Just as that thought occurred to him, Holly looked up from the table and stared right into the camera. Which meant right into him. Never looking away.
Bob’s muffled voice came off camera. ‘Right. Sorted.’ He coughed a few times. ‘So … it’s 6:28 pm. Sunday November 4th, 2001 …’
He glanced at his sheet … Holly killed herself in the early hours of Thursday the 8th.
‘… we’re in number 29 Barley Street, in Menham, South London. Present are myself, Bob Hodges, and my wife, Joyce. And this is … can you introduce yourself, please? Full name, please.’
She nodded. Eyes fixed on Matt. ‘Hello. I’m Holly Wasson.’
He didn’t feel a chill, but rather he just felt something crack in his heart. At the way her eyes looked out at him, personally. Right through the lens, right down through the magnetic tape and across time. Through the phono-to-USB wire and up and out through the pixels of the screen. So that she was looking at Matt in his cosy little sanctuary.
She’d hang herself a few days later.
‘Age?’ Bob said.
‘Nine and three-quarters.’
He let out a long breath and took a longer swig.
‘Excellent,’ Bob said. ‘And can you tell me the first time you knew there might be some sort of presence in the house?’
Silence.
‘Holly?’
Silence and slow blinking. She bit her lip.
Matt heard the faint voice of Joyce Hodges, in the background. ‘You’re doing great, poppet. Now go ahead and answer. When was the first time you knew something was in this house?’
‘On Thursday,’ she nodded toward the walls. ‘When all these got messed up.’
Bob again. ‘You mean the animal pictures?’
‘Mm-hmm.’
‘And how were they messed up, exactly?’
She looked at them and tilted her head as if the walls were turning.
‘Holly?’
‘Oh, sorry …’ She sat upright again. ‘The pictures were all upside down. That was the first thing I remember. All the animals with their heads down.’
He went to sip a shot of beer as Bob moved onto a new question. Something about small holes dug in the garden. Matt stopped suddenly, glass rim resting on his mouth.
He hit pause.
Rewound a little.
Holly’s face rippled with the tracking.
‘The pictures were upside down,’ Holly said. ‘That’s the first thing I—’
Pause.
He thought for a moment, then quickly slid the log file back in front of him. He glanced across to Thursday Nov 1st and read the entry.
Dining room pictures (all of animals) removed and hung back on nails, inverted.
He grabbed a pen and his yellow pad.
Things to tell Larry: 2) Upside-down animal pictures in Barley Street AND school???
He unpaused her, and watched some more. Pulling out the final fold of papers as she spoke. Not the originals, but colour photocopies of drawings she’d made, mostly in what looked like crayon, and some in felt tip. There were five pictures, all with the same sort of image. A little girl, which looked like Holly, standing in a summer garden made of slashed lines of green felt tip. Each had a thick tree filled with birds. Each had butterflies floating around flowers. And each had one thing and one thing alone, which had used a black felt tip. A very tall figure, standing on its hind legs, with long thin ears springing up. No features, no face. Just a scribbled storm of black. In most of them, the figure stood by the tree. In one it was up in the branches, crouching. In one, the one he looked at for longest, it was holding her hand.
‘Black rabbit,’ he said and then the cabin lights went out.
Amelia started screaming in her room.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Rachel stopped brushing and sloshed the water around her mouth. When she spat it out it slapped into the sink. She noticed some tiny chunks of lasagne mince gathered on the white foam by the plug. Yuk. That was happening more and more these days. Like her teeth were getting gappier with each passing birthday. Maybe when she hit forty she’d be flossing and an entire banana might drop out.
She tried to smile at that, but such things were not in her vocabulary tonight. People could no more smile in Barley Street than they could breathe on the moon. She was standing in her old bathroom, fully dressed. Surrounded by walls of crooked tiles of dark mustard. Still lit only by that horrid fluorescent strip above the mirror, that flickered every few minutes with a buzz. The main light had no bulb in it, as usual. She always thought this room looked like the set from a seedy German play. She wasn’t sure exactly why she thought it had to be German, but the connection seemed utterly logical as a teenager and it still did now.
She rinsed the sink out and glanced at the bath, with the old moulded soap-holder and its lightning-fork crack across it. And the familiar arches of rust behind the taps. She pictured Holly sitting in there at five years old giggling while Rachel stood pouring water into her little cupped palms. Their cat Pob slinking around until they both sprinkled water at him and he sprang off. Laughter bouncing off the tiles. While weather-girl Mum had her arms folded as she leant against the door frame, smiling and humming out Disney songs.
If this was anybody else’s house, she’d have left her toothbrush on the side for the morning. But she didn’t like the thought of any of her stuff sitting here by itself. So she slipped it into her washbag, which scraped its metal
