The House of Susan Lulham (Kindle Single) (4 page)

Bernie Dunmore hanging up his mitre, Huw on the edge. Merrily felt unsteady.

‘What do I do?’

‘Back off. Lie low.’

‘That’s what Sophie says.’

‘She’s right. The woman’s plastered you all over the Net. Behaved like it’s a joke. You did the necessary, you’re under no obligation to take it any further or talk to her again.’

‘Right.’

‘End of.’

‘OK.’ Why had she hoped for more? ‘Um… you all right, Huw?’

‘Not bad.’

‘Good.’

‘Listen,’ he said, ‘sometimes compassion has to be sat on.’

‘OK.’

‘You’re clear on that?’

‘Sure.’

6. She’s here

A sporadic rain misting the ornamental conifers. A few early lights visible on the executive estate, the flickering of wall-mounted TVs.

No lights in the house of Susan Lulham, its angles stabbing a caramel sky.

Merrily parked her old black Freelander just past the last house on the estate to which Zoe’s home was closest. A white Mini Cooper was parked on the rising drive, but no-one answered the doorbell. Merrily stood in the fine rain, looking up, thinking she saw a curtain move in an upstairs room. Backed away, down the steep drive, so that Zoe, if she was up there, could see who it was. Or maybe Zoe already knew who it was, and that was why she wasn’t opening the door.

‘You’re not helping her, you know.’

Merrily spun around in the road. A car had pulled in behind the Freelander. She saw a slender, dark-haired woman, about her own age, in an open, sea-green jacket, off-white silk scarf. Car keys in one hand.

‘Or yourself, I’d guess,’ the woman said. ‘But you’d know best, I suppose.’

‘I’m sorry—?’

‘Forgive me.’ Hands waving dismissively, car keys jingling. ‘I don’t know you. I know
about
you. A little. Enough to suggest that you really ought to know better than to frighten a woman like Zoe Mahonie.’

Merrily took a step back. Was the entire estate on bloody Facebook?

‘Look, take no notice of me.’ The woman looked annoyed, perhaps with herself. ‘I’ve had a fraught day.’

‘Is she in? Is that her car? The Cooper?’

‘She doesn’t drive,’ the woman said.

‘I thought a curtain moved.’

The woman smiled crookedly.

‘Perhaps it was
Suze
,’ she said.

* * *

Her name was Anita Wells. Evidently the neighbour who’d finally told Zoe why the house had been so cheap. A calmly-attractive, soft-voiced divorcee working, she said, for Herefordshire Council. In an executive role, Merrily guessed when it came out that she’d served on a committee with Sian, the Archdeacon.

They were on tall stools in opposite bays of the island unit, in the warm dimness of an opulent Smallbone fitted kitchen, green and blue pilot lights like distant night-shipping in the shadows.

‘I was warned to leave her alone,’ Merrily said.

‘Sensible.’

‘I was going to do that, though I didn’t feel good about it. Then the phone rang. An hour or so ago. Picked up… silence. A mobile. Checked the number and, yes, it was hers. Phone rang again. Same thing. This time, I rang back, but there was no answer.’

‘Hmm.’

Actually there was more. About five minutes later, it happened again. Zoe’s voice. Two words.

She’s here
.

Then silence. Jesus Christ…

‘So I… came out. Thought I ought to.’

‘And she’s not answering the door.’

‘No.’

Anita Wells sighed.

‘Not my place to subject the poor woman to analysis, but I
will
say things were rather more peaceful when Susan Lulham was living here. Despite the parties.’

Mrs Wells had admitted to Google-imaging Merrily after a neighbour had shown her Zoe’s Facebook entries amidst inevitable gossip about an exorcism on the estate. So Anita Wells had recognised her out there, made a move, indicating, perhaps, that there was something she wanted - or even needed - to know.

She smiled.

‘I do rather admire you. Can’t be easy.’

‘Holding down a medieval job in a secular society?’

Was that a small, amused noise or the coffee pot? Merrily lifted both hands, backing off.

‘Sorry. I’m prone to self pity. What’s the husband like?’

‘Jonathan?… Spends as much time as he can away from home. Berating himself for his stupidity in falling for a… well, a much younger woman.’

‘Younger,’ Merrily said. ‘That’s all?’

‘Without a thought,’ Anita said, ‘for what they’d have to say to one another outside the bedroom.’

‘Is that
his
car in the drive?’

‘I… didn’t see him arrive. I’ve been at work.’

Nearly dark now, but Anita Wells didn’t switch on lights. Through a window, you could see part of Zoe’s house, a concrete elbow jabbed into the brown sky.

‘Awful eyesore,’ Anita Wells said. ‘There used to be more trees in front and a high hedge. Zoe was so proud of it she had to have it all cleared.’

‘The house of Susan Lulham.’

‘Perhaps proud of that, too,’ Anita said. ‘The awful glamour? I don’t know. What do you think? Does she find it perversely exciting?’

‘Do you know why she isn’t answering her door? Why, if her husband’s in there, neither of them are answering it?’

‘I… no.’

‘You were here when Susan Lulham was?’

‘Only for about six months before she died. She’d come round sometimes, to unload. Either manically happy or terminally distraught. Giving up men -
again
. All bastards. Always shit on you in the end. Never thinking she might be the kind of woman who attracted bastards.’

‘So you’d’ve been here the night she died.’

‘I’m glad to say I was on holiday.’

‘Right. Erm… am I right in thinking it was you who told Zoe whose house she was living in?’

Anita shrugged.

‘She’d have found out soon enough. At least I could explain it to her in a sensible way. I promise you, if I’d thought it was going make her completely delusional—’

‘That’s what you think?’

‘And you - I mean despite your… calling -
don’t
think that? Lipstick on the mirror? The ghost of Susan Lulham on the steps? Good heavens, Mrs Watkins, I don’t know why you didn’t walk away as soon as you saw the bookshelves.’

‘Oddly enough,’ Merrily said, ‘Richard Dawkins doesn’t scare me.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘Books about why God doesn’t exist.’

‘Jonathan’s books, yes. No—’ Anita Wells flapping the air with an exasperated hand. ‘—I meant the others.’

‘Education? Psychology?’

‘The DVDs.’

‘I didn’t see any DVDs.’

‘What, no lurid films? No
Exorcist
. No
Amityville Horror
? No complete set of
Most Haunted
? You’re saying she’d removed them from the shelves before you arrived?’

Merrily’s stool wobbled. She leaned over the island counter.

‘All right, look, the mirror and the rest, did you get all that stuff from Facebook?’

‘I don’t use Facebook.’

‘Who told you, then?’

Silence. A glimmering in the wide, low window of the house of Susan Lulham. The reflection of car-lights, street lamp, an early moon?

Merrily said, ‘Please…’

‘Jonathan,’ Anita Wells said. ‘Jonathan told me.’

‘Oh God.’ Merrily closing her eyes. ‘Oh, bloody hell.’

* * *

The darker it grew, the more illuminating the evening became, and not in a good way, Anita disclosing that she knew Jonathan much better than she knew Zoe, and there was only one likely explanation for
that
.

‘You’re in the education department?’

‘I’m an assistant director,’ Anita said. ‘Before local government, I was a teacher. So Zoe told you she was keeping it all from Jonathan, did she?’

‘Did you see a light flicker just then? In that house?’

‘That house,’ Anita said, ‘I don’t believe in ghosts, but I’d still hate to live there.’

‘She told Jonathan? Zoe told him all about the phenomena?’

‘She told him lies. Because he said he couldn’t stand it anymore. Because he was going to leave her.’

‘And you know that because..?’

Anita Wells sighed.

‘Look. We had a brief fling. It was years ago. Before his marriage. Before his first marriage, even.’

Oh.

Take this slowly.

‘Did he know whose house this had been? Why it was so cheap? And that… that you’d be his nearest neighbour? Did he know all that before they came?’

Silence. Anita seemed to be shrinking back into the shadows between the pilot lights. There was a lot to be explained here, and perhaps Anita wanted to do that. It was strange - you experienced this all too often - how people, even if they had no religious beliefs, would gravitate towards a priest when they had something on whatever had replaced a conscience.

‘Are they both in there now, Anita? Zoe and Jonno?’

‘Don’t call him that.
She
calls him that, not—’

A sudden caffeine rush had brought Merrily to her feet.

‘Shall we go and find out, then? Both of us?’

7. Raw liver

The sky was gutter-brown, and there was no moon and the spiky house was dark, except for the reflection of a streetlamp, from the estate, in the living room window. Anita led Merrily up the drive, past the Cooper and then down towards a flat-roofed double garage, with a door at the side, hanging open, accessing a side door of the house.

‘Usually unlocked. Until nightfall, anyway.’ Anita shaking the door. ‘Locked. Jonathan!
Jonathan…
’

They came out of the garage and stood on the steep drive next to the car.

Merrily whispered, ‘Did she know? About you and Jonathan?’

‘Couldn’t have. Sometimes she went to stay with her mother. Only then… only
ever
then. Look, she was driving him out of his mind with her inane…’

Of course she knew, Merrily thought. Neighbours told her. Or Facebook. Social media that used to be for kids. She walked up the drive to the low, wide living-room window. She could hear voices and music: TV noise. Peered in, saw nothing clearly, only jerky TV light. But it was a white room. And the sky wasn’t quite dark. She
should
be able to see in.

She backed sharply away from the glass.

Anita said,
‘What?’

Merrily moved to another part of the window and saw the white room, muted to grey but most of it visible now: the squashy sofa, the bookcase, half-empty. When she looked back along the glass she saw, in the light of the streetlamp over the road, a view obscured by dark spots and two smeared handprints.

Heard Anita saying, ‘Is that… what it looks like?’ as she turned away, feeling for her mobile, standing on the patio at the top of the steps, where Zoe had said she’d seen the woman with the short red leather jacket. Calling Zoe’s number and hearing the white phone ringing in the living room. The room
where Susan Lulham had been talking into a different phone with the expensive Bismarck razor opened up and ready.

Answering machine. Man’s clipped voice. Merrily walked over to Anita, holding up the phone.

‘They’re not picking up.’

They both went back to look at the window. It certainly wasn’t lipstick.

Merrily spoke to the machine.

‘Zoe, if you can hear me… if you thought I didn’t believe you, you were wrong. Are you getting this?’

Nothing but the cut-off bleeps. She ended the call.

Anita said, ‘Just call the police. I don’t like this at all.’

Merrily called Zoe’s number again. No machine this time.

‘Anyone there…?’

No reply.

But it wasn’t dead, this phone.

‘Are
you
there… Susan?’

Startling herself. She’d said that without thinking.

But no going back now.

‘
Suze
?’

Anita Wells stifled a cry, turned to the window with its smears and blotches and the hand prints. Merrily walked to the end of the terrace. Between the trees, across the new estate with its flickery wall-mounted TVs, the umber sky lay like oily sacking over the city

‘Suze. Listen to me. Just for a minute. Talk to Zoe for me. Tell her we can sort this out.’

Gasping breaths from behind. Anita was bent forward, hands on hips, like she was about to be sick.

And she probably had cause. Zoe wasn’t delusional in the expected way. This was Zoe proving she wasn’t as thick as Jonno thought, that she was actually quite clever. And had support. A friend.

In the phone, there was a rush of laughter, like a gas-jet. In Merrily’s head, a flash image of another phone slicked with fresh blood, Susan Lulham on her knees, pulsing and spouting.

‘Suze, is Zoe with you?’

No reply. In the background, she could hear TV voices. Anita Wells had turned to the window, was beating on the toughened glass with the heels of both fists and sobbing.

‘And Jonno?’ Merrily said. ‘Is Jonno there?’

‘Yesssss.’

This sudden reply, swollen with… satisfaction?

‘Can I… could I speak to him, please?’

Zoe giggled, and you could hear her moving around with the cordless, and…

…
snap, snap, snap
in the phone
…

…as, inside the house of Susan Lulham, lights came on, one after the other, and those familiar visceral thuds introduced the theme tune from
EastEnders
.

Heart jumping like a toad, Merrily looked up at the house and saw that the handprints in the now-illuminated living-room window were dark red and too big for a woman’s. As she backed away, the house seemed to shiver in her vision and then re-form, and the line of symmetrical windows above the conservatory was full of white light, like a row of perfect, crowned teeth, and the hardwood sills were deep gums the colour of raw liver.

Part Two

The type of person who is especially likely to remain
earthbound after physical death is the one whose
life…was dominated by selfish pursuits. Since their
awareness was almost completely limited to their
concerns they may fail to recognise the extreme
change that has overtaken them… They become very
indignant when they discover that their home is now
occupied by a stranger…’