It could be a one-off, of course. A coincidence that it justhappensto have taken place within days of discovering the secret room, the hidden cameras. Of making a phone call that first brought a stranger to my door.
But I don’t really believe that.
“Leah?” I say. “How about you stay home tomorrow?”
“GCSE revision classes for maths and English. Can’t miss them.”
“How about I pick you up from school?”
She doesn’t look up from her phone. “I’m not nine years old, Dad.”
“Seriously, with what’s happened this afternoon, I don’t like the idea of you getting the bus again tomorrow.”
“Hannah’s back though. I can walk with her again. Her house is only around the corner.”
I shake my head. “Your mum will drop you in the morning and I’ll get you from school at the end of the day.”
“I don’t need—”
“Just for tomorrow, then we’ll see about what to do next week.” I give her a smile. “Or I can take a day off and you can stay home and help me with the decorating.”
She blows out a breath. “Fine.”
Jess gets back early from work and has Leah take her through the whole thing again while I make tea for Callum and Daisy. Then I get in my car and do slow circuits of the neighborhood, cruising up and down all the nearby streets, looking for the gray Volvo as the last of the daylight fades into dusk. The lights in The Park are the original gaslights, which are quaint and authenticbut don’t throw as much light as regular street lamps. Instead, they give off a kind of half-hearted glow that accentuates the quiet of empty pavements on wide streets, deep shadows thrown by three-story Victorian houses.
When I get back, Jess gives me a questioning look but I just shake my head.
“I don’t like this,” she says, handing me a glass of wine. “Feels like… I don’t know.”
“What?”
“This house.”
“What do you mean?”
“Secret cameras, a hidden room, the dead bird on our doorstep, some weird guy being paid to come here and try to trick us.” She takes a sip of her own wine. “Now Leah gets followed home from school. We’ve not even been here a week.”
“I know. But we’ll figure it out. I won’t let anything happen to you or the kids.”
“Maybe coming here was a mistake. It’s like there’s…” She is silent for a long moment. “I don’t know. I loved this house right from the first time we saw it. It was our dream home, wasn’t it? I loved the character, the architecture, all the little Victorian quirks of the place. I loved the area, the sense of history. But now it feels like there’s another side to it. A darker side.”
“You don’t believe in haunted houses.”
“It’s not that. More like, maybe a feeling that something’s just a bitoffwith it.” She runs a hand through her dark hair. “Like a picture that’s slightly out of focus, and you only realize when you look at it really closely.”
“I know what you mean,” I say. “It’s been pretty hard to settle in.”
“Well I’m nowherenearsettled in.” She shakes her head. “If anything, quite the opposite.”
Once we’ve finished our wine and she’s headed upstairs to the bedroom, I take out my phone and bring up the text exchange from yesterday. I type a new message, sending it before I’ve even thought through what I’m going to do next.
I’ll talk to you, but leave my family out of this.
Once it’s gone I write another, deliberating for a moment before I finally press “send.”
By the way I gave your number plate to the police.
The replies come back almost straightaway, three messages dropping in one after the other.
