Chapter 1 (The Dark House)
I remember the day I first realised something wasn’t quite right with this house. It was one August Bank Holiday Monday about eight years ago. Julian and I had just moved in from our old house and Eve was only six years old. When we’d sign the tenants agreement I was cross with Julian because he’d not even let me see it before hand. I’d trusted his judgement though. But the first time I stepped into it I knew something was a bit off.
It was too dark. Too cold.
We’d sold our old house. It was in a rough area of the town and I didn’t want Eve growing up around there. There were street fights and gangs and burnt out cars. It was horrible. The area we’d moved to was much nicer, and the rent was pretty cheap. I should have realised something was up then. It’d had people living in it over the years, but nobody stayed for very long. In hindsight we should have gone out and actually bought a new house instead of renting, but we needed to save up for the one we really wanted on Maple Avenue, so this was really just a stop-gap until then.
The house we rented was on a leafy avenue with a small footpath in front of it, a public grass lawn and then an old wooden fence, beyond which lay the train line. Perhaps the train noise was why it was so cheap. I don’t know. I’d soon find out though.
I first set foot in the house the day after signing the tenancy agreement. I went on my own as Julian was working and Eve was at school. The moment I opened the door I could feel the cold coming from the inside. The hallway led to the stairs and to the left was a first door leading to a front room and a second door leading to the middle living room. The staircase led up to a back bedroom, bathroom, middle bedroom and front bedroom. Again, it was very dark. It got worse the further you walked into the house. The middle living room was the darkest with a single window looking out down the side of the house. The kitchen was basic with only a few cupboards fixed to the walls, cracked kitchen tiles, and at the back was the toilet and downstairs bathroom.
That was the only luxury – two bathrooms in one house.
But, it was home. Or at least it was a house that we had to turn into a home. Regardless we had no choice. We had a house, it was away from the bad area and we had to carry on. It’d only be for a year or so anyway.
I didn’t see Julian too much in the last few months. He was busy working away. He worked for a construction company dealing with architects and he was forever out of town, staying in hotels through the week and coming home at the weekend. It was a strain on us as a family, but we got by. I just worked short shifts as a dinner lady at Eve’s school. It didn’t pay well, but it helped with the day to day living and the ongoing saving.
In those first few weeks I’d set out to decorate the house, stripping it’s dark, burgundy wallpaper and putting it something more brighter – creams and light blues. Pastel colours. Anything to brighten the place up a bit. It didn’t seem to work though. The darkness still seemed to hang over the house.
I made the front room our best room seeing as though that let in the light more than the others. The middle room was used to spend our family time together. Upstairs the front bedroom was mine and Julian’s and the middle bedroom was Eve’s. We were going to put her in the back bedroom, but something didn’t sit right with me. Someone at some point had painted it in black. Even the floorboards were black. We reckon druggies had stayed here at one point as there were all sorts of graffiti over the walls. I had made a note to paint it pure white as soon as possible.
But, again, there was something not right about that room. I remember standing in there one day looking out over the kitchen roof below and into the garden. Eve came to the doorway but wouldn’t come in any further. When I touched her to take her hand to show her a cat playing in the tree at the bottom of the garden she felt cold and pulled away.
So we carried on and we made our way and just got on with life. The house never felt right, but it wasn’t anything like what we would come to experience later on. It just felt lonely.
And then I lost Julian.
Strangely the day I got the phone call from his manager was the brightest it had ever looked in the house. It was a glorious summer’s day and Eve had just turned seven. She was out playing on the grass on the front with the neighbour’s kid and I was doing the ironing in the front room, keeping an eye on her, when the phone rang.
“Mrs Webster?” came the voice.
It was a voice I recognised, but couldn’t quite place it.
“Yes, who’s this?” I asked, checking I had switched the iron off.
“It’s Jonathan Danby – your husband’s boss.”
I smiled. That’s where I’d remember the voice from. We’d met each other at the works Christmas party the other year. “Yes, Mr Danby, it’s nice to speak to you again. Is there anything wrong?”
“Yes, I’m not sure how to break this to you, but...well, I’m afraid there’s been the most terrible accident.”
There are those moments in your life when you feel like the entire world is closing in around you. You feel like your heart is being crushed inside your chest and you’re being compressed to a tiny dot of nothingness.
There had been an accident somewhere between Sheffield and Manchester. Julian had been on the way to work that morning. I’d kissed him goodbye. He’d kissed Eve goodbye and that was it. It was a normal, Monday morning like any other. I knew I wouldn’t be seeing him again until Friday evening, but it had become the norm for me now. I’d gotten used to it.
But now I knew I’d never see him again. There had been a twenty-car pileup on the M62. Julian had been caught in the middle of it all. His car had been hit from behind. His airbag hadn’t deployed and he’d flown through his front window and hit the back of the car in front of him. The head wound had been that traumatic that it had killed him instantly.
Strangely, after I’d received the phone call from Mr Danby, I’d returned to my ironing, staring out at Eve as she played with her friend. How was I going to tell her this? How was I supposed to tell her that her Daddy was never coming home again?
But I told her. Eventually. After a few days. When Friday night came around and she realised he wasn’t home.
She didn’t quite understand what I was telling her. She was only seven. She frowned and played with the hair on her Barbie doll, but she didn’t process it. She was bright, but how does a child process the news that they are never going to see their Daddy again?
But time passed. We continued on. We forged ahead as we always had done. My parents visited and then went back home to Dorset. My brother came for a few days and then he too went back home to Doncaster. I got a second job in a supermarket to help pay for the mortgage and I had to get a nanny in as well to look after Eve when I wasn’t there.
It was a difficult life. A difficult six years with different nannies and different jobs, but we gathered the pieces together and held on as long as we could.
But the house seemed to get darker and darker. With each passing day the light seemed to diminish more and more.
Despite how dark those horrible days, months and years were they didn’t prepare me for what happened after.
I remember the day it first started. It was Eve’s 13th birthday. The latest nanny, Natasha, had told me she had been offered a job at a playschool and did she mind if she handed her notice in. We were sad to see her go, but I couldn’t deny the woman an opportunity like that. She had been good for Eve, but Eve was getting older now. My little girl was about to become a teenager.
“Mum, I don’t need a babysitter anymore,” said Eve as stood at the door waving Natasha goodbye.
“I thought you liked Tash.”
“I did, but she was more like a friend to me.”
I looked at her and smiled. She looked just like me – strawberry blonde hair, blue eyes and a collection of freckles around her nose, but somewhere deep in those blue eyes I could see her father. I could see Julian. And his persuasiveness had come out in her as well.
“So who is meant to look after you when I’m at work?”
“I can look after myself.”
“The law states-”
“Oh, come on mum,” smiled Eve, “we all know what the law says, but we all know that parents never follow it. When you’re at work I’m at school and then by the time I come back from school you’re only away for another couple of hours.”
“But in those two hours-”
“It’s two hours, mum.” She took my hand and smiled. “Besides, think about how much money you could save.”
It was true. I couldn’t deny that. Paying the nanny every week had drained my bank account. What little money we had didn’t go very far after bills and food and necessities.
Eve looked up at me hopefully. “I promise I will lock myself in the house until you come home. I promise.”
I shook my head. Perhaps it was the wrong thing to do. I don’t know. But I couldn’t deny it. There was no chance of buying Maple Avenue now Julian was gone. We needed to make a saving somewhere, and two hours was nothing. Eve would be fine. The neighbours could check up her as well.
“Okay,” I said, as she jumped up and down in delight, “but no wild parties.”
“Wild parties?” she laughed, closing the door, “in two hours?!”
“You never know,” I laughed back.
I reckon that was the last time the two of us laughed together. In hindsight I should have gone with the law. Gone with my instinct, but hindsight is a very wonderful thing, and nobody could have predicted what would have happened next.
And still the house seemed darker.
To be continued...
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