And I knew I couldn’t escape from this place by myself.
I was in the dark market.
But it wasn’t just twenty-five-year-old memories that filled the house now. There was also the silence hanging in every room, which seemed heavier and more judgmental by the day. What had my mother meant by what she’d said? What was in the house?
I tried to tell myself it didn’t matter—that the past was something that could be left alone—but there were moments when it seemed like the house and I were engaged in a war of attrition, and I couldn’t help but feel that on some level it was winning. And that something bad was going to happen when I found out what.
Red hands everywhere.
It was on the fourth day that I saw her.
* * *
I was sitting in the pub at the time, a half-finished beer on the table in front of me. I reached out to pick up the bottle, running my finger over the cool condensation on the glass, and I saw the door across from me open.
A woman walked in, framed by a wedge of warm afternoon sunshine. I only caught a sideways glimpse of her face, and the half jolt of recognition was left unfulfilled when she immediately turned her back to me and walked to the bar.
Is that…?
She was wearing blue jeans and a smart, black leather jacket, her brown hair hanging halfway down her back. I watched her fumble with her handbag and purse. I waited, telling myself to keep calm, that it couldn’t really be her. The barmaid brought a white wine I hadn’t noticed being ordered, and then the woman clipped her handbag shut and turned around, scanning the pub for somewhere to sit.
For a few seconds it was hard to believe my eyes.
Jenny looked different now, of course, and yet somehow the same. I could still see the outline of the fifteen-year-old girl I’d known: forty now, her face sketched over by life, but still immediately recognizable.
The years fell away.
Perhaps it would be better if she doesn’t see you.
But then Jenny’s gaze met mine, and moved briefly over before returning again. She frowned. I could see her having the same thought I had.
Is that…?
And then she smiled.
God, her smile hadn’t changed at all.
I felt a spread of warmth in my chest at the sight of it, and any fear or reservation about seeing her again disappeared as she walked over, the heels of what looked like expensive boots clicking against the wooden floor.
“Good God,” she said. “Hello, there, stranger.”
“Hello. Wow.”
“Wow indeed. How long has it been?”
I tried to work it out. She had visited me at college a few times, but it had started to feel awkward, and at some point we’d lost contact.
“Twenty years?” I said.
“That’s outright madness.”
She evaluated me quietly for a moment. I wondered what she saw. My own appearance—shabby clothes; disheveled hair; tired eyes—must surely have provided a stark contrast to her own.
“Okay to join you?” she said.
“Of course.”
She sat down across from me and put her wine on the table.
“I suppose it isn’t actually a surprise to see you,” she said. “I’d heard you were visiting.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”
“Yeah. Small community, news travels fast—that kind of thing. Always has done, always will. You know what this place is like.”
“I do.”
“I would have gotten in touch, but, well … you know.”
Yes. I remembered how things had ended between us.
“I know that too,” I said.
She smiled sadly. There was a moment of silence, and then she looked at her glass and rubbed her fingertip slowly around the rim.
“Listen, I was very sorry to hear about your mother.”
“Thank you.”
The response came automatically, but I realized how unqualified I was to give it. Another thing I’d been suppressing these past few days was the guilt, but with Jenny it felt safe to let a little of it out.
“I don’t know how I feel,” I said. “I should have been here, but my mother and I hadn’t spoken much recently. I didn’t even know how ill she was. I’ve not been back to Gritten since I left.”
Jenny sipped her wine.
“It feels like I’m here all the time,” she said. “I come back to see Mom pretty often. You remember my mom, right?”
“Of course. How is she?”
Jenny nodded to herself. “She’s good, yeah. Old, but good.”
“Better than the alternative.”
“That’s true. God, you’ve really not been back here?”
“No,” I said. “I went away to college and that was it.”
“How come?”
“Too many bad memories here.”
“I get that.” She was silent for a moment. “But some good ones too, right?”
She risked a smile, and despite myself I returned it. It was difficult to think of it like that, but yes, there were good memories here too. Moments that, looking back on them objectively, had been filled with light. The problem was that what happened later cast such a shadow they were hard to see.
“It turns out I still have your book, by the way,” I said.
“My book?” It took her a second. “Oh—The Nightmare People?”
“That’s the one.”
She had brought it in to school for me the day after we’d met: a worn anthology of classic horror stories. The spine was as weathered as tree bark, and the price—50¢—was written in faded pencil on the top corner of the first page. Not a lot of money, of course, and she gave it to me with the same apparent lack of concern she’d exhibited the day before, but I felt the book was important to her, and I had determined there and then to take care of it. If it was in danger of falling apart, then it wasn’t going to happen on my watch.
And I supposed I had done that.
“I think my mother was reading it,” I said.
“Yeah, but more importantly, have you finished it yet?”
I smiled. “Many times.”
“Do you still write?”
“Nah. You know what they say. Those who can’t, teach.”
I picked up my beer and told her a little about my work at the college and the classes I taught.
“What about you?” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “I still do all of that. Art and music too. But mostly writing. I’ve had a few books published.”
“Wow.”
I was pleased for her; it was good that one of us had kept hold of that particular dream. And as I leaned back in my chair, I realized how good it was to speak to her again, even after all this time. She looked great, and I was amazed by how happy she seemed. I was glad that things had turned out well for her—that she had gotten away from Gritten in the end and was living a good life.
“Wow,” I said again. “I hadn’t seen. I’ll have to look you up.”
She tapped her nose secretively. “I publish under a pseudonym.”
“Which you’re not going to tell me?”
“No. Anyway, that’s work stuff taken care of. What about family? Wife and kids?”
I shook my head. I’d had a string of relationships over the years, several serious, but none of them had worked out in the end. It would be too dramatic to say the women involved had sensed some kind of darkness in my past, but the shadow of what had happened did fall over me from time to time. I didn’t let people in; at my worst, I pushed them away. The need to avoid addressing it was always more urgent, more important, than the relationships I found myself in, and I knew deep down that was no basis for anything long-term.