I watched as the groups wove among each other along the street, joining and detaching like shoals. I hung at the back of the biggest one, trying to shrink myself beneath the sheet, hoping no-one would turn around and say, ‘Who the hell are you?’ But nobody did. I felt a tug as some little girl grabbed my dust sheet and pulled at it, but she laughed and spirited herself away and I managed to gather it back over myself before I was revealed. As we approached Thorn House, I experienced a moment of apprehension. What if Edward doesn’t answer the door? What will you do then? Take a hostage? You’ll get yourself arrested. Think, Samantha. Go home. Don’t do this. Don’t.
A little zombie stood on tiptoe to ring the bell but the door was already opening. They’d seen us coming. I hesitated, trying to stand behind one of the men at the back of the group despite the fact that my face was covered. Edward stood there beaming, a bowl of sweets held in one of his large, flat hands. I felt for my knife in my pocket. I had to be careful. I didn’t want to scare these kids.
‘Well, look at this!’ he exclaimed. ‘I see a Dracula and a mermaid and a scary-looking monster and, hello, who’s this?’
‘Frankenstein,’ a small voice said, dipping a hand in the bowl.
Edward’s smile broadened even more. ‘Well, of course, Frankenstein was the name of the Genevan student but we’ll overlook that for now, shall we?’
There was a ripple of laughter as he handed out more sweets. Some of the children were already running off. One of the fathers called out, ‘Mind the road!’
There was a soft click as I released the blade from the handle. ‘Happy Halloween!’ the little zombie yelled, taking his mother’s hand. They were starting to disperse. I moved forward, slowly, the dust sheet trailing on the ground behind. Edward looked up, slightly puzzled but smiling.
‘And who are you? The ghost of Christmas past? Here you go then. Even the adults need a sweet from time to t—’
His voice dropped off as I grabbed his hand, jerking him towards me. Startled, he dropped the bowl and it clattered to the ground, sweets spilling everywhere. My adrenaline had sharpened my focus and I pressed the tip of the blade into the webbing of skin between the thumb and forefinger. He yelped.
‘You’re coming over the road to my car,’ I said. ‘And you’re going to do it quickly.’
‘Edward?’ That was Mimi, walking into the hallway. She took in the scene, her husband standing too close to a ghost in a dirty white sheet with cigarette burns for eyes. She saw the spilled sweets, the bowl broken neatly into two halves. Her face flickered with worry.
‘It’s all right, love,’ Edward said, his voice slightly strangled. ‘You need to get another bowl before the next lot arrive. I’m just going to sort something out. Go on. Go on, dear.’
‘Alex wants another hot dog,’ she said flatly.
‘Tell him it’s fine. It’s fine, Mimi. Tell him he can hold the fort till I get back.’
I increased the pressure on the blade so that the tip pressed into his skin and pulled him towards me so that we could stumble together like two drunks, out the driveway and over the road. When we reached my car I opened the passenger door first and ushered him in. He still looked pale but had regained some of his composure and did so gracefully, even leaning over to unlock the driver’s-side door for me. I pulled off the dust sheet and slid in, snapping off the radio.
He looked down at the knife in my hand. ‘Carrying something like that around is going to get you in trouble one day,’ he said.
I’d never really thought about it like that. I’d always thought of it as protection. ‘Just tell me. Just tell me and I’ll go. Why were you at the churchyard on the night of the ninth?’
He sighed, long and loud. ‘I’ll tell you what I told the police. It isn’t unusual to see my car down at St Mary’s. I do a lot of work there, both for the youth group and the preservation of the woodland on the church ground. I raised a lot of money to get the roof of that church repaired just last year. I’m there a lot. But I wasn’t doing any of that on that particular night. I parked there, yes. But I was visiting an address nearby.’
‘Go on.’
He looked out through the windscreen. ‘Mimi and I, we’ve been together a long time. Like most people our age we married young and kids came not long after. So sometimes it’s difficult to . . . keep the momentum going. We haven’t told the boys that we’ve been having marriage counselling because it’s not for them to know, but that’s how things are and that’s what we’re doing. Once a fortnight we visit a woman down there who has a studio in her home and she talks us through our problems. Is that enough information for you? Or would you like all the gory details?’
‘I thought—’
‘I know what you thought. You thought someone took your girl, maybe by force. But if you think that, you don’t know her at all, do you?’ He leaned closer. ‘Mimi liked her a lot, your daughter. Said being headstrong and stubborn were qualities that would stand her in good stead as a woman. She never had a problem with Edie in class. So maybe the problem wasn’t Edie, have you thought about
