Lucy Wood - The Sing of the Shore

He put his arm round Lorna and she leaned her head back against him. He could see the freckle behind her ear. It was tiny, hardly more than a dot. He used to kiss her there.

She yawned and leaned in closer. Her hair was kinked from wearing headphones at work most of the day. Her eyes were dry and flecked with red.

The audience on the TV laughed raucously at something and he found the remote and turned it down.

He could hear her watch ticking. There was a phrase they used to say to each other when they’d first met – something about clocks or time, because she always used to be late, and he was about to say it to her, it used to make her laugh. But he couldn’t remember it.

He’d seen her earlier on his phone and he’d grabbed it, almost yanked it out of her hands, but she was just checking a friend’s number. His hand had been shaking and he’d gone upstairs so that she wouldn’t notice.

He turned the volume up on the TV again and Lorna sighed and shifted her head so that it was against the cushion instead of his chest, and her hips moved, just slightly, away from his. His hand started to shake again, but it was nothing, he’d deleted everything, there had been no more phone calls. Any moment now she would turn back and lean against him again.

He was putting away the washing up – the cups and plates and glasses – in the cupboards and drawers. Everything was clean. Dinner was cooking. He was ahead for once. He lined the cups up carefully, and stacked the plates on top of each other. The glasses caught the light and gleamed.

A glass fell and smashed against the floor.

He reached up automatically to the shelf to stop any more falling but nothing had fallen, there was no broken glass anywhere.

There was another loud smash from behind the wall.

He put his hands over his ears and waited for it to stop.

The dishes were moving. If he hadn’t been watching them every day, he might not have noticed, but he did watch them every day, and he saw them move. Soon they would be pointing straight in at the kitchen window.

The van was there again. He hadn’t heard it drive up, or any doors opening and closing. But it was there. Jay watched it out of the window. He checked on the baby. He went back to the window, waited a moment, then went outside. He walked over to the van and looked in. There was an empty plastic bottle under the seat, and a newspaper on the dashboard from a week earlier.

He circled the van twice in the drizzle, then thought about the number plate. What he should do was write down the number plate. He ran inside and found a pen, then crouched down next to the van to write. The number plate was covered in mud and he rubbed at it, saw an X and a 7, then rubbed again but the mud was too thick and wouldn’t come off.

When he looked up, there was a light in one of next door’s windows. It flicked on, then off. The curtains upstairs moved.

He walked over to the house. He glanced back at the road, then went closer, right up to the window. The rooms downstairs were dark. He pressed his ear against the glass but couldn’t hear anything. Something moved further back in the house – maybe it was an arm, or someone’s back, he just glimpsed something crossing into another room.

He ran round the side of his house, down the alley and through the long grass on the bank. He scrabbled over the brambles, dropped the pen, and scratched his hand on a broken bit of fence. There was a low wall behind the house next door. He jumped down softly. The back door was padlocked. The windows were shut and dark.

He stayed crouched against the concrete. The net curtains swayed against the glass.

Something rustled in the bank above him. The rustling got louder, and then a blackbird ran out towards him, scolding loudly.

He moved closer to the windows. They were smeared and dusty but he was sure there was something back there, in the darkness. He went closer. A voice murmured and someone laughed.

There was a shout behind him. He turned quickly. It was the farmer he’d seen in the field. She was walking towards him, calling out, asking what he was doing. He looked at her, then back at the window. He realised his hand was on the latch. His fingers were rigid and scratched, the nails bitten right down. It didn’t look like his hand. He turned and ran, disappearing into his own house.

He jumped at small noises. When the baby broke her bowl he brushed up every single piece with the dustpan. He picked out the tiny shards from the cracks between the tiles.

It turned very cold. He stayed up late into the night with his ear to the kitchen wall, just the blue light from the fridge, and the white security lights coming in through the thin curtains. He paced the kitchen. When the baby cried he went straight to her and lifted her out of her cot and held her while he paced. She shaped her mouth into a sound and then gave up and blew a sticky bubble instead, and sighed.

‘It’s OK,’ he told her. ‘It’s OK.’

Then he went back to the wall and listened. He pressed so hard that bits of paint flaked off onto the floor.

He left Lorna sleeping in bed and came downstairs and listened all night.

He heard the music again, faintly this time, somewhere towards the back of the house.

Another time there was a hushed, crying sound, like someone had left a tap slowly running.

‘I no, I no,’ the baby said. She opened her eyes wide. ‘Sshhh,’ she said.

The phone next door rang, cut out, then rang again. Jay stopped turning his phone on. He put it under a box in the wardrobe, then in a drawer. After a few days he took it out and threw it into the brambles behind the back window.

Someone was leaving. He heard it clearly and distinctly.

The baby looked at him, her head to one side. ‘Wha?’ she said. She frowned.

A very cold feeling washed over Jay – it went from his neck down to his feet, almost rooting him to the floor.

The voice came again through the wall. It was a man’s voice, but not as deep as the one he usually heard. ‘Going,’ it said. ‘The only thing to …’ A cupboard opened, then drawers opened, and something heavy was dragged across the floor. A zip crunched.

Jay picked up the baby and held her to his chest. He stood by the front door. Footsteps thudded through the wall, more cupboards creaked open.

He put the baby in her coat, then went outside. He crossed the front yard. The van wasn’t there. It was cold and the dishes seemed poised, tensed. They were pointing straight at him.