Let Me Lie(21)

I can’t help myself – I turn to 21 December and look at the day she died. There are two appointments and a list of tasks left incomplete. Tucked into the back of the diary are a handful of business cards, leaflets and scribbled notes. The diary is a cross-section of Mum’s life, as illuminating as an autobiography and as personal as a journal. I slip the photos inside and hug the book to my chest for a moment, and then I start to put everything back where it came from.

I replace the desk tidy, and with it the paperweight I made from clay and painted when I was in primary school. It used to live on the dresser in the kitchen, holding down the myriad classroom letters.

I run my finger over the superglued crack that divides it neatly in two, and I have a sudden, sharp memory of the sound it made when it hit the wall.

There were apologies.

Tears. Mine. Mum’s.

‘Good as new,’ Dad said, once the glue had dried. But it wasn’t, and nor was the patch of wall where he filled the dent and painted over it in a shade that didn’t quite match what had gone before. I wouldn’t talk to him for days.

I pull out the bottom drawer of the desk and retrieve the bottle of vodka. It’s empty. Most of them are. They’re everywhere. At the back of the wardrobe; in the toilet cistern; wrapped in a towel in the depths of the airing cupboard. I find them, I pour away the contents, and I push the glass to the bottom of the recycling bin.

If there were bottles before I went to university, they were better hidden. Or I didn’t notice them. I returned home to a life that had altered in my absence. Were my parents drinking more, or had I had my eyes opened to a world beyond the narrow scope of my childhood? After I found the first bottle there seemed to be hundreds – like learning a word and then seeing it everywhere.

An involuntary shiver tickles my spine. Someone walking over your grave, Mum used to say. It’s dark outside. I catch a glimpse of something moving in the garden. My heart thumps, but when I look properly, it’s my own pale face staring back at me, distorted by the old glass.

A noise outside makes me jump. Pull yourself together, Anna.

It’s this room. It’s full of memories, not all of them good. It’s making me jumpy. I’m imagining things. A ghostly figure in the window, footsteps outside.

But wait: I do hear footsteps …

Slow and deliberate, as though the owner were trying not to be heard. A soft crunch of gravel underfoot.

There’s someone outside.

There are no lights on upstairs, and none down here, save for the desk light in the study. From the outside the house will be in near darkness.

Could it be a burglar? This street is filled with high-value properties, crammed with antiques and paintings bought as much for investment as for show. As the business grew, my parents spent their money on beautiful things, many of which could be easily seen through the downstairs windows. Perhaps someone came by earlier, when Ella and I were at the police station, and decided to return under cover of darkness. Maybe – a hard knot of fear forms in my throat – maybe they’ve been observing for a while. All day I’ve been unable to lose the feeling I’m being watched, and now I wonder if my instincts have been correct.

As a child, I knew the code for the burglar alarm long before I could memorise our telephone number, but it hasn’t been set since Mark moved in. He wasn’t used to living in a house with an alarm. He’d set it off every time he came home, cursing in frustration as he fumbled with the keypad.

‘Rita’s enough of a deterrent, surely?’ he said, after telling the alarm company that yes, it was another false alarm. I’d fallen out of the habit of setting it myself, and now that I was home all day with Ella, we had stopped using it entirely.

I consider setting it now, but I know I won’t be able to fathom how to zone it in the dark, and the thought of being there, by the front door, as a burglar tries to get in, brings goosebumps to my arms.

I should take Ella upstairs. I can pull the chest of drawers in her room across the door. They can take what they want from down here – it doesn’t matter. I assess the sitting room with an objective eye, wondering what they’re after. The television, I suppose, and the obvious things like the silver punchbowl that once belonged to my great grandmother, and now holds African violets. On the mantelpiece are two porcelain birds I bought for my parents on their anniversary. They aren’t valuable, but they look as though they could be. Should I take them with me? If I take the birds, what else should I take? So many memories in this house; so much I would grieve over. Impossible to take it all.

It’s hard to work out exactly where the footsteps are. The quiet crunch of gravel gets louder, as though the prowler walked first to one side of the house, and is now returning to the other. I take up my mobile, lying next to the baby monitor. Should I call the police? A neighbour?

I pick up my mobile phone and scroll through the numbers until I find Robert Drake’s. I hesitate, not wanting to call him, but knowing it makes sense to do so. He’s a surgeon, he’ll be good in an emergency, and if he’s still at home next door he can come out and take a look, or just turn on the outside lights and scare off whoever’s out there …

His phone is switched off.

The crunch of footsteps on gravel gets louder, competing with the rush of blood singing in my ears. I hear a dragging noise. A ladder?

To the side of the house, between the gravelled front drive and the landscaped back garden, is a narrow strip of land with a shed and a log store. I hear a dull bang that could be the shed door. My heart accelerates. I think of the anonymous card, of my haste to take it to the police. Did I do the wrong thing? Was the card meant as a warning – that whatever happened to Mum could happen to me, too?