then the second, I’d thought it had character. Now, just for a moment, the odd arrangement of windows reminded me of a beaten face, with an eye pushed up over a badly bruised cheek, the skull injured and lopsided. I shook my head and the image disappeared. But an ominous feeling remained.
“Come on, then,” I said quietly.
Outside the car, the day was still and quiet. With no breeze to move the warm air, we were in a capsule of silence. But the world was humming softly as we approached the house, and it felt to me as though the windows were watching us, or perhaps something just out of sight behind the glass. I turned the key in the lock and opened the door, and stale air wafted out. For a second it smelled as though the house had been sealed for far longer than it had been, perhaps even with something left rotting inside, but then all I could detect was the bleachy scent of cleaning products.
Jake and I walked through the house, opening doors and cupboards, turning lights on and off, drawing and closing curtains. Our footsteps echoed; otherwise, the silence was absolute now. But as we worked our way through each room, I couldn’t shake the sensation that we were not alone. That someone else was here, hiding just out of sight, and that if I turned at the right moment I’d see a face peering around a doorframe. It was a stupid, irrational feeling, but it was there. And it wasn’t helped by Jake. He was excited, moving quickly from room to room, but every now and then I’d catch a slightly puzzled look on his face, as though he had been expecting to find something that wasn’t here.
“Is this my room, Daddy?”
What was going to be his bedroom was on the second floor, raised up from the landing outside, so that his window was smaller than the rest: the eye staring out across the field from above the swollen cheek.
“Yes.” I ruffled his hair. “Do you like it?”
He didn’t reply, and I stared down at him nervously. He was gazing around, lost in thought.
“Jake?” I said.
He looked up at me.
“Is this really ours?”
“Yes,” I said. “It is.”
And then he hugged my legs—so suddenly that it almost knocked me off balance. It was as though I’d shown him the best present he’d ever seen and he’d been worried he might not be able to keep it. I crouched down so we could embrace more properly. The relief I felt was palpable, and suddenly that was all that mattered. My son was happy to be here, and I’d done something good for him, and nothing else was important. I stared over his shoulder at the open door and the landing beyond. If it still felt like something was just around the corner there, I knew it was just my imagination.
We were going to be safe here.
We were going to be happy.
And for the first week, we were.
* * *
At the time, I stood looking at a newly assembled bookcase, marveling at my industry. DIY had never been a strong point of mine, but I knew this was something Rebecca would have wanted me to do, and I imagined her pressed up behind me now, with the side of her face against my back and her arms around my chest. Smiling to herself. You see? You can do this. And while it was only a small taste of success, even that was an unusual feeling recently, and I liked it.
Except, of course, I was still alone.
I began filling the shelves.
Because that was another of the things Rebecca would have done, and even though this new house was about Jake and me moving on, I still wanted to honor that. You always put out the books, she told me once. That’s when it starts to feel like home. She had never been happier than when reading. There had been so many warm, contented evenings, with the two of us curled up at different ends of the couch, me writing as best I could on my laptop, her lost in novel after novel. Over the years we had accumulated hundreds of books, and I set to work unpacking them now, sliding each one carefully into place.
And then it came to my own. The shelves beside my computer desk were reserved for copies of my four novels, along with the various foreign translations. It felt ostentatious to have them on display,