Page 51 of Don't Let Him In

“Right, and Jane Trevally is totally the first person you’d trust to remember anything.”

“Actually, yes, when it comes to Dad. And you haven’t met her, OK. She’s cool. She’s not like we thought she was. I trust her.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t think a lighter that Dad might or might not have had when he was, what, like twenty-three, twenty-four, is enough to base a whole opinion of the guy on.”

Ash sighs. She hasn’t even mentioned the pacifier clip and the poo bag to Arlo because Nick already has stories for those. She rolls her head. She’s tired.

“I’m going to bed,” she says, sighing. “Night, little brother.”

She pats his head, and he pretends to duck and dive, and then laughs and pats her head back and says, “Night, big sis. Love ya.”

“Love you too.”

On her way up to bed, she stops at the picture window in the living room that overlooks the channel, and she stares out into the night sky, at the moon reflecting bluey-white off the murky surface of the sea and the straggle of stars and the glow of the Christmas lights on the high street down below. She feels an ache in her gut, thinking of the twenty-five eves of Christmas that have come before this one and the slightly different person she was on each and every one of them, but particularly the version of herself who stood here two Christmases ago in the throes of madness, still hiding it from her family. She remembers her father coming to her right here that Christmas, his hands on her shoulders, the smell of wine on his breath, and saying to her, “None of us is perfect, you know, angel, not even me.” He’d laughed drily and squeezed her shoulders. “Don’t be scared to talk to us. We all make mistakes. Believe me. We really do.”

Six months later, the police had arrived at the flat she was sharing with two other girls near Greenwich. She couldn’t remember much after that, other than the way her flatmates had looked at her, the brittle airof shock and slight disgust. Her father, of course, when she spoke to him on the phone afterward, had said simply, “Come home, angel. Just come home.”

And now here she is again, obsessing over another middle-aged man, maybe about to blow up her life again. But she can’t help it. She has to protect her mother, at any cost. She sighs and turns and is about to head up to bed when her eye is caught by the gifts from Nick Radcliffe under the “Christmas yucca.” She should wait, she knows, but she doesn’t want to wait. What, she wonders, has Nick Radcliffe bought her for Christmas?

She picks up the gift and takes it to her room, where she sits cross-legged on her bed and unwraps it. And there it is. Another pink box. But unlike the box that the lighter came in, this one has a small rose embossed on it. She runs her finger across it and it takes her back suddenly and surprisingly to another moment, and inside her head she is running her finger across the same embossed rose and she cannot remember where or when, but she knows she has seen this rose before, and she has seen this precise shade of pink before, not just on the box in which the Zippo arrived and not just in Marcelline’s office at work, but somewhere else entirely. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries to bring it to mind, but she just can’t. Then she opens her eyes and pulls the lid off the box. Inside there is a row of three small soaps, each embedded with flower petals, all tucked into pale pink tissue paper. She lifts them to her nose and sniffs. They smell incredible. Ash loves soap. She read somewhere that soap is better for your skin than all the man-made unguents and potions that are designed to clean skin, and ever since then she’s made a beeline for interesting soaps wherever she goes. And these, she knows, are top quality, handmade and probably very expensive. She slips the lid back on the box and stares again at the rose. But still, she cannot remember where she saw it.

FORTY-SIX

Are you serious?”

Ash looks at her mother in horror.

“Ash,” says Nina in a tone of voice that suggests she has reached the end of her tether over this exchange within thirty seconds of it beginning. “He is all alone. He’s already spent Christmas Day alone. We’ve all had the most wonderful time together, and now I want to share Boxing Day with someone who is important to me, and someone who has nobody else to share it with.”

“But—” Ash stops herself speaking as she catches the look on her mother’s face. “Fine. Whatever.”

And then, there he is, an hour later, all primped and groomed, wearing a red sweater, clutching his leather holdall, an expensive-looking scarf wrapped around his neck. He smiles almost sheepishly as he makes his way into the kitchen, where Ash sits with Arlo. “Hello again,” he says, leaning in to embrace Ash gently, wafting his expensive aftershave all over her, then shaking hands with Arlo and giving him a fist bump. Nina is behind him, smiling the way she smiles when he’s around, glowing the way she glows.

“How was Christmas?” he asks them both.

They tell him it was great and then Ash says, “Oh, thank you for the beautiful soaps, by the way. They’re stunning. Where did you get them from?”

“Oh!” He smiles happily. “I’m glad you liked them. Wasn’t sure if soap was a bit of an old-lady gift for a young woman like you. But I got them from a tiny shop in Mayfair, near the bar.”

“Oh,” she says. “Right. That makes sense. Do you buy a lot of stuff from there?”

“Well, I wouldn’t say a lot, no. But I have bought gifts from there before.”

“Right. Because it’s the same as the box that you sent the Zippo in.”

He looks confused for a moment, but then simply nods and says, “Possibly. Yes.”

And there it is, yet again, another conversation that for Ash is loaded with sinister meaning, but which is closed down with a tiny hydraulic puff of a response from Nick.

“I was thinking of coming to your bar in the New Year,” she says breezily. “I can’t believe you haven’t invited us yet!”

“Hmm,” he says. “Yes. There’s a reason why I haven’t invited you. It’s a bit…” He turns his eyes to Nina, and Ash sees a wave of uncertainty pass across her face—this is clearly news to her too. “Listen,” he says, “there’s been a bit of a situation at the wine bar. I haven’t been able to talk about it because it’s kind of a legal thing. But as of a week ago, I’m not actually a co-owner there anymore. So, yes, that’s why I’ve not invited you all there. And that’s why I’m scouting about, looking for new ventures, new things. Like Bangate Cove.”

There’s a tiny beat of uncomfortable silence when Nick finishes speaking. It’s the first time one of Nick’s explanations has left a bubble of space in which doubt might grow.

Dead fiancées, abortive careers, name changes, wedding rings, pacifier clips, these were all things that could be thrown into the ether and batted away with not even a ripple. But this—this is bigger. He has fallen out with the people he worked with. He lied about why he had Christmas off. He kept something from Nina that he should have told her. And now that it sits stacked on top of all the other,smaller, more easily explained-away omissions, it looks extra big and ungainly.

Ash exchanges glances with her mother and then with Arlo before Nina bounces into the breach with, “Oh, so you’re still thinking about Bangate?”

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