get yourself on a few dating websites, then. It worked for me and Ted.’
‘Yeah,’ she says, ‘maybe you’re right.’ But her thoughts linger on the doctor, and she’s not sure what it is about him that intrigues her so, only that there’s something about his grave smile, the calm brown of his eyes that she can’t quite let go of.
Much later, after her guests have left and Cleo is sound asleep, Viv goes about turning off the lights and locking the front door. Outside, the November wind bounds and batters along the street, she hears a bottle rolling to and fro along the pavement, a dog’s distant bark. Before she goes to bed she glances in at Cleo sleeping before softly creeping away.
No matter how hard she tries not to think about it, her mind returns again and again to the day her sister died, a familiar niggling doubt worrying at the peripheries of her consciousness. This strange uncertainty is something that has dogged her all her life. Perhaps it was Jack’s continued assertion of his innocence – he had appealed three times against his conviction – or his family’s unwavering belief that she had lied, but she’s never quite been able to shake it off.
As she gets undressed she reminds herself of how badly Jack had treated Ruby, how both Morris Dryden and their neighbour Declan had said they’d seen him in their lane at the time of the murder. She reaches for her sleeping pills, wanting only oblivion. The right man had gone to prison; there could be no mistake.
She wakes to darkness, her head slow and foggy from the pill, to feel fingers gripping her shoulder and she jerks away in alarm.
‘Mum, wake up! Wake up, Mum, it’s OK, it’s only me.’
Sitting up, Viv gazes around her in confusion. ‘Cleo? What’s the matter?’
‘You were shouting in your sleep again.’
‘Oh, God, love, I’m sorry.’ She leans over and switches on the bedside light to find her daughter crouching by her bed, blinking in the sudden brightness.
‘It’s OK. You were really screaming. Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine. I’m sorry, darling. I’m OK.’
Cleo straightens and yawns, her face swollen with sleep. ‘Sounded like a bad one this time.’
‘It was. Thanks for waking me, I’m so sorry I disturbed you. Go back to bed. I’m fine.’
When Cleo leaves, Viv waits for her heart to cease its frantic hammering. The nightmare had begun the way it always did. She’s a child again, sitting in the living room while Ruby and Jack argue in the room above. A slow dread creeps through her. She knows that her sister is about to die but she’s unable to move a muscle, to do anything at all to stop it. What happens next always varies; occasionally she’ll go to Ruby’s bedroom to see a dark faceless figure standing over her sister’s body, sometimes she’ll run from the house knowing that her sister’s killer is on her heels, his hand reaching out to grab her.
In tonight’s dream though, just as she’d heard her sister’s scream she’d looked up to find their old neighbour, Declan Fairbanks staring in at her through the living room window. For a moment she’d held his pale blue gaze before being hit by the overwhelming rush of fear that had caused her to scream out so loudly that she’d woken Cleo – and probably half the street too.
It was not the first time she’d dreamt of Declan; he often appeared in her nightmares, always with an accompanying feeling of disquiet. Sometimes she’ll dream that Morris Dryden is there too, his happy grin and rosy cheeks incongruous with her terror.
This, of course, is not surprising, tied as Morris and Declan are to that day, their witness statements playing a key role in Jack’s conviction. But she’s noticed lately that her unease when she dreams of Declan is laced with something else – a queasy kind of revulsion. She remembers little about him: a rather severe-looking man in his fifties, dark hair peppered with grey, very striking pale blue eyes. She has a dim recollection of him shouting at her once for kicking a ball at his window. Perhaps that’s where her aversion springs from, the childish memory of being chastised mixed with the general horror of Ruby’s death. Perhaps that was all it was.
For a long time she lies staring at the ceiling, only the street lamp below her window casting its weak glow upon the blackness. The wind has stopped; the world outside is silent now. But when at last she starts to drift off back to sleep, a sudden noise from the street jerks her back to full consciousness. What was that? Her window is open a crack and she lies very still, listening, until another sound from outside has her sitting up, suddenly alert. There it is again: feet shuffling on the pavement below, then the sound of someone clearing their throat. Her nostrils prickle as she detects the faint trace of cigarette smoke. Slipping from her bed she creeps to the window and looks out.
There is someone standing by her gate and she feels a jolt of shock when she realizes that it’s her mother’s boarder, Shaun. He’s looking away down the street, the red glow from his cigarette rising and falling as he takes a drag, and she quickly steps back from the street lamp’s glare. What on earth? She waits, heart pounding, until she hears him move off, his footsteps on the pavement gradually retreating, and when she dares to peer out once more she sees him rounding the furthest corner, before finally disappearing from view.
Vivienne’s disquiet continues throughout the weekend, no matter how hard she tries to distract herself. What the hell had Shaun been playing at? Was he stalking her now? The thought is as baffling as it is frightening. She knows that all of her mother’s guests are carefully vetted before they’re sent to her; that Stella’s never given anyone with a history of violence – or any other serious crime, for that matter – yet what did either of them really know about him? When her alarm wakes her on Monday morning these questions are still weighing heavily upon her as she heads for the shower.
Thirty minutes later she and Cleo hurry out of the house only for Viv to come to an abrupt halt before the door has closed behind them. ‘I’ve forgotten my phone. Get in the car,’ she says, handing Cleo the keys and turning back inside. ‘I’ll give you a lift to the bus stop.’ But when she reappears twenty seconds later, it’s to find Neil and Cleo in deep discussion at the gate.
They stop when she approaches and she smiles. ‘Hey, Neil, how are you?’ She puts a hand on her daughter’s shoulder and propels her towards the car. ‘Sorry to rush off,’ she tells him, ‘we’re running late as usual.’
‘No problem,’ Neil calls after them. ‘Have a good day!’
Viv smiles and waves, but once they’re in the car she turns to her daughter. ‘What were you two talking about so avidly?’
Cleo shrugs. ‘Just Fortnite, gaming, that sort of thing. He knows quite a bit about it because his son’s into it.’
Viv puts the key in the ignition and glances at her in amazement. ‘He has a son? He never said.’
‘Yeah, he lives with his ex-wife, apparently. Why, what’s wrong with that?’
‘Nothing’s wrong with it, it just seems odd he’s never said so before.’ Neil was someone who really liked to chat about himself, and it did seem strange he hadn’t mentioned such a huge part of his life. She can’t stop mulling it over as she pulls away from the kerb and checks her rear-view mirror, where she sees Neil grinning enthusiastically after them. He’d once told her that he was an IT consultant, but it occurs to her that in all the time he’s lived next door he’s never seemed to have a job to go off to, or at least, not that she’s noticed.
After she drops Cleo at the bus stop she edges slowly through the morning traffic towards the café, and her mind returns to Ruby. Her sister would have turned forty-eight this year, Noah would be a grown man. Perhaps he’d have had kids of his own. For years afterwards, Viv had tortured herself with ‘what ifs’.