This can’t be right, can it?
Why would Peter put me here? I mean, it’s not exactly near the hospital, or accessible in terms of local amenities, is it? I’d better make sure I stock up food if this is it because the nearest village, Wells-next-the-Sea, is a good twenty minutes’ drive from here.
But there’s only one way to find out if this is it, I suppose.
I restart the car, check my rearview mirror, and bump down off of the tarmac and onto the crunchy gravel of the lane. One Market Lane, here I come.
I’m sure there’s a reason Peter’s put me in the middle of nowhere. I guess he wants me as far from the media, and therefore the hospital, as possible. It makes sense. I’ll certainly be safely tucked away from the Princess Margaret Hospital. And I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been slightly worried about ending up near Holt, near our old family home.
It’s impossible to say what effect seeing the old house would have. I haven’t been back there since it happened. We didn’t even go back for our things at the time; they wouldn’t let us.
I won’t go back now either, if I can avoid it.
I decide Peter must have partly chosen this location on my behalf. He’ll have put me here so I don’t even have to drive past my old home every day. Good old Peter.
I let down the window again; I need to wake up. The breeze flows in, bringing the scent of wet earth and dead leaves with it; no more bonfires for now.
The lane is longer than I had expected. The tall trees flank my car on both sides. The forest beyond on either side is dense. I’m right in the heart of the Norfolk National Nature Reserve; these woods go on for miles in either direction.
I catch a rustling motion in the undergrowth beside the car as it crackles along the gravel. At least no one can sneak up on you out here, which is reassuring—you’d definitely hear them coming.
A bird bursts from the woods to my right, soaring high across the track ahead, and then I see it. Cuckoo Lodge. The lane ahead opens out into a small clearing where the house looms, majestic, framed by forest.
It’s unexpectedly beautiful, placed right in the center of the dark clearing at the end of the long lane, an intricate little red-brick house hidden in the woods. A neo-Gothic Victorian dream with a wood gable over its front door, chocolate-box chimney stacks, and an engraved York stone plaque between its two uppermost windows, commemorating the date it was built. I squint up through the windshield but it’s too far away to read yet. I shiver and close the car window. There’s a chill in the air now.
The building might be the most perfectly symmetrical thing I’ve ever seen, a gingerbread house made real, its dark windows reflecting the sky. There’s a low wooden fence encircling the house at waist height, a small hinged gate at its center.
I pull the car up to the left of the clearing, as close to the grass verge as I can. It feels rude parking here but I don’t know where else to go, the road simply stops outside the house. I turn off the engine.
Silence floods the car; I let it soak in for a moment before popping the door and stepping out. Now that I’m closer I see the stone plaque reads CUCKOO LODGE, 1837.
Eighteen thirty-seven, that’s weird. I don’t know many historical dates but I do know that this was the year the young Queen Victoria succeeded to the throne. Which is bizarre because off the top of my head the only other historical dates I know are 1066 and 1492! And it suddenly occurs to me how strange it is that someone who specializes in other people’s histories knows so very little about actual history.
I look up at the house that is nearly two centuries old. It’s impressive. I definitely wouldn’t be able to afford this in London.
But then, I’m not entirely sure I would want to. I try not to think it, but standing there in front of it, it’s hard not to feel that there is something slightly peculiar about it, some strange quality.
If I had to describe it, I would say it feels like the house is watching me.
I know, it’s a ridiculous thing to say, obviously, I know that. In fact, I probably know that better than most people would, because I know the exact neurological reasons my brain is thinking that.
I know it’s just a trick of the mind.
You know that feeling you get sometimes of being watched, of somehow knowing before you know, that someone is watching you? Well, it’s a neurological phenomenon called blindsight. It’s a completely normal feeling, a simple evolutionary process, perfectly explicable.
Blindsight describes the process of seeing things that you weren’t consciously aware you were even noticing. It’s just the subconscious processing of visual stimuli. A lot of the things we process day-to-day bypass our conscious minds; they get processed subconsciously, but, to us, it seems as if we are just getting a funny feeling.
I know the reason I feel like the house is watching me is because as I drove up to it steadily in the car my subconscious brain was tricked into thinking the house was slowly looming toward me. My brain decided the house was getting closer to me rather than me getting closer to it. It’s why tracking shots in horror movies work so well on audiences.
I know it’s the silence, the darkness of the woods, and the unusual surroundings all compounding, on a subconscious level, to leave me with a feeling of unease. It’s just my instincts doing their job. Sometimes they’re right, sometimes they’re wrong, but where would we be without them?
I know why the hairs on the backs of my arms are raised, but a part of me still can’t help but wonder if the house in front of me is actually watching me.
I find the key exactly where Peter’s email tells me to look, under the leg of the bench by the door. I slide it into the lock and the door creaks open in front of me.
Inside is just as beautiful as outside. Deep plush sofas. Persian rugs and polished wood. I could definitely get used to this.
I wander from room to artfully curated room and wonder who on earth is funding all this. This is a nice house. This is an expensive house.
But then I remember that the first choice for this assignment was Richard Groves. And Richard Groves doesn’t exactly work pro bono. My employers were probably expecting to plow a fair amount into this anyway and I’m definitely the cheaper option. Maybe me staying here has nothing to do with Peter Chorley protecting me. Maybe whoever organized the accommodation arrangements just couldn’t be bothered to rebook.
The house is fully stocked. There are flowers in vases in every room. In the white-tiled Victorian kitchen, the fridge is full of supplies.
There’s a printout from Peter on the kitchen counter next to a neat stack of the patient’s medical files and press cuttings. Whoever opened the house up earlier today and did all this must have dropped this off too.
I read.