The Stranger in Our Home

‘Hello, Sheila, two packets of your usual?’

The assistant was addressing a middle-aged woman in front of me. She turned to pluck two cigarette boxes from the shelf behind her.

‘Thanks, Em,’ said the customer. ‘And a book of stamps.’

‘First or second?’

‘Oh, second will do. Have you heard? We think we’ve found it.’

I wondered what it was.

‘Yes, Pete was in a minute ago. Crying shame.’ The assistant opened the till, fishing for the stamps.

‘The sheep must have got run over last night. Some idiot driving too fast.’

I winced. A sheep hitting a car would have been nasty, for both parties.

‘Pete’s really angry, he loves his animals.’ The woman opened her purse.

‘Where did he find it?’ The assistant seemed to have forgotten about payment. There was a shuffling of feet behind me.

‘Outside Elizabeth’s house.’

The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up.

‘Well I suppose that makes sense, he’s got the field opposite, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes.’ The woman sighed, clutching her purse. ‘But the body was hidden in the verge – took a while to find it. Not much left of it either – the foxes had already had a go. Pete’s gone to fetch the trailer to shift it and ask his brother to help. But he’s annoyed with himself. It must have escaped the night before. Normally Elizabeth would have spotted it and given him a call.’

‘Well, she couldn’t have done that no more,’ said the assistant. ‘Twenty-one pounds seventy, love. Isn’t the house still empty?’

There was the chink of money and a rattle as it was stashed away in the till.

‘Pete said there was a car outside first thing this morning. Reckon one of the daughters has finally turned up.’

‘Really? Which one? The flashy one or the nutcase?’

I felt my ears burn, humiliation flooding my body. I lowered my head, fingers pushed deep into my jacket pockets. What was wrong with these people?

‘Don’t know, the car’s a bit crap, Pete said. Perhaps it was that car which hit our sheep?’

I ground my teeth. What right had they to make that assumption?

‘Oh, well, tell that lovely husband of yours how sorry I am when you see him.’

‘Sure. Thank you. See you tomorrow.’

The woman lifted a hand and left. I presented my basket and waited patiently. The assistant ignored me as she scanned the items but threw me a look when she got to the tins of cat food. My eyes dropped and I paid the bill as quickly as I could.

Back in the car, I pulled over when I got to the bottom of the drive to the house. On the roadside, they’d said. I told myself I needed to see what I’d been accused of, but perhaps the truth was that I’d always been drawn to the macabre, the visual trickery of the surreal, an artist’s fascination for the biological structures behind our physical façade. My car eased onto the verge and I stepped out.

The wind had picked up, with a bitter edge, bending the trees on either side of the road, already twisted and contorted from years of exposure on the hill. My hood whipped down and my hair caught in my eyes. One of the poppers on my coat was broken and I had to grasp the folds of it over my chest to keep the flaps from bursting open.

There it was. The feet were visible through the long grass and a tangle of briers growing in the hedge. It was just about recognisable as a sheep. The head was intact, but the body had been badly damaged, not just by a car. Entrails splayed across its woolly coat and something had tugged and pulled at the flaps of skin. The eyes were wide open, bulging from the skull, and its tongue lolled uselessly between its teeth. I couldn’t help but think of my stepmother, how her body must have looked lying on the floor at the foot of the stairs. I tried to push the image from my mind, gazing at the animal. Judging by the state of it, that hadn’t happened today.

I thought – what if it had been me? Yesterday, as I’d arrived? I’d been tired those last few miles, not particularly alert. What if I’d hit the sheep myself? No, I didn’t believe that. I would have felt the impact. And there was that car behind me. The driver would have noticed too. Surely, he’d have reacted if either one of us had hit an animal that big.

I reached out with my foot, giving the carcass a nudge. A bevy of flies rose up from the body, flying in ever decreasing circles before settling down to their business again. I felt my stomach flip. It was disgusting. But a sheep was just a sheep, wasn’t it? Another animal bred for consumption, its death inevitable one way or another. Like all of us, I thought.

I looked around me. I saw the last few leaves hanging on the trees, great piles of damp and blackened vegetation heaped on the verge below. I saw the remains of a pheasant cleaved to the tarmac further down the road, berries that clung shrivelled and inedible, rejected even by the birds. Already I’d alienated my neighbours without doing anything wrong at all. The strange looks at the butcher’s, the assumption of my guilt over this sheep, made without a shred of proof, and the vague gossip about Elizabeth’s two daughters.

‘The flashy one or the nutcase,’ they’d said – I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as ‘flashy’.

I’d only just arrived, after an absence of ten years. Why would they say that about me? I felt a sense of helplessness. Already it was as if I’d never left. This was meant to be a fresh start, wasn’t it?

CHAPTER 4

‘Caro? Is that you?’ It was Steph’s voice on the phone, distant and contorted.

‘Hi Steph, how are you?’

‘Oh, I’m fine, fed up with this weather, that’s all.’

It had been raining in New York, apparently.

‘But at least I’ve got a trip to Miami coming up – for work,’ she continued.

‘When do you go?’

‘Day after tomorrow.’ Steph sounded harassed. ‘Early flight. Which means an even earlier cab to the airport. It’s only for a few days though.’

‘Oh.’

Miami sounded very glamorous. You didn’t get business trips like that with book illustration.

‘Everything okay with the house? You got in alright?’

‘Sure, yes. It’s a bit cold and damp, you know.’

‘Well, yes, I s’pose. Been empty for a while.’

Steph paused. Somewhere in the background I could hear movement. Then she spoke again.

‘Listen, I’ve spoken to the lawyer. I’ve told him I don’t want any of it.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ I felt a stab of guilt. Steph had said she was well off, but still … ‘I mean, the house must be worth a fair bit of money and some of the things here are antiques. There’s all Dad’s old stuff too, you know, books and pictures – from when we were little. Don’t you want some of that? It’s your inheritance as well.’

‘No. No, thanks. I’ve moved on and I don’t want anything that reminds me of those days. Anyway, how would I get all that stuff over to the States? It’s like I said, Sis, I don’t need the money. Really.’

Sis. It felt good hearing her use that word, after so many years of silence.

‘Well, it’s very generous of you.’

In truth, I was delighted. I’d been penniless for years, scarcely managing on the fees from my work. It had been a mistake moving to London. Whether I stayed or sold up, to have a home, rent-free, even the prospect of a modest independent income, was amazing. Life-changing stuff. I hadn’t thought Steph really meant it, but now it was clear that she did.

I didn’t linger on the guilt. She didn’t need the money, she’d said. You could see it in her clothes, the make-up, no cheap brands there. And the house hadn’t been her home for almost twenty years, had it? It was her choice. Still, I asked one more time.

‘Are you really sure, Steph?’

‘Yes. Caro, if I could undo the past, to make it up to you that I never got in touch, I would. We’re family. I shouldn’t have let my feelings about Elizabeth and the whole situation get between you and me. Can you ever forgive me?’

Forgive her? I didn’t know about that. I chewed my lip; I hadn’t tried that hard to contact her either.

‘Do we need to think like that?’ I said. ‘Forgive each other? What’s important is now. Only I wish you didn’t live so far away.’

‘Well, this time I promise I will keep in touch. I get over to the UK quite a bit these days. I’ll let you know when I’ll be around next and we can meet up. We’ll hit the shops, eh? Get you some nice clothes, a haircut.’

I flinched at that, remembering her quiet look at my wild hair. Paul had sneered at my hair, even when things had still been good between us.

‘… and go to a show. I’d like that, Sis.’

That word again.

‘Sure, I’d like that too.’ I smiled down the phone.

‘Right – gotta go. Oh, and calls are stupidly expensive from New York. You got Skype?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Great.’

Steph reeled off a Skype address and I noted it down.

‘Add me and I’ll Skype you every now and again. It’ll be nice to see your face. You take care, Caro. I’ll be thinking of you!’ Steph called off.

The house was too quiet after she’d gone. Steph had never really been a sister to me. But now? I scanned the kitchen, my painting gear laid out on the table, my laptop, the emails filling up the screen with rubbish. I clicked delete and stood up. Time to check out the upstairs.

I was reluctant to use the bedrooms on the first floor. No way was I going to sleep in Elizabeth’s room and, though I couldn’t explain it, I didn’t fancy the other ones either. But I needed a proper bed, I didn’t want another night on the sofa. I hung back, feet on the first step, then curiosity got the better of me and I climbed the stairs to the top floor.

My old bedroom was right under the eaves. It was the most neglected of all the rooms and hadn’t changed much. It didn’t surprise me, I could just picture my stepmother shutting the door after I’d gone and forgetting all about it. There was a single bed under the window overlooking the back of the house, a desk against the wall and a lamp tinged with yellow. A bookcase stood between a wardrobe built into the eaves and a small Victorian fireplace. The ceiling was low and, in the middle, a large spider dangled from a web strung out across a hatch into the roof. A fly was caught in its strands, still moving as the spider wrapped it with thread. I wanted to pull out my sketchbook, to record the shape of it suspended like it was, pencil lines capturing the spider’s legs, the way they tapered and moved, weaving silk with the delicacy of a pâtissier making spun sugar. I lowered my head. The room had seemed bigger when I was little.

I opened the wardrobe. The doors stuck; the wood had swollen and loose flakes of paint fell onto my fingers. Inside smelt of charity shop clothes, damp cardboard boxes and old bedding. I fished out a soft toy, a felt penguin. Its beak was bent and worn, its once white breast grey from a thousand childish cuddles. I’d had it for as long as I could remember. It was missing when I’d looked for it when packing to go to uni. I hadn’t realised then that I wouldn’t be back, even once; that I’d have to find jobs in the holidays to support myself. I held it for a moment, stroking its beak, then placed it gently on the floor.

I reached further into the cupboard. More stuff. A wooden doll, her clothes worn ragged, and a Monopoly set. I grimaced at the board game – I’d been thrilled to get it all those years ago, but I’d never had anyone to play it with, neither Steph nor Elizabeth had ever been interested. I would set up the bank, line up the penguin and doll and we’d play like that, the three of us. Sometimes I won, sometimes they won, that in itself had been the game, which toy would win. Sad, I thought. What a sad little girl I’d been.

I shut the wardrobe door and turned to the bookcase. Books had been my escape. Peter Pan, Five Go to Smuggler’s Top, Black Beauty, all classics. The Little Mermaid caught my eye, a picture book, its glossy pages smooth beneath my fingers. It had arrived in the post one year. I’d been first to the door that day. I wasn’t sure about the name on the card, some relative on my mother’s side, Elizabeth said. Whoever it was had never come to visit, at least as far as I knew. It had been a fantasy of mine, my mother’s relatives hammering at the door demanding to see me, but that had never happened. I pulled the book from the shelf. There was something about the story of The Little Mermaid. The sea princess who has to lose her place in the family and give up her beautiful voice, whose every step with her new feet felt like walking on a thousand shards of glass. Even then, she still didn’t get her prince. I’d read that story again and again.

The bed was by the window. My refuge, there where the light was best, where I could look out over the hills and immerse myself in stories of another time, another place, away from my existence at home. Something caught my eye, the corner of a book peeping out from under the bed. I reached down to pull it out. A collection of fairy tales. It had been one of my favourites. How could I have left it behind? Had that too been missing? I frowned.

I brought the book to my nose, drinking in the old-book scent, a mixture of woody glue and grass cuttings, old paint and vanilla candles. The pages fell open in my hands. It was as if the black ink already stained my fingers, my hands tracing the beautiful line drawings – princesses with long rope-like hair; trees gnarled like old man’s hands; lilies, roses and wild garlic blossoming around the words, winding about the letters. It was the book that had inspired me to paint, the fine detail, the insects under the leaves, the sense of a hidden, lush world of fantasy.

I’d first met Paul at the British Library, at an exhibition on fairy tales. There’d been old woodcut prints and illustrations from all the books I remembered from my childhood. H.J. Ford’s illustrations from The Fairy Books of Andrew Lang, Arthur Rackham’s prints for the collections of the Brothers Grimm, I’d been in heaven moving slowly from one display to the next. I was standing in front of a book, the pages open at the full-page picture of a cat perched like an owl upon a branch. By day she made herself into a cat. Its expression scowled at me, teeth and claws etched angrily onto the print, the dark shape of the animal like a black cloud bursting onto the sky. I’d scarcely noticed Paul at first, as I peered down at the book.

‘Not exactly the cute, cuddly kittens you see on Facebook,’ he’d said.

I’d swung round to look at him. He was tall and slim, dark-haired with a neatly trimmed beard and high pale cheekbones that made his eyes leap out from his face. He looked like he must be a writer or a poet, someone who spent his time in the proverbial garret, too intensely absorbed in his work to spend time outside in the sunlight. It turned out he was an accountant, working for the one of the firms that had sponsored the exhibition.

‘I don’t like cute, cuddly kittens,’ I said, only half a truth. I stood up and made to move on.

‘She was a witch,’ he said. ‘She turned women into birds, and men into statues.’

‘I don’t like stories about witches,’ I said. ‘It’s misogynism, pure and simple.’

He nodded in agreement. ‘Not helping the reputation of black cats, either. But look at the fur on her haunches, the way it echoes the lines of the storm clouds behind, and the tint of orange in her eyes. It’s not the cat that was being drawn but the repressed anger within.’

His hands were slender, pointing at the image, and a smile illuminated his face. As we talked, I imagined him standing trapped within the stained-glass window of a Victorian church like one of those translucent tortured saints. I found myself wanting to paint his face, to capture the angles of his features, the long line of his neck. One of my favourite artists had been Modigliani, known for the exaggerated necks and seductive features of his subjects. I felt the warm heat of a blush seeping across my face. Paul – even the letters of his name sparked that image in my head, long and lean, his legs white against the covers of my bed. Paul had been the man from my teenage fantasies, intelligent, courteous, patient. By the time we first slept together all my nervous reservations had gone.

I let the book drop from my fingers onto the floor of my old bedroom. I thought about the commission. The Pear Drum and Other Dark Tales from the Nursery. I hadn’t even started it and already two weeks had gone by. Too busy packing up to leave London. Or had I been avoiding it?

It was there on my phone, an attachment to David’s email. I reached into the wardrobe, pulled out a musty eiderdown, and dragged it over to the bed by the window. I propped up the pillows, arranged the eiderdown about my body and curled up with my phone, swiping through the emails to download the manuscript, then pausing to look out of the window. The sky was pastel pink, white mist shrouding the valley, trees fanning out against the horizon. The height of the window made me feel distant and alone, safe. The file loaded up and I scrolled through the contents, quickly passing over The Pear Drum to stop at a story I recognised, The Wild Swans. I settled down to read.

There were eleven brothers spurned by their new mother; their father, the king, under her spell. They’d been transformed into eleven black swans, their long bodies drooping as they flew low over the valley. Their sister, the youngest, mourned their loss and swore to turn them back. She spun and she sewed, weaving nettles into flax, blisters bubbling on her skin. Each night she crept out into the graveyard where the nettles grew, gathering what she needed. Each day she sewed the shirts. Ten she made, one after the other, glad to start the last.

But by then her stepmother had discovered her plan.

‘She’s a witch!’ she cried, persuading the king to have his daughter burnt at the stake.

One final shirt the sister had to make, sewing as quickly as she could, as the cart dragged her towards the fire, as the guards pulled her against the stake, one last shirt floating up into the air, not quite finished, as they bound her hands behind her …

The swans appeared, darkening the sky, their cries drowning out the crowd as they swooped down. Scooping up the shirts, they slipped them over their feathers, transforming back into men. The truth was out, the princess was saved, the stepmother put to death, the brothers restored to their family. Except the youngest, number eleven. He was fine, almost. Apart from his arm. It was still a feathered wing, you see, where his sister hadn’t quite finished his shirt.

I looked out of the window, the late sun burning up the hillside, streaks of mist streaming out across the valley like a line of swan brothers. I could see them as clear as day, the swans, pink eyes blinking, red beaks snapping, hissing, crowding round their sister, beating their wings, pushing her, almost crushing her in their eagerness for freedom.

I closed my eyes. I could feel her hands fighting back, the panic rising in her chest. This time it was me. Boys, girls too, crowding round me, pulling at my hair, kicking at my feet. Voices shouting, laughing, their hands reaching out to tug the feathered wings from my back …

I shook my head, as if to loosen the image from its grip. It was just my imagination, too vivid. It was how I experienced stories, as if I were there, the action a tangible thing, reaching out to touch the shapes and colours as they formulated in my head, buzzing around me like a swarm of bees. Crazy girl, that was what Paul had used to say, laughing, when I tried to explain to him how I felt about stories, about painting.

But this was different, this time it was more. My heart was racing, my knees trembling, my lips moving as if to scream. It felt real. A memory – but of what? My feet had gone numb. I unfolded my legs from under my body and swung them out onto the floor. Perhaps it was something at school? It felt that way with all those children. I wriggled my toes. I tried to picture the classroom in the village school, a building not far from the church. But it was too vague.

It was freezing up here, no heating in the room. I wasn’t going to sleep here, I decided. I levered myself from the bed, left the room and shut the door behind me.

CHAPTER 5

It was the next day, after another night on the sofa. I was perched on a stool in the kitchen, my hand sweeping across the paper, sketching with a light, confident motion the wings of a black swan. I’d been fired up by that first story, eager to get started on the commission in between clearing the house. As the image grew, my heart warmed to him, my swan prince, his eyes soft and human.

There followed a series of pictures, paper floating frantically to the ground as one sheet after another was rejected. I couldn’t capture him properly. The feathers were too bold, the angle of his wing too taut. I couldn’t fathom his expression. Was it fear? Was it joy? Was he wilful, wild and free? The lines had to be perfect, so pleasing to the eye that I couldn’t stop looking at it. I wasn’t there yet. Then at last, I had it. This, the youngest prince, my prince, was sweet and innocent, untouched by the human world, the purity of his black feathers a mirror to his sinless soul. Now I was happy, I stopped. The secret to a good picture is to know when to stop.

My fingers ached. I tipped off the stool and pulled on a coat, deciding to head down to the village. Or maybe I would go into Ashbourne. There were tea shops there and more people. I craved human contact, albeit the impersonal kind.

As my car swung out from the bottom of the drive, another car appeared behind me. It was the jeep again, I recognised the driver, the same impatient craggy-faced thirty-something who’d beeped at me before. He seemed content enough this time, driving behind me, a large dog hanging out of the front passenger window despite the cold. When we got to the village, the road widened and he accelerated past.

Larkstone was quiet. The cottages that lined the road were built with solid stone, curtains drawn, blinds lowered, as if the whole village was closed to me. The Co-op shop window was full of local adverts and Christmas-cracker boxes piled high in a stack, but the doors were locked, the lights were out and no one stirred on the street. Only the butcher’s lights were on. Tinsel was strung across the window and a pheasant, hanging from its neck, bumped against the glass. A figure moved away from the door and a blind dropped into place.

I decided Ashbourne was definitely a better bet.

I managed to nab a space in the market square car park and ambled down the hill to the main street. It had a pleasant buzz to it, fairy lights in every shop, traffic passing slowly under the street decorations. I didn’t really have a purpose. I wanted to soak in the atmosphere and the voices around me.

There were various gift shops. I thought, why not buy something for Steph for Christmas this year? But what did you buy for someone who could afford to waive a substantial inheritance? Perfume? A silk scarf? Those seemed eminently suitable for Steph, but a little boring. I wanted to give something more personal, something that I’d taken my time over, that spoke to us both, even after all these years of silence between us. One of my pictures, I thought. She’d said how much she liked them. I’d give her one of my pictures, something I’d painted especially for her.

There was an artists’ supply shop on St John Street and I went inside. I wanted paper the right size to fit into a table-top picture frame. The shop was a tiny space, pungent with the smell of oil paint and varnish. I lingered awhile, appalled at the prices – I usually bought my supplies on the internet. I selected a pad of thick watercolour paper, adding a pack of pencils, paid for them and left. Back out into the cold air and the damp.