under stairs cupboard where their mam had kept the vacuum cleaner.
Moving slowly, inching his foot forward for fear of falling over something in the dark, Jimmy crept into the hall, his arms held out to either side, his hands brushing the walls. He reached the sitting room without incident, snaking his hand around the door frame for a switch.
Light flooded the room and he stepped inside, releasing the breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. A new, hardwearing carpet replaced the swirls of pastel flowers their dad had laid when they were nippers and the walls were no longer covered in diamond-patterned wallpaper but a smooth neutral off-white. A modern forty-inch television hung where the horses-running-through-waves picture their mam had given pride of place. The three piece suite was new, too. Smart red leather instead of half-timbered foam with the holes where dad had fallen asleep and dropped his cigarette. Jimmy looked up. The ceiling had been painted, too, and was now a dusty white instead of nicotine yellow.
The sideboard was still the same. Jimmy crossed to it and opened the door, half expecting Mam’s knitting to fall out but pleased to see one side was still used as a liquor cabinet. He poured himself a generous measure of scotch and downed it in one gulp. He poured a second and took another sip.
“John?” Still no reply.
He left the glass and bottle on top of the sideboard and, emboldened by both the whiskey and the light spilling from the doorway, reached the bottom of the stairs. The light over the stairs worked.
He headed up, one hand on the banister and the other trailing along the wall like he used to as a kid. Photographs of old family members lined the stairs. Aunt Margaret and Uncle George, Nana Beskin, Nan and Granddad Fenstone, their sister Faye the year before she died and, right at the top in a considerably newer frame, Mam and Dad standing in the garden outside. Mam was holding a tiny bunch of sweet peas, and Dad leaned on his spade. A wigwam of bamboo canes to his left indicated a bean trench. Jimmy ran his finger over the glass as if he could bridge the years and stroke his mam’s long, dark hair.
He took a deep breath and turned, seeing nothing changed in the landing. The wallpaper was just the same, though shabbier for the intervening years, still showing twin lines where John had run his toy train along it and cut the paper under its sharp wheels. The carpet runner was threadbare, the boards showing at its edges covered in dust and footprints. He entered the bathroom, pulling on the light and nodding at the familiar cast-iron bath, the heavy taps, the stone sink and above-head cistern. Mam’s creams and lotions had been replaced by shaving soap and men’s deodorant but otherwise he could have been back in the nineties, leaning over the sink to keep his teeth-brushing dribbles off the floor.
The first bedroom used to belong to Jimmy and his brother. They’d had bunk beds at one end and a strict dividing line down the middle, Jimmy’s the side with the door since he was the younger and less deserving of the extra three feet of space. Now it was full of cardboard boxes, most of them sealed shut and labeled with tags showing the contents. Iron Man issues 1-256, British-issue Spiderman 1992-94, Toxic Comics and so on. Oddly, there was also a set of stepladders.
The second, main bedroom used to be their mam’s. Jimmy reached in and switched on the light. The same built-in wardrobes with the mirror in the middle, the same dressing table, the same wicker chair covered by the same crotchet blanket their Aunty May had made before she died. Different bed, though. Jimmy wasn’t surprised. Their mam had died in that bed, cutting her wrists the day after Faye’s funeral, unwilling to face life after her daughter had been killed. John had gone for a simple divan. Probably from the first shop he’d gone to after the house had fallen to him. Jimmy took a step further in. There was a family portrait in a frame next to the bed. A photograph of Dad and the three of them taken in Torquay when he was ten, John twelve and Faye five. His mam would have taken the picture. Happier times.
He pulled open a drawer. John’s things. Cufflinks, an old watch, a tie pin. The wire for a mobile phone. Nothing of Mam’s. The same with the wardrobe and dressing table, although the top drawer still held a trace of her perfume. Jimmy closed his eyes and inhaled, a memory of her in her best coat on the way to church coming unbidden to his mind. He opened his eyes again. There was a faint layer of dust on the remote control for the television. It hadn’t been touched for a while. When he crossed to the bed, the sheets felt vaguely damp from disuse.
The last room–more the size of a large cupboard built out over the stairs and barely able to house a bed and overhead clothes rail–used to be Faye’s. The bed was still here, as well as a framed picture of her with the horse she used to ride once a week at the stables, but the room was otherwise bare and covered in dust. Jimmy was probably the first to go inside in years.
He backed out and returned to the top of the stairs. He could see no evidence of a crime. Had the place been burgled? Had John done something and been arrested for it? That would explain the air of neglect the house had suffered. Surely John would have called him, though, or had his solicitor do so.
Perhaps he’d been hurt.
Jimmy clattered back downstairs to the sitting room and picked up the glass of scotch, taking another gulp as he carried both it and the bottle into the kitchen. He put the bottle down on the table and opened the fridge. Bacon, cheese, eggs, margarine. A four-pint plastic bottle of milk in the door. He unscrewed the lid and took a cautious sniff. It was only just on the turn, indicating John hadn’t been away for more than a few days and expected to return. He was always careful about perishables.
Jimmy found bread in the cupboard and made himself a cheese sandwich, heedless of using a cutting board and ignoring the plates in favor of clasping the uncut round in his hand and wolfing it down, savoring the taste of the sharp cheese against the slightly stale bread. Funny. Before he’d left he’d have turned his nose up at a cheese sandwich. Now it tasted like a meal fit for a king. He opened the freezer compartment and pulled out a frozen curry, glancing at the cooking instructions before slamming it into the microwave oven.
A sudden banging at the front door startled him, but not as much as the muffled shout of “This is the police. Open up.”
He bolted for the back door but found a copper there as well. The man held a baton in his right hand. “Good evening, sir. Can you explain what you’re doing at a crime scene?”
“This is my house.” Jimmy looked behind the copper trying to see if his brother was there. “What do you want?”
“We had a call alerting us of suspicious activity. Can I have your name, sir?”
“Jimmy–James–Fenstone. Where’s my brother? What’s happened to him.”
“Your brother, sir?”
“Yes. John Fenstone. He’s lived here for years.”
“Oh, right.” The copper looked uncomfortable. “You don’t know then?”
“Everything all right, Perce?” A second copper appeared behind the first. Probably the one from the front door.
“This here’s Jimmy Fenstone. The brother. He doesn’t know.” PC Perce slid his baton into a loop on his belt.
“Oh dear.” The second copper sucked his cheeks in, shaking his head.
“Know what?” Jimmy looked from one to the other. “Where John? What’s happened to him?”
“I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, sir, but I’m afraid your brother’s dead.”
“No.” Jimmy half laughed, searching their faces for a sign they were pulling his leg. “You’re having me on.” Their faces only tightened, and as they shared a glance he felt a lump of grief growing to the size of a golf ball in his throat. “Please tell me this is some kind of joke.”
“I’m afraid not, sir. Hung himself last Friday. Upstairs. Tied a rope around a roofing beam and dropped himself through the loft hatch.”
The microwave oven pinged.
Chapter 2
Meinwen Jones shifted