The House That Jack Built

TWO

Julia held Rob's hand and tried not feel as if she had let her aunt down. When you see your dentist more often than your family, it's hard to avoid a little guilt when they die. There were just the two of them in the church, an old man sat in the front row having left with a curse as he realised 'his old mate Len' wasn't due for cremation until later on that afternoon.

The vicar — a thin, red-faced man who stumbled behind his lectern like a drunken Swan Vesta — did his best not to let the false start faze him as he launched into his prepared speech extolling the virtues of the deceased. Perhaps the virtues were accurate. It was fuel to Julia's guilt that she hadn't known the woman well enough to be sure.

Aunt Joan had been a passing figure from childhood, a slightly austere dispenser of the occasional sweet and two pounds at Christmas. Julia hadn't expected to inherit anything from her — or from anyone for that matter, she had never thought in such terms. She might not luxuriate in the flat she and Rob shared as snugly as the bank overdraft that went with it, but she was content with it. They had made it their home.

As the cheap theatrics proceeded, she had to admit this was no way to gain a house. There was a depressing clunk as the lift mechanism carried Aunt Joan towards the furnace and an escape from this terrible funeral and, indeed, from everything else. When the coffin vanished, Julia realised she had been holding her breath. She breathed out, her exhalation echoing around the chapel like an escaping spirit.

'That was painful,' Julia said to Rob in the snug of the Clement Bishop, just across the road from the crematorium.

He gave her shoulder a squeeze and took a sip of his Guinness, a drink dressed for a funeral. 'At least we were there for her,' he said, scratching at the stubble he always ended up wearing past dinner-time. The only thing Rob Wallace Painting Services couldn't make presentable was his own chin. 'It's depressing to think someone can go through life and not gather friends.'

'People lose touch.'

'Everyone?' He took another mouthful of his pint as if to wash the thought away.

Julia spun her wine glass around by its stem. The chilled white felt too vibrant on her subdued palate, like a scream in a library. 'Let's just go home,' she said as Rob's pint sank to a drainable level. 'We need to finish the packing.'

'Jackson Leaves' insisted the name-plaque that hung alongside the front door.

'Of course he does,' Julia said.

'Weird name,' Rob replied.

'Weird house.' She prodded the plaque with her thumb. It was screwed into the brick. 'We can live with it for now.'

She unlocked the door and they stepped into a hallway lined with black-and-white tiles and the musk of years.

Rob's eye was caught by an old photo just inside the door — an attractive young woman who reminded him of his wife, despite the lack of blonde hair. 'She has your looks,' he said, as Julia pushed the mountain of collected junk mail along the hall with her foot.

'I suppose it's more accurate to say I've got hers.'

In the sitting room, a collection of easy chairs sagged under the weight of cobwebs and dust that reclined on them.

'We could hold church meetings here,' Rob joked. 'You could bake cakes.'

Julia smacked the back of one of the chairs, stepping back as a mushroom cloud of dust threatened to envelop her. 'Old people collect abandoned function rooms like they do liver spots,' she said. 'Retreating through their homes until they end up hiding in one little room. Depressing.'

'Yep,' Rob agreed. 'The sooner we clear all this stuff out and make the place our own the better.' He caught an uncomfortable glance from Julia and was worried that he might have spoken out of turn. 'I don't mean we just junk everything. I mean it's your aunt's belongings, I understand if you want to-'

'Don't worry about it,' Julia interrupted, not wanting to see her husband tie himself in knots. 'None of it means a thing. I just…' Her voice trailed away, her thoughts as fragile as the strands of cobweb she'd snapped pacing across the room.

'It's big.'

Julia smiled. Some days, she and Rob seemed to share a mind. 'Isn't it? Three floors, God knows how many rooms… We filled the flat.'

'Plus some.'

'OK, it was snug but we fitted in it. We're just going to rattle here…' She stared at the gap between the stair banisters that took her eyes straight to the roof at the top. 'This place is hollow.'

'And worth a few quid once I've done it up.'

Julia nodded. She knew the rational arguments, had started most of them; she just wished she hadn't felt so small the minute she'd stepped through the front door.

Later, they sat and ate fish and chips out of the paper, the traditional dinner of new homes, kitchen crockery left in its packing crate for one more night.

'The work won't take long,' Rob said as he sent a thick chunk of cod diving into a sea of ketchup. 'I mean it depends how many other jobs crop up, but the phone doesn't ring itself silly most weeks, does it? Lick of paint, fire safety doors, then we can get some students in.'

Julia had abandoned her meal and scooted her paper across the lounge floorboards so that Rob could hoover up her leftover chips. 'Maybe we should start advertising the place straight away?'

Outside there was the rumbling of a storm.

'Let's just hope the roof doesn't leak,' she said, kissing her husband's greasy lips.

They were making love by the time the rain began to fall. The roof didn't leak, but Julia felt the storm was in the room with them nonetheless. If only she could shake this nervous feeling — there was no reason for it that she could think of. She had no bad memories of the house. In fact she had no strong memories of it at all. There was just something in the atmosphere, something she could taste.

Their lovemaking sputtered out with a conciliatory kiss from her distracted lips, and she lay back on the inflatable mattress that was their first-night bed. She made patterns from the shadows the rain cast in the amber of the streetlights. Her state of mind led her time and again to picture screaming faces, eager gallows, severed limbs. As sleep took her, she was desperate for the happy feelings that would let her see butterflies.

She woke later to the knowledge that they were not alone. She stared at the darkness that had settled in the far corner of the bedroom and strained to see straight lines and shapes in it. Just as she managed to identify a face, seemingly hovering in the air, it vanished, leaving her to question whether it had even been there in the first place.

With morning came an even greater desperation to dismiss her unease. She tried the noise of unpacking and the reassuring smell and hiss of fried bacon. Neither worked. Once the portable stereo was unpacked, she tried heavier artillery, turning up the radio volume so that the voices and songs were shouts of opinion and melody. It was so loud she failed to hear the sound of breaking glass from the cobweb-ridden front room when Danny Wilkinson sent a stray pebble through its window. In fact, a little later, she nearly missed a call from Rob as he rang her on the mobile.

'Open the door, would you?' he said. 'Forgotten my keys. What's going on anyway?'

'What do you mean?'

'Cordoned off the road, haven't they?'

She opened the front door to find the police just along from her front gate. Rob had parked the van several doors up, an inconvenience as the back was stuffed full of what little furniture they owned. He and his mate Steve were walking down the street, a mattress wobbling between them. Looking at the police tape, every disturbed feeling she'd had since the night before became real. She made eye contact with a dark-haired woman who was getting out of her car and heading towards the police tent. The woman gave what was meant to be a reassuring smile, but Julia wasn't so easily assuaged.

'What's happened?' she shouted, but the woman vanished beyond the police tape.

'Probably a gas leak or summat,' Steve said as he and Rob worked their way past her.

Rob rolled his eyes. 'Thanks for that. Big comfort, really.'

Julia ignored them as they vanished into the house. She walked down the path and tried to get a glimpse of whatever was going on. The policemen marched out, got in their cars and drove away. That had to be a good sign, surely?

Stepping into the street, her heart jumped into her mouth as a black four-by-four came speeding along the road towards her. The car pulled up sharply and a tall man jumped out.

'Sorry about that, didn't see you coming.'

He was handsome but his vintage military clothing made her suspect he would never be her 'type'.

'What's happened?' she asked, still the only question she had any interest in.

'Couldn't tell you,' he replied, his American accent as unusual in Cardiff suburbia as his clothing. 'I just got here. You too?'

She had to look over her own shoulder to understand what he meant. Rob and Steve were forcing the mattress through the front door. 'Oh… Yes, just moving in.'

'It's a nice house,' he sounded like he was reassuring her rather than passing comment. Whatever the intention, he had nothing else to say, turning his back on her and following the dark-haired woman beyond the police tape.

Julia stared after them for a while before moving back across the road and into her drive.

'The Wilkinson boy,' said a woman's voice from beyond the privet hedge that lined Jackson Leaves.

Julia peered through the foliage. The speaker was wreathed in cheap gold and cigarette smoke, mouthfuls of which she puffed onto the breeze as she worked her way through the length of a Dunhill.

'Dead as you like, buried in the pavement.'

'I'm sorry?' Julia felt as if she were still making dream shapes from the silhouettes of rain. Nothing was making sense.

'Kid from up the way. Buried in the ground, he was, arms and legs sticking out all over.'

'That's horrible.'

'It is, and you can bet there'll be drugs behind it. They're all on drugs these days.'

Later, Rob and Steve were putting flat-pack furniture together as if everything was all right.

Maybe it was. Julia found she still couldn't tell. She watched from the dirty (and now broken) front window as the police tape, tent and investigators vanished and rain appeared. There was a big trench by the side of the road where a chunk of the pavement had been removed — she could see it filling with water. She tried to imagine what the body might have looked like.

'Don't suppose you could make us a cup of tea, could you?' Rob asked from behind her. 'That bed frame's turning out to be a right bastard, and Steve's moaning about the lack of service.' He shifted awkwardly in the doorway. 'You know what he's like… gobby.'

Julia nodded and made her way through to the kitchen. She should get on anyway, staring out of the window wasn't going to make her feel any better. She needed to crack on, knock the unfamiliar away and start making this home. As she worked her way through the last of the kitchen things, she almost felt normal, even convinced herself that there wasn't the faint outline of a fat man watching her from the back garden, that it was nothing but the rain.