The Doll House: A gripping debut psychological thriller with a killer twist!

Dominic is still staring at me, shaking his head from side to side. There is a funny gasping sound that I realise is coming from me. I need to think of something to say.

‘Did you pick up the dinner?’

2

13 January 2017

London

Ashley

Ashley shifts her daughter from one hip to the other so that she can bend to pick up the mail on the doormat. Holly lets out a cry, a short, sharp sound followed by a wail that makes the muscles in Ashley’s shoulders clench. Every bone in her body is aching. Her hands clasp Holly’s warm body to her own; her daughter’s soft, downy hair brushes against her chest and she feels the familiar aching thud in her breasts. Please, not now.

She feels exhausted; even on days when she’s not at the café it’s as though she’s on a never-ending treadmill of nappies and tantrums, homework and school runs. It’s not as if James is around to help her; her husband has been staying at the office later and later, leaving early each morning before the children are even out of bed. He is pulling the sheets back usually around the time that Ashley is starting to drift off to sleep, having spent the night rocking Holly, trying to calm her red little body as she screams. She has never known anything like it; her third child is by far the most unsettled of the three. It has been nine months and still Holly refuses to sleep through the night; if anything she is getting worse. Ashley doesn’t think it’s normal. James stopped waking up at around the four-month mark, has been sleeping lately as though he is dead to the world. She doesn’t know how he manages it.

Ashley had woken yesterday to find his side of the bed empty and the sound of the tap running in their bathroom. She had put her hand to the space beside her, sat there mutely as her husband gave her a brief kiss on the cheek and headed out the door. As he had leaned close to her, Ashley had had to fight the urge to grip his shirt, force him to stay with her. She hadn’t, of course, she had let him go. Then she had been up, bringing Benji a glass of orange juice, placing Holly in her high chair, making coffee for her teenage daughter Lucy. On the treadmill for another day.

Working a few shifts a week at Colours café is her one respite, her only time when she is no longer a tired mother or a wife, she is simply a waitress. James had laughed at her when she decided to start working at the little café on Barnes Common, with the ice creams and the till and the tourists. He had been amazed when she insisted on continuing work a few months after having Holly, strapping her daughter carefully into the car and driving her across the common to their childminder.

‘You don’t need to now, honey,’ he used to say, before giving her little pep talks on the latest figures of eReader sales, on how well his company was doing. She knows they don’t need the money any more. But the waitressing isn’t for the money – most days she even forgets to pick up the little tip jar that sits at the edge of the counter, ignores the dirty metal coins inside as though they are nothing more than the empty pistachio shells that Lucy leaves in salty piles around the house. Ashley has always been happy to give up her publishing career for her children, but she craves this small contact with the outside world. The easy days at the café give her insights into other people’s lives, a chance to be in an adult environment. Just a few times a week, when she becomes someone else, someone simple, leaves her daughter in the capable hands of June at number 43 and walks back to her car alone, her arms deliciously light, weightless. It isn’t about the money.

June has been a godsend to Ashley in the last six months. A retired schoolteacher, she had been recommended to them a couple of months after Holly was born. Neither of them had been coping very well and the offer of a childminder seemed like a golden ticket, a chance opportunity that might never come again. Neither Benji nor Lucy had ever had a babysitter. Ashley had stayed at home all hours of the day and night, playing endless games of peek-a-boo and living her life on a vicious cycle of nappies and tears. Not that she’d minded at the time, not really, but now that she is older she finds her mind wandering, her energy limited. To be able to work in the café is bliss.

June is unwaveringly kind, and Ashley is overwhelmingly grateful to her for stepping in a few days a week. As far as she knows, the woman lives completely alone, has never had children of her own. Ashley can sense the sadness there, is happy to see the joy in June’s eyes when she drops off Holly. Yes, June really has been a blessing.

Ashley has thought about asking Corinne to mind Holly, but she has the gallery, and besides, Ashley doesn’t want it to upset her. Her sister’s emotions are so close to the surface at the moment, spending all day looking after someone else’s child rather than her own might have been too much.

It took Ashley seconds to make the decision last week. When Corinne had called with the doctor’s news Ashley had gone straight to her laptop and transferred her sister the money for her final round of IVF, thousands of pounds gone with a wiggle of the mouse. Still, it’s for the best. The money would only have been accumulating dust in their joint account. She hasn’t told James yet, has barely had the chance. She can hardly tell him at midnight, when she is half asleep, trying to catch one of her half-hour bursts between the baby’s cries and he rolls into bed next to her, pulls her towards him in the dark and wraps his arms round her stomach. There never seems to be the time.

‘Are you worried?’ her friend Megan had asked her last week. They had been sitting outside Colours café, taking a break from their waitressing duties, huddled against the cold with a pair of creamy hot chocolates.

‘Am I worried?’ Ashley had repeated the question out loud, the words misting the January air.

Megan had nodded, pushed her strawberry blonde hair behind her ears, tucked the ends underneath her purple wool hat.

‘About what?’ Ashley knew what her friend meant, had pretended not to.

‘Well, you know.’ To her credit, Megan had had the grace to look slightly uncomfortable. ‘Why do you think he’s staying late so much?’

‘He’s working, Megan,’ Ashley had told her, and they had finished their drinks in silence, drunk them too fast so that the cocoa burned the top of Ashley’s mouth and scorched the taste buds off her tongue. Megan had apologised later, put her arm around Ashley as they stood behind the counter together.

‘Ignore me,’ she said, ‘I haven’t had any faith in men since Simon left. James is one of the good ones. Don’t worry.’

Ashley had squeezed her friend back, allowed herself the warm flood of relief. The feeling hadn’t lasted. The hot chocolate she’d had coated her mouth, she felt the thick sweetness of it on her tongue, looked down at herself in shame and felt the bulge of her stomach, the way it pressed against her jeans since having Holly. It never used to.

In the kitchen, Ashley sets Holly down in her high chair, humming to her until she begins to quieten down. Holly’s chubby hands reach out for the wooden spoon on the work surface and Ashley hands it to her obligingly, closes her ears to the noise of the daily drumbeat beginning, the sound of her baby hitting the spoon on the table. She begins to sift through the pile of mail, catches the edge of her finger on an envelope and closes her eyes briefly as a slit appears in her flesh. She is so tired; as she squeezes her hand she thinks momentarily how nice it would be to sink onto the sofa and blot everything out, just for an hour, just for five minutes. Three children have knocked the wind completely out of her sails. She thinks of herself as a child, and wonders at how well behaved she was. She and Corinne were good as gold, would spend hours sitting cross-legged in front of the big doll house their dad had made, playing endless games of families in the light of the big French windows that overlooked their garden, the sprawling green jungle that was home for so many years.

At fifteen, Ashley would never have spoken to her dad the way Lucy sometimes talks to James. She would never have wanted to let him down – the disappointment in his eyes if she came home with a less than perfect grade was always heartbreaking, though he’d always pull her into his arms and tell her it didn’t matter. By contrast, Lucy can be so insolent, the harsh words fly out of her mouth like bullets. She apologises, of course, most of the time. Ashley has seen her curl up next to James, rest her head against his shoulder, put on her pink piggy socks so that she looks like a ten-year-old again. With Ashley she is closed off, on guard. Perhaps it’s just a phase. Her friend Aoife’s daughter had come home the other night with a shoe missing, vomiting up vodka in horrible swirls of sick. At least they are not there yet.

Ashley checks her watch. Ten to five. Her eyes meet Holly’s, as though her daughter will speak to her, will offer some advice. Instead she smiles, a big, round-cheeked smile that makes Ashley’s heart melt. Neither of them blink and the moment stretches out, and, just for a second, Ashley feels the rush of love, the energy she used to have. It is all worth it, the exhaustion, it is worth it for this. These moments. Then Holly’s eyelids swoop down to cover her eyes and the moment is gone, lost. The kitchen is humming with everything still to do. Ashley has to pick Lucy up from the school bus in ten minutes, which leaves her about forty-five seconds to spoon some coffee granules into her mouth. She doesn’t bother with the kettle and water ritual any more, there never seems to be time. Still, she’d never eat granules in front of James; it feels shameful, like a dirty secret. As she unscrews the jar of the coffee, the phone begins to ring; Ashley reaches for it automatically, using her other hand to dip a spoon into the brown granules.

‘Hello?’

There is a silence on the other end of the line. Ashley listens, straining to hear. Being a mother always gives telephone calls a new level of anxiety: the children, the children, the children.

‘This is Ashley?’ she tries again but there is still nothing, just the steady sound of the house around her, the receiver pressed to her ear. Behind her, Holly gurgles, she hears the sound of a spoon hitting the floor. Ashley thinks of her husband, wonders where he is, who he is with, what he is doing right this second. There was a time when the only place he’d ever be was right next to her. She puts the phone down, crunches the coffee between her teeth. The taste is bitter in her mouth.

3

London

Corinne

‘Are you sure you’re going to be all right?’ Dominic calls from the kitchen. He is standing at the sink, eating a plum for breakfast. The juice drips down his fingers, yellow rivulets running into the silver basin. I reach for my hand cream, rub it into the crevices of my palms, inhale the soft sweet smell of it.

‘Yes. Yes, Dom, of course.’

‘And you’re going to the gallery today? D’you feel up to it?’

‘Of course. Dominic, I’m not ill.’

He turns on the tap, rinses his fingers and shakes them dry. ‘OK. Sorry. So we’ll meet after work at the clinic, yes?’

I nod, he reaches for me and I lean forward to kiss him. He’s dressed for work and he smells lovely; clean and fresh.

‘Yes, sounds good. What are you working on at the paper today?’

He sighs. ‘Alison’s really on my case at the moment. She’s insisting I get on with the Carlington House piece, says she’s being hassled a lot by the owner. Cool place though, didn’t you think?’

I stare at him. ‘I thought it was kind of scary.’

Dominic smiles. ‘Maybe a bit creepy. Weird to think of it abandoned for so long. I’m hoping there’ll be time to start writing it up today. I’ve got a bit of a backlog at the moment, what with . . .’ He tails off.

I feel a flash of guilt. ‘I know, time off. I’m sorry, I’m OK today. Promise!’

He shakes his head, folds his arms around me again, even though the clock is now showing nearly a quarter to eight and he’s going to be late.

‘Don’t ever apologise to me, Corinne,’ he says, the words urgent in my ear, his breath warm on my cheek.

We straighten up. There is a loud banging sound upstairs, the familiar noise of an electric drill gearing up. The people above us are extending their flat, I don’t know what they’re doing up there, they’ve been messing around for weeks.

‘The fun continues,’ Dominic says, rolling his eyes at me. ‘I wonder whether they’ll ever actually complete?’

‘Go, go!’ I say, and I adjust his blue tie, touch his chest. I don’t really want him to, I don’t want him to leave me on my own. He picks up a cooling cup of coffee from the counter, drains it and leaves the flat; the door bounces noisily on the hinges behind him as it always does, far too loud. The neighbours have complained several times, we ought to fix it.

After he’s gone, I go back into our bedroom. I’ve got to get better at being by myself. My dad used to say being able to be alone is a skill; he told me his alone time was precious to him, something he cultivated in spite of all the parties and the attention, the people who wanted to know his name, where he got his ideas from, what project he was working on next. We used to have a photo of him propped up on the windowsill in the dining room – in it he’s surrounded by people, his dark eyes flashing. He looks like he’s in his element, but one night when I was a teenager he told me that all he’d wanted to do that night was be alone, away from the frenzy. I never would have guessed.

I take a deep breath. Perhaps I can find my element too, perhaps being alone is something I can learn to enjoy. The bedroom feels so quiet and still. The bed is made; Dom is good at things like that. He says we have to try to keep the flat tidy with it being so small. It is tiny, nestled in the tangle of streets between Finsbury Park and Crouch End, a two-room affair with a little bathroom leading off the kitchen. I love it; it’s minuscule, miniature, fit for a pair of dolls.

I go to my drawers, the insides pretty with the embroidered linings that Ashley made for me. In the bottom drawer, a clump of black tights lies in wait, flecked with tiny specks of white tissue. The nylon feels dry and rubbery. I think about untangling the blackness and drawing the material over my legs, getting on the Tube and going to work, and all of a sudden the idea seems overwhelming.

I sit down, hugging my knees to my chest. The flat always feels even smaller when I am on my own, I don’t know why. The absence of a child seems worse. I stare at the painting above the clock, the first picture I ever commissioned for the gallery. I brought it home three years ago, hung it proudly in the flat. The blue waves of the ocean, the bright red of a ship. It’s beautiful. I used to love it, the way the thick paint glistened on the canvas, the hint of sunlight dappling the left corner. Aurora yellow, cadmium red. I know all the paint names, or I did. I used to recite them to Dominic when I got my first gallery job, spent hours hunched over the colour chart, making sure I didn’t forget. That was a long time ago now.

My gaze shifts from the painting to the clock below and, as I watch, the crimson figures (geranium lake, paint number 405) flicker, rearrange themselves into new numbers, and that’s when I realise that I have been sitting by the pile of black nylon for almost forty-five minutes.

It’s too late to go to work now. I don’t know where the time has gone. The hormones I am taking make me feel dopey, a wasp in a honey-jar. When I call the gallery, Marjorie sounds irritated and I feel bad. I’ll go tomorrow, definitely.

I get back into bed, lie still for a while, listening to the sound of rain beginning outside, the steady drip drip drip of the pipe on the roof. The builders upstairs seem to have stopped for a bit, the quiet is nice. When I was little I used to go up to Dad’s office and listen to the way the rain spattered on the skylight, hammered down hard so that it bounced off the glass. It used to make me feel safe, because the rain was outside and I was inside. It couldn’t get to me.

There is a sudden sound, a little thud that makes me jump, and I feel my body stiffen, the muscles in my legs tense slightly under the sheets. You’re too jumpy, Corinne, Dominic always says. You exhaust yourself with nerves. He’s right about the exhaustion. I’m not sure I can help the nerves.

Eventually, I start to need the bathroom, so I ease myself out of bed, go out into the hallway. I’ve got to pull myself together, I know I have. I take a deep breath, peer at my reflection in the mirror. I need to keep hoping, I can’t give up.

The tiles are freezing on my bare feet. The hallway is draughty; the front door has sprung slightly ajar. Occasionally it refuses to close properly; I’ve told Dom to fix it time and time again. I frown, step over a pile of yellowing newspapers, push my shoulder against it to make it jam shut, but it won’t. I open the door again and try harder, but something is bouncing it back. I crouch down. Something is stopping the door from closing; something small jammed in the frame. I stare at it for a few seconds and then it comes to me; I know exactly what this looks like.

I bend down, pick up the small object, hold it carefully between my cold hands. Flecks of auburn paint flake off onto my skin, lying on my hands like specks of blood. How strange. It’s a little chimney pot. It looks like the chimneys we had on our doll house when we were little, on the big pink house Dad built for us.

I stand there at the doorway, clutching the little chimney, and a small smile comes to my lips as I remember.

It was no ordinary doll house. Nothing Dad did was ordinary – I remember one of his clients telling him that over lunch, him regaling us with the story that evening, his eyes glowing with pride. ‘Nothing by halves,’ he always said, and he was always true to his word. Our doll house was almost a metre high, with pink walls and a blue painted door, a red-slated roof and four big brown chimney pots made of real terracotta. Each of the rooms was tiny, compact, perfectly formed. Dad was obsessed with buildings, and he’d spent months working on this one, a little replica of our real home that Ashley and I could play with. Whenever Mum would tell him to come to bed, rest his eyes for a bit, he’d shake his head. ‘It’s a challenge,’ he used to say, ‘and there’s nothing better for you than that. I’ve got to get it right.’

He knelt on the floor with us on Christmas Day and showed us how it worked; the intricacies of the rooms and the stairways and the loft, and even when Mum came out with the Christmas pudding I wasn’t drawn away. I became obsessed with finding miniature furniture, little rugs, curtains that I cut out painstakingly from scraps of white material I found in my mother’s sewing box. And the dolls. Oh, the dolls. Dad brought them home for us, one by one, beautiful, smartly dressed figures that we positioned in the house: a long-skirted mother cooking in the kitchen, a baby in the miniature cradle, a father sitting in the little pink armchair stuffed with real feathers. Every time he went away for work he’d come back with another one. He got some of them from abroad, bringing them carefully wrapped in scarlet tissue paper to protect the china, regaling us with tales of the countries he’d been to as we pulled open the presents. His work took him further than any of us had ever been.

I haven’t thought of the doll house properly for years, had always assumed Mum had put it in her attic with the rest of our childhood things. A lump fills my throat.

I bring the chimney pot up to eye level, twist it around so that I can see it from all sides. It is as tall as the length of my hand and as wide as my palm. As I stand in our doorway, I feel a pair of eyes on me and raise my gaze. A young woman is watching me, a dark-haired toddler in her arms, an empty pushchair at her side. I blush, pull my dressing gown more tightly around me, suddenly aware of my bare feet, the untamed hairs on my legs.

‘Sorry!’ she says. ‘I just wondered if you were OK? You looked a bit upset.’

‘Oh!’ I say. ‘Yes, yes, I’m fine, thank you. Just had something in the mail.’ I smile at her, trying not to notice the way her child is clinging to her chest, its little hands clutching at her hair. She strokes its head absent-mindedly. She hardly looks old enough to have a baby; I hope she knows how lucky she is. God, of course she does. What’s the matter with me?

‘I’m Gilly,’ she tells me, ‘I’ve just moved in.’ She gestures behind her to where the door to her flat hangs open and I see boxes, the edge of a packing crate.

‘Welcome to the building,’ I say, and she laughs. Something about the sound of it is familiar, as though I have heard it somewhere before. The way she gasps slightly, as though she hasn’t quite enough breath to properly let go. She’s smiling at me.

‘Thank you, it’s been a bit of a rocky ride so far but we’re hoping to settle in here.’

‘Is it just you and the baby?’ I ask her.

She nods, looks down. ‘Just me and the kiddy. Do you have any little horrors?’

I flinch, clutch the chimney pot tighter to my chest.

‘No,’ I say. ‘No I don’t. It was nice to meet you, Gilly.’ She looks a bit taken aback but I try not to mind. I step back inside our flat and close the door. I can’t be friends with another mother, I just can’t. It’s too painful. The gasping sound of her laugh niggles at me. I’m sure I’ve heard someone laugh like that before but I can’t think where – the thought slips away from me like the string of a kite that I can’t quite grab hold of.

Inside, I prop the chimney pot on the table. I know it can’t really be from the doll house, but it does look almost identical to what I remember, and even though the rational side of my brain knows it must be something else, it feels almost like it is a sign, a little spark of hope, a reminder of why I put myself through this every time. I want to cling to it, to cling to something. It’s as if this being here is a message from Dad, telling me not to give up hope. I have wanted a family since I was a little girl. It will happen. I have to believe.

*

Later on, I leave to meet Dominic at the fertility clinic. As I dressed, I put the chimney pot into my pocket, gave it a lucky pat before I left the house. I can feel it bumping slightly against my hip bone; I like it, it feels like a little talisman, a good luck charm. If I do have a daughter I could dig out the doll house, give it to her as a present. One day. I feel bad for being abrupt with Gilly this morning. I know she can’t help having kids, I know I can’t behave like that. Maybe I’ll knock on her door later, apologise.

Outside it is freezing. Minus two, the radio said. Strings of Christmas lights are still dotted around, twinkling stubbornly, even though it’s past the deadline of the sixth. I can see my breath, misty particles floating in the air, glowing under the street lamps. It is already dark even though it has only just gone five-thirty. Despite the weather, I feel a little glow inside me, a swell of hope from the chimney pot cocooned in my coat.

I’m walking along the pavement by the park, past the playground, the empty swings hanging loosely in the darkness. Resting for the evening. A car speeds past, its headlights illuminate the tall, spiked tops of the park railings and I give a little gasp; someone is there, right beside me, I see a face hidden in the railings amongst the dark. My breath catches in my throat. Oh, God. I can’t breathe.

Then the headlights swing by, the golden light throwing itself over me and I exhale; it’s just the shadowy figure of a dog-walker, hurrying along towards the park exit and the gaping steps of the Underground. It’s nothing, it’s nobody. It never is.

I put my head down and keep walking, focusing on my feet clad in their little black boots. My heart rate returns to normal, I can feel my body calming down. I’m used to the feelings now – the immediate rush of anxiety followed by the weak-kneed relief. The cycle of it all.