‘No, real dynamite.’ He looks worried. ‘And it’s addressed to you, Mum. The box has got your name on. Look.’
I do. It’s the box the courier brought, and it says my name, Jeanie Randall, and in smaller letters after it:
RIP.
Seven
Jeanie
1 January 2015
8 a.m.
* * *
A whole new year! A new start. I look out at the bare apple tree nearest the window, at the miserable wet day, and I huddle closer to a gently snoring Matt.
If it’s all a fresh new start, why is my stomach rolling with anxiety?
I turn my head from the mail locked in the dresser and from Miss Turnbull’s, ‘I thought I recognised your name’ of yesterday. It’s only a matter of time. I’ve got to tell Matt before someone else does, but…
I can’t bear to shatter the illusion. I can’t bear to knock the light out of his eyes when he looks at me.
As if he’s sensed me watching him sleep, Matthew opens his eyes and pulls me closer.
‘Come here, you,’ he says, kissing my neck, and I shiver and snuggle into him, thinking, I will deal with this – only not just now…
* * *
Half an hour later I leave Matt sleeping again and slide out of bed. It is miserable and grey, and I am definitely a little hungover – unusual for me. One glass too many last night.
George has stayed, as well as Luke’s friend Joe, and I thought Matthew might have put one of them in the spare room – but they are on the sofa bed in the living room.
‘Still haven’t found the key,’ Matt had said absently when I’d talked of making up fresh beds yesterday, and I’d had another look through the key drawer in the kitchen with no luck. ‘It’ll turn up’, he added. ‘Or we’ll have to change the lock. Use the sofa bed for now, in the study.’
The key had been lost by one of Matthew’s sister’s kids, visiting from America in the summer. They’d lost it playing hide and seek apparently. When I asked Matthew what was in the room, he laughed and said it was the second spare room, full of junk, and I was welcome to look if I could just find the key.
But I can’t. I’ve searched everywhere for that key since I moved in: everywhere. The locked door unnerves me every time I pass it.
Downstairs is deserted, although the cornflakes are out on the side, and the TV is chatting away to itself.
A huge cooked breakfast would be perfect now, a nice way to ease everyone into January. Then perhaps a walk, or a film in front of the fire – The Sound of Music perhaps, or The Wizard of Oz – something cosy and family oriented, in honour of last night.
The news comes on. Debt, death, the Pakistani media accused of pandering to extremists, followed by someone from the Metropolitan Police talking about the schoolgirl who vanished on Christmas Eve. She’d taken only her passport and one small bag of clothes and was last seen on CCTV catching the Heathrow Express. The fear is that she was headed to Syria; they think she might have been enticed out there to marry a Daesh jihadi. A few photos are shown of a pretty, head-scarfed girl and then one of her with her English boyfriend, laughing on a fairground ride. The police spokesman goes on to say that this relationship had possibly been a decoy, planned to throw her family off the scent. Her older sister makes a plea for information and then starts to cry.
Poor family, I think, imagining my own sixth-formers. They were such babies: not ready for the world, let alone war.
It is too early in the day – in the year – for such bad news. I turn it off, clutching my tea for warmth.
The house is strangely silent, considering all the people sleeping in it, and I have that sense again that the old walls are whispering.
Whilst I’m looking for the eggs, something creaks nearby.
Then I hear it – I definitely hear muttering, coming from outside.
‘Frank?’ I call. No answer. ‘Scarlett? Luke? Is that you?’
Nothing.
I’m just not used to old houses that creak with age – that’s the truth. I’m used to newbuilds and council flats.
I’ve cracked the eggs into a basin and begun to whisk them when I hear footsteps running somewhere above me and whispering.
In my fright, I slop the batter everywhere. Whisk in hand, I stare at the ceiling – and then there is another noise. The crash of breaking glass.
‘Matthew? Frank?’
For God’s sake, why does no one answer? My fear is making me feel irritated. With an action braver than I feel, I pull open the lopsided door at the back of the kitchen that leads to the rickety stairwell.
‘Hello?’ I call up the dark little stairs. ‘Who is it?’
There is no answer. I turn the light on – and something explodes. My own cry resonates in my ears.
The light bulb has blown.
Don’t be daft, Jeanie! Old houses, old electrics…
I go back into the kitchen and switch on my phone’s torch.
Gingerly I walk up the first few stairs until I see something in the shadows: a picture, I think, lying smashed halfway up the staircase.