The House of Susan Lulham (Kindle Single) (9 page)

‘You would have thought,’ Sophie said, ‘that Zoe would also have known about Susan’s death and where it happened. A minor celebrity. The Forest of Dean’s less than an hour’s drive away.’

‘Uh huh.’ Merrily shook her head. ‘The Forest’s… different. Separate. It’s in a different county and a different world. Could be a hundred miles away. Sure it was in the national papers because of the
EastEnders
connection, but Zoe didn’t seem to read papers at all, and Jonathan only read the
Guardian
. And it’s probably a different local TV news. Assuming she even watched the news, which is doubtful.’

Nattie had sounded angry at first, then upset. She’d talked about Zoe’s first hints of something not right about the house. This, clearly, had not excited her the way it had excited Lou.

‘Because, you see, Nattie also knew Susan Lulham. As a teenager, she used to save up to have her hair done at the expensive salon in Gloucester, where Lulham trained. And found her… she was very much the junior, but it was like it was her salon. She’d make style decisions for you. She was very dominant. Nattie seems to have found her fascinating but scary. She read everything she could get hold of about the suicide.’

‘And did she believe what Zoe was saying?’

‘Mmm. I think she did. Very much. And unlike Lou, she didn’t find it exciting. God, this doesn’t get any easier, does it?’

‘You’re tired.’ Sophie came to her feet. ‘Go home, Merrily. Get some sleep. Having unplugged the phone.’

‘Mmm.’

14. Undawn

The view from the doorway. Near the mirror in the white room. It might not have been a white room in Suze’s time there, but it was in this dream, even whiter than Zoe’s room, so that it seemed to glow, until small blisters began to appear in the emulsioned walls.

The worst of it… half the time it wasn’t even a dream. Twice more she’d awakened, and it was still happening in her head, like a fever, like an infection. When she closed her eyes, the blisters burst and became blood. As if it was coming out of the walls like in one of those poltergeist movies.

But movies couldn’t do the smell, the rusty, salty stench.

First the skin -
Sophie’s voice -
and then… every visible vein
.

Here was Suze, barefooted on the deep-pile carpet. Suze writhing and pulsing and spouting.

Suze smiling with a determined savagery, all flashing teeth and deep pink gums.

Suze sharing her death.

Merrily lying there cold in bed. Cold as a corpse.

Early-morning imagery. Mortuary metaphors. God, how far off dawn? Check the—

No, don’t
.

Don’t open your eyes to look at the clock on the dressing table, because the clock is going say 3.00 am.

The time when the TV came on in Zoe Mahonie’s white room, the time when it was believed Suze had died.

Merrily didn’t move. If you could steel yourself to go back into the dream, you might learn something. Your mind might put things together.

She lay there breathing rapidly, merging with the fitful jerking of the dream. The blisters on the wall went
plip-pop
and trickles of blood joined them, one to another like the splattery pattern on a summer dress.

Think
. Was there a point when Suze had realised, as she bled into the carpet, that she’d lost too much blood from too many wounds for there to be a happy outcome… that nobody was going to find her in time? She’d be too weak by then to get to her feet, open the door, scream for help - and would anyone have responded if she had?
Not the first time they
’
d been disturbed by Susan
’
s antics
, Sophie said,
so nobody went out
.

But too weak to prod 999 for an ambulance? Or did she think,
What
’
s the point?
Was there a moment when she knew the angel of death had her in his arms?

What was that like - the realisation that it was done? That she’d killed herself.

Merrily felt her eyelids quiver.

And then, suddenly,
she
was Suze, rushing for the door but failing to move, both feet sticking to the glutinous pile of the sodden carpet, blood bubbling up between her toes,
oh dear God
…

Her eyes sprang open into a rusty sky.

Dawn.

The clock’s acid-green fingers signaled five minutes to six. She’d made it through three am to the dawn. And yet…

Realisation of the truth was like the duvet being snatched away. She sat up in bed, shivering.

She’d picked up the Freelander in the swimming pool car park and driven home in the early afternoon, walking in to the bleeping of the answerphone, unplugging the phone but not the machine, not eating or drinking, just doling out some food for Ethel and then stumbling up the stairs.

The truth of it was that she’d been in bed barely three hours. It was approaching six
in the evening
. The bloody light in the sky was the dying of the day.

Undawn.

Dear God, a whole night to come.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, hearing the chatter of the sparse central heating coming on, she thought about Canon Dobbs, her predecessor as diocesan deliverance consultant. Except he’d refused to call it that.

He was old and scary. The Diocesan Exorcist, who had bitterly opposed the ordination of women. As for the idea of handing over his job to a woman… he wouldn’t even discuss it with her. He wouldn’t see her, although he’d once left a note for her which said,
The first exorcist was Jesus Christ
.

How would Dobbs have handled this? Dobbs poring over Facebook, Dobbs watching himself on YouTube.

Merrily got dressed, pulling on a skirt this time, and went down to the kitchen, putting on the lights; it was dark now. She plugged in the kettle for tea before padding through to the scullery, plugging the phone back in and playing back the messages on the machine: nine from journalists. Many more would have called but not left a message. She was thinking she might call Fred Potter when the machine said,

‘It’s Anita Wells. Could you please call me back.’

This was the last message. It was timed…

Six minutes after six.

Not five minutes ago.

She didn’t call Anita back. She rang Bliss on his mobile.

‘You still at work?’

‘Are you?’

‘I live at work. What’s happening?’

‘Well, we’ve charged her. Didn’t seem much point in hanging on. An interim psychiatric report gave us what we needed for the CPS to greenlight it. And the custody sergeant to decide she could be a danger to herself. Not that she even asked for bail.’

‘Where is she now?’

‘Spending the night with us. Eastwood Park in the morning.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Women’s nick in Gloucestershire.’

‘She said anything?’

‘Oh, yeah. Two familiar words. Taking her cue from all those friggin’ reality cop-shows, she says no comment to everything. Would you like another mug of tea, Zoe?
No comment
.’

‘Anybody still at the house?’

‘Why do you ask?’

She didn’t reply.

‘We’ve finished with the house,’ Bliss said. ‘POLSA’s gone home, leaving downstairs curtains tightly drawn against sightseers. House has nothing more to tell us. And looking like a bit of a health hazard, so I authorised a basic clean-up of the living room out of me pocket money. Happy, now?’

‘No comment,’ Merrily said.

15. Spite

Anita Wells said Jonathan had been terribly unhappy, had come to realise he’d made the biggest mistake of his life.

In the kitchen, dark, uncurtained double-glazing was multi-reflecting the dimmed globular hanging lights. Only one window was covered by a roller blind.

‘I probably should be telling this to the police,’ Anita said, ‘although it doesn’t alter anything. It might even cause damage. Complicate things.’

Merrily lowered her coffee cup. The pot stood on the island unit between them.

‘Do you ever think this might actually
be
quite complicated?’

No reply. Silences could be left now without embarrassment. Their short relationship had changed forever, no ice left to be broken; you could almost see it lying in splinters on the quarry tiles around their high stools.

‘This mistake
was
marrying Zoe?’ Merrily said.

She’d parked in a neighbouring estate road. One police car had passed her - routine patrol, probably - as she’d walked, close to the hedges, around the corner to Anita’s house. No cars outside the New House, jagged against the flaring of headlights on Aylestone Hill. She’d thought of a broken bottle.

Anita was wearing a thick, dark-green sweater and a plain black scarf which she eased away from her throat. She seemed ill-at-ease, not yet recovered from last night. Looking grateful to see Merrily. Or maybe anybody.
Things that need to come out, that
’
s all
, she’d said at the door.

She poured more coffee.

‘At the school, she was a fantasy figure for the older boys. Jonathan told me that. They couldn’t wait for lunchtime to get a glimpse of Zoe sweating over the food. His words.’

‘You’re saying that was part of it? Jonno, an older man, a teacher, getting off with the girl they were all—?’

‘He wasn’t
that
much older than Zoe - maybe twelve years. But yes, sure, there’d be some of that. He accepted he was far more educated than she was. He seemed to think that didn’t matter. You came home to relax, not to have intellectual debate. He was actually quite fascinated with her. He used to talk about… you know, Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe?’

‘Marilyn Monroe wasn’t dumb. She just played dumb. And Zoe…’

‘Oh, Zoe was clever in ways Jonathan simply couldn’t see. If she’d been thick but adoring, they might have held it together. But Zoe was becoming more assertive and his friends were not made welcome. Parties… Oh God,
dinner
parties. You know?’

‘I don’t really do dinner parties,’ Merrily said, ‘but I’ve heard they go on.’

‘He was ambitious. Bigger schools. Headships. Committees, advisory bodies. It simply hadn’t occurred to him that Zoe, who had no particular interest in his work, might want to… well, play more of a part in things than simply providing the food. Apparently, she sometimes became embarrassingly drunk.’

‘Was he… perhaps wishing he’d hung on to you?’

Anita frowned.

‘That wasn’t going to happen.’

‘But it
had
happened…’

‘Long time ago. Well over. Never much, anyway. More of a foundation for friendship. That’s how I saw it, anyway.’

‘Did he know you were living here… before they moved in?’

‘He knew everything. He knew whose house it had been and why it was so cheap. Did that bother Jonathan? Not in the least.’ Anita shook her head, bleakly exasperated. ‘You know Zoe wouldn’t live in an old house because she was afraid of ghosts?’

‘She just told me she didn’t like old places.’

‘It was more than that. She found them frightening. And yet she
liked
to be frightened - on her own terms, as Jonathan used to say. She was fascinated by the supernatural. She liked horror films and
Most Haunted
and all those American ghost-hunting programmes. But as
entertainment
. As long as there was a glass screen between her and them. You know?’

‘It’s not uncommon.’

‘Jonathan, of course, despised all that. Even when they were living in a flat, they were watching TV in separate rooms. Programmes he had to watch for his work, she’d say, rather than admitting that everything
she
loved to watch bored him rigid. He said her tastes were unbearably crass. He’d thought at first he could change her. Perhaps she’d even led him to think he could do that… that she wanted him to. That age-old courtship game.’

‘Eliza Doolittle?’

‘Men can be so naive. She wasn’t going to change at all. She was just going to stop being a dinner lady and enjoy herself in a nice house in a posh area.’

‘A modern house.’

‘No history, no cellars, no attics, no dark corners. Somewhere you could watch horror films without feeling you were in one. Jonathan, now - someone who sneered at the very idea of ghosts - had always preferred older houses with spacious accommodation, room to breathe. When they’d been together for about six months in a poky flat, and the quarrels were becoming more frequent, he thought he’d found the perfect place to give them some space. This… Georgian house, I think it was, in the Wye Valley, had been divided into four separate dwellings and one was about to become vacant because the owner - acquaintance of Jonathan’s - had taken early retirement and wanted to live in
France and thought they might be able to dispense with an estate agent for speed.’

‘Always helps.’

‘Zoe wouldn’t even go to look at it. Jonathan was absolutely furious. Still seething nearly a month later when we were both at a residential conference and it all came out over a long dinner. At the end of which he made a drunken move on me, which I tactfully resisted. Feeling quite sorry for him, stupid man. He’d told me he wanted a divorce; she didn’t. Still thought a new house would bring them together.
Her
kind of house. I’d also had a few glasses of wine by then, you understand. Not as many as he’d had, but enough to say something stupid.’

‘You told him about…?’

‘About the house next door, yes, yes, yes. He knew about it because
I
told him. I wasn’t serious… I said, Hey, if she wants modern… just the thing. Wasn’t
serious
, I really
wasn’t
. But he… He was
very
angry, very bitter. And obviously it
was
a bargain. And nobody on this estate wanted it to be empty or the home of short-term tenants who didn’t cut their hedges.’

Merrily glanced at the roller blind concealing the one window with a view up to the New House. Anita nodded.

‘Susan Lulham, what did Jonathan care about that? He could sleep in any old chamber of horrors and not even notice. And he knew it’d be love at first sight for Zoe. Looks more modern than modern. A bit
space-age
, as they used to say when I was a child. Jonathan hated it, but the exquisite irony wasn’t exactly lost on him. He thought that they deserved one another, Zoe and this house.’