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Back The Family Next Door Save as PDF
Chapters (117)
  1. Also by
  2. Title Page
  3. Copyright Page
  4. Epigraph
  5. PROLOGUE
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 3
  9. 4
  10. 5
  11. 6
  12. 7
  13. 8
  14. 9
  15. 10
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  30. 25
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  32. 27
  33. 28
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  114. 109
  115. 110
  116. Teaser chapter
  117. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

He’d been called to an elderly woman’s flat by her alcoholic son. No response for a few days. His colleague had stayed with the man while French had broken a kitchen window. At first, he’d assumed her blinds were black, pulled tight against the cold glare of daylight, but the glass had been darkened by flies. They’d crawled over his arm as he’d shattered the pane.

As soon as the air from inside the flat had reached him, he’d known that she was dead. The weather was stone-crackingly cold, but the windows had been shut, the gas fire blazing. She had died sitting in front of it.

He had flicked her a brief glance, disturbed by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come. Her nose was not where it ought to be, and it had taken him a minute to register her face had slipped off in the fierce heat, and it was not her nose, but her tongue.

She’d been wearing a nightgown with pockets, filled with cash she had squirreled away to give to her grandchildren as Christmas presents. The notes had stuck together with the fluids that had leaked from her decomposing body. French had collected them in an evidence bag and stashed them in his locker. The stink had permeated the station and put him off his fish and chips.

That night, the son had turned up at the station, half-drunk, demanding his mother’s money.

“I can’t give it to him,” muttered French to the desk sergeant. “It’s a public health hazard.”

The sergeant had shrugged. “Nothing we can do about. Legally, it belongs to him now.”

French still felt queasy when he remembered the stench that had risen from the damp notes as he had peeled them apart to count, and the idea of them being passed back and forth to customers in the pub.

But that was a long time ago. And this was now.

Because ten years later, lying on the bed, was another woman in her nightgown, and she was staring at him, eyes wide and fixed. Her arms were straight and stiff, hanging over the side of the coverlet, and her skin was blanched like a piece of freezer-burned meat.

Her face was painted, her cheeks stained pink, lips a deeper red. A few drops of water were visible on the carpet.

And she was unquestionably dead.

60

60

Now

I tried so hard and for so long.

I learned to garden. I planted and tended and watched life grow. I made things. I observed other people. I cooked and read and listened to the radio. Got on with the business of life.

And I tried to rub out the scars that both of my mothers—and you—had left upon my soul.