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

It is a relief to see the double doors of the clinic glowing ahead of me. Dominic is waiting inside, looking at his watch, wearing the sky-blue scarf I bought him last Christmas. He looks so handsome. As I stare at him through the glass, I remember the times we used to meet after work, back when we first met; I’d sneak out early to see him, desperate to be in his arms. It was so exciting; it was like a drug. Somewhere along the way we lost that excitement, between the endless rounds of IVF and the money flowing out of our bank account like water through a sieve.

I walk a little faster, eager to get to him, to feel his arms around me. I slip my left glove off as I go, run my fingers over the tiny chimney. As I enter, a couple push past me, hurrying through the door, and I catch a glimpse of young, bright eyes, hopeful red lips chapped with cold. An elderly woman follows them out, walking quickly with a slight hobble, grey hair falling across her face. She looks like a grandmother, a grandmother in waiting.

In the entrance room of the clinic we hug hello, I feel the relief of Dominic around me. We might not have the excitement, but we’ve still got each other.

‘You OK?’ he asks. ‘Good day?’

I smile at him reassuringly and almost tell him about finding the chimney, but something stops me. I know he’ll think I’m being silly. He thinks I cling on to the past a bit too much, to memories of Dad. So instead I say nothing, I feel for the chimney pot in the pocket of my coat and tell Dominic that my day has been fine.

‘Miss Hawes?’ The nurse appears and gestures to me. Dominic puts an arm around me as we enter a little side room. We sit down together on the green chairs, our thighs touching.

‘IVF treatment can be a difficult process, Miss Hawes.’ The nurse is smiling kindly at me. ‘Corinne? Sometimes it helps to chat to others who are going through the process. We do have a support group that meets once a month? Would you and Dominic be interested?’

The nurse is looking at me expectantly, her face open, eyes wide. She means well, I know, so I smile back at her, even though tonight I will have more hormones pushed into me, will wince as Dominic injects me with bromocriptine, clomifene, fertinex. We can both recite the drugs as though they are our times tables.

‘I think we’re OK, actually. But thank you,’ I tell the nurse, and then we start going through it again, planning the insemination. I force myself to keep cheerful, keep hoping, and I squeeze my hands around the little chimney pot in my pocket and imagine my dad smiling at me, telling me this is just another challenge. It makes me feel better, and I close my eyes and I wish and I wish and I wish.

Then

The windows of the car are misting up. Mummy has turned off her headlights so that our car sits in the darkness, hidden on the tree-lined street. Now that I’m almost eight, she talks to me more. She says if we’re lucky though, the next time it’s very cold winter time we might be able to get out of the car and go into the house. She says she’s not sure yet, she’ll have to let me know. I like talking to her, it’s the best thing, except for I can’t talk to her on her quiet days, because she hardly says a thing. On those days I have to talk to myself, make up the voices in my head, pretend there is someone else who will chat to me. Really I know it’s just me but sometimes I can trick myself. I can pretend.

I’m seven nearly eight, I’m getting big, and I know I’m getting taller because on the nights when we sleep in the car my legs hurt more. They’re hurting now, it’s harder to scrunch them up small in the passenger seat. I draw shapes on the car window, circles and diamonds and swirly lines that tangle into great messy scribbles. I am bored. I want to go home. We have been here for hours.

‘I’m hungry, Mummy.’ I am hungry, my stomach is growling like a lion. There has been no food all day. Sometimes Mummy forgets. When there is no reply, I pull on Mummy’s sleeve and eventually she gives me a bar of chocolate, squashed and warm but whole, bright in its wrapper. Yum. Just as I’m about to eat it, I am jerked forwards; the car is moving, we are on our way. Mummy is pressing her foot to the floor, glancing into the rear-view mirror, her eyes alive again. She still hasn’t put the headlights on. The chocolate tastes old and a bit stale, but I don’t mind, I eat it anyway. It’s gone too quickly. I want more.

The car is moving very fast; the chocolate whooshes around in my stomach and I begin to feel sick. We bend in and out of streets, faster and faster, until suddenly we are stopping, Mummy is slamming her foot onto the brakes and our little car is screeching to a halt. Outside the world has become very dark, I can just about see the tiny silver stars if I tilt my head back all the way and look out of the window. The dashboard lights glow; their green and orange lines form a face in the reflection and I jump, startled by the way the features leap out at me. That finally gets Mummy’s attention.

‘What is it? Do you see him?’

‘I see a face,’ I say, and Mummy leans over me, right across my lap so that I can smell her hair, the strange sour scent of her skin. I hate the way my mother smells now. The girls at school tease me for it, they say that it’s because she doesn’t wash. I wash myself, I run myself baths in our little flat, fill the tub up until the water runs cold. I sit in them for ages, wishing I could be a mermaid and live underwater. I don’t like the flat, I want to move back to the big house but Mummy says we can’t. All our money is gone. The bad man took it.

4

London

Ashley

James still isn’t home. Ashley has put Holly and Benji to bed and Lucy has stomped upstairs with her headphones in. The door to her room is permanently closed these days; Ashley knocked about an hour ago but got no response. Her fifteen-year-old daughter is surgically attached to her phone, the little buzz of it vibrates through the house, tailing her around.

She is in the kitchen, pretending to watch television, but her mind is on the big clock on the wall and all she can hear is the second hand moving, tick tick tick, and all she can think about is James, and why isn’t he home yet.

The phone bill came in today. Ashley went through it late at night with a glass of red wine, hating herself all the way through. It was because of what Megan said, how she looked when they were sitting outside Colours. It made Ashley doubt herself. There have been three silent calls, now. Not a lot by anyone’s standards, but two have been late at night, and she can’t help but wish that just for once, James would be here, and she’d be able to ask him, she’d be able to see his face. Looking at the bill, Ashley tried to pinpoint the times of the calls, but all that shows up is private number. Obviously. Still, she has kept the records, stashed them in the drawer in the kitchen, the one that houses Benji’s school projects and the million phone chargers that this family seems to need.

It isn’t that she doesn’t trust him. It isn’t that at all. They’ve been married for almost sixteen years; Ashley knows him almost as well as she knows her sister. As well as she knows herself. It’s just that there have been a lot of late nights, and he hasn’t given her any explanations. She tries to think back, runs her mind over the last few months. When did his late nights begin? He was here when Holly was born, of course he was, he was up in the night with her for weeks on end while their newborn rocked and raged. The months afterwards are a blur, a sleepless, messy stream of tasks. At some point, they stopped doing them together.

Ashley takes a gulp of wine. Her fingers have left misty prints on the glass in her hand; she stares at them in the light of the kitchen. The gold band of her wedding ring glints and a shiver goes through her. What if it is a woman calling the house? They have all read the stories. If you’ve got a group of girlfriends, you’re bound to know someone whose husband ran off with the secretary, someone who came home one day to find him in bed with the office floozy. Someone who let themselves go, became wrapped up in the children, looked the other way when her husband strayed. Ashley just never considered that it would happen to her.

God, listen to herself! She must stop this. She doesn’t think he’s having an affair, of course she doesn’t. Not really, not deep down. She just feels unsettled, she feels that there’s something not right, something that he’s not telling her. And she hates it.

Ashley picks up a magazine from the side, flips through the pages to distract herself. The women in it are young, glossy. She thinks of her own eye cream sitting in the fridge. She’d given in, bought the anti-ageing stuff that her friend Aoife had raved about. Corinne had laughed at her, told her not to be so silly. She isn’t being silly, she’s being realistic. She’s got four years on her sister, perhaps when Corinne gets to her age she’ll be buying eye cream herself. She turns another page, winces at the bright pink heading. New year, new you! Should she be doing a January diet? She puts a hand in the waistband of her jeans, feels the indents the zips have left in her flesh. She doesn’t know how other people do it, pop kids out then spring back to size. She’s never been able to manage it, but perhaps she isn’t trying hard enough.

She ought to give Corinne a call. Her insemination is coming up. Insemination. When Corinne first started the fertility treatments the word had made Ashley uncomfortable, conjured up grotesque images of cows and oversized pipettes. Now it trips off the tongue as easily as a hair appointment. Ashley sighs. Corinne has had to go through the process more times than anyone should have to bear. It makes Ashley’s heart hurt. When Holly was born, Corinne had come to the hospital room, bearing a huge bunch of yellow balloons and a smile that looked as though it might crack at any minute. They had sat together on the bed, staring at Holly as she nuzzled Ashley’s chest, nudged for the nipple. Ashley had pretended not to notice the tears in her sister’s eyes, knew Corinne wouldn’t want her to see.

Yes, she needs to call Corinne. While she’s at it she should ring her mother too; Ashley worries about her, all alone in Kent, rattling around like a penny in a jar. Mathilde moved last year, barely two months after their dad died, said she couldn’t face being there, surrounded by all his things. They had packed up the Hampstead house together, boxing things up, making endless trips to the charity shops, clearing room after room until at last the big house was empty, full of nothing but dustballs clinging to the floorboards. Ashley had stood for a moment in their old living room, her hand on the light switch, staring at the bare walls, the stripped shelves, the blank windows. Then she had snapped off the switch and closed the door, blinked back the tears that threatened to fall.

Mathilde was installed in her new place quickly, a small house in Kent with a gravel drive and double-glazing. It is better for her, really. Ashley should go and see her, take the children. If James can spare the time.

Ashley looks at the clock again. Ten to ten. Holly will wake up at about eleven, no doubt. Then again at twelve, one if she’s lucky. She has finished the wine so she stands up, pours herself another, fills it to the rim. Her hand is shaking slightly and a droplet of wine hits the work surface, spreads rapidly across the wood. Ashley reaches for the sponge and, as she does so, the phone begins to ring. Ashley stares at it as though it’s a bomb; the little red light flashing again and again. Then she remembers the children, sleeping upstairs, and she reaches for it, taking a big gulp of wine as she does so.

This time there’s breathing. Quite loud, as though the person on the other end of the line might be out of breath. Ashley’s mind pictures a horrible host of possibilities; women flash through her head in various states of undress, bosoms out, taut stomachs, lips pressed to the phone, wanting her husband. Stop it, Ashley, she thinks to herself, and she takes another sip of wine and says:

‘Who is this, please?’

No answer. The breathing increases in tempo, and as Ashley listens, she thinks she can hear a sort of rattle, as if the person on the other end of the line is ill, or elderly. Perhaps it really is a wrong number. She is about to speak again when the line goes dead, and at that moment James walks through the door, his briefcase in his hand.

‘You’re so late,’ Ashley says, and he immediately looks guilty. She feels sick. ‘Where have you been?’

‘I’m just working, Ash,’ he tells her, and he comes forward, takes the wine glass and the phone from her hand, puts his arms around her waist. He nuzzles her neck. ‘Mmm, you smell nice. Did I buy you that perfume?’

For a second she tenses, imagining the weight around her stomach, the soft cushion of her skin. She shouldn’t have had the wine. He leans towards her, kisses her quickly on the mouth. She puts her hands to the back of his neck, feels the tiny hairs prickle beneath her fingers.

‘You’re always working, James,’ she says, and she pulls back from him, looks into his eyes. They are grey, flecked with brown around the edges. She loves his eyes. ‘Is everything all right?’

He isn’t meeting her eyes. He runs a hand through his hair, the brown curls spring up beneath his fingers. He looks so like their son when he does this, the gesture makes Ashley’s chest tighten, just a little.

‘Everything’s fine, Ash,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry, I’m really tired. Did Holly go down OK tonight?’

Ashley nods. ‘Yes. But, James—’

‘Can we go to bed? Please?’ He interrupts her, and she swallows. She stares at him, at the bags underneath his eyes, the wrinkles that are forming around his temples.

‘Of course we can,’ she says, and he looks so relieved that she can’t face telling him about the phone calls, not just now. They troop upstairs to where the children are softly snoring. Holly’s bedroom door is ajar, the end of her cot just visible. Ashley tiptoes past, holding her breath, but James forgets and the sound of his shoes on the floorboards cuts through the quiet.

‘James!’

There is a pause. Three, two, one – the sound of Holly’s cry spills into the corridor, as if on cue. As she goes to her daughter, Ashley catches sight of herself in the wall mirror. Her lips are dark red, stained with the wine.

5

London

Dominic

Dominic sits at his desk in the newsroom, gulps down his slightly burned tasting coffee as he prepares to start writing up his copy. He thinks of Corinne shading her eyes as she stared at Carlington House yesterday, of her small hands running over the derelict white walls. She was thinking about her dad, he knows she was. Richard looms as large in death as he did in life.

As he types up his notes, Dominic grits his teeth, remembering the way Warren leered at Corinne. He probably shouldn’t have brought her along, but he hasn’t wanted to leave her alone much since the doctor called. He pictures her lying in the bath, her eyes shut, the water cold. A shiver goes down his spine and he shakes himself slightly, pushes the thought away. She’ll be all right, he knows she will. This is just a setback.

He works quietly until lunchtime, when a hand comes down, claps him on the shoulder. Andy, the court reporter, is grinning down at him, Cheshire cat-like.

‘Stop slaving away over property stuff, Dom. I want you to meet Erin.’ He gestures to a young-looking blonde girl standing beside him, who is holding her hands behind her back nervously. ‘She started last week, while you were away. Erin, this is Dom.’

Dominic stands and shakes hands with Erin, noticing as he does so that he has a large black ink spot on his thumb, brilliant against the smooth white of his skin.

‘Sorry.’ He laughs, rubs at it with the fingers of his other hand. ‘Comes with the territory, I suppose. Good to meet you!’

Erin smiles back. ‘It’s lovely to meet you, Dominic,’ she says. ‘I hope you don’t mind but Andy said you guys were going for lunch together – is it all right if I join you? I’ve only just started and I don’t know the area yet.’

Behind Erin’s back, Andy winks at him and Dominic nods quickly.

‘Sure, of course.’ There’s no point protesting. Erin is Andy’s usual type; he has a big thing for blondes. In the five years that Dominic has known him he has never stayed with a woman for more than six months.

Dominic swings his chair around, pulls his jacket off the seat behind him and shrugs it over his shoulders. The three of them make their way through the newsroom to the lifts.

‘What’ve you been working on this morning, Erin?’ Dominic asks.

‘God, it’s a horrible court case. Mother accused of neglect. Claudia Winters?’

The image immediately flashes into Dominic’s mind: a small woman, dark hair tied back off her neck, hand raised to shield herself from the lights of the media. She has been all over the papers. Extreme neglect leading to infant mortality. He swallows.

‘See, this is exactly why I became a features man!’

‘I know,’ Erin says, ‘It’s not a nice one to start with. In at the deep end!’

They step into the lift together.

‘How you finding it here so far?’ he asks.

‘Good, good, you know, still settling in. Everybody seems friendly.’

‘Oh, yeah? Where have you come from?’

‘Oh, I grew up in Suffolk if you know it, over by the coast.’

‘Bit of a change from Finchley Road,’ Dominic says. ‘Lot less stabbings, I bet, although we’d all be out of a job without them.’

‘Right.’ She nods. ‘I’m living in Tooting now, though, just got a flat.’ She laughs. ‘It’s in serious need of decoration, bit of a shit-hole actually. Tooting seems a bit dodgy so far! Or maybe I just notice it more cos of the job. I’m still getting to grips with it all!’

‘Takes a while,’ Dominic says. ‘You’ll get there!’

They have reached the ground floor; he fumbles for his lanyard in his pocket but Andy dangles his own in front of his eyes.

‘Honestly, mate, what are you like.’ He grins at Erin, opens the door for her and guides her through, his large hand on her back. Dominic rolls his eyes and follows the pair of them out onto the high road. He can already tell what Andy is thinking, almost see the cogs turning in his brain. He never takes long to make his moves.

*

They make their way to the pub on the corner, the Hare and Hound. An abandoned Christmas tree sits outside it, next to a pile of empty beer cans. Pine needles blow along the pavement, dry and brown.

The three of them chat about Andy’s court case. It’s a drug deal; he says that today was the sentencing, he watched a nineteen-year-old girl go down for twenty years. Dominic shivers – he has always hated sentencings, hated seeing the look on people’s faces when the enormity of what they’d done would crash down on them. Always too late, of course. Half the kids he went to school with are behind bars now.

‘I hate sentencings, actually,’ Erin says. ‘So final, aren’t they? Imagine being locked away like that. God, it would be awful.’

Dominic looks at her. She really is very young; she can’t be more than a few years older than nineteen herself, mid-twenties at the most. It will still take a while for the edges to form. He’s surprised they’ve started her on the Winters case, it’s a high-profile job.

‘Well, prisons are hardly prisons any more, are they?’ Andy says. ‘It’s not as if they’re off to Bedlam. Most of them have gyms attached.’

‘I think gyms is a bit of an exaggeration,’ Dominic says.

‘Do you do any court stuff, Dominic?’ Erin asks him. ‘Or do you stick to the features?’

‘I’m a features man,’ Dominic says, ‘I used to cover the court stories too, but it got a bit much. I just found it a bit depressing, really. All that horror. All those wasted lives.’

He looks down, feeling suddenly embarrassed, but Erin nods sympathetically.

‘I know exactly what you mean. It gets you down, doesn’t it?’

Andy interrupts, flexes his knuckles on the table. He’s a big guy; Dominic can see the tendons in his arm straining.

‘So, Dom, how’s Corinne doing?’

Dominic shifts in his chair, pretending to be engrossed in a remaining chip congealed on his plate.

‘She’s . . . she’s doing OK, man,’ he says, although he is not sure that it’s completely the truth.

‘Corinne is my girlfriend,’ he tells Erin.

‘Beautiful name – unusual. Is that after anyone? Grandmother, or anything?’

‘I don’t think so,’ Dominic says. He doesn’t actually know, has never thought of it.

‘Well, it’s lovely,’ Erin says. ‘Have you been together long?’

‘A while, haven’t you, Dom?’ Andy says, grinning at him. ‘They’re joined at the hip.’ His chair has moved closer to Erin’s, the tip of his elbow grazes her water glass as he spreads his arms across the table. Dom is reminded of an animal, a monkey asserting his territory. He’s no idea why Andy bothers.

‘Yeah, years now actually. She’s great. We’re very—’ he bobs his head, awkwardly ‘—very happy.’

‘Most of the time,’ Andy says. Dominic ignores him.

‘What does she do?’ Erin says, and Dominic feels grateful to her for changing the subject.

‘She works in a gallery,’ Dominic says. ‘Over in Islington. They do really well, a lot of nice pieces. She’s very arty, talented, that sort of thing.’

‘Do you live in Islington then?’

‘No, we’re Crouch End way,’ he tells her, ‘closer to the rough side.’

Erin sighs, dramatically. ‘An art gallery though, wow. I always wished I could draw. The best I can manage is stick people.’

‘Stick people, hey?’ Andy asks. ‘I like stick people.’

‘Maybe I’ll draw you some sometime.’ There is a note of flirtation in her voice.

Dominic looks away from them both, traces a pattern on the tabletop. A bored looking waitress who is hovering around behind the bar calls over to them.

‘Can I get you anything else?’

‘Just the bill, please,’ Dominic says. He doesn’t need to watch Andy start to make his moves. What right does he have to comment on Corinne? Just because she wasn’t taken in by him at the Christmas party, wasn’t won over by his charms like the rest of the female population, he seems to have got it into his head that Dominic is making a mistake. Well, he isn’t.

They head outside, back to the office. Erin is going back to court after a quick briefing with the boss on the Claudia Winters case.

‘She just doesn’t seem to show any remorse, that’s the thing,’ she is saying. ‘I mean, her daughter ended up dead! And Claudia sits in the courtroom like she’s not even listening, like she’s in another world. It’s mad.’

Dominic nods. ‘She’s quite ill though, isn’t she? I read somewhere that she had post-partum depression.’

Erin nods. ‘Yes, but how far can you take that, you know? The blame has to fall somewhere.’

They reach the office. Andy holds the door open for them both. He places a hand on Erin’s back as she enters the building and Dominic rolls his eyes. Poor girl. God knows he wouldn’t want Andy homing in on Corinne. As a mate he’s all right, but with women . . . Dominic rubs a hand through his hair and follows them into the newsroom, the clatter of keys quickly surrounding them, swallowing him up.

6

London

Corinne

I gave in and showed Dom the chimney pot when I got home from the gallery yesterday. But I was right – he didn’t really understand.

‘You know it’s just a piece of pot, babe?’ he said, and I could tell he wasn’t properly paying attention because he was still focused on the news, reading the headlines as they streamed across the bottom of the TV. They were showing footage of that awful woman on trial for the death of her daughter – Claudia Winters. I don’t understand how anyone could ever hurt their child. Anyone lucky enough to have one in the first place. There were pictures of her as she came out of the court room, the paparazzi lights in her face. Her head was bent. You couldn’t see her eyes. The sight of her hunched body made me shiver.