The Bones of You (5 page)

“That’s okay. It’s stopped raining now. You won’t get wet getting out of the car.” Whatever I said felt so prosaic, as if I were trying to build a barrier of words between us, a linguistic wall that she couldn’t break down.

“Hey, how about I come over some time? To your new place. I could cook you a nice meal, you supply the wine. It might be fun. Remember that? Fun? It’s what people used to have before we all grew up and got so fucking serious.” She smiled at me, and this time it was genuine.

“Maybe that isn’t such a good idea.”

She pursed her lips, drew them back from her teeth. “Is that why you never called? After the last time we saw each other? Because it wouldn’t be a good idea to start seeing me?”

I closed my eyes, lowered my head, and then raised it again. When I opened my eyes, she was still smiling. She didn’t want to have a fight; all she needed was answers. I couldn’t blame her for that. “It isn’t you. Not just you, anyway. I just feel that it wouldn’t be the right time to start seeing
anybody
. I’m not in the right headspace, if that doesn’t sound too poncey.”

She laughed; a small sound that soon grew to fill the car. “It sounds very poncey, mate.”

Then I laughed, too. I couldn’t help myself. It had sounded so weak, like something somebody in a film might say. “Jesus, when did I get so lame?”

“I hate to shatter your illusions, but you’ve been that way ever since I’ve known you.” She reached out and slapped me in the solar plexus, her hand staying there just a fraction too long. “So…dinner?”

I nodded, smiling. “Yeah, dinner. That would be good, I think. How about tomorrow night, so I don’t have time to change my mind?”

She nodded, slapped me again, this time on the shoulder, like an old pal, opened the door, and got out of the car. When she slammed the door, I was just about to call her back, to ask her to come home with me, to take her in my arms and ask her what the hell she saw in me anyway, but be grateful, oh so fucking grateful, for whatever her answer might be.

Relieved that the moment had passed me by, I pulled away from the curb and headed for home.

I didn’t give much further thought to the fact that a murderess had once lived on my street.

FOUR

The Watcher

I’m not sure what made me wake up in the early hours of the morning—some sound outside, or even inside the house—but when I opened my eyes, it was still dark. I groped for the alarm clock, which was for some reason turned with its face away from me, and discovered that it was 3:05
A.M
.

Muttering wordlessly, I turned back over and tried to get back to sleep, but when I closed my eyes, my mind kept buzzing. I’d suffered from insomnia in the past, but not for a long time.

“Shit.” I sat up in bed, fully awake now, feeling as if my brain had decided that it was morning and I should be up and about. I’m not sure why, but I crossed the room in the darkness and went to the window. I opened the curtains an inch or two and looked outside, at the street on which I now lived.

Upon first inspection, the street was quiet and empty, but then I noticed someone standing on the footpath outside the house next door. From this angle, I couldn’t see the house itself, just the figure standing there, immobile, and facing it.

The figure was short and dumpy and wearing black clothes: black shoes, black trousers, and a long black overcoat. Even her hair was jet black—by this time I’d deduced the figure was female.

At a loose end now that I was awake, I stood there for a while to see what she would do. The girl didn’t move. She just stood there, staring, as if she was unable to take her eyes off the old, abandoned house next door.

Then, as if sensing that she was being watched, she broke away from her scrutiny long enough to glance up at my window. Instinctively, I raised a hand in greeting. The girl—pale face, big dark eyes surrounded by bruise-like smudges of kohl eye makeup—smiled cautiously and returned the gesture. We stood there like fools, staring at each other, and I started to realize that she probably wasn’t going to look away unless I did. My hand was still raised. I dropped it and shrugged. The girl smiled again.

I closed the curtains and went back to bed, then got up again because right now there was absolutely no chance that I’d get back to sleep. I put on an old T-shirt and a pair of jogging bottoms.

Downstairs, I put on the kettle and tuned the radio to a channel that played slow, sweet songs rather than the incessant chatter of talk radio.

While the kettle was boiling, I opened the back door and stepped outside. The air had turned cold. I could see my breath as a white mist in front of my face. I blew it out, pretending that I was smoking. It was childish, but it killed an urge.

Purely out of nosiness, I walked around to the front of the house to see if the girl had gone. She hadn’t; she was still there, in exactly the same place, and she was staring at the house again.

“Hi,” she said, without turning around.

“Hello. See anything interesting?”

“It’s just a house,” she said, as if she were trying to convince herself of something. Her breath did the same as mine, a thin white snake hanging in the air.

“It’s cold,” I said, redundantly. “How about a nice hot cup of tea?”

I thought she might be homeless. I’d experienced that situation myself, so felt a level of empathy toward her. I didn’t think there was any harm in being friendly. None of my new neighbors had bothered with me, so this odd, lonely girl might become my only friend.

She moved her head, looking at me. “You serious?”

I nodded. “Yeah. Why not? You look like you could use a hot drink.”

The girl walked over to the wall at the front of my property, sat down on it and made a face that looked like she’d tasted something she didn’t much like. “I hope you’re not planning to rape me. I have VD.”

“That must be nice for you. I bet your parents are so proud.”

She cracked a smile, amused by the silly middle-aged man in his Clangers T-shirt and baggy joggers. “A brew
would
be nice…”

“It’s up to you. I’m not going to beg you, for Christ’s sake.” I turned away, went back inside, but left the side door open.

In about half a minute, she followed me inside.

“How do you take it?”

“White, six sugars.”

“Very healthy.” I poured the hot water over teabags in the cups, turned to face her as I waited for the tea to brew. “You can leave the door open if you like…if it makes you feel more comfortable.”

She kicked the door shut. “You’re not going to hurt me.”

“How do you know?”

“I can tell. I’m a good judge of character.”

She took off her heavy coat and hung it over the back of a kitchen chair. She had on a black (surprise, surprise) T-shirt that declared the name of a band I’d never heard of—
Gladiatorial Snot
. The shirt was at least two sizes too big for her frame, and underneath it she had on a white long-sleeved sweater.

“Nice shirt,” I said, then turned to pull the teabags out of the cups. I added milk to mine, milk and the requisite six sugars to hers, and then handed her the drink.

“What’s your name?”

“Adam,” I said. “I just moved in.”

“I’m Pru,” she said.

“Short for Prudence?”

“Short for mind your own fucking business,” she snapped, but a smile came with it to let me know that she was at least half kidding.

“My, you’re a real charmer,” I said. “The youth of today: so damned rude.”

“You invited me in.” She sipped her tea, those dark-rimmed eyes peering at me over the cup.

Pru looked to be about seventeen or eighteen. She might have been younger; I couldn’t tell, and she was one of those semi-goth kids whose age was tough to estimate. I’d seen them everywhere, this type:
her
type, always wearing black, with long dyed black hair, and listening to death metal on their iPod headphones. She wasn’t homeless, as I’d first thought; she just liked to look as if she was.

“You’re out late. Aren’t your folks worried?”

“Don’t be silly. I’m nineteen. I live in a flat a couple of miles away, share it with a few friends.”

“By flat, do you mean squat?”

“Whatever.” She took another drink of her tea. “This is nice.”

I liked her; she was pretty cool, and seemed to take no shit. I wished I’d been like that at her age.

“So why were you out there, looking at that house?”

She put down her cup on the table, pulled out a chair and sat down.

“Please, make yourself at home,” I said.

She gave a little chuckle at that one. “Do you know who used to live in that house? The empty one next door?”

I sat down opposite her, wrapping my hands around my mug. “I just found out today that a murderer used to live on my street. So let me guess. A murderer?” I couldn’t help being flippant. The seriousness of the subject matter made me want to try and keep it at bay using cheap humor.

“That’s right,” she said. “Katherine Moffat. She killed twelve kids that they know of, and is thought to have killed at least ten more and buried their remains in the area.”

Pru’s type, they always seemed to idolize, or even deify, serial killers. I bet she had one of those T-shirts with “Charlie Don’t Surf” written underneath Charles Manson’s grinning face.

“Ah…you’re one of those.”

She looked questioningly at me, little wrinkles furrowing her brow. They were cute. “What do you mean, ‘one of those’?”

“A death groupie. The black clothes, black hair, white face…I bet you read extreme horror stories and write bad poetry, too, or cute little songs, about death and stuff.”

“Okay, I’m gone.” She stood up, pushed back the chair, and stalked toward the door. As she opened it, she turned to me, and her face had gone red beneath the sun-starved pallor. “I don’t know who you think you are, but you’re a bit of a prick.”

“Thanks,” I said, saluting her with my mug of tea. “Please, stop by anytime. I’m always happy to help.”

She slammed the door on her way out. I was left there staring at my tea.

About a minute later the door opened again and she was standing there, looking sheepish, her gaze finding me through her ragged black fringe. “Okay. So you’re a funny guy. It’s cold. I haven’t finished my tea.”

“Sorry,” I said, taking pity on her for the second time that night. “Sometimes I
am
a bit of a prick. Come back in. Have your drink. I was kind of enjoying your company.”

She entered the kitchen, shut the door, and sat back down. “Thanks. I do have an ulterior motive, you know…”

“Oh, yes?”

“I come here a lot. I suppose you’d call it an obsession. That house…it draws me here, I just stand out there and watch it, like I’m trying to fathom its secrets.”

The hard-edged street kid had vanished, and now she seemed like a little girl. Like an older sister or niece to my daughter, my Jess.

“Why do you come here? What is it about that house you find so fascinating?”

She leaned back in the chair. “Okay, I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you. My dad was a writer. He wrote a book about Katherine Moffat, and about what she did in that house.”

“Really?”

She nodded. “The book’s out of print. Even I don’t have a copy. It was called
Little Miss Moffat and the Radiant Children
. My dad’s name was Robert Shingley.”

“Was?”

“Huh?”

“You said
was
, not
is
. Your dad’s name
was
Robert Shingley.”

“Yeah, he died.”

“Oh…I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. He was ill for a long time. He had a heart condition. That book was the last thing he worked on before he died. The last thing that obsessed him, that took up the time he should have been spending with me and my sister. Coming here…it helps. It just helps, that’s all.”

She didn’t have the vocabulary to express what she really meant, but I felt it anyway. The longing, the lost connection with a father who was probably never fully there even when he was around physically, his head buried in research while he wrote books about grubby little murders.

“Yeah. I know.”

She smiled. Her hands moved slowly on the tabletop, spreading out flat, palms down. Her nails were bitten short; the ends of her fingers were red; they looked painful. I wondered what went on inside her head, what kind of demons were housed within the small, tired shell of her body.

“Drink your tea,” I said.

* * *

I sat there for a while after she’d gone, thinking about the way she’d looked so fragile, crumpled almost, when she told me about her dead father. The love I felt for my own daughter hit me hard, like a blow from deep inside. It often happened that way, when I was least expecting it. Tears threatened to come, but I wouldn’t let them. I was too strong, too tough and old-fashioned to cry.