it on and cranked up the volume a couple of notches, smiling at the irony of the song that was playing. “I Put a Spell on You…”
And now you’re mine…
Maura lay in her bed clutching the camphor- and lavender-scented sheets to her chin and listened – it was a beautifully clichéd dark and stormy night, one that rattled the windows in their frames and caused draughts to lick across the skin in unseen malevolent caresses. For fear he’d go on a midnight wander, get outside and blow away like some pyjama-wearing woebegone Mary Poppins, she had even resorted to putting the chain on Gordon’s door. She’d hated doing it – she was supposed to be his nurse, not his keeper.
The only thing in the house that hadn’t felt it necessary to make its presence felt that night by rattling, creaking, clanking (or bizarrely pinging) was the chain on Gordon’s door. He seemed to be sleeping soundly, which wasn’t surprising given the heap of pills she’d been obliged to pile into him. In fact, he’d been unexpectedly compliant when she’d taken in his cocoa, sat with him and helped him to prepare for bed. He hadn’t even flinched when she’d cleaned the rug with white vinegar to neutralise the smell of pee, or batted an eyelid when she’d found the major source of the stench – the several vases that had been used as impromptu receptacles for Gordon’s urinary urges. Maura was sure that Moorcroft, Crown Derby and Minton had not intended their delicate and beautiful wares to be used for such purposes. Had they not been worth a small fortune she might have thrown them in the bin, but instead she’d borrowed Cheryl’s rubber gloves and had scoured them clean while praying she wouldn’t ruin them.
Sleep proved elusive and all she had done was toss and turn on the lumpy mattress, trying to find the sweet spot. The camphor was intrusive too, a particularly vile smell reminiscent of frugal old ladies and the bad old days. It reminded her of staying with her grandmother when she was little, of secondhand shoes and hand-me-down clothes, of having her face washed with carbolic soap and being expected to clear her plate because people were starving in Africa. It reminded her of the instruction to make do and mend, a philosophy she felt she was being forced to live by. How did you make do with nothing and mend a broken spirit? More to the point, how did you begin in a house that was so depressing it seemed to suck the joy out of everything?
Cheryl had said that parts of the place were dangerous, and Maura had assumed rotten boards and woodworm-savaged beams, but as she lay beneath the pungent sheets she began to wonder if the danger wasn’t from something else entirely – the bad that Gordon had been so eager to tell her about. The look of the place made it feel as if no Henderson, in the history of Hendersons, had brought a good intention to the place. It seemed to have been pieced together with menace and meanness – no one period predominated, no one style. Just a building stitched together by time, passing fashions and a family who had been custodians out of habit and grudging obligation rather than pride and heritage. All speculation on Maura’s part, of course, but Gordon was hemmed in a single room full of filth and clutter, and she had to contend with a mothball-sodden bed and a ceiling that was so creaky it seemed as if it would cave in at any moment. It was as if the house was trying to corner them both.
Why on earth hadn’t they sold up and left? Why stay in a place that exuded such misery?
They were good questions, ones she could apply to herself – why had she stayed with Richard when it had been patently clear he was a self-serving, booze-dependent dickhead? Why hadn’t she thrown him out the moment she’d caught him in bed with her sister? Why, after she finally had thrown him out, had she pitied him, looked after him and cried when he finally drank himself to death?
Sometimes there were no answers, or none she wanted to face. Maybe it was the same for Gordon Henderson and Estelle Hall; there were just things they didn’t want to deal with.
Annoyed with herself for being maudlin, she threw off the sheets and moved towards the window to watch the storm play out. The lights of the estate surrounded the Grange, but at a distance, like the lit torches of an angry mob encamped and holding the house under siege. It felt so lonely and she wondered if that was another reason Gordon had taken to his clutter and his room, like children did when they built pillow forts to keep the adult world at bay. Would she wake him if she crept downstairs and made herself a drink? It seemed unlikely. She had given him a hefty dose of Zopiclone, enough to fell an elephant for the night, let alone a frail old man. Too much in her opinion, but she’d always found Dr Moss a bit heavy-handed with the meds. They had butted heads many times over his prescribing at the hospital, and bitter experience had shown her he didn’t like to be questioned – especially by nurses. Nurses were a lowly sort in Philip Moss’s eyes.
Despite Gordon’s drug-fuelled repose, she felt the need to creep through the house, pausing once to glance out at the storm as it crackled across the sky and howled around the house.
The essence of a figure glimpsed through the landing window caught her eye. A dark, human shape standing under the trees, a shape that made her freeze, made her breath catch in her throat and caused her to clutch her dressing gown to her throat as if a handful of fleece could protect her.
Her instinct argued that only a madman would be out in the storm.
A madman in the middle of nowhere, staring at a house containing only a feeble old man and a lone female.
A madman lurking in the dead of night with no innocent reason to be there.
The builders had gone home, the houses near to the Grange were far from finished, and it was hard to believe anyone would be lost around here when the house was the only thing they could be looking for. If it had been Bob, the handyman, surely he would have called, or at least come to the back of the house? If it was Cheryl, or even Dr Moss, they would have just come in or knocked – they’d have no reason to lurk outside.
The clock in the hallway below chimed midnight, scaring the bejesus out of her and diverting her attention from the window. When she looked again, the figure was gone, and she had to question whether it had ever been there at all – though her heart still pounded with a violence that argued it had. She peered out, trying to pick up movement, but there was nothing. Just the storm and the wind forcing the trees into a frenzied ballet of whipping branches and whirling leaves. Whatever. Whoever had been there was gone, leaving no trace other than the mild panic of a woman who was to all intents and purposes alone in a house that appeared to be straight from the pages of some Gothic horror novel.
Pulling herself away, she made her way down the stairs, trying to recall if she had locked the house as per Cheryl’s instructions. Her memory was playing tricks on her. She knew for a fact that she had locked up properly, but a midnight maggot of irrational fear wriggled and writhed, making her doubt her recall. She stamped on the little bugger and forced herself to snap out of it and think like a functional adult. There had been no figure under the tree – just a shadow or an illusion conjured by lack of sleep and unfamiliar surroundings. The house was creeping her out and hooking shadows from the dark corners of her imagination. She had come to the Grange to escape all that, not to bring it with her and have it enhanced by noisy floorboards and a high wind. Coffee and a flick through one of Cheryl’s magazines would banish such thoughts and entrench some good sense. There was nothing like perusing pictures of airbrushed women wearing clothes you could never afford (or get away with wearing in public) to slam a person back into the realms of insignificance. To Maura it was the mental equivalent of a strong black coffee after a drinking binge – it might make you sick and keep you awake, but it did you good. With resignation and as much composure as she could muster, she defied the house and its air of doom and strode through the passage into the kitchen, where she filled the room with light, filled the battered old kettle and settled down with a magazine.
When the rock hurtled through the window it didn’t just shatter the glass, it shattered every shred of equilibrium that Maura had managed to cling on to.
Breath froze in her throat as the glass exploded inwards, shards of it hurtling towards her like a thousand shining knife blades, the rock landing on the table like an unexploded bomb of dread.
Instinct