat.

  In his left palm was a shiny black ball the size of a cantaloupe. A white circle with a number 8 in its middle was painted on the top. A birthday present from his cousin.

  “It’s a Magic 8 Ball.” The words had bubbled out of her before he’d even had the chance to tear off the wrapping paper. “It foretells the future.”

  “Cool,” he’d said, and meant it. His eyes pricked. He would miss her.

  Bunching his duvet into the rough shape of a pillow, he shoved it up against the wall and leaned into it. He pursed his lips, thinking, and whispered his first question.

  Will we have pizza for tea?

  He tipped the ball over and the answer appeared in the triangle of a window.

  Most likely.

  Evan grinned, his stomach rumbling its approval, and chewed on his lip while he thought of another.

  Is the Tooth Fairy real?

  He liked to pretend he was almost grown-up, but he was still losing his baby teeth, still clinging on to childish fantasies. Two mornings ago, when he had slid a hand beneath his pillow, there had been no money, just the pearly treasure he had lost while eating an apple the day before. When he’d told his mother, who was packing books into a box, her cheeks had flamed red. But she’d insisted the Tooth Fairy hadn’t forgotten and had just been busy. Evan wasn’t so sure.

  Ask again later.

  He tutted. Those noncommittal replies were the worst kind. He gazed around the bedroom. It was weird, being in this house. A new start. That’s what his parents kept calling it. Evan didn’t understand it. Like his toys and furniture and the kitchen pots and pans, surely all the shouting and crying and arguments would move with them, too.

  He pressed the tatty old bear he’d had since he was a baby to his chest and whispered another question, crossing both sets of his fingers.

  Will we be happy here?

  He tipped the ball and it slowly revealed its answer.

  My reply is no.

  7

  Now

  My earliest memories come to me not in pictures, but sounds. The frantic pump of a spinning top. The twist of a key in a clockwork mouse. The mechanical winding of a jack-in-the-box crank.

  Half a pound of tuppenny rice. Half a pound of treacle. That’s the way the money goes. Pop goes the weasel.

  Birdie would settle me in a corner of our shop and surround me with toys. She would pull them from the shelves, ignoring the price tags, generous with these expensive knickknacks, if not her affections.

  The floor was always cold, but it did not matter. My childish fingers would grasp for the top, a crazy, whirring riot of color and motion. I would lurch after the mouse on unsteady legs. But it was always jack-in-the-box that held the most fascination.

  Le diable en boîte. A boxed devil, like me.

  A prelate once saved a village from a drought by discovering a well with healing powers. He was so holy he caught the devil in a boot. Folklore, of course, but bound in truth.

  Like the devil, I was cast out.

  My mothers didn’t want me. Not my birth mother, whose name I never knew. Not Bridget, my adoptive mother, besotted by the curled fists and rounded cheeks of a baby—“Come to Birdie, come to Mama”—but who fell out of love as my views and behavior took on a different shape from her own. Used her own fists to mold me into the type of child she could be proud of. Pinched me. Slapped me. Pressed the vicious edges of her watch’s metal strap into my face whenever we were running late. Ticktock. Ticktock. Ticktock.

  Her tongue was as sharp as a shard of glass. Some days, I dreamed of cutting it out. Imagined her mouth filling with blood. Choking her. The bladed edges of her viciousness reduced to a stump, blunted and useless.

  But the jack-in-the-box, I loved. The surprise of it. And then, when I knew what was coming, the anticipation of that surprise.

  Death is like that. One knows it is coming. Old age. Illness. The gradual decline of one’s body. But for some, it is not like that at all. Their death is abrupt. A shock.

  The five-car motorway pileup in the early hours of the morning. A stroke in the armchair on a Sunday afternoon. An accidental drowning in a lake on a summer’s evening.

  A murder.

  It strikes me as curious that there are millions upon millions of people in this world, but only a few will share with me this particular human experience. The deliberate taking of a life that does not belong to us. It is intoxicating, like being a god in the sky.

  But it is not something one discusses in the supermarket queue or the doctor’s waiting room or the office. I cannot say, for example, Did you see the way her left hand jerked thirty-two seconds before the moment of death? or Poor soul, he suffered from a terrible case of rigor erectus.

  The police sirens scream at me. Three minutes. Perhaps less. Time feels like it is slowing down. I am sitting in the chair and she has put on some music. I’m tapping out the beat with my fingers.

  Did you know that the act of murder has a rhythm all of its own, a slowed-down version of a jack-in-the-box tune?

  Sing with me.

  Half a pound . . .

  On that first beat of time, the victim is still breathing in air; still laughing, head thrown back with the sort of abandon that implies they have no idea of what is to come.

  . . . of tuppenny rice.

  By the second beat, their eyes have widened. They know something is terribly wrong.

  Half a pound . . .

  The third beat, and they are a jerking, skin-covered shell.

  . . . of treacle.

  On the fourth, a caved-in memory.

  That’s the way . . .

  By the end of the fifth, they are nothing but an empty sack of humanity.

  . . . the money goes.

  On the day they moved in, I saw Olivia Lockwood sitting at the dining room table. She was wearing a green shirt and a white skirt. Drinking a glass of wine. Eating a slice of pizza. Three weeks later, I dreamed of closing my fist around her heart until it stopped.

  Pop goes the weasel.

  8

  Sunday 29th July 2018, 9:30 P.M.

  4 Hillside Crescent

  Breathe.

  Breathe.

  Come up for air. Inhale. Exhale. Swim through the darkness. Eyelids flicker. Open. Close. Close. Open. Shadows into shapes. A chair. The wardrobe. The thrown-down light of a lamp. Water. Take a sip. Breathe. Breathe.

  Adam.

  Stifling air. Breathe. Slow. Inhale. Exhale. You’re okay. Another sip. Breathe. Adam. Breathe. Keep breathing. Keep breathing.

  My name is Wildeve Stanton and I am in my own bed.

  The sheet was tangled around the bone of her ankle, and she tried to kick it off, but her body was loose and liquid, refusing to do as she asked. She struggled to sit up but the lead in her chest pinned her to the mattress. Don’t panic. It’s the sedative. Keep breathing. Dry mouth. The taste of stale wine an
d despair.

  Adam.

  Keep breathing. Count them. One. Two. Three.

  Everything was jumbled and indistinct. Flashes of memory. Voices. But it was not about words, just feelings. Not lead, but stones, piles and piles of them in the hollow of her stomach. She was walking the empty spaces, surrounded by the collapsing walls of a paper house.

  Again.

  On my own again.

  A blackened sky lit by the dull rind of the moon. Evening, but not late. The air still held the heat of the sun and it filled her lungs, stifling her. Why was the earth not breaking open and falling into the seas? How was it her heart continued to pump when everything else in her world had stopped?

  Her hand touched the sheet of the too-big bed. Remember him. But remembering burned. Adam. The night stretched in front of her, hours and hours of darkness.

  Her hand closed around the bottle and she swallowed down her sorrow with another mouthful of red wine. Over and over again she drank, deep and long, until the liquid spilled down her chin and bloodied her nightshirt with grief.

  9

  Now

  If the emporium was a place of shiny toys and birthday promises, in darkness it became somewhere else.

  Birdie would lock the door behind the last customer and turn over the CLOSED sign before she turned on me.

  “Clean the floors,” my adoptive mother would say, and I would hide away my homework before she tore it up. She’d done that more than once, when my response had not been quick enough, so I had learned to be clever, setting up a makeshift desk behind the doll’s houses and wooden baby carriages filled with alphabet blocks, knowing that by the time she had picked her way through to hand me a mop, my schoolbooks would be inside my bag.

  The winter I was nine, when the air was so cold it hurt my chest and the night began when it was still afternoon, she flipped over the sign and tipped a bottle of lye across the inside of my wrist.

  An accident, she said. “You clumsy boo.” But I knew what it was. My punishment. Because I’d been too slow to answer her. I would not—could not—stop screaming so she went back to the flat and left me on my own, locked inside the shop.