As I turn to him, the air around me explodes into colours of the rainbow.
I register that Mother is wailing, but that’s fine. I am focused.
I grab Brian by the shoulders and push him as hard as I can. He slips on the kitchen tiles in his sock feet and keels over like a great hog. His head smashes into the wall and I watch, fascinated, as his cracked skull leaves a trail of red down the paintwork.
He doesn’t move. His coarse dirty mouth stays closed and silent. But Mother is screeching in the background like Maria Callas.
I don’t look at her. I just say, ‘I’ll be back soon.’
I step outside into the cool, cleansing air and close the door behind me.
I might be acting fairly calm but my heart is racing and I feel a bit nauseous. But Holly needs my help.
I walk up the side path between the two houses and look directly up at her room. She has the wrong idea about me, thinking I can help her.
I feel disingenuous. Pretending to be something I’m not.
I knock, and Holly comes to the door.
‘Thanks for popping over, David,’ she says, her face pale.
‘Who is it, dear?’ I hear Mrs Barrett call.
Holly rolls her eyes and speaks in a low voice. ‘She’s been a bit confused today. I need to talk to you, in private. Shall we go for a walk or something?’
My chest suddenly feels tight. Perhaps the incident with Brian has unnerved me more than I thought.
‘It’s quite cool out here, and there are a lot of people out and about, so…’
She nods slowly. ‘OK, well you’d better come upstairs then.’
‘Upstairs?’
‘We can’t talk down here. Cora will be interrupting us every few seconds.’ She hesitates and her eyes glisten. ‘And I really need to speak to you, David.’
‘Fine.’ I step inside. ‘Lead the way.’
En route, I pop my head round the living room door.
‘Hello, Mrs Barrett.’
‘David! Come in, sit down, dear. I wanted to ask you if—’
‘David is just going up to measure my room for some shelves, Cora,’ Holly says kindly. ‘We’ll be down soon and then you two can chat.’
Mrs Barrett begins to object, but Holly pulls my arm and guides me towards the stairs.
Chapter Sixty-Five
David
In Holly’s bedroom, the heat channels up the middle of my body and into my face and neck with a vengeance.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, noticing my high colour. ‘The last thing I want is to make you feel uncomfortable.’
‘It’s fine,’ I say quickly. ‘What seems to be the problem?’
She walks into the room and snatches something up from her bedside table.
‘This.’ She holds up a white envelope. ‘This is the problem, David.’
She hands me the envelope. On the front, written in neat block capitals and underlined, is her name: HOLLY NEWMAN.
I turn it over and look at the unsealed flap.
‘Go ahead,’ she says. ‘Open it.’
I slip out a single sheet of folded paper.
‘Read it out loud,’ Holly directs. She sits on the bed and fixes her gaze on me.
I clear my throat.
‘“I am watching you. And when you least expect it, I will come for you.”’
The words aren’t particularly threatening or violent in themselves, but together they add up to something more. A very sinister intention.
I read through the message silently again. Something about it sounds familiar, and I push thoughts of Mr Brown from my mind.
Silence descends on the room for a few moments, and then a rushing noise starts in my ears. Holly shifts and a bed spring creaks, and the sounds inside my head fade.
I turn over the paper to check that it’s blank on the other side. ‘Do you know who sent this?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘But I’ve got a good idea. There’s someone in Manchester who hates me. She’d do anything to hurt me. I think… I think she might even send someone after me.’
I look at her tense face. ‘Is this the first note you’ve had?’
She sighs. ‘Yes, but I think someone was in the garden the other night. I woke up because there was a strange noise. I looked out of the window and there was a man… I think it was a man. Standing at the bottom of the garden, staring up here.’
The CCTV image of Brian at the bottom of our garden, staring towards the houses, flashes into my mind, and I shiver.
Holly’s narrow chest rises and falls like a small, dazed bird that has flown into glass and is trying to recover before next door’s cat comes along. She looks very afraid, vulnerable. Just like Della did.
I wonder if she wishes I could protect her somehow. Perhaps she’d like us to be more than friends.
‘David… are you feeling OK?’
‘I think I might have killed Brian,’ I tell her.
She laughs without mirth. ‘This is no time for jokes. I’m scared that someone is watching me.’
‘I have a good view of your garden from my bedroom window,’ I say faintly, thinking about Brian’s blood running down the kitchen wall. ‘I could keep an eye on things if you wanted me to.’
‘But what if someone comes in the middle of the night again?’ Her breath catches in her throat and she coughs. ‘You can’t help me then, can you?’
I can’t tell her about my monitoring equipment, the cameras. Without a lengthy explanation, it could make me look a little odd.
‘I don’t mind getting up a few times during the night for the next couple of days,’ I tell her. ‘To make sure nobody is out there messing about, I mean.’
‘Would you honestly do that for me?’ She shakes her head slightly as if she can’t believe my offer. It makes me wonder how much actual kindness she’s had in her life.
‘It’s no trouble.’
She makes me feel strong, capable.
‘Thank you, David.’ She stands up and walks over to me, taking the letter and brushing my hand as she does so. ‘I really am grateful. With you around I don’t feel nearly so alone.’
I feel a rushing sensation in my chest, like someone just opened the floodgates to a great backlog of pent-up emotion.
I grasp her hand and squeeze but I don’t say anything. There seems to be no need for words. There’s a sort of knowing between us.
Holly squeezes my hand back, then begins to retract, but I hold onto her fingers. I don’t want to let go of this feeling.
‘David,’ she says softly. ‘We’d better go downstairs. Cora will be waiting.’
I come to my senses and release her hand.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean to…’
‘It’s fine.’ She smiles. ‘Honestly, it is.’
I feel hot all over. I wipe both hands on the sides of my trousers.
Holly clears her throat. ‘What will you do? I mean, if you catch someone in the garden?’
I think for a moment and realise I don’t know what I’ll do.
‘I’ll ring the police,’ I say.
‘The police?’
A trickle of sweat runs down from my temple. I wipe it away quickly, but I think she sees it anyway. I’d better not ring the police.
‘I’ll chase him away,’ I say.
‘I thought you didn’t like going outside after dark?’
I stare at her.
‘David?’ I focus again and see that Holly is looking at me with concern. ‘I’m not sure you’re feeling quite yourself. You look… confused.’
Who’s been telling her things… embarrassing things?
‘Are you coming down soon?’
As soon as I hear Mrs Barrett’s voice call up, I know it’s her. She’s been blabbing about what happened to me in the past.
The anger backs up in my throat but I swallow it down. If I let it out, it might never stop.
I must start taking my tablets again tomorrow. The world is too dark a place without them.
Chapter Sixty-Six
Holly
Thinking back to Manchester, to waking up feeling so ill, Holly couldn’t begin to hazard a guess at how long she’d been in the bedroom.
She’d been too ill to question what had happened or to think logically about the situation.
‘You got drunk and acted like a slut,’ Geraldine had told her repeatedly. ‘Brendan is a hot-blooded man, not a saint. I went to bed early and you threw yourself at him, wouldn’t take no for an answer. He told me you threatened to tell me he’d raped you.’