‘I’ll tidy it up, of course,’ I say.
‘And get me a new bed.’
‘What’s wrong with that one?’
‘Your grandparents probably had sex in it.’
‘This was my bedroom.’
‘Ew! Even worse.’
Caroline admonishes her. Evie isn’t fazed.
‘Can I redecorate it?’
‘If you wish.’
Evie turns in a slow circle, as if mentally measuring up the room and deciding on colour schemes.
I can see Caroline having second thoughts. ‘Are you sure about this?’ she whispers.
‘Why?’
‘Child and Family Services will have to approve everything . . . this place.’
‘I’ll clean it up, I promise.’
Evie steps outside the room and glances up the stairs. ‘What’s up there?’
‘It’s closed up.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I don’t need any more rooms.’
‘Can I see them?’
‘No!’
My tone is harsher than I intended. I wish I could take it back. The moment registers with Evie, but she doesn’t react. Instead, I imagine her storing it away, stockpiling weapons for later skirmishes.
‘We should get Evie back to Langford Hall,’ I say.
‘I’ll take her,’ says Caroline.
Downstairs, Evie puts on her old duffel coat, which looks incongruous with her new clothes. Caroline gives me a quick hug and Evie hesitates, wondering if she should do the same. Her arms go up and out, but never quite reach me.
‘I’m sorry it’s so messy and old,’ I say.
‘At least it’s not haunted,’ Evie replies.
‘How can you tell?’
‘I’ve been in haunted houses.’
23
That night I dream the dream.
My mother was the first to die, while cooking saffron chicken and prawn paella with peas. My mother with her wicked laugh, her soft spot for underdogs, her hatred of hypocrisy, her love for school teachers, dark chocolate and Bailey’s Irish Cream. My mother with her posh phone voice and pink lipstick, potpourri-smelling lingerie drawer; her bubble baths behind a locked door, no children allowed. My mother, who could make rice pudding from leftover boiled rice and made us each take turns to get the wishbone when we ate roast chicken. My mother who grew up on a farm and had a pony called Twelve (because it was twelve hands high), yet who refused to let us have a dog because she still mourned the loss of her own beloved childhood pet, a boxer called Sinbad.
On that night she was standing in front of the freezer, with a bag of frozen peas in her hand, when the knife scythed through her carotid artery, spilling green and red onto the white tiled floor. She had always complained about choosing white tiles because they showed every spilled crumb, scuff mark and dropped pea.
The plume of blood sprayed in an arc across the kitchen bench and the sink and the cutlery drawer, which was open, and Tupperware boxes, which she always arranged neatly so she could find the lids when she needed them. The blood stretched all the way to the cat-food bowl in the corner where Tibbles would later lick it into a smear and track it across the floor with her paws.
Dad was next. My father who worked in property management – a fancy way of saying he collected rents and organised building leases. My father who taught Elias how to drive and would get him to practise his parking outside a succession of pubs, whereupon Dad slipped inside for a quick half. The White Lion, the Last Post, the Beekeeper and the Commercial Inn. Later Dad would fall asleep on the sofa, snoring through Midsomer Murders.
My father who brewed his own beer, collected vinyl LPs and once scored a golfing hole-in-one that ran all the way along the ground, but he still framed the scorecard. My father who didn’t like using the word ‘hate’, but instead said he disliked racists, reality TV shows, Manchester United, pistachios that don’t open and people who spend fifteen minutes in a queue and don’t know what to order when they get to the counter.
Dad died on his hands and knees, crouching in front of the DVD player because one of the twins had managed to get a disc stuck in the machine. The knife severed his spine, paralysing him from the waist down. He managed to roll onto his back and hold up his arm, trying to ward off the blows, losing two fingers on his left hand and his right thumb. For a long while they couldn’t find his thumb because it had rolled under the TV cabinet.
My twin sisters were doing their homework or playing in the bedroom they shared. They must have known something was wrong because they locked the door and barricaded it with beanbags and soft toys and a rocking horse that belonged to my grandmother and had no hair on its mane.
April was the eldest by twenty minutes and always acted like an older sister. Earnest and bossy, she was the hoarder, the show-off and the baker of cupcakes, partial to strawberry lip gloss and jelly snakes, and able to name every king and queen of England using a rhyme she’d learned off by heart.
Esme was different, but the same – part of a collective child, or two halves with the same face, each slightly different, but in symmetry. Esme the shy, the meek, the songbird, with a dancer’s grace and tiny feet. Esme the peacemaker, the advocate, the knitter. Esme, who pressed flowers in the pages of her diary and gave names to every animal she ever met.
Elias used an axe to break a hole through the door before reaching inside and turning the key. He tossed aside the rocking horse and the beanbags. April fell first, which followed the natural order of how the twins handled everything. She ran towards Elias and the knife entered her ribs and came out near her spine. Blood splattered across the wallpaper and the bedspread, the bald rocking horse and the doll’s house.
Esme tried to crawl beneath her bed but was dragged out by her ankles, scratching at the floor and bunching the rug under her body. I try not to imagine her fear or the sound of metal on air, or metal on flesh, or the silence that followed.
People always ask, where was I?
At football practice, or on my way home. It was the second training session of the season and my first year with the Sherwood Strikers. I had moved up to under-fifteens and felt a little over-awed.
We trained at Brelsford Park, about two miles from the house, or ten minutes if I rode my bike along the towpath. Mum had told me to be home by six. She also told me not to ‘even think about’ stopping for chips. Of course, I didn’t listen. I hadn’t eaten since lunch time at school and the Fat Friar did a cone of chips for a quid (although I had to forego the vinegar, or Mum would smell it on my breath).
I scoffed the chips and still had time to ride past Ailsa Piper’s house in the hope I might glimpse her in the garden or coming home from netball practice. Ailsa was a year older than me. I once helped her find a bracelet that she lost on her way to school. We hadn’t spoken since then, but she always smiled when we bumped into each other – happenstances that I tried to orchestrate as often as possible.
Running late, I had to stand up on the pedals and push hard to make it home by six. I wheeled my bike through the side gate and rested it up against the shed. Then I took off my muddy football boots and banged them against the back step. I could hear canned TV laughter coming from the front room as I opened the back door. I called out to Mum. She didn’t answer.