Alix watches her husband in the kitchen, his hair still wet from the shower, the back of his shirt stuck to his skin – she’s never understood why he doesn’t dry himself properly before he gets dressed – drinking coffee from his favourite mug and nagging the children to move faster, eat up, get their shoes on. He’s acting as if it’s a normal Monday, but it is not a normal Monday. It is the Monday after his second bender in a row. The Monday after he failed to come home yet again and appeared once more, bedraggled and pitiful, on a Sunday afternoon, stinking of the night before. It is a Monday when Alix has started seriously wondering about the future of their marriage again. If she keeps wondering about the future of their marriage in this way, this could well be the Monday that marks the beginning of the end. Nathan has always been a walking list of pros and cons, from the very first time she met him. She’d even written a list after their third date to help her decide whether or not she should carry on seeing him. His behaviour these last two weekends has suddenly added a huge weight to the cons column, which is bad because the pros have always been quite slight. Being a good dancer, for example. Great on a second date, but not so important fifteen years down the road with two children, two careers and a future to worry about.
At eight fifteen Nathan leaves. He calls out his goodbyes from the hallway. It’s been a long time since they habitually kissed when leaving the house. Ten minutes after that, Alix walks the children to school. Leon is grumpy. Eliza is hyper.
Alix walks between them, looking at her phone, checking her emails, looking at websites for the puppy she has promised they will get some time this year, an Australian Shepherd that should, ideally, have mismatched eyes and hence is proving impossible to find, about which Alix is secretly relieved. She hasn’t got space in her head right now for a puppy, as much as she misses having a dog in the house.
She’s just finished recording the thirtieth episode of All Woman ; it’s launching next week and then after that she wants to try something new. The theme has run its course and she’s ready for a new challenge, but she’s still waiting for inspiration to strike and her diary is empty and an empty diary is as stressful as a full diary when it comes to a career.
The children are gone a few minutes later, sucked into the maelstrom of the playground, and Alix turns to head home. After a cloudy morning, the sun suddenly breaks through and dazzles her. She delves into her handbag, looking for her sunglasses, and then, when she’s found them, she looks up and sees a woman standing very close to her. The woman is immediately familiar. She thinks for a brief moment that she must be a mother from the school and then it hits her.
‘Oh,’ she says, folding down the arms of her glasses. ‘Hello! You’re the woman from the pub. My birthday twin!’
The woman looks surprised, almost theatrically so. ‘Oh, hello!’ she parrots. ‘I thought you looked familiar. Wow!’
‘Are you – do you have children here?’ Alix gestures at the school.
‘No! Well, at least, not any more. They did come here but left a long time ago. They’re twenty-one and twenty-three.’
‘Oh. Proper grown-ups!’
‘Yes, they certainly are.’
‘Boys? Girls?’
‘Two girls. Roxy and Erin.’
‘Do they still live at home?’
‘Erin does, the oldest. She’s a bit of a recluse, I suppose you might call her. And Roxy – well, she left home when she was quite young. Sixteen.’
‘Sixteen. Wow! That is young. I’m Alix, by the way.’ She offers her her hand to shake.
‘Josie,’ the woman replies.
‘Nice to meet you, Josie. And who’s this?’ she asks, noticing a tiny caramel-and-cream-coloured dog on a lead at Josie’s feet.
‘This is Fred.’
‘Oh, he’s adorable! What is he?’
‘He’s a Pomchi. Or at least, that’s what they told me. But I’m not so sure now he’s full-grown. I think he might be more of a mix than that. I do wonder about the place we got him from – I’m not entirely sure they were kosher, you know, now I think back on it. I keep meaning to get one of those DNA tests. But then, you know, I just look at him and I think, whatever.’
‘Yes,’ Alix agrees. ‘He’s gorgeous whatever he is. I love dogs.’
‘Do you have one?’
‘No. Not at the moment. We lost our girl three years ago and I haven’t quite been able to get my head around replacing her. But I have been looking. The kids, you know, they’re at that age where I think having a dog will be really good for them: coming into adolescence, the teenage years. Teeny was my dog, the dog I had before I had kids. This one would be for them. But we’ll see.’
She reaches down to pet the dog, but it backs away from her.
‘Sorry,’ says Josie, overly apologetically.
‘Oh,’ says Alix, ‘he’s shy. That’s fair enough.’
Alix glances at Josie and sees that she is staring at her meaningfully. It makes her feel uncomfortable for a moment but then Josie’s face breaks into a small smile and Alix sees that she is, as she’d thought on the night they met in the pub, quietly, secretly pretty: neat teeth, rose-petal lips, a small Roman nose that gives her face something extra. Her hair is hazel brown and wavy, parted to the side and tied back. She’s wearing a floral-print T-shirt with a blue denim skirt and has a handbag also made of blue denim. Alix notices that the dog’s collar and lead are blue denim too and senses a theme. Some people have that, she ponders, a repeat motif, some defining aesthetic tic that somehow makes them feel protected. Her friend’s mother only bought things that were purple, she recalls. Everything. Purple. Even her fridge.
‘Anyway,’ Alix says, unfolding her sunglasses and putting them on. ‘I’d better get on. Nice to see you again.’
She turns to leave, but then Josie says, ‘There’s something I’d like to talk to you about actually. If you’ve got a minute. Nothing important. Just … to do with us being birthday twins. That’s all.’ She smiles apologetically and Alix smiles back.
‘Oh,’ she replies. ‘Now?’
‘Yes. If you have a minute?’
‘I’m so sorry, I can’t really now. But maybe another time.’
‘Tomorrow?’
‘No, not tomorrow.’
‘Wednesday?’
‘Oh God, Josie, I’m sorry, I really am. But I’m busy pretty much the rest of the week, to be honest.’
She starts to leave again but Josie places a hand gently on her arm. ‘Please,’ she says. ‘It would really mean a lot to me.’
There is a sheen of tears across Josie’s eyes; she sounds desperate somehow, and Alix feels a chill pass through her. But she sighs softly and says, ‘I have a spare hour tomorrow afternoon. Maybe we could grab a quick coffee.’
Josie’s face drops. ‘Oh,’ she says. ‘I work afternoons.’
Alix feels a sense of relief that maybe she has swerved the commitment. But then Josie says, ‘Listen. I work at that alterations place, by Kilburn tube. Why don’t you come along tomorrow – we can chat then? It won’t take longer than a few minutes, I promise.’
‘What is it that you want to chat about?’
Josie bites her lip, as if considering sharing a secret. ‘I’ll tell you tomorrow,’ she replies. ‘And if you’ve got anything that needs altering, bring it along. I can give you a twenty per cent discount.’
She smiles, just once, and then she walks away.
Josie works part-time: midday to five-thirty, four days a week. She’s worked at Stitch for nearly ten years, ever since it originally opened. It was her first-ever job, at the age of thirty-five. She’d always made clothes for the girls when they were little, and given that she left school at sixteen with virtually no exams and then spent the next ten years looking after her husband and raising children, she didn’t have many skills to draw on when she finally decided it was time for her to do something outside the house. She could have worked with children – in a school, maybe. But she’s not great with people and this job is not public-facing. She sits behind her sewing machine next to a huge sash window which overlooks the tube tracks and rattles in its frame every time a train goes past. She chats with the other women occasionally, but mainly she listens to Heart FM on her earphones. She spent the whole of today sewing large fake-fur beards on to printed images of a groom’s face on twenty stag night T-shirts. They were all off to Riga apparently. But usually it’s just hems and waistbands.
Walter is sitting at the dining table in the window when she gets home, staring at the laptop. He turns and hits her with a single smile when he hears her. ‘Hello,’ he says. ‘How was work?’
‘Work was fine.’ She thinks about telling him about the fake-fur beards but decides that, really, it would lose in the telling.
‘How was your day?’ she replies, scooping the dog into her arms and kissing his head.
‘Quiet. Did some research into the Lake District.’
‘Oh, that’s nice. Find anything good?’
‘Not really. Everything seems so expensive. Feels like one big rip-off.’
‘Well, remember, I’ve had my windfall. We could probably stretch it a bit further this year.’
‘It’s not about whether we can afford it,’ he says. ‘Don’t like feeling ripped off.’
Josie nods and puts the dog back on the floor. Half the reason the dog is not a real Pomchi is that Walter refused to pay the going rate for a real Pomchi and was determined he could get a bargain. She’d just gone along with it.
‘What shall we have for dinner?’ she says. ‘There’s loads in the fridge. Some of those readymade meatballs. I could make a pasta?’
‘Yeah. That’d be great. Put some chilli in it. I fancy something spicy.’
Josie smiles. ‘I’m just going to get changed first,’ she says. ‘Then I’ll start.’
She walks past Erin’s room to get to hers. The door is shut as it always is. She can hear the squeak of the gaming chair in Erin’s room, the expensive one they bought her for her sixteenth birthday that’s held together with duct tape these days. Walter puts WD40 on the base every few months, but it still squeaks when she moves. Josie can hear the click of the buttons on the controller, and the muted sound effects leaking from Erin’s headphones. She thinks about knocking on Erin’s door, saying hi, but she can’t face it. She really can’t face it. The stench in there. The mess. She’ll check in on her tomorrow. Leave her to it for now. She touches the door with her fingertips and keeps walking. She acknowledges the guilt and lets it pass away like a cloud.
But as soon as the guilt about Erin passes, her concern about Roxy turns up; they always come in a pair. She picks up the photo of Erin and Roxy that sits on top of the chest of drawers in her bedroom, taken when they were about three and five. Fat cheeks, long eyelashes, cheeky smiles, colourful clothes.
Who would have guessed? she thinks to herself. Who would ever have guessed?
And then she thinks of Alix Summer’s children this morning in their Parkside Primary uniforms: the girl on a snazzy scooter, the boy scuffing his feet against the pavement, their smooth skin, and their hair that she knows without going anywhere near them will smell of clean pillowcases and children’s shampoo. Young children don’t exude smells. That happens later. The shock of scalpy hair, of acrid armpits, cheesy feet. And that’s just the beginning of it. She sighs at the thought of the sweet children she once had and resets the photo on the chest.
She changes and washes her hands, heads back to the kitchen, opens the fridge, takes the meatballs from the fridge, a can of chopped tomatoes and some dried herbs from the cupboard, chops an onion, watches Walter tapping at the buttons on his laptop in the window, sees a bus pass by, registers the faces of the passengers on board, thinks about Roxy, thinks about Erin, thinks about the way her life has turned out.
When the meatballs are simmering in their tomato sauce, she covers the pan and opens another cupboard. She pulls out six jars of baby food; they’re the bigger jars for 7 month + babies. They’re mainly meat and vegetable blends. But no peas. Erin will not countenance peas. Josie takes off the lids and microwaves them. When they’re warm, but not hot – Erin will not eat hot food – she stirs them through and places them on a tray with a teaspoon and a piece of kitchen roll. She takes a chocolate Aero mousse from the fridge and adds that to the tray; then she takes the tray to the hallway and leaves it outside Erin’s room. She doesn’t knock. Erin won’t hear. But at some point between Josie leaving the food and Josie going to bed tonight the baby-food jars will reappear empty outside Erin’s room.
Another bus passes by. It’s empty. Walter closes his laptop and gets to his feet. ‘I’ll take the dog out, before we eat?’
‘Oh! That’s OK, I can do that.’
‘No. It’s good for me. Fresh air. Exercise.’
‘But are you all right picking up after him?’
‘Just kick it in the gutter.’
‘You can’t do that, Walter.’
‘Course I can. His shits are like rabbit droppings anyway.’
‘Please pick it up,’ she beseeches. ‘It’s not nice leaving it there.’
‘I’ll see,’ he says, taking the dog’s lead from Josie’s outstretched hand. ‘I’ll see.’
From the front window she watches them leave. Fred stops to sniff the base of a tree and Walter pulls him along impatiently, his eyes on his phone. Josie wishes she was the one walking Fred instead. Dogs need to sniff things. It’s important.
She stirs the meatballs on the hob and then adds a few flakes of dried chilli. She pours water into a pot and puts it on to boil. She turns on her phone and goes to the browser and types in ‘Roxy Fair’. Then she goes into ‘Tools’ and sets the timings to ‘Past week’ so that she only sees the most recent results. She does this twice a day, every day. Every time there is nothing. Roxy has most probably changed her name by now, she knows that. But still, you can’t stop looking. You can’t just give up.
At 8 p.m. Walter returns with the dog.
‘Did he poo?’
‘No.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Very sure.’
He’s lying, but Josie isn’t going to push it.
They eat their spaghetti and meatballs in front of the TV. Walter makes out it’s really spicy and knocks back his pint of water theatrically and Josie laughs indulgently. They get up to go to bed at ten o’clock. The empty baby-food jars are outside Erin’s room. Josie takes them to the kitchen and rinses them for the recycling. Walter is brushing his teeth in the bathroom, naked from the waist up. He looks like an old man from behind. It’s easy to forget what he once was. Josie gets into her pyjamas and waits for Walter to finish in the bathroom, then she goes in and brushes her teeth, brushes her hair, washes her face, smooths cream into her skin and on to her hands. In bed she picks up her book, opens it and reads for a while.
At 11 p.m. she turns off her bedside light and says goodnight to Walter.
She closes her eyes and pretends to sleep.
So does Walter.
After half an hour she feels him leave the bed. She hears his feet soft against the carpet. Then the creak of the floorboards in the hallway. Then he is gone, and she stretches out across the empty bed, knowing that it is hers for the rest of the night.
The screen shows an empty floral armchair in a large open-plan studio.
From the side of the screen a young woman appears.
She wears green dungarees over a cropped black vest top and has tattooed sleeves on her arms.
She sits on the armchair, crosses her legs and smiles at the camera.
The text at the bottom of the screen says:
Amy Jackson, Josie and Walter Fair’s neighbour
Amy, laughing: ‘We called her Double Denim.’
Interviewer, off-screen: ‘And why was that?’
Amy: ‘Because everything she wore was denim. Literally. Everything.’
Screen switches briefly to a photo of Josie Fair in a denim skirt and jacket.
Interviewer: ‘When did you move into the flat next door to Josie and Walter Fair?’
Amy: ‘I suppose it was late 2008. The same year I had my first baby.’
Interviewer: ‘And what did you think about Josie and Walter, as neighbours?’
Amy: ‘We thought they were really kind of weird. I mean, he was OK. We thought he was her dad, when we first moved in. He always nodded and said hello if we passed him in the hallway. But she was really unfriendly, acted like she was a bit better than anyone? But then sometimes I wondered if maybe she was just being standoffish because she was trying to keep people out of her business, you know? If maybe there was stuff going on, behind closed doors.’
Interviewer: ‘Did you ever meet their daughters?’
Amy: ‘Yes. When we first moved in we used to see both the girls quite a lot. I guess Erin was about twelve, Roxy must have been about nine, ten? It was a loud household. A lot of shouting. A lot of slammed doors. And then one day, I guess about five or six years ago, it suddenly went really quiet. And we never really knew why. Until all this happened.’
Interviewer: ‘All this?’
Brief pause.
Amy: ‘Yes. All this. All the killings. All the deaths.’
Screen fades to black.