The Housewarming: A completely unputdownable psychological thriller with a shocking twist by S.E. Lynes

Author:S.E. Lynes [Lynes, S.E.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781800190825
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2020-10-22T18:30:00+00:00

Twenty-Three

Ava

How blue Neil’s eyes are, darker under this navy sky. He has aged this last year, I think – violently so. I have this thought before the knowledge falls into me, before it lands.

‘What do you mean?’ I say, beginning to understand the words but still unable to grasp their meaning fully. ‘What are you talking about, I didn’t leave the door open? How can it have been Matt? He wasn’t there.’

Neil shakes his head. In his eyes, the passing reflection of the moon.

‘I swore I wouldn’t tell you,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t have told you. But it’s going to kill you. It’s going to kill all of us. You didn’t leave the front door open, babe. None of this is your fault.’

He sits on the wall outside our house and covers his face with his hands. I make to sit beside him, but I can’t. I can’t sit down. I have to pace, two steps away, two steps back, shaking my hands as if to dry them, my fingers spread and stiff.

‘But he went to work,’ I whisper, the horror still peripheral, still arriving. ‘He’d already gone.’

‘Do you remember it was raining? Well, he popped back for his coat.’

‘His coat?’ I try to think. On the corner of the street. Abi taking a tumble. Blood on the pavement. Matt teasing her with Mr Sloth, kissing her, kissing me, cycling away. ‘His red top,’ I say, seeing it, seeing the undulating muscles in his shoulders under the stretchy fabric as he rode away, seeing him later, when he got back, when I found him standing by his bike in front of our house. I try, but I can’t picture him, not then, but later, later I see him clearly, his silhouette in the doorway, phone to his ear.

‘He was in his black rain jacket,’ I say, to myself as much as Neil. ‘When he called the police, he was in black. I didn’t think it—’

‘He just popped back and grabbed his jacket.’ Neil’s shoulders are round and his belly sticks out against his shirt, the fabric splaying between the buttons. ‘He said he called ta-ta but you didn’t hear him. He was running late, he said, so when he realised he’d left the door open, he just carried on to work, but only ’cos he thought you’d be back downstairs by then. He didn’t do it on purpose. It was just one of those things.’

My eyes feel gritty. I blink to clear them. To see. To see, to see, to see. Opposite, the triangular roofs of the houses, so many triangles, all the same, white arrows heading away to the end of the street. Somewhere a mating vixen cries out in pain and confusion.

‘Why didn’t he tell me?’

Neil doesn’t look up. ‘He didn’t tell you because you were hysterical. Everything happened too fast, everyone was panicking. He panicked too. He thought she’d turn up and it would come to nothing. And then later, when she didn’t, I think he thought it was too late.

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