The Child Across the Street: An unputdownable and absolutely gripping psychological thriller Read online

  I figure we’re done but, out of nowhere, she places a comforting hand on my arm. It feels motherly, though I’m older than she is.

  ‘You look like you need a good sleep, love,’ she says.

  I stare at her, but the freckles are now fuzzy and unclear, like she’s behind misted glass.

  ‘It’s been a long day,’ I reply, fighting a yawn.

  ‘You’ve done great,’ Tina adds, although it takes me a second or two to realise she’s talking about calling 999.

  She moves towards one of her colleagues, who is heading in the direction of one of the patrol cars. The street is now largely empty of onlookers, with only a couple of residents standing at their doors chatting to officers. It’s now I realise that I abandoned my suitcase on the corner. It’s still there, the handle high and extended, untouched by anyone who was here. In London, it would have been nicked the moment I’d left it – but not Elwood. At least, not the Elwood in which I grew up.

  The horror of everything that just happened is impossible to blink away, but I don’t know what else to do. I was unsure from the moment I got off the bus, so I retrieve my case and drink from my bottle. The liquid is warm and anything but refreshing, so, after one more glance towards the skid mark on the road, I head off along Beverly Close.

  It’s only a minute until I reach the junction, barely two minutes’ walk from where Ethan was hit.

  I stop and stare up at the corner house that was once so familiar. It’s on the end of a terrace, the type of two-storey place that sprang up everywhere in the 1950s. There’s a small garden at the front and a far larger yard at the back. The house feels recognisable and yet not. The curtains are drawn, which is unsurprising, seeing as there will be nobody inside. There was always a strip of soil dedicated to flowers along the side of the garden but, as I step onto the path, I can see that it’s now overgrown with flourishing green weeds. It doesn’t look as if anyone’s been near it in a fair while.

  I reach into the pocket at the front of my case and take out the envelope emblazoned with the purple and orange FedEx logo. The solicitor’s return details are printed on the back. I received it four days ago, though it feels longer.

  My former boss said I couldn’t have the time off to return here, and that was the last time I spoke to him. I’ve ignored the missed calls and don’t know what happens next. Everything I own is in the case.

  The tab across the top of the cardboard envelope has already been pulled and I empty the key into my other hand. The letter drops out, too, though I already know what it says, so put it back in the envelope before heading along the path.

  It takes little effort for the key to fit the lock, but I have no satisfaction from the fact that, after all the years of unsuccessfully saving for a deposit, I am finally now a homeowner. It just so happens to be the home in which I grew up.

  It is unspectacularly ordinary as the door creaks inwards. I haven’t been inside since the day I left twenty years ago.

  I close the door behind me and then turn to where the light is shining from the landing upstairs, cascading down the stairs and drenching the hallway in searing sun. There’s a shelf off to the side that’s plastered with the same old trophies that were here decades ago. Dad won them for everything from athletics to football to darts to chess – though they’re all older than me. At one time, he’d sit on the stairs and polish them, while telling stories of heroic victories and unfortunate defeats.

  That was a long time ago.

  Dust now sticks to my finger as I run it around the rim of a trophy that’s in the shape of a dartboard. I return the award to the shelf, but it isn’t only that which smells of dust. The entire hallway is like the inside of a vacuum cleaner.

  I continue into the kitchen, where there is a sinkful of dishes. The big plate at the front is plastered with sticky ketchup and there’s a dripped trail of gloopy, dried coffee across the nearby counter. A wire scourer has been abandoned on the windowsill, where there’s a plant pot with a dead twig sticking sadly out the top.

  There’s a moment in which I think about washing up, but it’s barely a sprout of an idea before I turn away. I’ve cleared up too many messes in this house and it’s not the time for one more.

  I decide not to bother with the living room and am about to head back towards the hall when I spot the note that’s stuck to the fridge. It’s held in place by a magnet in the shape of the UK. My father once had beautiful, calligrapher’s handwriting, something he said was beaten into him at school. This note is in shaky blue scrawl. The curl to the capitalised letter ‘A’ tells me it’s still his writing, though the rest is an interwoven mess, even though I can still make out my name. My phone number is written underneath, something that hasn’t changed in a good decade.

  I unclip the note from the fridge and run my fingers against the crumpled page, before glancing instinctively to the landline phone that’s still pinned to the wall next to the fridge. It’s as grubby and dust-coated as everything else, though that doesn’t stop those memories of the phone calls my parents would make while leaning on the fridge. I could hear either of them shouting into the receiver, no matter where I was in the house. My mum would be bellowing at her friends as she made plans for whatever they’d be getting up to that night. Dad would be on to the bookie or one of his mates. Neither seemed to realise that phone calls could be made without having to shout.

  As for mobiles in more recent times, they are something for the twenty-first century, and I’m not sure Dad was ever fully comfortable with the twentieth.

  He certainly didn’t much care for phones of any sort. It’s hard to remember the last time we spoke. The best I can come up with is new year, which was seven months ago. It wasn’t New Year’s Day itself, but maybe the second or third of January. He’d have been leaning on the fridge right here while he said something about having to get off because he was on his way to a football game. I think that was his way of ending the call early, even though he was the one who contacted me. His gnarled, hoarse voice was enough to let me know how he’d spent the morning.

  It’s longer still since we actually saw one another. Perhaps seven or eight Christmases ago, when we were at a grim service station halfway between here and where I lived in London. I had a car then and was probably over the limit. I have no doubt that he was.

  I return the note to the fridge and then head back to the hall. It’s like opening the door of a hot oven as I carry my case up the stairs. The sunlight burns through the windows above, dousing everything below in ferocious heat. My bare arms tingle as I reach the landing and then stop on a shaded patch of carpet.

  I shiver and spin, feeling a whispering breath on my neck, although there’s nobody there.

  The unsettling feeling cloys at me. I’m not sure what it is at first, but then I realise it’s the silence. The soundtrack of this house was never quiet. It wasn’t only the shouted phone calls: the living room TV was rarely off, even overnight, and the sport or news would always boom upwards to where I am now. The opposite is true now. There are no phone conversations and no television. I can’t even hear anything from the street. The only thing that echoes is the unrelenting, all-consuming silence. It makes my arms itch.

  I blink away the unease, or try. There are too many ghosts in this house and I’m not sure the anxiety I feel here will ever leave.

  I stand undecided at the top of the stairs. There are four doors from which to choose – the bathroom, Dad’s bedroom, my room, and the spare bedroom. I ignore the others and head into the door on the left. The door sticks in the frame, as it always did, but I press it hard until I find myself in my childhood room. My feet are planted in the doorway, not quite able to move any further. It’s like there are two versions of me. The one who lived in this room – and the one who disappeared off to London just before the turn of the century. I was in search of something I never found. That’s a whole chapter of my life now written off, because here I am, back at the start, with so little to show for the time away
.

  Aside from the same coating of dust that permeates everything else in the house, my room is eerily close to how I remember it. There is a hi-fi stereo in the corner, complete with double tape deck, with which I would copy music from the Sunday afternoon chart show. I cross the room and run my fingers across the stack of grubby cassettes. It’s mainly Britpop. Everything was back then and I was always more of a Blur girl, than Oasis. The originals of Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife, The Great Escape and Blur itself are all there. I can’t remember what album came after that. I used to think I was into them before anyone else, simply because I’d read copies of Melody Maker and NME that I’d nicked from local shops.

  The evidence of that is the posters taken from the centre of magazines that are on the walls. Yellowed sticky tape is still clinging to the paint, holding up my pictures of Damon Albarn, Jarvis Cocker, the Glastonbury Pyramid stage and, among others, Crispian Mills from Kula Shaker. All the men look so young.

  My bed is still made, though, until now, I had forgotten the Garfield duvet cover under which I used to sleep. I’m not sure I was ever into the cartoon and I don’t know where it came from.

  There’s more, too. My old school exercise books are crammed into a box under the bed, there are swimming certificates in the drawer of the bedside table, plus another drawer full of make-up long past its use-by date. It’s hard to know why Dad kept everything as it was. Things are dusty, but there isn’t twenty years’ worth of grime. He must have cleaned periodically, without clearing out any of my things. He can’t have believed I was coming home and, even if by some miracle I did, it wouldn’t have been the teenage me.

  I put my suitcase on the bed and set up my laptop on the desk. I open the curtains fully, then a window, letting the early-evening warmth spill inside. The clammy summer air is still better than the murk of this old room.

  Even with that, I can’t face too much longer here – not now – so I head back downstairs and check the fridge. There’s a packet of ham that’s somehow not gone mouldy, plus some stinking old cheese. I’m never sure if the slight bluey mould is a good or bad thing. There are packets of crisps and biscuits in the cupboard, but that’s about it. The type of junk a teenager can put away day after day, but not someone of my father’s age.

  I’m not feeling particularly hungry, anyway.

  There isn’t much point in putting it off further, so I press into the living room. The curtains are open at the back, though closed at the front, leaving me blinking into a mix of dark and light.

  I head to the cabinet in the back corner. It stretches from floor to ceiling and is probably the most expensive item of furniture in the house. Everything else is cheap stuff from catalogues, but this is made of heavy, expensive wood.

  Dad’s pride and joy.

  There’s a keyhole on the door, but I don’t ever remember it being locked. It’s certainly not now as I pull it open to reveal the row of mostly empty vodka and whisky bottles. The only surprise is that there’s anything left at all.

  I unscrew the top from Lidl’s Western Gold, but it might as well be Jim Beam, given the way they’ve copied the label. I have a sniff, wincing slightly at the acrid smell, and then I take a mouthful anyway. My teeth chatter involuntarily as it burns its way down my throat. Whisky is not my drink.

  As I’m returning the bottle to the cabinet, I almost miss the envelope tucked in at the very back. It’s brown and crusty, the type that looks like it might have been around longer than two or three generations of kids. It’s bulging and, when I untuck the flap, I find a thick wad of ten- and twenty-pound notes. The fact they’re plastic, instead of the old-style paper notes, means they have to be relatively recent.

  I fan the money onto the table and then count almost six hundred pounds back into the envelope. I almost return it to the cabinet, but then figure Dad won’t be needing it any more, so it goes into my bag instead. I do a lap of the rest of the room and it’s astounding how little has changed since I left. The sofa and armchairs are the same, although the brown fabric has faded into near grey. The carpet is still the horrid bluey-grey abomination it always was, though it’s far patchier now. The tiled floor below is clear in places, though I have no idea why there are tiles in a living room.

  My father bought a newspaper every day that I knew him – and there are three stacks in the corner, close to the front window. I finger through the closest pile, trying carefully not to send everything toppling. One of the issues from the middle that’s sticking out slightly is from six years ago. There will be a news organisation somewhere going out of business because Dad had spent all these years propping them up.

  I leave the papers and turn to the rest of the room. There’s a newer flat-screen television, but I don’t recognise the make and suspect it was either a cheap supermarket special or that Dad got it from a man who knows a man, and so on. The red standby light glows, so I go to turn it off at the mains. In most places, this would be an easy task, but my father was seemingly trying to break every fire safety rule in the books. There are blocky, plasticky adapters plugged into other adapters that are wedged into an ancient, dusty four-gang. It takes me a couple of minutes to disentangle everything before I can finally turn it all off.

  It’s when I’m done stopping the house from burning down that I spot the crack in the skirting board, close to one of the armchairs. It stretches from the floor to the top of the wood, maybe five or six centimetres long. When I crouch and look more closely, there’s a dot of inky reddy-black embedded in the ridges. It doesn’t smudge or disappear when I scratch a finger across it. Before I realise what I’m doing, I am rubbing the spot close to my temple where there’s still a raised line of a scar. It’s faded over time, no longer a bright white slash, but closer to the colour of my skin. I glance back to the blob of reddy-black and then turn away.

  I need to get out of this house.

  Four

  I’m not sure how the passing of time escaped me, but it’s almost dark when I leave the house. The warmth of the August day hangs stickily under the blackening skies. The streets are quiet, aside from the vague sound of someone’s music in the distance, while the singed smell of barbecue wafts airily on the gentlest of breezes. I have another drink from my bottle and then head along Beverly Close towards the park, where the music is louder. It looks like a bonfire has been lit on the furthest side of the park and someone’s having a party.

  Things are far more subdued on this side and there’s only one other person around. Even if I hadn’t seen her earlier, I think I would have recognised Jo’s silhouette. She is standing on the spot close to the verge where I found Ethan. She’s always had a way of slumping slightly to one side when standing, as if one leg is a little longer than the other.

  I sidle in close, saying her name and trying not to startle her. Jo turns and blinks blankly towards me. One half of her face is in shade, the other illuminated by the searing white of the full moon. She was always the one to whom the boys gravitated when we were young. I used to tell myself it was her natural blonde hair and the way her chest exploded when we were only twelve. That was the age when some of the slightly older lads were starting to notice us and we certainly welcomed it. It’s hard to remember the time when any of that mattered.

  Jo’s arms are folded across her front and she turns to stare down at the ditch, where a couple of people have already left bunches of flowers.

  ‘Ethan’s in intensive care,’ she says quietly. ‘The hospital told me to go back in the morning. Said there’s nothing I can do. They’ll call if anything changes.’

  Her phone is in her hand and she holds it up into the light, as if willing it to ring.

  There’s a bench a few steps away, one of those ones with a small plaque on the backrest, to say who it’s in memory of. I touch Jo on the arm and it’s enough for her to understand the intention. We end up sitting side by side on the bench, staring across the park towards the fire. It’s a while until either of us speak. For me, there’s not a l
ot I can say. My family and, by extension, I, was never the type to offer much in the way of sympathy, let alone meaningless platitudes. I can hardly tell her that everything will work out all right.

  Jo’s voice is croaky when she speaks. ‘I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,’ she says.

  ‘Dad died.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’m back for the funeral.’

  ‘Oh.’ There’s a long pause and then she adds: ‘I think I knew that. Holly told me.’ Another gap and then: ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s fine,’ I reply, though probably too quickly.

  A firework surges up with a whoosh from the other side of the park. There is a flash of sparks, a fizz, and then a boom as a kaleidoscope of red and green splashes across the sky. It surely can’t be long before the police are out again.

  ‘They reckon it was a hit-and-run.’ It takes me a moment to realise that Jo means Ethan. I don’t know what to add, but she continues anyway. ‘Scum. Absolute scum.’ She nods towards Beverly Close and the estate beyond. ‘I can’t believe someone from here would do that.’

  ‘Do they know it was someone from around here…?’

  Jo turns slightly and looks to me. Her eye twitches as her brow rises. ‘You’ve not been gone that long, have you?’

  She has a point. Elwood is the end of the line. It’s not on the way to anywhere else and provides very little industry for anyone who isn’t already local. The people here are those who live or work in the town. Why else would anyone be driving around the park and then turning onto the street where I grew up? The red-brick terraces and rows of battered cars means it’s not for the range of scenery or cultural importance. It should have been obvious, but perhaps I have been away too long.