While Lydia may be a quiet, introverted, solitary soul, Matt was all sharp edges, confrontational one moment and surly the next. Helen couldn’t remember a moment in the last seven years in which she had felt any sort of affection or fondness from him. His loyalty had always been to his mother, despite Hugh being the injured party when his first marriage dissolved. Matt had always viewed Helen as an imposter in his family.

Ironic considering he was living in her family’s house. Perhaps that was part of it. If they lived in his father’s house, he may find her easier to stomach.

Helen watched the window without really seeing it, her mind churning over the characters behind those walls, the ones physically present and living out their lives, encased in the same brick and cement exterior that she found herself stifled by, and those that were merely ghosts imprinting on the rooms, like the faded shape left behind by an old picture frame when a family leaves.

She jolted unexpectedly when she realised someone was watching her from Matt’s window. Merely a shape against the light, but she knew instinctively it was Diana.

It felt like she was staring right at her, naked and exposed, even though there was no way she could see her all the way down this end of the garden and sitting in shadow as Helen was.

She didn’t move for some time. Her skin felt prickly, like she’d been caught snooping, but Helen stared straight back, wanting to look away but finding she couldn’t.

She thought she could hear the ring of a bell, carrying on the breeze from the house.

The ring of a bicycle bell.

She pulled her eyes away from the window and stared towards the kitchen door. Was someone in there? The person who had left the bell for her to find. Had they come into her house? Where they there now, taunting her with the tinny sound? She froze, her heart thumping in her throat.

There it was again, barely audible but definitely there. But if there was someone in the house, Clive would’ve barked, alerted her.

Unless it was someone he knew. Someone inside the family.

She strained to listen again, but she heard nothing more other than the sounds of the sea in the distance, the waves calling and answering.

She looked back at Matt’s window, but the blind had been pulled again, blocking out the light and cutting her out.

*

Matt stood in the kitchen and stared at the bicycle bell on the table. He picked it up, turned it over in his hands, felt the weight of it. He pressed the lever, heard the metallic rasp of the ring and smiled. He could see his reflection in it, a distorted image of his face, gurning into the silver, making him look misshapen, deformed.

The smile froze.