The Visitors(34)

‘David.’ He kept his voice low. ‘Watch him. That’s all I’m saying.’

She felt a flush rise from her neck. ‘I… I’m not sure what…’

‘Some people pretend to be one thing when really they’re something else altogether… if you get my drift.’

‘I’m not sure I do,’ she said slowly. ‘Do I need to be worried?’

Nick opened his mouth to speak, but the words caught in his throat. His eyes slid sideways, focusing on the small window behind her.

Holly twisted round to see Cora standing in the doorway with her arms folded.

Wordlessly Nick turned and scurried back down the garden.

Nick had kept his voice low, so she doubted Cora had overheard what he had said.

Holly knew that the older woman thought a lot of David. She might not like to hear Nick’s strange warning.

Holly waited for her to say something but Cora simply turned away and began chopping salad.

Holly stepped back inside the kitchen just as someone knocked frantically at the door.





Chapter Twenty-Seven





David





I sit at my bedroom window for what seems like hours, going over everything Holly said at work earlier. Mother calls it fretting.

‘It does you no good at all, David,’ she always says when she senses I’m in the grip of it. ‘Just let go of whatever’s worrying you. It’s no use churning it over and over in your mind.’

But setting aside troubling thoughts is far easier said than done. Nobody knows that better than me. Mother might call it fretting, but this time it feels a bit more than that.

For the last two years I have embraced my eventless life, my boring routine. That’s not to say I’ve sometimes wished for a little more variety in my days, but Mother and I, we were managing just fine.

Now, with Holly appearing next door – a good thing – and Brian moving in with us – most definitely a bad thing – it feels like the ground beneath me is suddenly not as rock solid.

Holly kindly invited me to join her for coffee in the terrace café at work. My anxiety was rooted in the fact that I might have inadvertently snubbed her.

Join me if you like. That was what she said, and now I can’t remember for the life of me what my response was.

As usual, I started ranting on about nothing, with the nerves and all. I think I said I couldn’t spare the time away from my desk.

That wasn’t really the reason. I was too worried to sit down and start a conversation with her. I felt nervous of long silences; afraid we’d have nothing to talk about.

Yet now I’m home and can look back in a calmer frame of mind, I realise it wouldn’t have done any harm just to sit down and chat for a few minutes.

We might have talked about the book she was reading, or the weather… or a hundred and one other things, come to that.

I wonder how I appeared to her. Nervous and unfriendly? Or perhaps just a bit off.

That’s the thing about being different. It’s so hard to know how to act in order to appear… well… normal, I suppose.

Growing up, I was told so many times by adults – teachers, Mrs Barrett, and Mother herself – to just be yourself. They meant well, but I knew even back then that myself was the last thing I needed to be. At least if I wanted to try and fit in at school.

Being myself meant never joining in with popular activities, always sitting on my own on school trips, not laughing at the jokes everyone else found hilarious, choosing the library instead of playing footie on the field. That was me, after all.

Things got more complicated as I grew older and entered the world of work. After A levels, I managed to get an apprenticeship at a small textiles factory.

Here there were no teachers to supervise, no responsible adults to watch out for the kids who were perceived as different. The worst bullies on the shop floor were the management. It was the same story at the printing firm, too.

I soon learned that being myself was the worst possible way to endear myself to colleagues. Yet I just couldn’t pull off how to behave normally, how to fit in like the others.

Just like the kids at school, colleagues grasped within minutes that I wasn’t like them.

No matter how often I sniggered at jokes I didn’t get, or put myself through the agony and discomfort of drinks after work, they still weren’t fooled.

There was a seamless continuation from my school days. The sly grins, the subtle nudges and the same clandestine whispered conversations that broke up the instant I entered the room.

I’ve learned the hard way that people who don’t fit the social norm, for whatever reason, are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Simple as.

And that’s why, earlier today, I didn’t try to be the person Holly might have expected in the café. That’s why I just acted normally… normal for me.

She probably thought me a bit stand-offish, and that’s what bothers me now. Because I didn’t mean to be. I really, really didn’t want to come over like that.

She couldn’t have been left with a positive impression, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.

Or is there?

I decide, on the spur of the moment, to pop round to Mrs Barrett’s on the pretence of checking the water pressure, which we sometimes have problems with around here.