Adam Nevill - House of Small Shadows

‘I’m sorry. Sorry.’

‘Fuck you!’

‘Look, when you told me about the girl that you hurt, in London, I only answered her messages because… I wanted to hear from her. About what happened. Before we got any deeper. Her side of it.’

‘And then you met her!’

‘I wish I never had. You were right. She’s poison. She’s been using me. I can see that now. And I’m a bloody idiot. I don’t know what I was thinking.’

‘I bloody well do!’

‘Things weren’t great between us, Cath. Not since… you know. I didn’t know what to do… shit!’ He swallowed at the bolus of pain that constricted his throat. But was he swallowing his anguish at being betrayed by Tara, or remorse at what he had done to Catherine?

‘You slept with that horse-faced bitch.’

‘I… Look…’

And for the second time in her life she struck someone’s face. This time there was no closed fist, but an open hand.

Catherine turned towards the church as if it offered some hope of sanctuary. Through her blurred vision, trembling from the emotion that shook her body, she was sure the aged and diminutive members of the tatty assembly had all gathered at the top of the lane and were turned in her direction, to watch the confrontation of two strangers on the border of their village.

‘Cath, something’s not right here. I mean it.’

Catherine turned away from the church to find Mike so close they both flinched. ‘No shit! You don’t even know the half of it. ’

‘You can hate me for ever. I don’t expect you to forgive me, or to even talk to me again. But come home with me, yeah? Tonight. Please.’

‘Where’s that bitch’s car?’

‘In the lane. On the other side of that pole. But I can’t find her. She’s gone.’

‘Gone? What are you saying?’

‘We got split up. We went up to that church. She went inside. I didn’t… I didn’t want to. Didn’t like it. But she hasn’t come back out. I can’t find her. She’s got the car keys. We all need to get out of here.’

‘She’s still in there?’

‘I don’t know. Yes, maybe. I saw… I don’t know. Up there, I saw something really weird. Horrible. What the fuck is this place? Leonard had to show me on a map.’

‘But you still brought her here. You betrayed me with that bitch, and then you brought her here too. Were you thinking of her career? Because I know she was!’

‘What could I do? I shouldn’t have said anything about the house. I know. Damn it, I know. But I did, before I knew what she was doing to us. Then it was too late. And she wanted to see it, the antiques and stuff. This guy, Mason. His animals. She knew about him.’

‘You stupid bastard.’

Mike held her arm. ‘She would have come out here anyway. She’s already been looking for that house since I told her about the animals. But she couldn’t find the village. I still have no clue how we found it today. By accident, I think. But I needed her to drive me. When Leonard said you were in trouble, I had no choice. I don’t have the money for that kind of cab fare from Worcester. I told her I wanted to find you, told her it’s you I really care about.’

‘Liar!’

‘This is all so messed up.’

‘You messed it up.’

‘Tara didn’t care. She just wanted to get here to see the house. She’s so driven, she’s mad. Even after what she’s done to us, she didn’t care about a confrontation with you, as long as she could get to see the house.’ Mike clenched his fists as if he were going to punch himself. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’

Catherine looked at the church. The strained and rapid rotations of ‘Greensleeves’ swirled about her and grew louder. Even the stars moved in a circle above her tormented mind, or so she imagined.

‘That bitch is up there?’ Her chest felt like it had been pierced by something cold and made her breath shuddery. This night was the endgame to what started in the torture chambers of tarmacked junior school playgrounds. Of course! But at last she could see the end. Fuck therapy. What could a counsellor or doctor do to prevent destiny? She had been right all along. She knew it. Beneath all of the reassurances, she had always known that other forces guided her down the tragic spiral of life like magnetic fields sucking water through a grate, a circular but inevitable descent. You either endured it and suffered, or you did the unthinkable to your enemies and at least went down with a sense of justice being served.

Mike’s voice brought her out of her miserable absorption. ‘There was some kind of service in there. Singing. Around this glass coffin, or something. Pretty damn sinister. I split, but Tara waited to see if she could find that crazy old woman we met up at the house, the one in the wheelchair. To see about looking at the stuff in the house.’

‘Edith.’

‘Yeah, Edith. Tara wanted to talk to her about a film. Edith said she would be here, with you. But we couldn’t find Edith, and Tara hasn’t come back out of that church. This is all wrong. Jesus, this place. We should just go, now.’

‘Keys. The car keys! We’ve got to find your bitch.’

‘Hey, I told you. I messed up. I was wrong.’

‘Bit late for that, don’t you think?’

‘Don’t go up there. I’m not. Not again. It’s… I think it was a funeral, or something. I can’t look at that woman again, in the coffin.’

‘What woman? What are you talking about?’

‘I don’t know. She was in this case. It was all lit with these red lights. I was watching from the door. Then the lights went out. The doors shut. But Tara was still inside. What the fuck are they doing in the dark?’

‘Jesus Christ.’ Catherine began walking to the church. She would get the keys, but she wouldn’t look at the woman in the case. Almost certainly more of Mason’s handiwork. She’d seen enough of that for a lifetime.

‘Don’t go.’

‘What about the car keys, you moron!’

Mike bit the inside of his mouth. She’d never seen his eyes so wild-looking before, never seen him this frightened.

‘Fuck the keys. Let’s walk out of here. But I’m not going back in there. I’m taking off.’

‘I don’t have any shoes! How can I walk?’

‘Shit! Look, if we get split up, I’m going to wait for you. By the car, yeah? It’s parked in that lane, by the pole. I’m not leaving you out here. This place is all wrong. I’ll be waiting, yeah? Cath! Cath!’

‘My hero!’

‘I don’t care what you think of me. But I won’t leave you here. If you two go back to that house, I’m coming up there to get you, yeah?’

She was right. Tara had come here. No doubt with the sense of the antiques documentary story of the decade filling her nostrils, as well as a perfectly laid-out vengeance narrowing her reptile eyes with anticipation. Take Mike and break off their relationship. Show up at the Red House and inveigle herself into Edith’s confidence, as only Tara could do, to spoil the valuation and auction with promises of a lucrative television contract, augmented with lies about what Catherine had done at Handle With Care. Edith would be thrilled by the subterfuge and scandal. Her lonely, mad existence would be lit up with even more of Catherine’s misery, and with new talk of the greater riches available through Tara’s influence.

‘I’ll kill…’ Catherine’s attempt to speak broke into a sob of rage that felt like it could damage her.

But then she smiled, and she felt as if a terrible constriction had been released from around her heart.

Let her have it. Let her waste her time.

Even if Edith had been in possession of the Rothman treasures, lost when the Titanic went down, Catherine knew she’d rather die than value the Mason estate. Tara was welcome to the Red House. And she was welcome to Edith. It would all be evidence soon, in a police investigation. There would be yellow tape strung across that porch not long after she found a phone signal and directed the authorities up that lane.