I can feel my cheeks flame. ‘I don’t know how I’m going to tell her.’ It’s going to be another thing that divides us. I balance my box of bedding against the wall with my hip while I unlock the front door.
‘Maybe face to face. Might be easier.’ Jackie’s expression softens in sympathy as she passes me. She knows how complicated my relationship is with Alison. Jackie has been there for me since I was eighteen and treats me like the daughter she never had, but she’s also searingly, sometimes crushingly, honest. She only ever tries to sugar-coat what she’s said after she’s already said it, and by then it’s too late. She means no harm, and I love her. She just doesn’t have much filter, and over the years I’ve grown a thicker skin.
‘Holy shit!’ she exclaims when she steps over the threshold. ‘This is impressive.’ She follows Josh into the living room and deposits the box there, even though it’s clearly marked KITCHEN.
‘We have so much space, you could move in too,’ suggests Josh when he’s set down his TV. Dorothea’s telly, old and tiny in comparison, has already been discarded.
I prickle. I love Jackie but I definitely don’t want her moving in. Her personality is too big to share a house with. Plus, as much as she views me as a daughter, I’m not flesh and blood. Josh will always come first, and even though she tries to play devil’s advocate when we disagree, she always ends up taking Josh’s side. I’m annoyed with him for mentioning it, even if he was joking. I don’t want him to give Jackie any ideas.
The awkward silence stretches before Jackie says, ‘I couldn’t leave Bristol. My life is there.’
‘You mean Tony is there,’ he says with a laugh. Tony is Jackie’s ‘man friend’. Josh never knew his dad. He walked out when Josh was a baby and it has always been just him and his mum, until five or six years ago when Jackie went on Tinder and met Tony, a barrel-bellied man with a ready laugh and a sleeve of tattoos. They refuse to move in together. ‘We’re both too stuck in our ways,’ Jackie says when we probe her on it. ‘We’re nearly sixty and we’ve both lived on our own for a long time.’
I pick up the box of mugs, offering to make tea, and Jackie follows me down the stairs into the kitchen. I feel like I’m play-acting as I go to the kettle – Dorothea’s orange Le Creuset – fill it and then place it on the hob.
‘Wow,’ says Jackie, seeing the kitchen for the first time. ‘This is totally lush. Look at that Aga. I’ve always wanted an Aga, not that I could fit one in my kitchen.’ She moves to the French doors. ‘And that garden. Just amazing.’ She throws open the doors and steps outside. ‘Is that … is that an actual wood?’
‘Yep. It was all Dorothea’s.’
‘Bloody ’ell.’
I laugh. ‘I know.’
She steps back into the kitchen. ‘What a great place to bring up children,’ she says wistfully. Then her gaze lands on a cream-painted display cabinet with bone china plates. ‘All this stuff,’ she says, her eyes roving over the wooden dining table and the armchair in the corner, by the French doors. ‘It’s just so … much.’
Josh and I have already agreed not to tell Jackie for now about the arson because she would worry about us being in this huge house by ourselves. It’s something that’s constantly on my mind as it is, and I haven’t even told Josh the half of it. It’s hard to imagine something so horrible happening here. This house had been my safe space all those years ago, the kind of place where I could never imagine anything bad ever happening. Anxiety twists in my gut at the thought of this house as a crime scene when it’s so beautiful, so idyllic. I’m suddenly seized by doubt. Are we doing the right thing? I still have so many questions about the night Dorothea died. But how can we back out now? We’re planning to rent our Bristol flat out, and who wouldn’t want to trade that for this stunning villa? We’ve already arranged for a security firm to come out and put measures in place, but it’s more than that. If I want to find out more about Dorothea’s life, and death, if I want to be in with a chance of getting my job back, then I need to be here, right in the thick of things.
‘Are you all right, love? You’ve gone a bit pale.’
‘I’m okay,’ I say as I start to unpack the mugs. But they look clunky and ugly against Dorothea’s bone china teacups and so I put them back in the cardboard box, using the teacups instead.
Jackie sits down at the table. ‘I imagine it must feel strange suddenly inheriting all this,’ she says, glancing around. ‘I mean, it’s beautiful, don’t get me wrong. But definitely different to what you’re used to.’
I nod and busy myself with the tea. I hand Jackie a cup and she comments on the ‘posh china’.
I pour tea for Josh and then tell Jackie I’ll take it to him. ‘Go ahead, love. I’ll help unpack these boxes if you like.’ But she doesn’t move, her eyes still on the garden.
Josh glances up when I enter the room. The massive TV looks incongruous amidst Dorothea’s antiques. ‘Thanks, babe,’ he says as he takes the cup. ‘Where’s my Yoda mug?’
‘I haven’t unpacked it yet,’ I lie.
He slurps the tea and then sets it on the coffee table behind him without using a coaster and I fight the urge to pick it up again. ‘I’m going to have to drive Mum home soon. She’s going out with Tony tonight. And then I’ll come back with the last of the stuff from the flat. All the guys at work are so jealous!’
‘You told them already?’
‘Of course. Why wouldn’t I?’ He bends down and starts fiddling with another lead. Without saying anything else, I leave him to it.
Josh and his mum leave an hour (and a tour of the house) later. Jackie had been impressed with it, especially the studio. ‘I know it needs renovating, but it would be a great place to use as a reading room, or a library. I know how much you love your books,’ she had said. Josh had nodded in agreement, while I pretended this was something I hadn’t even thought about.
And now, at last, I have the house to myself for a precious ninety minutes or so.
I haven’t told Josh about the key I found in that box with my name on it. I keep it tucked away in my pursealong with the Post-it Note. I take it out now, examining it. It’s a generic Yale key and I go around the house trying it in different door locks. It doesn’t fit any of them and I wonder if it was the key to the studio. It doesn’t fit the back door either. She must have left it in that box hoping I’d find it, so it has to mean something. I don’t remember there being any sheds or outbuildings in the garden, but I vow to have a look later and I slip the key into the front pocket of my jeans.
I take a few of the lighter boxes up to the room we’ve chosen to sleep in: I don’t want to use Dorothea’s bedroom, so we’ve picked one at the back of the house, with windows at the side and rear looking out over the gardens and woods and fields beyond. It was the room I stayed in all those years ago, and the bed is the same – a sleigh-style double in a sleek chestnut wood – although the mattress looks new. The room has since had a refurb – a fresh, French grey paint on the walls and new, cream-painted wooden wardrobes. I wonder who else inhabited this room after I left. The bed is stripped and I find fresh duvet covers and fitted sheets in the wardrobe, but I decide to use our own duvet and throw it on the bed, although the bright pattern looks too modern for this room. For now it will do.
It’s turned into a surprisingly sunny afternoon after a grey start, so I grab my jacket and venture outside, keeping an eye out for a shed. I haven’t really had the chance to explore the grounds yet, even though my memory of that summer is still clear in my mind. I remember how much I’d loved the fact Dorothea hadher very own wood. It felt magical. Harry and I had spent hours lying on a blanket beneath the canopy of leaves, talking about books and music and films, content that we wouldn’t be disturbed. I get that queasy pull in the pit of my stomach. I feel guilty that Dorothea had to die for me to get all this. I feel guilty that I am the one to benefit, and not my sister. I feel guilty that I could be happy when my mum never got the chance. And now, learning that Dorothea was murdered makes me feel even more uneasy. Ever since the visit from the police earlier this week, I can’t stop thinking about those empty box files, imagining someone rifling through them. I wonder why they didn’t empty the one with my name on it. Were they disturbed? Was it the night of the fire?
I cross the lawn – fluffy-edged but otherwise neat – until I reach the path between the trees. It feels like yesterday when I last stepped into the dark undergrowth. The wood is smaller and less dense than I remember. If I recall correctly, the path takes you right to the edge of the woods where a six-foot fence separates it from a farmer’s field. The only access to the woods is through Dorothea’s garden. I trudge along the path, past huge oaks and pines, light flickering between the leaves. It’s colder here, without the full force of the sun, and I pause to do up my bomber jacket. I breathe in deeply, all the worries and fears leaving me just like they did back then every time I came here. I can almost hear Harry’s laugh and my mum calling us in for tea. I wonder what Harry is up to now. I once tried to find him on social media butthere was no trace of him and I’d been surprised by how disappointed I’d felt.
