The Stepmother(18)

 

The key had been lost by one of Matthew’s sister’s kids, visiting from America in the summer. They’d lost it playing hide and seek apparently. When I asked Matthew what was in the room, he laughed and said it was the second spare room, full of junk, and I was welcome to look if I could just find the key.

 

But I can’t. I’ve searched everywhere for that key since I moved in: everywhere. The locked door unnerves me every time I pass it.

 

Downstairs is deserted, although the cornflakes are out on the side, and the TV is chatting away to itself.

 

A huge cooked breakfast would be perfect now, a nice way to ease everyone into January. Then perhaps a walk, or a film in front of the fire – The Sound of Music perhaps, or The Wizard of Oz – something cosy and family oriented, in honour of last night.

 

The news comes on. Debt, death, the Pakistani media accused of pandering to extremists, followed by someone from the Metropolitan Police talking about the schoolgirl who vanished on Christmas Eve. She’d taken only her passport and one small bag of clothes and was last seen on CCTV catching the Heathrow Express. The fear is that she was headed to Syria; they think she might have been enticed out there to marry a Daesh jihadi. A few photos are shown of a pretty, head-scarfed girl and then one of her with her English boyfriend, laughing on a fairground ride. The police spokesman goes on to say that this relationship had possibly been a decoy, planned to throw her family off the scent. Her older sister makes a plea for information and then starts to cry.

 

Poor family, I think, imagining my own sixth-formers. They were such babies: not ready for the world, let alone war.

 

It is too early in the day – in the year – for such bad news. I turn it off, clutching my tea for warmth.

 

The house is strangely silent, considering all the people sleeping in it, and I have that sense again that the old walls are whispering.

 

Whilst I’m looking for the eggs, something creaks nearby.

 

Then I hear it – I definitely hear muttering, coming from outside.

 

‘Frank?’ I call. No answer. ‘Scarlett? Luke? Is that you?’

 

Nothing.

 

I’m just not used to old houses that creak with age – that’s the truth. I’m used to newbuilds and council flats.

 

I’ve cracked the eggs into a basin and begun to whisk them when I hear footsteps running somewhere above me and whispering.

 

In my fright, I slop the batter everywhere. Whisk in hand, I stare at the ceiling – and then there is another noise. The crash of breaking glass.

 

‘Matthew? Frank?’

 

For God’s sake, why does no one answer? My fear is making me feel irritated. With an action braver than I feel, I pull open the lopsided door at the back of the kitchen that leads to the rickety stairwell.

 

‘Hello?’ I call up the dark little stairs. ‘Who is it?’

 

There is no answer. I turn the light on – and something explodes. My own cry resonates in my ears.

 

The light bulb has blown.

 

Don’t be daft, Jeanie! Old houses, old electrics…

 

I go back into the kitchen and switch on my phone’s torch.

 

Gingerly I walk up the first few stairs until I see something in the shadows: a picture, I think, lying smashed halfway up the staircase.

 

Shaking the broken shards of glass away, I hurry back downstairs with it.

 

It is our wedding photograph, I realise in the daylight, my heart sinking. Only a month old, in an elegant silver frame that the children had bought us – and it is completely smashed.

 

I look down at my stupidly smiling face, gazing at the camera with all the hope in the world, Matthew’s arms around me on the happiest day of my life.

 

The last time I saw this photograph – last night probably, before the party – it had been safely on the dressing table in our bedroom.

 

Hands trembling, I clean up the glass on the stairs as quickly as I can. Then I drink a pint of water with a couple of aspirin, hoping I’ll feel more human soon, and realise from a single drop of ruby blood on the white worktop that I’ve cut my finger on a shard of glass.

 

Sucking the blood away, it strikes me once again this marriage might not be as welcome to all as it was to me.

 

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

As I am flipping the first batch of pancakes about ten minutes later, Scarlett appears. In her baby blue tracksuit and matching beanie, mascara smudged below her eyes, she looks her real age again. It is odd how that happens, the years fading away – and I find her rudeness more forgivable when I remember she’s only a child. A rather lost one, at that.

 

‘Morning!’ I don’t want to show anyone I am rattled. ‘Sleep well? How do you want your eggs?’

 

‘I hate eggs.’ She swipes her phone. ‘Disgusting chicken mess.’