A shadow of movement catches my eye in the kitchen. A dark figure. Or a figment of my imagination?
I stand and creep further into the room, trying to locate the movement I thought I’d seen. But the kitchen is empty, and so are the bedrooms. Both mine and Ellie’s. Even the bathroom is deserted when I throw open the door, half expecting the phantom of my past to be there.
It had to be nothing.
A trick of the light.
Silence sifts through the flat, nothingbut the scent of lemon cleaning spray is with me. No shadows. No stalker. No grown-up phantom.
I pull my phone from my pocket and scroll to Ellie’s name. The urge to call her and blurt out everything burns in my throat, but beneath it lies something darker.
Heavier.
If I tell her, I’ll have to explain everything.
About that summer and him.
About what I saw and what I did.
And that isn’t something I can do…
SEVEN
LIAM
Sandra isin the kitchen washing the dishes when I walk in. I cross the room and take the spot next to her, grabbing a dishtowel.
‘Hey,’ I say.
Her eyes crinkle when she smiles up at me, always warm even when she worries. I’d have loved to have been her child properly, like Ellie, but even with her constant love, I feel like a parasite clinging to her family.
Sandra’s back door is unlocked. It always is.
She glances at the newer scars on my knuckles, still pink and angry, when I roll up my sleeves and pick up a wet plate.
‘Need I ask?’ She focuses on the mug in the sink as she speaks, swishing the sponge around it.
‘It’s nothing that won’t heal,’ I say, feeling heat inmy cheeks. Can’t exactly blurt out that I kill people for money while hoping I’m not the one to die. Or that sometimes I hoped I did. Until Kat, that is. I have a reason to live again.
Sandra takes the towel from me and dries her hands.
‘Sit.’
I do as I’m told and wait as she makes us both a cup of tea. Soaking up the normality of the family home, I let the sounds and smells soothe me. The bubble of the kettle, and the distant sound of a TV. The tumble of the dryer and the clean scent of the washing powder. It all throws me back to my first night here as a difficult, unlovable teen. I lay in the spare room with the floral bedcovers, feeling so out of place. But where others would push me, or punish me, or ignore me for the foster payments, Sandra treated me with gentleness. She gave me space without leaving me isolated, and slowly, I grew to fit. In my own way. Never feeling a complete part of the unit, but comfortable all the same.
The tea is hot and fragrant, and is served with homemade custard creams. If there’s one thing you can say about Sandra, it’s that she loves to feed the people around her. No locked pantries or portioned meals. It was a fill-your-boots kind of household, which may have stopped me running away. Three solid meals can do a lot to tame a wildling.
‘I brought back some dishes,’ I say, toying with thehandle of my mug. ‘Thanks for the dinners, but you know you don’t have to bring me those, right?’
‘I like knowing you’re at least well fed. Someone’s got to look out for you.’
She wouldn’t think that if she knew the real me. The me who knows the exact crack sound of a snapped neck, or the way eyes ooze around your thumbs when you push them into a man’s face.
‘They stopped paying you to look after me a long time ago.’ I still feel guilty about hanging around after.
‘This isn’t something you do for money. You’re family now. You’ll not get rid of me easily.’
We drink our tea while she fills me in on her husband, Matt’s, doctor’s appointment and the gossip about Mary down the street and her sabotaging the local roses. The mundanity of it all is a sweet diversion from the life I’m leading outside. No masks or stalking. No death fights. No obsession. A slice of utter normality.
