I know he thinks there are too many ghosts here. That sleeping in my parents’ old bedroom is hard for me. Perhaps it’s hard for him, too. ‘Maybe.’
But I mean no. I don’t want to move. Oak View is all I have left of my parents.
Ella wakes at six on the dot. Six a.m. used to be early, but when you’ve been through weeks of night-wakings, and resigned yourself to starting your day at five, 6 a.m. feels like a lie-in. Mark makes tea and I bring Ella into bed with us, and we have an hour as a family before Mark has his shower and Ella and I go down for breakfast.
Half an hour later Mark’s still in the bathroom – I hear the clanging of the pipes and the rhythmic knocking that provide the musical accompaniment to our ensuite shower. Ella is dressed, but I’m still in my pyjamas, dancing around the kitchen to make her laugh.
The crunch of gravel outside makes me think of yesterday evening. As the morning light creeps into the kitchen I’m embarrassed by the way I worked myself into a state. I’m relieved Robert’s phone was switched off, making Mark the only witness to my paranoia. Next time I’m alone at night I’ll play loud music, turn on lights, walk through the house slamming doors. I won’t cower in one room, creating a drama that doesn’t need to exist.
I hear the metallic snap of the letterbox, the soft thud of letters dropping onto the mat beneath, and then the lightest of finger taps that tells me the postman has left something in the porch.
When Ella was five weeks old, and full of colic, the postman delivered a textbook Mark had ordered. It had taken me a full hour to settle her and she had finally dropped off to sleep when the postman banged the door knocker with such force the light fittings rattled. I wrenched open the door in a sleep-deprived, post-natal rage, giving the poor man both barrels, and then some. Afterwards, when my fury had burned itself out and my cries no longer rivalled Ella’s, the postman suggested he might simply leave further packages outside the door, with no danger of disturbing us. It appeared I was not the only house on his round at which this was the preferred modus operandi.
I wait until his footsteps leave our drive, not wanting to greet him in my pyjamas, and still mortified by my tears that day, then I pad into the hall and collect the post. Circulars, more bills, an official-looking letter in a buff envelope for Mark. I take the key from its hook beneath the windowsill and unlock the front door. It sticks a little, and I pull hard to open it.
But it isn’t the force of opening the door that makes me take a step back, or the icy cold sucked instantly into the warm hall. It isn’t the parcel that rests on the pile of logs to one side of the porch.
It’s the blood smeared across the threshold, and the pile of entrails on the top step.
THIRTEEN
They say money is the root of all evil.
The cause of all crime.
There are others like me – other people wandering around in this half-existence – and they’re all here because of money.
They didn’t have any; they had too much.
They wanted someone else’s; someone wanted theirs.
And the result?
A life, taken.
But it won’t end there.
FOURTEEN
ANNA
The rabbit is on the top step, its stomach cut neatly open in one continuous, careful slice. A gelatinous mass of flesh and guts oozes from within. Glassy eyeballs stare out at the street, above a gaping mouth exposing sharp white teeth.
I open my mouth to scream, but there’s no air in my lungs and I take a step back instead, clutching at the coat stand to the side of the front door. I feel the prickle of my milk letting down, the need to feed my baby an instinctive reaction to danger.
I find air.
‘Mark!’ The word explodes from me bullet-fast. ‘Mark! Mark!’ I keep shouting, unable to tear my eyes away from the bloody mess on our threshold. A morning frost has coated the rabbit and its blood in glistening silver, and the effect serves only to make the spectacle more macabre, like a gothic Christmas decoration. ‘Mark!’
He comes downstairs at something between a walk and a run, stubbing his toe on the bottom step and swearing loudly. ‘What the— Jesus …’ He’s wearing nothing but a towel, and he shivers involuntarily as he stands in the open doorway, staring at the step. Droplets of water cling to the sparse hair on his chest.
‘Who would have done such a horrible thing?’ I’m crying now, in that post-shock relief that comes with realising you’re safe.
Mark looks at me, confused. ‘Who? Don’t you mean what? A fox, presumably. Good job it’s so cold or it’d be stinking.’
‘You think an animal did this?’
‘A whole park across the road, and it chooses our doorstep. I’ll get some clothes on, then I’ll get rid of it.’
Something doesn’t make sense. I try to work out what, but it slips away from me. ‘Why didn’t the fox eat it? Look at all that meat and,’ I swallow the nausea that threatens my gullet, ‘the guts. Why kill it then not eat it?’
‘That’s what they do, isn’t it? Urban foxes feed from the bins. They kill for fun. If they get into a hen coop they’ll slaughter the whole flock, but they won’t eat a damned one.’
I know he’s right. Years ago my father decided to keep geese, penned in a run at the bottom of the garden. I can’t have been older than five or six, but I remember pulling on my wellies and running to collect the eggs and throw grain onto the muddy grass. Despite the geese’s Christmas fate, my mother named them all, calling them individually as she rounded them up at nightfall. Her favourite – and by default, therefore, mine – was a sprightly bird with grey-tipped feathers she called Piper. While the others would hiss and flap their wings if you got too close, Piper would let my mother feed her by hand. Her docility was her undoing. The fox – so bold he didn’t wait for darkness – was deterred by the bad-tempered siblings, but clamped his jaws around poor Piper’s neck, leaving her decapitated body for my mother and me to find that evening.
‘Filthy animals,’ Mark says. ‘You can see where the fox hunt brigade’s coming from, can’t you?’
I can’t. I’ve never seen a fox in the countryside, but I’ve seen plenty in town, trotting down the centre of the street, as bold as you like. They’re so beautiful I can’t imagine terrorising them in punishment for their own instincts as hunters.
As I stare at the mutilated rabbit, I pinpoint what’s been troubling me. I speak slowly, the thoughts solidifying along with the words.
‘There’s too much blood.’
There’s a pool of it beneath the lifeless rabbit, and more on the three steps down to the drive. Gentle amusement shows on Mark’s face as he takes in my announcement.
‘I remember dissecting frogs in fourth-form biology, but we never did a rabbit. How much blood should there be?’
The sarcasm irritates me. Why isn’t he seeing what I’m seeing?
I try to stay calm. ‘Let’s suppose a fox did it. And let’s suppose there’s enough blood in a tiny wild rabbit to produce this mess in front of us. Did it wipe its paws on the other steps?’
Mark laughs, but I’m not joking.
‘Did it use its tail to paint smears of blood?’
Because that’s what it looks like; like someone has taken a paintbrush, dipped it into the rabbit and covered our steps with irregular daubs of blood. It looks, I realise with sudden clarity, like a crime scene.
Mark becomes serious. He puts a strong arm around me and uses his free hand to close the door, then he turns me to face him. ‘Tell me. Tell me who did this.’
‘I don’t know who did it. But they did it because I went to the police. They did it because they know something about Mum’s death, and they want to stop me finding out about it.’ Voicing my theory does nothing to make it sound less fantastical.
Mark is impassive, although I detect a hint of concern. ‘Sweetheart, this doesn’t make sense.’
‘You think this is normal? An anonymous card yesterday, and now this?’
‘Okay, let’s think this through. Suppose the card wasn’t someone being spiteful—’