Chapter 41 Home Truths
Home Truths
“Frankie?” Aoife Doherty is staring at me from her front door.
I try to take a breath, but the ground seems to tilt beneath me. I grip the railing beside me, white-knuckle tight, and sink down onto Pam’s front steps, my breathing coming in tight little gasps.
I’m having another episode. I haven’t had one since the last time I saw Ben. I pray that this time I don’t lose consciousness.
To her credit, Aoife has the least dramatic reaction to the unfolding events that I could possibly imagine.
She walks down her own front steps, along to Pam’s gate and up to me, sinking down beside me, and silently offers me her hand, my breathing jagged.
I look to her, her face calm and accepting.
“Go on, grab on. I used to have panic attacks all the time. Just ride it out. I’m here. No rush. Just breathe. We’ll do this one together.”
I don’t know why, but I take her hand. She squeezes it and I close my eyes and breathe.
I feel the dizzying panic rise, peak, threatening to eclipse everything, my throat burning with each rasped breath, as I teeter on the edge of the black void. But I push through, and slowly, breath by breath, it washes through me. I realize she has been talking to me throughout.
I catch only snippets.
“The second one was at a ballet recital. I was eleven, and, man, that one was bad. I peed my pants. Leotard, whatever. I swear my mam was more worried about me staining the community center carpet than she was about the rest of it. You doing okay, there?” she asks, suddenly breaking off.
“Uh-huh.”
“Good on ya, girl. Didn’t love being a kid,” she continues, her stream of consciousness grounding me.
“Probably won’t have them. Not sure it’s for me.
It’s a lot of work. Like getting a dog but they’re people, so you can’t leave them in the house alone or walk them on a lead, or train them, or, like, do anything you would do with a dog, really.
So not like a dog. To be fair, though, I don’t want a dog, either.
Can’t really have one with my job, you know.
Sure, look at me—I can’t even collect my own bloody packages now, can I?
What’d I be like with a living creature or a child? ”
“You’re funnier than I thought you’d be,” I manage finally.
She smirks. “Oh, yeah, I’m a regular gas wagon. Hand me a microphone. Hang on—why’d you think I wasn’t funny?”
“Because, I mean, you don’t need to be, I guess,” I say.
She turns to face me with a wry smile. “Well, that’s a lot to unpack on the doorstep. Trust me—in my line of work a sense of humor is all that stops you from a murder spree.”
I feel my face drop like a stone. She notes the change.
“Oh Jesus, sorry. Right, I think we’ll get you inside your home, shall we? We’ll make a nice cup of tea.”
“Okay,” I say. I make a move to stand but falter. She leans over to help pull me gently up.
Safely ensconced in my kitchen, I watch Aoife busy herself about the counters, sourcing mugs and brewing tea; the sight of her doing such a mundane domestic task is infinitely soothing.
My mind sorts fast through all my available options. I need her help but there are few ways I will actively be able to get it by being entirely honest with this woman.
Finally, she places a mug down in front of me and smiles.
“If there ever was a woman who looked like she needed a tea,” she says to me, sitting down opposite me at the table and sipping hers.
I can’t tell her about Anna. She’ll think I’ve lost it—if the police don’t believe me, why would a famous actress? But I need help, I need someone to help.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” she asks.
“It’s Blue, my cat,” I tell her, this suddenly seeming like my best, most low-stakes-sounding option. Enough for her to help me without freaking her out. “He’s missing and I think the guy I’m seeing has taken him and is ‘holding him hostage’ in the house he’s doing up.”
I know it sounds crazy, but it sounds “fun” crazy, not “closed-ward” crazy.
Aoife smirks.
“Brilliant. Sounds like you found a corker. God, I’ve been there.”
I feel heat on my face. “To be fair, Aoife, I’m not sure it’s likely you’ve experienced a similar situation to this one.”
“God, I hope not. I went out with a guy for three months who I found out planned to kidnap me and keep me locked up against my will in a ski lodge in Canada. So yeah, your situation is slightly different,” she muses and takes a sip of tea.
I stare at her, aghast, yet oddly not surprised at the likelihood of this happening to her.
“That’s horrible.” I can’t tell her how similar the two cases might be. Images of Anna, her bruised face, and her lopsided walk flash through my mind.
“The guy I’m seeing lives on this street,” I begin, unsure how much of this I can and should disclose, “and I’ve only now found out that—”
“Hang on.” Aoife stops me, hand raised politely. “You’re not seeing the shifty guy, are you?”
“Shifty?” I respond, seeking clarification. So many of the neighbors around here could come under that banner. “I’m not seeing Greg. Or do you mean Eric, who keeps going into Number Fifteen? No.”
Aoife frowns. “Eric? Eric’s not shifty, he’s harmless. Like, I don’t get the whole open-relationship situation they’re into over there, but he’s pretty straightforward. And he’s fine being her ‘second partner,’ so that’s that.”
I stare at her. “What? How do you know about their relationship? You’re never even here!”
I don’t mean it to sound judgmental, but it does.
“Ha, yeah, fair point—it’s been a bit busy lately.
No, but I do have a Christmas party every December and invite some of the least weird neighbors.
It’s grand. You better be coming to the next one.
No, but we had shrooms at the last one and Chris and Marina tried to rope me into a four-way with them and Eric.
” She takes another gulp of tea. “I politely said no, thank you very much.”
I frown deeply and Aoife stops talking.
“But I saw Eric arguing with Marina, shouting at her.”
Aoife shrugs. “I don’t know, Frankie, but I guess maybe it is a hard situation for him after all. I’d imagine someone’s always a third wheel—but what do I know? But come on, like, everyone argues in relationships,” she says.
“Wait,” I blurt, recalling how we got on to all of this in the first place. “If Eric’s not the shifty guy, who is?”
“Well, maybe not shifty but…like, keen, way too keen. The architect. Matt, is it? He’s just a bit too…I don’t know, too good to be true.”
“In what way?” I ask quietly, my mind racing. Even though the blue dot from the AirTag is showing Matt’s house, even though I know it could be him, I still can’t quite believe that he could be Simon. But hearing Aoife say this now makes everything seem much more real.
“Fair play if it’s him you’re seeing—I was totally into the attention, too.
Until it all got a little much, like too friendly, too quick, you know.
I’ve been out with love bombers, and it felt like that.
Accidentally showing up all the time, you know?
Just bumping into me. He said it was coincidence, so who knows—I’ve been known to overstate.
Anyway, I made up some story about a boyfriend moving in.
I got someone from the cast to stay over for a weekend.
Never heard a peep again. Though to be fair, I saw him sniffing round after you moved in.
Sorry—I should have come over on the day and said hi but I’m on this crazy shooting schedule right now and I’m doing press.
I swear, they’re trying to kill me with the early pickups. ”
She frowns. It’s clear she wants to say something else.
“What?” I ask. “Just say it.”
“I thought it might be the house,” she says, looking at me expectantly, “that was creeping you out? You didn’t seem okay when we met a few days ago.”
“The house? Matt’s house?” I ask, confused.
“No, your house. Like I was surprised when I saw it was you moving in, a single woman, given everything.”
I sit up straight. “Oh my God. There is something wrong with this house, isn’t there?” I snap, every instinct now confirmed, from the day I moved in until Greg’s overheard conversation in the deli.
“You don’t know? No one told you?” she blurts, appalled.
I shake my head. “No. I overheard something but I have no idea what it is. I’ve got a feeling it’s bad, though.”
Aoife squeezes her eyes shut. “Oh, shit. I really shouldn’t have said anything, should I? I’m a fecking liability.” She rubs a hand over her tired eyes. “Crap. I dunno. Here.”
She grabs her phone and taps something in, then pushes the phone across the tabletop to me.
I look at the search bar—it doesn’t mention the house number or street. She has just typed in “Local Murder/Suicide De Beauvoir.” No wonder I didn’t find anything when I looked.
Beneath it I see an unmistakable photo of my house, but from two years ago, the front door pastel-green, the front windows hollow, black charred streaks licking up the white paint of the front wall, ashy torn curtains visible through the window voids.
The street in front of the house is littered with devotional candles, handmade cards, children’s drawings, and wilted bouquets in jam jars.
I feel a wave of revulsion rise up inside me.
“Oh my God,” I mutter, lifting the phone to read, a cold, awful realization dawning on me that something so very terrible happened in my lovely new house.
“The couple who lived here—the guy who lived here,” Aoife explains, “he killed her, then set the house on fire to make it look like that’s how she died, but it took too long to go up; the house didn’t burn in the way he thought it would.
We all heard the windows pop. We went outside onto the road, and he came running out.
People on the street wanted to go in and save her, but, like, he knew she was already dead.
So he went back in, and I guess he knew the game was up; the evidence wasn’t burning.
He never came back out. They found them both in the kitchen. He killed himself, too.”
I stare at her, then turn back to look at my perfect kitchen.
My gaze flashes over my beautifully renovated counters, the intricately swirling marble splashbacks, the under-floor-heated, quarry-sourced slate. “Oh my God. It happened right here.”
“Yeah,” Aoife sighs, as if a huge burden were finally being lifted.
I swallow, my mouth suddenly dry. “Why didn’t anyone tell me? Why isn’t it in the article, the exact address? Why didn’t it come up when I Googled the house?” I ask, my panic rising.
“That’s what we were all asking. They aren’t allowed to put exact addresses because messed-up people come, apparently.
Evidence gets disturbed, the houses get robbed.
They don’t put addresses. They don’t even put names until after hearings.
Greg was on all this from day one with the implications to property values.
He was sad for them, but he’s a machine. ”
“Oh my God,” I mumble, all the bizarre exchanges I’ve had since I’ve arrived now slotting into place. “No one told me. They sold me the house but no one told me. And then the day I arrived, I saw Marina, Greg, and Pam arguing…”
Aoife sighs. “I guess the estate agent who sold you the house didn’t disclose; maybe the relatives asked them not to.
Greg and a few others on the street wanted to know if you’d been told.
They were worried you’d put the place back on the market at a low resale value and it’d have an effect on all of our houses.
Some people wanted to tell you. Others didn’t want you to know, in case.
You see, we all agreed not to sell until all the damaged houses were restored, after the fire, to avoid a mass exodus, you know; that’d make the area look undesirable and we’d all lose hundreds of thousands of pounds from our sale prices.
Or more, in Richard’s case. But he’s clearly broken his agreement with Greg, so Greg bought up the fire-damaged houses either side of you to repair.
He was counter-bidding you to inflate the sale price. ”
“But why did the relatives break the agreement and sell the house early?” I ask.
“It was in trust. The solicitors acted for the next of kin overseas. We never met them, they’re in Hong Kong apparently.
Greg tried to get their details but the solicitors wouldn’t disclose them.
That’s why Greg wanted to buy your house.
Everyone was terrified you’d find out what was wrong with it and lower your asking price or you’d find out after moving in and sell fast at a low rate. ”
I shake my head, the ins and outs of it all hard to take in. Aoife misconstrues my reaction.
“I know. Someone should have just told you. The estate agent should have told you. I promise you, babes, if, like, I had known it was you moving in, on your own, I’d have said something to you the day you looked around.
You were bound to find out eventually. And who’d wanna have to think about all that happening here while they eat their cereal every morning? ”
“I really wish you had told me before all this, Aoife,” I say, but as soon as I do I know. If I hadn’t moved into this awful house, perhaps Anna would never have been found. I look down at my phone, the blue dot still blinking. I need to go and find her. Now.
“Aoife. Matt has my cat, in his renovation house basement, I think, look.” I spin my phone around so she can see the blue dot flashing on the map.
“That’s Blue’s collar tag,” I tell her.
She studies the screen, then looks back at me. “Wow. If it wasn’t for him looking after his sister’s baby, I would have serious concerns about this fella.”
“Hang on,” I blurt, a terrifying thought suddenly forming. “Have you ever actually seen Matt’s sister?”
“No, but Lucy Kiefler told me what he’s doing. It’s kind of sweet,” she adds, with a concessionary tilt of the head. “So, what’s the play? To get the cat back?”
She hands me back my phone, the blue dot of the GPS blinking at me.
“I’m going to go get him,” I say.
“Okay, and what, like, you need a wing woman?”
I’m surprised by her unquestioning willingness to help, but then she doesn’t quite seem like the average person. But she does sound like she’s been through a lot to get where she is—I have no trouble imagining that she’s been in stranger situations.
“Yeah. I think I need to go in there and see if the signal is definitely coming from his basement, but I don’t feel entirely safe doing that,” I say, an idea forming in my mind. “If you could just knock on his door ten minutes or so after I go in?”
“Yes,” Aoife agrees. “I’ll say I need you for something. I do actually need help moving an armchair upstairs.”
I pause, momentarily wondering if Aoife is really the best choice to help in a situation like this. But Arabella and Pam aren’t home, and I realize, with a horrid thump, that the person I would have called is Matt.