The Neighbour Read online

  I lay on the stone flags, as I had done as a much younger child, the substance eating its way through my skin, fire spreading up my arm. I could not get up because even the tiniest movement fuelled the flames.

  In the shadows of the shop, wracked with pain, the fumes irritating my lungs and making me cough, the horrors of my imagination came to life.

  The puppets with their strings swung back and forth on their hooks, pointing their wooden hands at me. The toy monkeys jeered, chattering and baring their teeth. Clockwork mice crawled across my fevered skin.

  The dolls climbed down from their exalted position high up on the shelves. They pulled at my hair and clothes, their porcelain fingernails scratching at the rawness of the open wound, their pale, enquiring faces daubed with the plasma that leaked from my chemical burns.

  When Birdie came back in the morning, I was unconscious, toys strewn across the shop floor. Through fear or pain, neither of us knew.

  Three skin grafts, I needed, the replacement flesh harvested from my stomach. In front of the doctors, Birdie ruffled my hair and called me a silly boo. When she thought I was asleep, I overheard her telling a nurse how I’d climbed on a stool to reach the caustic soda after she’d warned me not to play with it.

  As soon as we were home, she handed me one of the broken puppets. A peace offering, she said. Tangled strings and chipped paintwork, its nose sheared off completely.

  I could have packed my things and stolen some money from the till or Birdie’s purse, and run far, far away.

  But Birdie wouldn’t have suffered then, and where was the fun in that?

  10

  Sunday, 29 July 2018

  25 The Avenue – 9.30 p.m.

  Across the hallway from her brother, Aster Lockwood was considering the myriad ways she could run away. Hitchhiking would be too risky, but she didn’t want to spend her own money on the train fare. Perhaps she could borrow her mother’s credit card. Or persuade Matthew to drive down and collect her. The lure of a semi-naked selfie never failed to surprise her.

  The removal men had put together her bed, but the rest of her former life was in cardboard boxes strewn across the floor. She couldn’t be bothered to unpack, especially as she wasn’t planning to stay.

  Two months ago, her parents had sat them down, Aster and her brother Evan, and told them they would be moving from their family home in Cheshire to a small Essex town near the sea. It would mean new schools and new friends. Evan had cried. Aster had picked up her glass of cordial and poured it over her mother’s head.

  ‘This is your fault.’ The words had been a hiss. ‘I hate you.’

  Olivia had not shouted or even reacted. She had sat there, hair plastered to her face, the pink liquid dripping down her shirt, soaking her bra and her skin. Aster had enjoyed slamming the door, and the surge of power it gave her. If her mother thought she’d forgive her for ruining everyone’s lives, she’d be waiting forever. Her mother was so old. The whole sordid mess made her feel hot and sort of dirty.

  Her new room wasn’t bad. Bigger than in the old house. With a sofa and TV, it might even be decent. The curtains had been taken down and packed up by the previous owners, but her father had promised her shutters. She scrolled through her phone. Matthew was already asking when he could visit. She supposed she’d have to check with her mother, which irritated her because her mother never bothered to check anything with the rest of the family.

  Aster wandered over to the window and looked out on the street below. A length of police tape cordoned off the entrance to the woods where the body had been found. The trees were thick and dense, spread out so widely that she couldn’t see where they ended. A couple of officers were standing on the pavement. A woman with a large bag on her shoulder and a camera in her hand was firing off shots while a man in a suit was talking on his phone and scribbling notes on a pad.

  She would post the pictures she’d taken later. Her friends would lose their shit when they saw the dead body, even if it was hidden under a sheet.

  Her gaze strayed to the house opposite. It was much the same as theirs. Semi-detached. Red-tiled roof. But less unkempt than many of the neighbouring properties. The walls were pale green, a much nicer shade than their own, and the front garden was filled with floral bursts of violet and yellow and orange.

  Aster wondered who lived there. More importantly, whether any teenage boys did.

  At the top of this house across the street was an open window. She could see curtains, drifting in the lightest of evening breezes. There was something else too. A glimpse of black and silver, sleek and elegant.

  Aster pressed her palms against the glass and waited for the curtains to still. There it was again. A telescope.

  Were the nights ever dark enough to pick out the stars above this unfamiliar town a million miles from the moorlands and vast, black skies of the home she had loved so much? A hotness burned behind her eyes.

  She flung herself on her bed and buried her face in the pillow.

  And so Aster Lockwood did not see the swivel of the telescope seeking out her bedroom or the careful adjustment of the focusing mechanism, a few turns to the right. She did not see a shadow move from behind the curtains to stand in the square of glass lit by the cool fire of moonrise.

  She did not see the watcher then, or when she returned to her bedroom after an ill-tempered hour watching television with her family. She did not sense the heat of a stranger’s gaze, and if she had, she would not have understood it. All thoughts of the telescope and its owner had long slipped from her mind by the time she undressed for bed, a blur of pale skin framed in the window of her new bedroom, the fall of the lamplight shading in her curves and hollows like a body in a crime scene photograph.

  11

  Sunday, 29 July 2018

  27 The Avenue – 9.43 p.m.

  In the house next door and separated only by a brick wall, Audrina Clifton had the uncomfortable sensation that she, too, was being watched.

  In the stillness of that summer’s evening, drawing her nightie over her grey curls and rubbing in face-cream, she became possessed by the conviction that she was not alone.

  Her ears picked up the faintest drift of laughter.

  Like a child playing hide-and-seek, she pressed her liver- spotted hands to her face as if that might disappear her from prying eyes, the callus on her thumb rasping against her skin.

  Middle age was now a memory to Audrina, but she wasn’t one to worry about her advancing years, the slackening of her skin or pouching beneath her jawline, the arthritis that swelled her joints. On the few occasions she had needed to use her wheelchair, she had found herself invisible. But while she was not embarrassed about the scars that time had left upon her, she resisted exposure to a stranger’s gaze.

  She had lived in this house for many years, but, in recent months, she had become increasingly convinced that someone was spying on her.

  Audrina snapped shut the curtains, and in that flurry of movement, a pale pink peony petal from the vase on the windowsill floated to the floor.

  The thud of a door closing.

  Imaginary spiders crawled across the back of her neck. Heart pumping too hard, she groped in her bedside drawer for a knitting needle and spun around, hoping to find her husband Cooper in their bedroom, laughing at her fears, his pyjamas smelling of pipe smoke.

  But he was not there.

  She let out a breath.

  One of her greatest fears was a home invasion. She had read in the newspaper about an elderly woman a few streets away who was beaten up and tied to her bed while her bungalow was ransacked. Thrusting the needle forward, she heard another thump behind her.

  A rush of adrenaline made her feel light-headed. Her world seemed to blank into nothingness. The roar of her heart filled her ears.

  Another burst of laughter, and the strains of music. A boy’s voice crying out for his mother.

  For a beat in time, Audrina was immobilized, and would not have been able to run even if she’d
wanted to. But then, quite suddenly, she smiled out her fear. Of course. The new family next door. Relief made her shoulders sag.

  She scanned the bedroom. All she could see was the polished oak of her chest of drawers, its bronzed handles and the willow-patterned jug and bowl atop a crocheted doily.

  And a beanbag frog from Liberty that had belonged to her son a long time ago.

  She took a step towards it.

  Despite the stifling heat, goosebumps stippled her forearm. One hand clutched at her throat. The thunder of blood in her ears again.

  The frog had been propped against a paperweight when she had come to get ready for bed, she was certain of it. She had not jogged the chest of drawers, had not even touched it.

  But now the frog lay face down, its limbs splayed outwards, a split up the seam of its fabric like a knife wound.

  12

  Sunday, 29 July 2018

  18 The Avenue – 11.02 p.m.

  The signage was a dusty wash of burnt orange and blue and the letters had faded, but it did not matter. Even if passers-by could not read the curling font that spelled out Doll & Fancy Dress Emporium, the window display gave the game away.

  The shop stood on the corner of The Avenue, as it had done for more than sixty years, in a modest parade that boasted a newsagent’s, a launderette, a cafe and a dry cleaner.

  All windows were in Sunday-night darkness, but a light was just visible in the emporium, and the glow it threw down filled the dressing-up costumes with shadows that might have been people.

  They were old, those costumes, but extravagantly made. A soldier’s uniform with a fraying cuff and heavy medals that might pass for the real thing. A dress handed down so many times that no one could remember its original owner, but with flounces and lace that fell apart when touched. The rusted metal of an astronaut’s helmet.

  Some of the costumes had not been worn for years, shoved at the back of the shop in piles that teemed with moths and spiders and their contrails of silk. The fabrics had lost their lustre. A scratched button here. A loose wisp of cotton there. If one pressed an ear to those discarded bundles, the whispers of past glories, of balls and parties, would play like a gramophone record, scratches and all.

  But no one ever came to the shop to hire a fancy dress outfit.

  They came for the dolls.

  Because beyond the costumes, past the overfilled rails and the wigs made from human hair, the riding boots and leather crops, the buckles and belts and shoes with bows, was a room.

  A man worked alone at a trestle table and he did not look up. A ceiling fan worked noisily to ease the thick heat. A lamp bent over in submission lit his way. Sixteen porcelain heads rested in neat rows of four at the far end of the bench. White and smooth. Hairless. Blank-faced.

  On the paint-spattered surface in front of him, he was bringing one of those dolls to life.

  For a man of his size, his brush strokes were deft and precise. A delicate sweep of black for the eyebrows. Daubs of green for the eyes. A brush so tiny it was lost in his hand, another held in his mouth. Eyelashes. A speck of white, and the suggestion of a tear.

  To him, the eyes were the most important part of the face. He believed each doll should tell a story with her eyes, that to look into their depths would be to learn something new.

  He wore an old pair of cargo shorts, thinning at the knee, and his ill-fitting T-shirt was full of holes. He wasn’t the type to bother about haircuts or shaving or mobile phones. His house was unkempt and unloved, even though he could afford better. His interest in appearance stopped with his creations.

  His dolls sold for a great deal of money.

  They featured in specialist magazines and drew crowds at toy conventions. He had sold several to a very famous celebrity couple for each of their three daughters. Collectors from New Zealand to France queued up each year for a new Lovell doll, waiting patiently for photographs of his progress amid discussions of hair colour and clothing and the shade of their lips.

  They were the work of a dedicated craftsman.

  Each took several days to finish, their pretty heads needing firing between each application of paint, which shimmered with its own translucency. He breathed in the smell of his work, of turpentine and oil and mixing medium, and it settled him.

  After an hour, Trefor Lovell flexed his fingers and put down his brushes. He placed his latest creation on a shelf to dry, opened a drawer and reached for the talking pull-string doll he’d owned since 1971. Her head was much bigger than her body and when he pulled on her string, a recorded voice played, crackly with age.

  His knees creaked like an old rocking chair as he walked over to the desk telephone, which sat next to a pile of orders, printed off the internet, and a spike for the ones he’d fulfilled.

  He listened to the rhythm of his call ringing out in a darkened house on The Avenue a few hundred yards away.

  When the receiver was picked up and a voice, quiet and guarded, spoke into the night, he did not reply, but placed it back in its cradle.

  By the second hand on the watch on his wrist, he waited for two minutes to pass, and pressing the tip of his finger into the rotary dial, careful to withhold his own number, he dialled the same house once more.

  This time the telephone rang out again and again until the sound was scratched into his mind.

  Three minutes and forty-seven seconds later, it was answered.

  ‘Hello?’ A pause. More aggressive. ‘Hello?’

  Lovell waited just long enough for the silence to fill with threat, then pulled the doll’s body away from its oversized head. This action tugged on the string which was connected to a phonograph inside the toy. He had used his skills to doctor the recording and, after a moment’s pause, the doll began to speak, a slow, mechanical sing-song.

  ‘The stains of your sins will never wash clean.’

  ‘Who is this?’ Ill temper leaked its way down the line. ‘What do you want?’ A gathering of strength. ‘If you call again, I’ll ring the police.’

  Lovell picked at a spot of dried paint with his thumbnail. He knew the voice at the end of the line would never call the police. He breathed quietly.

  ‘Please.’ Pleading now. ‘Leave me alone.’

  He closed his fingers around the doll’s body and pulled for a second time, enjoying the stretching out of the string between her head and torso.

  ‘The stains of your sins will never wash clean,’ the doll said again, her words rusty with menace. ‘And you are going to be punished.’

  He didn’t bother to ring a third time because he’d said what he’d wanted to. He had learned long ago that words were a powerful weapon, that the fear of what might happen, the waiting for it, was far more brutal than the clean relief of the guillotine.

  The dread of discovery was something that Trefor Lovell understood.

  He had lived with it for months.

  He put the pull-string doll back in his drawer and withdrew the small notebook he kept in the back pocket of his trousers, scribbling the time and date next to the telephone number he had just dialled.

  Next, he cleaned his brushes and rinsed the ceramic tile he used as his palette to grind and mix his paints. The porcelain doll’s eyes followed him as he tidied. There was a sadness in her, exactly as he’d intended. He screwed up a stray piece of newspaper and put it in the bin, preferring to start each new day with a clear space and a clear head.

  He switched off the light, locked up and headed off into the night.

  Although it had just gone midnight, tipping Sunday night into Monday morning, the air was still swollen with heat. It teased the sweat from his body, from under his arms and his upper lip.

  The street was in darkness but the moon was as silver and flat as a coin. He tried to recall the science behind the lunar cycle, but the knowledge drifted from him, and he realized, with a shade of regret, that he had forgotten many things with the forward march of time.

  He patted his pocket. Writing things down helped him to r
emember.

  Trefor Lovell lived at number 32 The Avenue, at the bottom end of the street. His house was less than four minutes’ walk from his shop and past the public footpath that led into Blatches Woods.

  A uniformed police officer stood by the entrance. Lovell’s palms were damp. He nodded at the man. The man nodded back.

  ‘Evening, sir, you’re out and about late tonight.’ Lovell noticed the man move his hand and rest it lightly on his radio.

  ‘I’ve been working,’ he said.

  ‘Well, I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but you might want to think twice about being on the streets at this time of night.’ The police officer jerked his head towards the dark mass of trees. ‘We found another one today.’

  Lovell, who had been painting his dolls all afternoon, lost in music and the act of birth, did not know this.

  ‘I’ll be fine. I only live over there,’ he said, pointing down the road to his house. ‘Not far.’

  ‘Then I’m sure someone will be round to see you in the next day or so.’ The police officer laughed at Lovell’s expression. ‘Don’t look so worried, sir. It’s routine.’

  Lovell cleared his throat. ‘It wouldn’t be the first time.’

  Goodnights were exchanged. Lovell raised a hand in farewell. Jasmine, or the musk of another bloom, was heavy in the night-time air.

  The police officer watched Lovell as he strolled down The Avenue, past silent houses clad in pebble-dashing, wheelie bins and the hulks of parked cars, and through his own gate. Although Lovell could no longer see him, he sensed the weight of the man’s stare, the frisson of his interest.

  His hand was trembling so much his key scratched the metal cover of the lock as he tried to insert it. It took every ounce of Lovell’s strength not to run back to the officer, fall upon his knees and confess everything.

  13

  Monday, 30 July 2018

  Southside Hospital, Essex – 8.59 a.m.

  Monday morning. 26.3°C.