Page 77 of We Live Here Now
76
Emily
“So,” Sally says as the cars round the corner onto the lane, disappearing out of sight. “Here we are.”
Her whole demeanor changes now that the men have gone. She slouches slightly, one hand on her hip, a wry smile on her face, but all her ease has vanished. There’s a sudden hardness in her expression. Something brittle.
“Joe hasn’t noticed a thing.” She looks over to me. “Since you released me.” I must look stupefied, because she laughs. “Hard to get your head around it, isn’t it?” She looks up at the house. “I won’t come inside again if it’s all the same to you. I’ve spent far too long in there for one lifetime.”
She takes a few steps forward and then leans against the small wall by the steps where I’m standing, watching her, this new Sally.
“But now I’m free. Thanks to you.” She looks down at her hands. “So strange to be in such an old body. Enjoy your youthful skin while you have it. Getting out of the shower in front of the bathroom mirror has been a horror story that’s taking some getting used to. But I shouldn’t complain. I thought I was stuck in there forever.”
It’s so strange, listening to her. She’s still Sally, but with added ingredients. An edge. An anger. Is this because of what happened to her, or was it always there? Is it part of why Joe killed her?
“And maybe I nearly was.” She shakes her head. “In that godawful room upstairs you eventually start to mesh with the house. It sucks you in and it gets harder to be you. It eats you up. Devours your being. Fortuna Carmichael’s husband, Gerald, eventually died out here so that killed him in there, but there are echoes of others trapped in the brickwork. People who lived too long out here to ever truly release the bits inside when they died. They feed the house. It likes it.”
She shivers and I realize that however bad the feeling I got from her presence in the room was, it was nowhere near as awful as the room felt for her.
“The books,” I say eventually. “Was that you?”
“You will die here.” She lights a cigarette and exhales. “I needed to get your attention. And it was a warning. This place. It brings out the worst in people. It’s been doing it with you two. I saw everything.” Her eyes are flint sharp. “Your husband’s hidden gambling.” She nods down the lane. “You should leave him. He’s a weak piece of shit. What’s going to happen the next time you have a crisis? All your money down the drain again?”
“He needs help,” I say. “I’ve got some money coming—”
“Ah yes, the blackmail.” She laughs. “You surprised me there. But like I said, I think there’s something in this house that brings the worst parts of you to the surface. I was always jealous, yes, and there’s no way I could have done the open relationship thing long-term, but being in this house made me worse. It made Joe more selfish too. The bastard murdered me, after all.”
“Do you think, after you came back, he realized there was part of you trapped in Larkin Lodge?”
“I don’t think he gave it a moment’s thought. Joe is all about Joe, and I was compliant and adoring. I honestly think he’s persuaded himself it was just a bad trip. That he never killed me at all.” She takes another fierce inhale. “But he did. And he has to pay for that.”
“What are you going to do?” I can hear the rumble of an engine heading back up the lane, Joe come to collect his loving wife. All of her. I watch her posture and expression change as the car comes into view, straighter and more serene.
“I’ll think of something,” she says before coming forward and kissing me on the cheek, enveloping me in her perfume. “Take care, Emily.” She squeezes my arm. “I owe you one. And I mean that.”
As she jumps in and they drive away, I wave as if everything is perfectly normal.
“Safe travels!” I call after them, and then Sally twists around and smiles a vicious goodbye at me, and I know in that instant that I’m very unlikely to see Joe ever again.