I try to remember what Jeremy had told us—months ago—when we’d viewed the house for the second time. When both Jess and I had already fallen in love with it, had already been talking about which bedrooms the kids could have, how wemight remodel the kitchen, and put in French windows out onto the back garden. When Jeremy already knew he had us on the hook. From what I can remember, the son had moved abroad years ago—to France or Spain?—and the owner had lived here mostly alone in the years that followed until the house became too much for him to manage. His son had acted on his behalf in the sale and in dealings with Jeremy from their end.
“Had Mr. Hopkins lived here for a long time?”
“Twenty years or so,” Eileen says. “But he never really recovered from the stroke, poor chap. And that was years ago, long before I moved in next door.”
“Can’t have been easy, looking after such a big house on his own.”
“Oh, he had help with the day-to-day things. A gardener in the summer and a cleaner all year round. Although goodness knows she was more interested in sitting around and chatting on the phone from what I ever saw of her. Still, she was better than nothing, I suppose, especially after his health deteriorated. And that boy of his was never here.” She shakes her head. “Always gallivanting off overseas, back for a flying visit once in a blue moon, never really seemed to want much to do with the place. Such a pity. It all got too much for Eric in the end, after the dementia took hold.”
I check that there’s water in the kettle, switching it on. “Are you sure you won’t have a cup of tea, or coffee?”
Her eyes flick to the unopened boxes on the floor, dirty breakfast dishes and cups stacked around the sink, before they come to rest on me again.
“I dare say I should leave you to it,” she says with a tight smile. “You seem to have your hands full.”
I see her out through the front door and watch as she marches back up the drive, her black slip-ons crunching on the gravel. She walks quickly, shoulders back, spine straight, as if she’s on parade.
When I return to the kitchen, Jess is shepherding the two younger children through the back door and telling them to wash their hands before tea.
To me, she says: “Guess what?”
“You found another camera?”
She shakes her head, switching off the gas cooktop where the peas have been simmering. “I’ve just had a reply.”
I take two plates from the cupboard and lay them on the kitchen table, adding cutlery and ketchup.
“A reply from who?”
“That mystery number in the ancient flip phone you found upstairs.” She lowers her voice. “They’ve texted me back.”
12
My wife waits until Callum and Daisy are tucking into their tea—rice and peas with chopped fish fingers mixed in—before holding out her phone to me, the screen unlocked. There are two text messages from the same number.
Thx for message. Pls return phone and all other personal items found in house asap.
Below it, a second text gives the details of a PO box address in Nottingham.
“That’s the number I called last night,” Jess says. “The number in the memory of that old phone. Weird, isn’t it? And presumptuous, sort of half-polite but rude at the same time.”
The message has no name or sign-off, not even a first name. Had it been sent by Kevin Hopkins? There is a twinge of unease in my gut as I think of the watch, the only thing of any real value I’d found in the house, already sold and out of my reach.
“You’re right,” I say. “It is rude.”
“Classic passive-aggressive.”
I hand the phone back to her. “Can’t understand why they didn’t just return your call, rather than sending a weird text message.”
“I don’t like it.” Her face is pinched with worry. “And what does it even mean anyway, ‘all other personal items’? It’s like we’vebeen dishonest, trying to get one over on them when actually we were trying to do the right thing.”
“It’s not as if they didn’t have plenty of time to clear the house before we moved in.”
“I thought it was just junk, what you found with the phone in that top room?”
I swallow. “Yeah. Nothing really worth anything.”
“Who evenisthis person? Could we call Jeremy to find out?”
