The Other People: A Novel(71)

After exhausting the questions and the Custard Creams and Jammie Dodgers, Gracie started to yawn. It had somehow got to almost seven o’clock.

“I think it’s bedtime,” Katie said meaningfully. She glanced at Gabe. “We’d better sort out where the children are going to sleep. I mean, obviously, you’re not short of rooms.”

Gabe thought. “Well, the master bedroom is probably made up. I’m not sure about the others.”

“I don’t want to sleep on my own,” Gracie immediately said.

“Me neither,” Sam added.

Izzy didn’t say anything, but she seemed to shrink a little closer to Gabe.

“Okay, well—”

“Why don’t Sam, Gracie and Izzy share the master bedroom?” Katie suggested. “I’m presuming there’s a double bed, so they can top and tail?”

“Right. Good idea.”

“And what about us…I mean?”

“Erm, well, there are two more doubles. I can probably find some bedding.”

“Great.”

“I’m tired, Mummy.” Gracie yawned again.

“Okay, sweetheart. Let’s get you upstairs.” Katie smiled. “Hey, at least you’re already in your pajamas.”

Gabe led them into the hall, flicking on lights as he went. The vastness still surprised him. He watched Katie and the children staring around in awe. Imagining it through their eyes, it also seemed unnecessary. Who needed this much space, this many rooms? A small home could burst with love, and yet this place, despite the plush carpets and silk wallpaper, seemed threadbare of joy.

They trailed up the winding staircase. It had been a long while since he had been on this side of the house, and it felt more unfamiliar than ever. He paused on the landing. Which was the master? Right, he thought.

“Just down here,” he said.

“You could get lost in this place,” Katie said, but something in her voice made it sound more like a criticism than a compliment. He felt a strange urge to defend Charlotte.

“I think Charlotte’s husband bought it as a family home, but then he died, Charlotte never remarried, never had any more children and then…there was the accident.”

His fault. All his fault.

He pushed open the bedroom door.

“In here.”

“Whoah,” Sam muttered.

The bedroom, like everywhere else, was huge. The bed was a four-poster, easily enough room for four adults, let alone three children. Sam and Gracie threw themselves on it, the long journey, the exhaustion, the strangeness of this unfamiliar house instantly forgotten.

A massive bay window took up most of one wall. The curtains were open. In the day, you could see views that stretched out over the ocean. Tonight, you could just make out the dark body of water, rising and falling restlessly. Above it, the wind whisked scudding clouds past the semicircular moon.

Izzy walked toward the window. The windows were double glazed, but you could still hear the buffeting of the wind, the distant roar of the waves.

Against the dark panes, she looked frighteningly small and fragile. Gabe had an urge to grab her, to pull her back from the storm building outside.

Instead, he walked over and stood beside her. Their own shadowy reflections stared back at them, ghosts hovering in thin air.

“You can see miles out to sea on a clear day,” he told her.

Izzy raised a hand and touched the glass. “The beach is down there.”

“Yes.”

“Have I been here before?”

Gabe frowned. “I don’t…” And then he remembered. Jenny had been ill. He had told her he would take Izzy to work for the day, but it had been a Monday so they had come here. Izzy could only have been eight or nine months old.

“Once,” he said. “But you were just a baby.”

She withdrew her hand and clutched the rucksack to her chest. It rattled and clicked, and Gabe realized what the sound made him think of. Pebbles. But why would Izzy carry around a bag of pebbles? And then he remembered something else, something he hadn’t thought about in years.

When Izzy was a toddler, she used to have these odd sleep episodes. Obviously, toddlers napped quite a lot, but she would just suddenly fall asleep, anywhere, one minute awake and gabbing, the next gone. Gabe had felt sure she would grow out of it (like her weird fear of mirrors), but Jenny had insisted it wasn’t normal. Then, one day, when Izzy was about three, he’d arrived home from work to find Jenny hysterical.

“She did it again. Just fell asleep and, when she woke up, I found this in her hand.”

“What is it?”

“A pebble?”

“Oh. Where did she get it?”

“That’s it. I don’t know. What if she’d put it in her mouth, what if she’d choked?”

He had tried to be sympathetic, but he had been tired and distracted and probably made Jenny feel that she was overreacting. Kids picked up stuff, right? And it hadn’t happened again, at least not that Jenny had mentioned.

But now, he wondered. Pebbles. The beach. And then another thought thrust itself into his head—the strange shiny stone in the Samaritan’s tooth. An icy draft seemed to seep through the windows and wash over him.

“She wanted us to come.”

He glanced back down at Izzy. “What? Who?”