The Other People: A Novel(33)

She tried to shake off the feelings of agitation. Focus on the road. The task at hand. They were nearing the outskirts of the village now. The area where she had grown up. A place she used to know well. But it had changed. She noticed a new speed-camera sign. The last thing she needed now was to be caught on film.

This was a bad idea, she thought again. A bad, bad idea. But she didn’t have a better one. Certainly not a good one.

They passed the sign for Barton Marsh, twinned with who gave a fuck. It was a small sleeper estate of once-desirable detached houses. When desirable meant uniform and bland. The sheen had worn off long before she moved away. Now, it was a dozy ditchwater of pensioners unwilling to downsize who spent their days tending their impossibly neat gardens, bitching about parking and every Sunday polishing their cars. Just like Dad, she thought with a pang.

It was easy to spot the house. The lawn was mown but the flowerbeds were empty and bare, the basket optimistically hung outside the front door not just dead but virtually mummified. The UPVC windows and doors were dirty, the net curtains yellowed. A small Toyota with a dented bumper was parked in the driveway.

Fran observed all of this then pulled past the house and parked around the corner, a short way up. She got the feeling that, just like her, the neighbors here were the sort who noticed strange cars visiting.

“Okay,” she said, in what she hoped was a bright voice. “Let’s go.”

She climbed out of the car. Alice gave her a curious look but grabbed her bag of pebbles and followed. Fran looked around, automatically checking for anything odd, out of place. All the other houses seemed quiet. She could hear a small dog barking somewhere. Distantly, the hum of a lawnmower. Normal sounds of suburbia. It didn’t quite reduce the hard knot in her stomach.

They rounded the corner and walked up the driveway of number 41. The closer they got, the more her gut was urging her to turn around and drive away again. But she had a job to do. Something to take care of…and she couldn’t take Alice with her for this. Alice didn’t know about the car, or the man. Or what she had been forced to do.

Fran rang the bell. They waited, Alice looking around with mild curiosity. Fran rang the bell again. C’mon. I know you’re here. The car’s here. C’mon.

Finally, she heard movement. A slow pad of footsteps, a mumbled curse. Chains on the door rattled and then it inched open.

Fran stared at the old woman in the doorway. The immaculate honey-blonde bob, the careful makeup, the smart blouses and slacks. The keeping-up-appearances. All gone.

This woman was scrawny and hunched. Her hair was a dirty yellow with grey showing at the roots. She wore no makeup and was dressed in an old gown over crumpled leggings. Fran could smell stale wine.

Jesus. Things were far worse than she had expected.

The woman squinted at Fran. “Yes?”

Fran swallowed. “Hi, Mum.”

Slowly, the woman’s eyes widened with recognition. “Francesca?”

And then her gaze shifted to the small, dark-haired girl beside Fran. She raised a trembling, vein-stippled hand to her throat. “And who is this?”

Fran felt her own throat constrict. “This is Alice.” She grasped Alice’s hand and squeezed it. A silent signal. “Your granddaughter.”





She sleeps. A pale girl in a white room. Miriam sits in the armchair beside her. The tea in the pot has stewed and the cakes have gone hard.

After a moment, she takes the girl’s hand. Physiotherapists visit regularly to ensure her limbs and hands remain mobile, that her fingers don’t curl permanently into her palms. But Miriam can still feel the stiffness in her joints. Beneath the crisp sheets, her body is as frail and tiny as that of a child.

The girl’s face is calm and smooth, like alabaster. No worry lines mar her forehead and no laughter lines trace happiness beside her eyes. She has not laughed or frowned or cried for years now. Possibly, she never will. While some patients in a permanent vegetative state may make facial expressions, noises, open and close their eyes, the girl does not. She remains frozen. Trapped in a body that has barely aged.

Miriam thinks it would be kinder to let her go. But that is not her decision to make. Not while there is even the faintest possibility that she is still in there, somewhere. The girl who used to love to sing, who loved the sounds of the ocean. The girl who no one remembers, except her. The girl who no one visits, except him.

He has never shirked his responsibility to the girl and her mother. Every week, he sits with the girl. He talks to her, reads. And often, he and Miriam talk, too. Despite everything, she’s grown to enjoy these conversations. Neither of them has any family or close friends. They are both tied to the girl, unable to leave her, unable to let her go. And he has never missed a visit. Never even been late.

Until today.

Miriam glances at the clock. He’s not coming, she thinks. For the first time.

A shiver of premonition runs through her. Something has happened.

She debates with herself, unsure if she is overstepping her boundaries…and then she takes out her phone.





Jenny had once told Gabe that his most annoying habit (of which he had plenty, apparently) was his inability to take advice. To listen to reason. His path could be peppered with warning signs and strung with barbed wire, but he would still only believe that the pool was toxic and infested with sharks by jumping in himself. Head first.