Rachel Edwards - Darling - The most shocking psychological thriller you will read this summer

Lola beckoned me to the next stop on the tour with a steel-tipped wave. ( Her nails and toes were both painted, a shade lighter than her stare.) She was set on showing me all five bedrooms. These would not have been tidied, armfuls stuffed into cupboards, for my eyes only. It was a well-ordered house, grown-up and yet designed to fulfil the grandest hide-and-seek fantasies. By the time we went from her room to the attic (up the secondary doll’s house stairs behind a Narnia door, I kid you not), which they had thought about converting – not her dad, they – I almost wanted to say, ‘OK, I get it and yes, I’m impressed not accustomed, and yes, I’m just the guest …’

But then I thought sixteen and bit my tongue – actually gave myself a salty little nip – and I beamed and nodded, every inch the spellbound stranger, when she asked:

‘So, Darling, would you like to see Dad’s favourite place?’

We traipsed back down the main attic stairs along the landing, and carried on down to the hallway without speaking. A shout from the kitchen over the effortful jazz:

‘All OK, girls?’

‘Fine, Dad!’

Lola and I kept going, to the right, to the left, to the side, through a door hewn out of the fucking Faraway Tree and into the dust of a red-brick landing. Another smaller door. I hesitated:

‘Basement?’

‘Cellar.’

She flicked on a sickly light and I squinted, unsure. Before I could think of three good reasons why not, we were going down. I descended into the B-movie, my mind’s camera shaking, her he’s-behind-you blonde hair swishing in too much shadow to be funny. But something about her steady pace told me she was not acting. Lola led me down into the dark must.

‘Watch these steps,’ she said.

‘Will do, thanks.’

I tried not to mind her. Of course she was showing off the house as if it were double-glazed with diamonds. Anyone would be proud with a dad like Thomas Waite.

At the bottom, another switch; more powerful illumination. Racks stood in rows, housing aristocratic boozers asleep under thin blankets of dust. The stone-carved ceiling curved in places and the ends from wine boxes tiled the walls.

‘Ta-da!’

I nodded and smiled, as required.

‘Go ahead and take a look, it goes right back.’

I had never been a huge wine drinker – a vodka, gin or rum girl, me – and could not spot a good year, coo with urbane delight. However, even I could work out, without looking too hard at the labels, that if wine had been left alone for a few decades you had to be confident that some poor grape-trampling sod would have made it worth the wait.

‘Yes, Dad? Coming!’ A yelled reply to a call I could not hear. ‘Back in a sec.’

She skipped upstairs and left me gazing, with the same eyes I had turned on the ‘original’ fireplaces and the ‘spacious’ study, at a bottle of 2012 Côtes du Roussillon Villages Le Clos des Fées. Ah, fée : French for fairy.

Thud-click.

‘Lola?’

Nothing. Nothing except a muffle-thump of bass, some new and energetic tempo. Was that Queen ?

‘Lola?’

I moved, with laboured nonchalance, to the foot of the stairs. Slow, slow, feet chilling on dank stone. I stared up: please, not this . Where the oblong of daylight had shown there was now only black.

‘Lola!’

Nothing but the dun-dun-dun high above, through dense, deaf floors – ‘Under Pressure’? Within seconds the room was pressing against my skin. I sank into a crouch. Walls locking down on me, dead air growing sweet in my nostrils, a sharp whiff of red flowers; the lights dimmed and in my ears dun-dun-dun a drum beating, a dangerous vibration, my lungs tight and full because I must have stopped breathing and then I was pounding upwards, upstairs dun-dun-dun-dun pounding hard into hard blackness:

‘Lola!’

I hit at the door dun-dun-dun . Not goddamn ‘I Want to Break Free’, no way. She couldn’t have.

‘Lola! Lola, let me out. Get me out now!’

Too loud, too far. My mobile; it was still in my handbag by the front door, next to my shamed shoes.

‘Lola! Lola!’

I could feel tears bleeding into the sweat at my temples.

Then a blinding of light and air and noise rushed in and she was there, a bending shadow. Oxygen, music washed me down (my hysterical ears now heard ‘Killer Queen’) and Lola swept me up.

‘Oh, you poor thing, I’m so sorry!’

‘I thought—’

‘This stupid beeping door. God, Darling, so sorry. It must have locked behind me, it’s been sticking lately.’

She took my hand and led me through the first door back to safety. Thomas danced out, a seafood cocktail in each hand. Seeing me he stopped dead:

‘What’s wrong, what—?’

‘The cellar door, Dad. Knew it would do that sooner or later.’

‘I’m fine.’ The veil of sweat said more, the tacky film noir on my face. I dropped her hand.

We ate. The prawns were perky, the pasta porky; paccheri topped with a fat chop, rubbed with salt and fresh oregano, in a more than passable passata. But I was done in. I laughed too loud, complimented everything Thomas had created: the dinner, all things Lola. I tried, but the pulsing music was all dun-dun-dun and I could not follow the chatter, my flesh had been rubbed with salt sweat and fear, and my wine tasted sharp, all wrong. We ate on as my toes curled up on themselves, defeated. My smiles lied broad and long, as did the yawns at around 9.30 p.m. Enough. Our night had been left behind, locked in the cellar, and I pleaded an early start with Stevie: physio. I would gather up my boy, he could sleep in my bed after all.

I pecked Thomas and hugged Lola, realising as I backed away that I knew little more about her than when she had first landed those eyes on me. As the door closed, those eyes put me in mind of magnesium, with the potential to flare bright. Or perhaps the casings of incendiary devices, of dormant bombs. Yes, that was it. In a certain light, Lola looked like she could go off at any moment.

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