Lawrence Court was a cul-de-sac lined with sturdy detached nineteenth-century red-brick Georgian houses, nearly all of which had been gloriously renovated and massively extended in the last decade.
Inside were people accustomed to being ushered to their tables and to having their children accepted by the best universities; who avoided the Christmas rush by employing personal shoppers, and who never queued at banks but instead met with their wealth manager. Most of the driveways parked two SUVs and a slick coupé or fat saloon. Several homes had small yachts resting on their carriages across the lawns. One back garden was illuminated with the blue rectangle of a lit pool.
The indicator ticked its second-by-second pulse as David’s BMW slowly cruised down Lawrence Court. It was nearly 10 p.m., and all seemed peaceful in this world. He turned off the headlights and pulled up onto the curve. In the circle of the cul-de-sac, a tall hoarding stamped with the logo Maximum Building Services shielded one of the houses. He was greatly pleased at having pulled off the classic coup of buying the worst house on the best street and turning it into the best house on the best street. David – who taught history at Trinity College – naturally considered ancient ruins to be glorious. But hundred-year-old ruins were just sad.
In the morning, David and his pregnant wife would finally be moving in. That was why he was there: for a private moment to walk through the finished project and then to have a cigarette out the back – a very special treat, as he hadn’t smoked in two years.
Then he saw it – Tara’s blue Ford coupé, parked across the road. It was so unlike her to go out alone at night. And why was she here? Had she been planning the same thing? Were they that psychologically attuned to each other? David smiled. Perhaps. But just as he was about to step out of his car to surprise her, he noticed another vehicle next to Tara’s – Ryan’s white SUV.
Footsteps began to echo, breaking the kind of silence that existed only in the neighbourhoods of the very rich. They came from behind the ten-foot-high timber enclosure. The hoarding door opened, and in the shadows a couple kissed. It might not be her. It might be someone else. David knew it wasn’t someone else. Crouching down in the seat, he held his breath, as if that would stop the pounding in his ears. Insects whirred about him through the opened window.
Tara exited the hoarding door alone. Just eight weeks pregnant, she appeared breezy and innocent, as if she’d just picked up a takeaway for a night in. Pointing the key at her Ford, the locks went thunk. As she swept her hands through her shoulder-length auburn hair, the street light glinted against the pale round opals clipped to her ears. She had bought them in Prague with David only a few months previously.
His hands were damp, his breathing shallow and quick. It was as if he’d just seen water flow upwards. David appreciated even the tiniest details about his wife’s past. He knew everything about her: intimate particulars of her childhood, her family, past lovers, fantasies, previous health issues; her fears, flaws, her jealousies and hatreds. Tara didn’t have secrets – except on his birthday and at Christmas.
She got into her car to return to their apartment. There she would wait for David’s return from his under-12s’ coaching, having no idea that he’d left early and skipped the traditional few pints afterwards with the rest of the backroom team. As she accelerated past his BMW, the tyres flattened an empty Coke can. He immediately pictured her driving the way she always did – not paying attention; singing along to the radio; distracted by songs she knew, 1990s songs; whacking the wheel in time and laughing when she got the words right – and then crashing: her body destroyed, her mind extinguished, their unborn child terminated.
David caught himself in the rear-view mirror – a handsome, forty-year-old man, abruptly suffering from the universal condition of being the unhappy spouse. A bullet of sweat rolled down his forehead. His skull suddenly looked lived-in for too long, his full lips shrinking into the lean geometry of his face. The usual vibrancy of his blue eyes abruptly deadened. Even the fibres of his thick hair felt heavy. As he leaned over the steering wheel, his body had never felt so slack, so tired.
With almost panicked movements, David withdrew a cigarette and turned the lighter’s flint. He inhaled and his chest felt aflame. But after several pulls, the pure bad pleasure of it came tearing back, wafting through the healthy, moist caverns of his lungs and then blasting into his bloodstream. It was the first time he’d smoked in two years, and he was thankful for this pleasure after the shock of so many stings.
I wish I didn’t know. How would his life have worked out if he hadn’t come here tonight? Would he and Tara have lived happily ever after? What was he going to say to her? Would she try that most abject of lies: blunt denial?
Was there something I did? Something I didn’t notice? There was nothing wrong with their relationship. Their life was exciting and interesting. Tara was eight weeks pregnant.
Except… There had been one moment, just after they’d begun gutting the house. It had been David’s fortieth birthday and they’d been celebrating with friends at their apartment. Tara had seemed off that night, and when they’d sung ‘Happy Birthday’, David had noticed her not singing but instead looking at the carpet. Had it just dawned on her what it meant for David to be ten years older than her?
But Ryan was the same age as Tara. Ryan and Tara had dated when she’d been a student. Back at their apartment, would she be waiting to tell David that everything had been a mistake? That it had taken the process of designing a house with him, of building it, to make her realise that she didn’t love him any more?
Do I love her? The question hit his brain like a large bug splattering the windscreen. He felt the answer in his gut: of course he did. The fact that she had just betrayed him didn’t only enrage David. It frightened him. It showed him that he could lose it all. That it – the vast array of great things that was ‘it’ – could depart forever. David was very aware that his next few decisions were the most important he would ever make.
Stepping out of the BMW, he slammed the door. Looking around, he expected a blind to twitch, a security beam to blast exposure, an alarm to bleat. But there was nothing – just a shuffle of leaves above as the warm night took a breath.
Sucking the cigarette to its final half-inch, he dropped it to the road. Something within David, something intrinsic, needed to deal with Ryan – even though it would be easier to follow Tara back to their apartment and shout at her in self-righteous fury. But when he thought about his wife, he didn’t just feel anger – he also experienced the dread that she didn’t love him as much as he loved her. After all, over the years he’d willingly scorned many opportunities with awestruck students, fellow lecturers and even the safely married dean of the faculty of arts and humanities. And yet Tara had responded to the very first opportunity that presented itself. Was this her first opportunity? Was this the first time?
David walked by Ryan’s white SUV where a hi-vis jacket was bunched into a ball on the passenger seat. He closed the hoarding gate behind him and the arm snapped down into the slot. For the first time, David had a clear view of his home’s restored Georgian facade – for months, there had been large skips in the driveway. He stared up at the windows that had been imported from Germany. It was almost impossible to believe that just six months ago, the site had been a derelict ruin.
David walked up the driveway and the crunch of gravel beneath his shoes reminded him of the marble chips on graves. He passed discarded tubes of paste, empty concrete bags and surplus sheets of Kingspan insulation. Stone steps flanked by arched handrails fanned up to the entrance of the three-storey house. The porch door was open and a faint light came from inside.
David entered the broad white hallway which was perfect for his wife’s home gallery. The air smelled of varnish, sawdust and glue. A winding staircase circled the main architectural flourish – a raw poured-concrete pillar that stretched up thirty feet through the centre of the building like the toughened bark of an old oak. From up on the first floor, light seemed to be leaking from a bedroom.
David climbed the stairs, his feet making no sound on the freshly laid carpet that was already scarred by builders’ boots. I told that asshole to make sure his guys put protective mats down. Emerging onto the landing, the floor remained in almost complete darkness; the doors to the three bedrooms, the walk-in and the main bathroom were all closed. But there was still a dim glow from the very top of the house, tinting the freshly plastered ceiling a stale nicotine-like hue. I told that asshole to make sure his guys had finished all the internal painting today.
He continued on up the turn of the staircase to the attic conversion that was soon to be his home office. The garret door was ajar and inside, light glowed from a naked bulb. David caught the whiff of a cigarette. He listened to the babumph of his heart and pushed the door further open, expecting a shrill creak to proclaim his coming. But the door silently glided inwards, revealing a low, sharply angled ceiling marbled with smoke. A shadow sketched a human shape on the opposite wall. On the bare boards, a used condom glistened like something just killed and skinned. Next to it, a saturated tissue resembled a half-melted snowball. And then there was a small, tight puddle of cotton on the floor – Tara’s black panties. David had watched her step into them that morning as he’d shaved.
Ryan stood between the opened floor-to-ceiling windows where the Juliet rail had yet to be installed, his back to David. Flicking his cigarette out into the night, he continued gazing at the dark shadows of mature oaks and elms. When the breeze blew, the heavy clusters of leaves shook, revealing the lights from neighbouring houses.
‘What are you doing in my house?’
Ryan turned about. His mouth pursed, lips setting tight like a turtle’s. Wearing only jeans, he was tanned and muscled with a tattoo down his right arm of a Celtic spear surrounded by meaningless hieroglyphs. Inked across the right side of his chest was the script, ‘Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?’
‘Dave? Wow. How did... When did…?’ Ryan stepped towards him, his forearms firm and sinewy, the kind a man gets from life rather than the gym. ‘I’m just making sure that my guys have everything wrapped up for your big move tomorrow. Only the patio to fill and bits of wiring – it’s all on schedule.’
In the light of the naked bulb, he was almost too good-looking. His smooth skin, tanned from the outdoors, appeared to be made out of pale chocolate, while his Brando-brown eyes narrowed evocatively whenever he smiled. ‘Man, it’s hot tonight,’ he continued. ‘No let-up to this heatwave. Anyway, didn’t want any last-minute hiccups. All part of the service. You’re welcome.’ After a moment, he tried again: ‘Bet you can’t wait till you’re in tomorrow and my crew have all fucked off?’ Then he laughed in a what-the-hell way.
When David still didn’t speak, Ryan’s smile faded. His expression became vague, waiting to choose the appropriate emotion to wear. With head lowered and fringe hanging down, he said, ‘It’s way after ten at night. Why are you here?’
‘I know everything.’ David had spoken before working things out. It was all going to accelerate now.
‘Well that’s... that’s a real pain.’ Ryan’s eyes could have burned pinholes through paper. ‘But since you know everything, then at least you’re aware that it was just the once. Just tonight. Never to happen again.’ He took another step forward, his focus swooping, swallow-like, back to his own immediate concerns. ‘Look, Dave, there are many ways this can play out. But there’s only one way that is the right way – get me? It is what it is.’ Ryan exhibited his smug-little-genius expression; a look that David had secretly despised for the past six months. ‘Dave: go home. Go home to your famous, wealthy, young, pretty wife. Wake up in the morning, move in here and pretend nothing happened. Because outside of – what? Thirty minutes? – nothing did happen. Some things can remain a mystery. You don’t have to know everything. That’s how people live happily ever after. That’s the trick.’ Ryan spread his arms, as if attempting to embrace all the white space of the attic. ‘Dave, we have a good relationship. Look around you. This incredible Georgian building. This piece. This art. Look at what we built together.’
‘Together? Ryan, you’re a glorified brickie. If you’d never existed, this house would still have been built. You won the tender. Nothing else.’
‘That’s cold.’ Ryan sucked in his cheeks, sculpting his jawline. ‘But fine. Can I leave? Do you think that would be all right?’
‘It’s more than all right. It’s required.’
Ryan moved to the left, stepping around David as if he were an inconvenient box. But then David slammed his hand into Ryan’s chest. It succeeded in halting him, but David also felt how heavy Ryan was, as if his frame had been stuffed with rocks rather than blood and guts.
Ryan jerked his head up, sensing brutality. ‘You threatening me? Because if you are, let me give you the warning most people don’t get. Fucksticks like you – without fighting skills or weapons – they should keep their counsel or they get a severe fucking tune-up.’ Ryan looked calm, but there was a wired alertness to his eyes. David imagined the tracking of Ryan’s mood on an EKG ticker tape. It was starting to spike.
David ploughed into him, reversing Ryan until his back smacked against the wall. What now? He’d learned from an early age that words were not always enough. They can lose their power, and it is then that you need to throw a punch. But could he remember how to fight? The last time had been years ago. Back then he’d wanted to dominate, to triumph, to protect the girl who would become his wife. A cold jolt sparked down David’s spine. He could lose. Hit him. He needed to dig deep – find that nasty streak. Hit him hard.
Ryan spread his shoulders, his long neck tensing as he decided upon the most suitable retaliation. David retreated a few feet so as to be out of headbutt range. Ryan’s eyes narrowed as he prepared to strike, choosing the spot carefully, intending to do the appropriate amount of damage as quickly as possible. David knew it was coming. So he struck first: jabbing his right fist forward, aiming for Ryan’s nose. Ryan managed to move his head to the side and David connected with his eye socket. Appreciating the warm sting across his knuckles, David felt impressed with himself. I remember now. Violence is easy. He jabbed again, connecting with the chin.
Ryan staggered backwards and reached out, his face communicating what an awful feeling it is to grab for something just to find that your hand is snatching, snatching at thin air. And then he vanished through the open French doors.
A dull thump sounded three floors below.
David stared at his future life collapsing in on itself like a dying star. Slowly he moved towards the opened doors where the Juliet rail was supposed to be. Looking down, he saw Ryan lying in the pit dug for the patio’s foundation. Face up, his legs rested across an orange sewer pipe. One arm was half-raised, but gradually it dipped towards the clay as if surrendering to the inevitable.
‘Ryan?’ David said in a loud whisper. ‘You OK?’
Nothing came back to him. Not a movement. Not a sound. David continued staring down on the body, affixed by the banality of tragedy. Illuminated by summer moonlight, Ryan’s face was as purple as raw liver, his tongue protruding. A cerise pool flourished around him, seeping eagerly out of his cracked skull like it had been waiting decades to do so. The flowing red curtain trickled along the grooves in the dry clay, winding its way like some biblical crimson river, pouring into the deepest part of the pit, where the marshy soil beneath the sewer pipe slurped it up. David couldn’t look away. The sight was irrevocable. It would not be undone. The dead simply do not return.
David ran his hands through his hair. So it wasn’t going to happen: his happy-ever-after in the palace of his dreams. He wasn’t even going to get a single night in the house he’d planned and built with his wife. What would become of Tara and his unborn child? David looked up to the perfect night sky, but he didn’t see beautiful stars – just distant explosions of ultra-violence.
But it wasn’t too late. Ryan might still be alive. There might still be time. Act. Do something. All he had to do was run down two flights of stairs, cross the vast kitchen, roll back the huge slider and then save Ryan. David spun round, registered a heavy thud against the side of his skull and dropped into the relief of a great deep nothingness.
He came from somewhere cavernous and black, but his eyes remained blast-furnace-forged closed. A painful pressure was growing on either side of his brain, as if he was growing horns. It didn’t feel like a hangover. I’m lying on the floor of my new office. He opened his eyes. Sunlight barked in his face as it blazed through the unfastened French doors. It came streaming back, the memories and feelings, like flies buzzing inside his skull. The worst possible thing had happened, and yet the world had continued to spin on its axis. Already, a slither of sunlight had made it from the wall to the edge of the floor.
David rubbed his head. There was a small lump, slightly scabbed, in the corner of his brow. To the side of the French doors, the attic roofline lowered sharply. Had he hit his head off an internal structural beam in his panic to help Ryan? He hauled himself into a kneeling position, the bare boards denting his knees.
There was noise from below. Were the police here? An ambulance? Where was Tara? Would there be time to talk to her before he was arrested for murder? It wasn’t as if he lacked an ironclad motive.
His dream of building his own house and living in it with Tara had been snatched away at the very last second. This would kill his seventy-six-year-old mother. His sister would be ashamed. No, it was over. The future cancelled. Soon, the world would be as if he had never been there. He looked at the fresh plasterwork around the French doors. If he was to stick his finger into it, it would leave a mark. He stuck his finger into it. It left a mark.
David inched his head through the French doors and out over the edge. Down below, he expected to see the police, medics, yellow tape. But there was no one there. David blinked. No corpse. There wasn’t even a pit. Instead, there was freshly laid limestone across most of the patio area. Some tumbled travertine slabs had already been laid.
A wave of sheer bliss crashed over him. Ryan was alive. Of course he was. While David had lain unconscious, Ryan must have dusted himself down and gone home.
David inhaled deeply the morning’s summer breeze that seemed to originate from the sun itself. This was the best time of day: newly minted, before the ongoing heatwave turned everything slovenly. But the reality of his wife’s betrayal made the rustle of leaves less cheerful, the sunlight less promising.
David checked his watch – 8.55 a.m. The builders usually started at 7.30. They had been working away for almost ninety minutes, oblivious to his comatose body on the top floor. A burst of conversation sounded from down in the kitchen before the noise suddenly shut off.
Unsteady on his feet, David scooped up the used condom, the flimsy panties and the dried tissue. He found a glimmer of solace in the fact that, despite Tara’s pregnancy, she’d still taken precaution against disease – which considering Ryan’s reputation was a genuine, if remote, risk. Had Ryan been telling the truth when he’d said that it had only happened once? He had no reason to lie.
Outside on the staircase, David noticed a discolouration on the wall in front of him. It looked as if something damp had been rubbed across the fresh paint and hadn’t yet dried. He touched the surface stain and smelled his fingers: a vague odour, similar to that carried on a sea breeze. Above it was a cobweb, like the sail of a yacht, already woven between the skylight and the corner of the ceiling. David pulled it down and rolled it into a sticky clump. This is my house.
In the first-floor bathroom, he pocketed the panties before flushing the condom and tissue down the toilet. Then, descending to the hallway, he came across the electrician who was finishing up the installation of lights that would illuminate Tara’s artwork.
David cleared his throat. ‘Hiya, Mike.’
The middle-aged electrician almost lost his footing on the stepladder. ‘Jazus. If it isn’t the Prof. Where’d you come from?’
Tara had told the crew that David was a college professor, rather than just an undergraduate lecturer. She’d thought it was funny.
‘Slipped by you earlier.’
‘You’re a ninja. What happened to the noggin?’
David rubbed the corner of his forehead. ‘Just a knock.’
‘And probably the first time you’re on site without a hard hat. Ryan with you?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Cos he was supposed to be here at 7.30. No sign. But his car’s outside. Weird.’
‘His car?’
‘Yeah. Must be gone off with a contractor or something.’ Mike turned back to the light fitting. Conversation over.
David stepped around the tins of Farrow & Ball and entered the kitchen – a space big enough to house a car showroom. Drifting by all the new stainless steel apparatus, the granite countertops and the elegant spring-mounted, single-lever tap curving out from the centre of the island, David stared through the huge slider window to the new patio. Where was Ryan? At the hospital? Maybe he’d got a taxi home and was lying low there, embarrassed at what had happened last night but relieved to be alive. Perhaps he was furious at what David had done and was planning revenge. Well, bring it, David thought. He pictured Ryan standing in his house, pretending to be his friend, congratulating him on his design. But suddenly a new and more appall. . .
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
