The Forever Home by Sue Watson

Chapter Nine

I wandered back up the hall, his aftershave lingering, the imprint of our marriage still in the air. He used to say, ‘One day when we’re retired, we’ll take off every winter somewhere warm. We’ll abandon the UK and rent a nice apartment with a pool. And one day, when we’ve got grandchildren, we’ll take the whole family to France, rent a chateau and cook French food and the children can run wild in the grounds.’

‘Or they could stay here and we could cook French food and they could run wild on the beach?’ I’d say, happy at the prospect of grandchildren, and wanting to share this house and the beach with them. It was our One Day conversation, our shared dreams away from his TV life, like the second honeymoon in the Maldives, a road trip through America. It gave me hope, made me believe we had a future together, because, despite everything, I had loved him, once.

I’d naively thought, with my customary optimism, we could be fixed, renovated and perfected, just like one of his houses. But too much water had gone under the bridge, too many lies, too many secrets, and Mark never intended to be around forever; he’d been looking for a new model to spend his twilight years with. And when Erin Matthews appeared, all grown up and ready to embrace those daddy issues, Mark was waiting. And our one day never came.

I walked back into the living room, thinking about what had just happened. I spotted a glint of blue caught by the sun. I sighed as I bent down to pick it up; I’d probably be picking up pieces of my beautiful, broken vase for the rest of my life. I gazed around, scrutinising the floor for any more pieces waiting like sharp teeth for bare, fleshy feet. Looking up from the floor I glanced at the family photographs on the wall. Me, Mark and the children. I hadn’t had the heart to take the ones of him down; I kept him on my wall for the children, one of the reasons I’d kept him in my life. I’d taken all the photos, and they were good, if I do say so myself, strong compositions, great light. I’d done photography as part of my degree and was proud of this curated time capsule of how my family used to be. But something wasn’t quite right. I wandered over to the wall and I could feel the hairs on the back of my neck prickle. Two of the photos had been swapped.

But who could have done this? The only people who’d been in the house were Mark and Ryan, and neither of them would have done it.

I saw another glint of blue, another shard from the vase; if Ryan was right, and Miss A hadn’t been able to knock it over, then had someone been in the house while I slept?

I kept looking at the photos, trying to believe I’d moved them all around so many times, I’d simply forgotten where I’d put them on the wall. Then I remembered I’d photographed the wall when I’d finished. I’d been so pleased I’d decided to put the ‘gallery’ on my Instagram. So, I grabbed my phone and went through my photos, eventually finding the one I was looking for, and enlarged it on the screen. My stomach dipped. The pictures had been moved around. I felt slightly nauseous. The only explanation I could think of was that Mark had done it, for fun?

I called him, and left a message, but it could be days, weeks even before I heard from him.

It was just like Mark to turn up as I’d started to lift my head in all this. He’d come along and stirred up all the sadness and resentment that had lain undisturbed like sediment at the bottom of the sea. I couldn’t help but think back to the night of the anniversary, I’d been so happy then. It was a milestone, the silver wedding that would erase our chequered past. But just as our marriage was becoming bearable, it all ended in a puff of smoke.

I meandered through the house, reliving moments of my life, from my childhood, playing in the garden and on the beach, to the day I brought Mark here to meet my mum, and the day she told me the house would be her wedding gift to me. She handed me my past, present and future, and I couldn’t have been happier, or more complete. Little did I know that the home I’d been so happy in, where the sun shone and my children played, would become a different place.

I went upstairs and, wandering into my bedroom, lay down. Just for a moment, I told myself. The sheets were cool and clean; they soothed the spikes of seeing Mark. I was exhausted, sad. Our marriage hadn’t been perfect, but whose is? Over the years, we’d found a way of existing, side by side, and then, when the children left, we had to adjust slightly again. Mark continued to work away, and I’d relished my solitude, often just sitting for hours gazing through the floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room, from where I could watch the ocean changing every hour – like a moving picture. Late in the day, the buttery sunlight would fade, making room for dusk, covering the sea and sky in orange, then pink or navy blue or stormy grey. Sometimes, if Mark was home, he’d join me, and we’d curl up on the sofa, and marvel at the weather coming over the sea, find faces in clouds, sit through sunsets and storms. Once he even bought a huge bag of popcorn so we could pretend we were at the cinema. He could be so lovely, so loving. And at times like that, he could even make me believe we were as perfect as everyone else thought we were.

Mark’s visit that day was a reminder that we’d lived through a marriage of sunsets and storms, and however much you want to, you can’t erase a lifetime. The neural pathways in my brain where habits are formed all led back to Mark and our life in this house. I didn’t want him back, but seeing him again, I was disturbed at how powerful and conflicting those feelings still were.

I fell asleep for just a few minutes, but it was disturbed sleep, and I was soon woken by the sound of something moving in the bedroom. I stayed very still, but opened my eyes. My first thought was rats. I have this real phobia, can barely say the word – once, I heard a rustling in the ceiling and became convinced we had them. I’d called Mark, he was working about an hour away, and I made him leave his hotel and drive through the night to go up into the attic. The kids thought it was great fun. Dad had come home and there were furry creatures in the house – it was a child’s dream! It was 2 a.m. and he wasn’t too chuffed, but as I pointed out, I was so scared of the little critters I would literally have to move out of the house if we had them. He’d yelled when he got up there. I was squealing in the bedroom, wrapped up in the duvet, trying to be funny so the children wouldn’t be scared – but I was petrified. The kids were hysterical with laughter.

Mark had eventually poked his head round the bedroom door. ‘I found something in the attic, you were right – it’s furry with four legs.’

‘I knew it, bloody rats!’

‘I’ve got it here,’ he’d said, still standing behind the bedroom door.

‘Nooooo,’ I’d screamed like something from a horror film and jumped under the duvet. When I’d eventually emerged, all three of them were laughing at the bottom of the bed, the children shouting excitedly, ‘Mum, Mum, look!’

I’d pulled the duvet down very slowly to see Mark holding up Miss A, who’d somehow found her way up there. We’d all laughed; my laughter was mostly from relief. Then Mark made us all hot chocolate with squirty cream, and the kids asked him if he was going to stay. It felt like an episode from Mark’s show, as I told them, ‘Dad can’t stay, he’s working.’

But he’d smiled, and said, ‘It’s late – and I think Mum might want me here tonight after her fright.’

I remember them being so delighted at this, and it surprised me how much it meant to both me and the kids that he’d chosen to stay with us rather than drive back to the hotel.

One night soon after, when Jake couldn’t sleep, he said, ‘Why don’t you phone Dad and tell him you think we have rats, he might come home then?’ His little face was filled with hope as he clutched Dino, his raggedy old dinosaur.

I’d explained that would be a lie, and we mustn’t tell lies. ‘Besides, Dad’s working a long way away this week, and he couldn’t come home even if we did have rats.’

That broke his little heart, and he’d cried himself to sleep. When I told Lara about it, she’d said, ‘When Mark isn’t there, Jake probably feels like it’s his responsibility to look after you and Phoebe. When Mark’s there, he can relax.’

I’d mentioned this to Mark, and suggested that he stay home more often, especially if he was only a short drive away. He’d said he would, but he never did.

I’d been so distracted by the memory of my tearful son, I’d almost forgotten what triggered it, but hearing the noise again, I remembered. Perhaps it was Miss A again? But she was an old lady now and rarely ventured up the stairs.

I checked under the bed, and all around the bedroom. I’d been half-asleep, I may not even have heard anything, so I decided to forget it and take a shower. Heaving myself off the bed, I heard the noise again. I stood very still, and waited. And waited.

After a few minutes, I was cross with myself. God, this was ridiculous. I was being so silly. It was nothing.

I started taking off my T-shirt and jeans, then bra and pants, dropping them along the bedroom floor slowly, like a child. That was something else I could do without Mark around. He used to call me ‘slovenly’, but it was just comfortable not to be living in a bloody show home, where everything had to be in place all the time. ‘You never know who’s going to pop by,’ he used to say. ‘Can’t have the Andersons’ house in a mess.’

I took a lovely shower, and tried to wash that man right out of my hair, as the song goes. Then I realised I hadn’t put the towels in the bathroom (okay, Mark would never have let that happen – there were plus points to his domestic perfectionism). I was padding across the landing, wet and naked, to get some towels from the airing cupboard, when I definitely heard something. My fingertips tingled. I had tried to pretend I wasn’t bothered, but the blue envelope and broken vase were just beneath the surface of my brain. I suddenly heard a creak. Whatever it was, it was bigger than a rat.

I stood still on the landing, listening, but it was hard to make out. Then I spotted a shadow moving. What the hell? Was someone breaking in? I grabbed a towel that barely covered me and leaned over the bannister, to see if I could look into the kitchen. I estimated the heft of the table lamp nearby and, reaching for it, heard myself shout: ‘Is someone there?’

Silence. The shadow stilled.

‘Who is it?’ I heard myself say, my voice more panicky now.

Nothing.

‘Okay, I’m calling the police!’

And just as I was about to dash into my bedroom, grab my phone and barricade myself in, the shadow moved.