His & Hers(64)



It’s bitterly cold, the variety that bites if you dare to stand still in it for too long. So I shove my hands a little deeper, down inside my pockets, and keep them there rather than smoke. Strangely, I don’t even feel the need for a cigarette now, after spending an evening talking to another human being instead of staring at a screen.

Rachel and I didn’t really talk, we just shared polite conversation accompanied by impolite sex. It never felt like we had much to say to each other, at least not things that either of us would have wanted to hear. I keep thinking about the words that were painted on her fingernails: TWO FACED. Anna and I used to talk before Charlotte came along, but it was as though we forgot how. Tonight, with Priya, I felt like a real person again.

I decide to send her a text, and reach inside my pocket for my phone.

I find Rachel’s phone instead, and there is an unread message:

You should have gone straight home tonight, Jack.

I stop walking and stare at the words for a few seconds. Then turn a full three-sixty, peering into the darkness, trying to see whether someone is following me now. Someone clearly has been. I wasn’t imagining it. But who? And why? I shove the phone back into my pocket and walk a little faster.

I can see that my house is in complete darkness when I turn onto the street. Nothing unusual about that; it’s late, and I don’t expect my little sister to wait for me to come home. We’ve never been the kind of siblings to check up on each other. I presume Zoe has had a couple of glasses of cheap wine and gone to bed, just like she does most nights.

I start searching for my keys as soon as I get through the gate, struggling to find them in the gloom. The porch light comes on by the time I am halfway down the garden path, but despite it shedding a little light inside my jacket pocket where my keys should be, I can see they aren’t there.

I hate the idea of having to wake the whole house in order to get Zoe to let me in—it can be hard to get my niece to go back to sleep—but when I step up to the front door, I see that won’t be necessary. It’s already open.

There is always a heartbeat-length moment when you know that something very bad is about to happen, and you are too late to do anything about it. It lasts less than a second and more than a lifetime all at once, while you are frozen in space and time, reluctant to look ahead, but knowing it’s too late to look back. This is one of those moments. I have experienced only a few like it in my life.

I sober up fast.

The police part of my brain tells me to call someone, but I don’t. What is left of my family is inside this house and I can’t wait for backup. I hurry through the front door, switching on the lights in all of the downstairs rooms, finding each one as empty as the last. The rest of the doors and windows appear to be closed and locked. I check the alarm system, but it looks as though someone has turned it off. The only way to do that is by knowing the code.

There is no sign of forced entry, no sign of a struggle; if anything the whole place looks a lot cleaner and tidier than when I left this morning. Toddlers are experts at creating mess, but all the clutter and chaos I’ve grown used to has been tidied away and put back in its place. Everything feels wrong, and I’ve learned over the years to trust my gut about things like this.

That’s when I see it.

One of the smaller knives is missing from the block on the counter. I remember that it wasn’t there this morning either, or the night before. My house keys are here too, even though I’m sure they were in my pocket earlier tonight, before I went to Priya’s home. Maybe I did leave them here—the last few days are a sleep-deprived blur. Then I see the photo. It’s just like the one Anna said was stolen from her car, and it’s a picture that I remember taking twenty years ago.

The five girls are lined up and smiling at the camera: Rachel Hopkins, Helen Wang, Anna, Zoe, and a strange-looking girl I vaguely recognize, but whose name I can’t remember. They are wearing matching grins on their faces, and matching friendship bracelets on their wrists. But that isn’t all. Three of the five girls in the photo have a black cross drawn over their face now: Rachel, Helen … and Zoe.

I drop the picture—realizing too late that I should never have touched it—and run up the stairs two at a time. I reach my niece’s room first, bursting through the door to see that Olivia is safe and sound, tucked up asleep in bed. Her pillow, along with everything else in the room, is covered in a pattern of unicorns. She looks so peaceful that for a moment I think maybe everything is okay. But then I realize that the noise I just made would normally have woken her. Olivia is breathing, but she’s completely out of it.

I hurry along the landing to my sister’s room, but she isn’t there. All the bedroom doors are ajar, and I soon discover that each one is empty. The bathroom door is closed. When I try to turn the handle, it doesn’t open.

We haven’t locked this door for years due to an incident when we were children, and I don’t know where the key could be. I can’t remember ever seeing one. The rule in our house was always that if the door is closed, you don’t go in. I knock gently and whisper her name.

“Zoe?”

It’s so quiet that everything I say and do sounds loud.

I try to peer through the keyhole, but see nothing but black.

“Zoe?”

I say her name a little louder this time, before banging my fist on the wooden panels. When there is still nothing but silence, I take a step back and kick the door. It swings open, its hinges crying out as though in pain. Then I see her.

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