Chapter 23
“So who the hell was he?” Jess studies the image on my phone, the surreptitious picture I’d taken of the man who’d called himself Shaun Hopkins. “And how did he know where we lived?”
I tell her about the afternoon’s strange visit as I slice onions for a spaghetti Bolognese supper.
“Said he was the grandson of the previous owner. Seemed quite genuine, at first.”
“And Jeremy had never heard of him?”
“No.”
She hands the phone back to me and crosses her arms tightly over her chest, seeming to fold in on herself.
“But you just let him in anyway?”
“Didn’t get Jeremy’s text until after he’d left.”
I don’t believe Shaun Hopkins is his real name and a Google search throws up five million hits, none of which seem relevant anyway.
It was possible that he just didn’t have much of an online footprint, I supposed, but it seemed much more likely to be an alias.
A fake name to match the previous owner, a bogus story to get him through the door.
Or perhaps there was some kind of family connection, some distant relative who guessed that old Mr. Hopkins would overlook a few expensive trinkets in the house move.
The mobile number Shaun had given me is not recognized.
“He was a fairly young guy,” I say, “just standing there at the front door when I pulled up. I was curious to know what he wanted.”
“Sometimes I wish you were a little less curious, Adam.”
I let that go without comment. Instead, I take two wine glasses down from the cupboard.
“Glass of red?”
She looks as if she’s about to say no, then sighs instead. “Go on then, just a small one. Do you think we should try the police again?”
I reach for a half-full bottle of pinot noir next to the hob, pouring each of us half a glass. “And tell them what?”
“That this weirdo conned his way into the house and was going through stuff in our bedroom?”
“What would be the actual crime, though?”
“I don’t know, Adam. What do they call it, a distraction burglary?” She eyes the wine glass but doesn’t touch it. “And what if he comes back when I’m on my own with the kids? Or if Leah answers the door? What then?”
“We’ll just… be careful, OK? I can work some days from home. I’ll be on the lookout. We’ll keep the chain on the door.”
She goes to the back door, tries the handle to check that it’s locked.
“Was there something in particular he was looking for?”
I open my mouth to reply, to tell her about the watch. But telling her about the Rolex would mean telling her about the jeweler’s and the fat envelope of cash I’d sold it for. And going into that would mean explaining why I had sold it.
“He didn’t really specify,” I say instead, taking carrots from the fridge for dinner. “Just said there were some family heirlooms with sentimental value.”
I list the things I found in the secret room, leaving out the watch. A sharp prickle of guilt at how easily the half-truth comes to me.
“Oh God,” she says. “I’ve just had a thought: what if they’re stolen goods, or something? What if they’re not even his?”
“You think old Mr. Hopkins was some eighty-seven-year-old cat burglar?”
“He wasn’t always eighty-seven, was he?”
I put a hand on her arm. “Listen, if he gets in touch again, we can just tell him we chucked it all out, right? Tell him it’s all gone to the dumpster, everything we’ve found.”
She says nothing, and won’t look at me.
“Jess?” I say. “It’ll be OK. I don’t think he’s going to come back.”
“I don’t like this.” She takes a small sip of her wine, putting the glass back on the counter with a shaky hand.
“Any of it. First the cameras, then the messages, now this stranger turning up. This house was supposed to be a fresh start, a clean slate to make into whatever we wanted, but it’s starting to feel like it doesn’t even fully belong to us. ”
Her voice has gone very soft and I know it’s partly to stop the children from overhearing our conversation.
But it’s also because she’s unnerved, unsettled by what I’ve told her about today’s visitor.
I pull her into a hug, holding her close, the smell of her apple shampoo mingling with the faintest remainder of the smoky perfume she put on this morning.
“It’s going to be OK,” I say again. “We’ll figure it out. We’ve only been here a few days. Things will start to settle down soon. I promise. In the meantime we probably need to be careful around strangers.”
“I don’t like it,” she says, her head flat against my chest. “Don’t like some weird guy being here, in our house, with all our things.”
“He won’t come back.” I say it with rather more confidence than I feel. “And if he does, we just call the police and let them handle it.”
We stand like that for a moment longer, the tension between us softening as the warmth of her body presses against mine.
It feels like the first time we’ve been close in days, with all the rush and bustle of the move, of settling the children into a new house, all the planning and organizing and uprooting of our old life to come here.
We’ve had almost no time for each other, just the two of us, and I’ve missed that. Missed her.
When my wife speaks again, her voice is almost a whisper. “Do you think he was dangerous?”
I think back to the confrontation on the stairs, the look in his eyes when I’d grabbed his rucksack. The threat. You want me to bang you out, mate?
“He was… hostile,” I say. “Rather than dangerous.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Well, he wasn’t happy, but I didn’t feel like he was going to take a swing at me.
” I stroke her back. “He was pretty pissed off by the time I got rid of him, but I didn’t really think he’d do anything stupid.
Felt like it was more for show than anything else, like he was just putting it on to make a point. ”
She hugs me a little tighter, her small palms flat against my shoulder blades.
“Maybe you could bag up those things he wanted,” she says, her head still on my chest, “and put them somewhere, ready to hand over if he turns up at the house again? So we can get rid of him?”
I rub her back. “Good idea. I’m not going to let anything happen to you or the kids. I’ll look after our family. It’ll be OK, I promise.”
She looks up, right into my eyes.
“And who’s going to look after you?”