Something ignites inside me – a low burn, like a pilot light, a flickering blue flame. ‘Well, in CBT – that is, uh, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy – we recommend exposure therapy. Facing your fears.’
‘Huh. Makes sense.’
‘But we do it in increments. So in your case, the first step would be walking up to the house. The next, standing beside it for a full minute. Then opening the door. Then going inside. You get the idea.’
‘Sounds like a lot of work.’
‘It is. It’s not easy. Hardest work you’ll ever do is on yourself.’
‘I’ve never been one for hard work. Maybe that’s my problem.’
‘Is that right?’
‘Uh-huh.’
I finish my drink. I can feel the weight of what’s going to happen, the way it feels as if the two of us are on an edge, tilting forward. I look across at her, this wild-haired older woman, her face hard and set and sombre.
‘I’ll come with you, if you want,’ I hear myself say, because I am always spoiling for trouble, like Samantha, like Edie.
She looks my way, lips curling into something resembling a smile.
‘Oh yeah?’ she says.
The little bungalow has been empty a long time. It’s accessible only from the road, so Samantha and I leave the churchyard and find ourselves in front of the high privet hedges that have grown around it almost as high as the roof. The little wooden gate has rotted away, the wood soft and spongy beneath my fingers. Somewhere in the trees behind the house a magpie chatters.
‘See how the windows are boarded up?’ Samantha says, pointing. Her voice is low, whispering. There are iron sheets over the windows, riveted into place. A sign in the top-left corner of one reads: This Private Property is Under Surveillance. Underneath, someone has written in marker, Didn’t see this tho, did U?
There’s other graffiti too, on the brickwork and reinforced front door. Tags, mainly, or big peace signs irregularly drawn. Someone has scrawled The Beast in large, irregular letters along the boarded windows. There’s a twinkling litter of glass in the lawn, crunching beneath our feet. Samantha explains that the windows were repeatedly smashed until they were boarded up.
She lights a cigarette, looking for all the world like a woman at peace with herself in front of faded graffiti which reads Burn In HEll U sick FUk!
‘“Nothing gets more tarnished than a reputation.” That’s what my brother said.’ She tests the boards with her finger. They don’t budge.
‘I don’t think we’re going to get in this way,’ I tell her, and she nods in agreement.
‘Let’s try round the back,’ she says.
I know something’s wrong as soon as we turn the corner of the house. It’s a tingling, like excitement. It’s dark back here in the shadow of the tall hedges and oaks of the churchyard. Samantha points out the window from which he took his photographs, the one that overlooks the churchyard. Other trespassers have left a lot of litter on the ground; broken bottles and cans and fast-food wrappers bagged and swung up into the hedge, where they hang like foul fruit. I stand on the ancient, blackened remains of something set on fire and left to burn out. I can smell something rotten, as if an animal has crawled into the long grass to die. The shed roof has fallen in, the glass panes smashed and tools presumably stolen. I duck my head in through the crooked door. In the corner, a rat’s nest, long empty. A strand of cobweb brushes my face softly, like a whisper.
It’s only as I pull my head out that I realise Samantha is speaking to me. ‘I’ve been calling you! Didn’t you hear me? Look, over here. There’s a gap in the boards. Looks like someone already managed to sneak in a while back. Come on.’
I pause, swallowing drily. I don’t like how dark it is back here in the shade. I don’t like the way the house seems to be waiting gravely, like a doctor about to deliver bad news. What if she is in there? I think to myself. Have you even thought about that, Frances? What if you find her body in a freezer all wrapped in plastic, lips frozen and blue and cold? What will you say to Samantha then?
Samantha is standing beside a window where one of the boards has been peeled away from the lower corner. She glances over at me, one hand fumbling in her pocket.
‘Hey, Samantha, wait—’ I begin, and then I’m quickly cut off by someone shoving against me, pinning me up against the wall. It’s her. Samantha. Her forearm presses against my windpipe and I make a noise like a tea kettle when I try to scream.
‘Do you think I’m fucking stupid?’ she asks.
I struggle – I haven’t been in a fight for a good long time, but Samantha must be nearly twenty years my senior and I once put a man in hospital after he tried to mug me. I get a grip on her arm and am about to shove her away with the heel of my hand when I see what she was reaching into her pocket for. She has a knife pressed against me. I lower my hands. To be pierced by that thin blade would be painful. Samantha sees I’ve noticed, and grunts.
She held a knife up to William’s throat, dummy, my brain tells me. I wonder how I could have been so stupid as to think coming back here with her to this deserted place would ever have been a good idea.
‘Just now I was calling you over and over again,’ Samantha says, her breath on my cheek. ‘And you never turned around. I know that Kim isn’t your name. I knew right away. Why are you lying to me, huh?’
I slump against the wall. Her pupils are tiny pinpricks floating on the glassy ocean of her eyes.
‘It’s a small town, honey,’ she spits, ‘so tell me who you are.’
‘Okay, okay!’
Samantha releases the pressure from my windpipe, but only a little. The knife stays where it is against my ribs. A pea-sized drop of blood soaks into the fabric of my T-shirt where the blade has punctured my skin.
‘My name is Frances Thorn. I’m married to William.’
‘Uh-huh. I know who he is. And what you said about his mother – Mimi? She’s really sick?’
‘Yes! Please, Samantha, just back off a bit.’ My voice shimmers with fear. She looks at me warily but steps back. I exhale, hands trembling.
‘William Thorn, huh? Always wondered what kind of woman he would end up with. I always thought he had a type.’
I think again of the photograph I’ve seen of Edie Hudson, the one that reminded me so much of Kim and Samira: the dark hair, the haughtiness. Oh, he has a type, I think.
‘His dad. Edward Thorn. What do you know about him?’
‘Put the knife away and I’ll tell you.’
She studies me for a moment before letting the blade slide back into the handle. She keeps the knife in her hand, though. I can tell how comfortable she is with it. It must be exhausting to be on your guard all the time.
‘I know he died in a car crash. I know he didn’t try to get out, even as the car was sinking. The boys don’t talk about him much.’
‘The boys?’
‘William and Alex.’
‘Oh yeah, the brother. The younger one. He’s an oddball, isn’t he? Still at home with his mum. It’s all a bit Norman Bates.’
Something catches my eye. Movement in the hedgerow behind her, a rustle of leaves. Briefly, I see the rabbit bolt for the safety of the shadows, eyes like beads of obsidian.