Read the book: «The Stranger in Our Home»

The phone rang.

‘Caro?’ It was Steph. She’d promised to ring before she left the UK. I was back home in London and hadn’t heard a thing for days and now suddenly there she was.

‘Hi.’ I could hear crackling over the phone line.

‘Fancy a curry? My treat.’

I caught my breath. ‘That sounds great. When?’

‘Tonight? We need to talk.’ She named a restaurant.

‘Sure, what time?’

‘Seven.’

‘Okay.’

I put the phone down slowly. It felt strange talking to my sister like that, as if we were friends.

We met up, Steph and I, in a curry house behind Leicester Square. We chatted about not very much, avoiding anything to do with the funeral or our childhood.

‘My office is amazing, in one of those skyscrapers overlooking Central Park. I thought I’d faint when I first looked out of the window and realised how high we were!’

I found myself following each word, each lift of an eyebrow, each smile, wondering what Steph was really saying as she talked about her work, her apartment in New York, the glamour of Fifth Avenue boutiques and constant traffic, flashing advertising boards leaching light into a sleepless city sky. Look at me, she was saying, how fabulous my life is, how lucky I am – unlike you, my little sister. That’s what she was really saying, wasn’t she? I caught my bottom lip between my teeth. I didn’t want to feel like this. I wanted Steph to be my friend, to be my sister.

It was the end of the meal when Steph finally brought it up.

‘What about the house?’ she said.

‘Larkstone Farm?’

The house where we grew up. I couldn’t call it home. The waiter was hovering, leaning in to whisk away a plate, his eyes sliding down towards Steph’s long legs.

‘Yes. It’s sitting there empty. It’s not good for the place. And someone’s going to have to go through all that stuff, sort out the paperwork, ready the house for sale. Unless you want to move back up there?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s ours. Except I don’t want it. Why would I ever want to go back to that place!’ She sounded bitter. ‘Besides, my home is in the States now. I’m seeing this guy … But you – you could go back and live there.’ She hesitated. ‘If you wanted.’

‘Ours? I don’t get it. I mean, Elizabeth had a cousin, didn’t she? It wouldn’t come to us, surely? We were only her stepdaughters.’

‘No, that’s not how Dad arranged it. I went to see the lawyer. When Dad married Elizabeth, he set up a trust. Elizabeth didn’t own the house after he died. She had use of it whilst she was alive, but it reverts to us on her death.’

My sister’s words sank in. And then the thought flashed into my head: she’d been to see the lawyer, on her own? But then hadn’t I been avoiding it myself? I hadn’t wanted to think about the house, all that stuff that had once been Elizabeth’s, that had once been my dad’s.

‘We’ll inherit the house?’ I said. The two of us?

I sat up. I couldn’t quite believe what she was saying.

‘Yes. Except, like I said, I don’t want any of it. It’s been on my mind a lot ever since I found out, I didn’t know what to say to you. But I realise now that I really don’t need it. My life’s in New York and I have more than enough money. It’s the least I can do. Besides, the funeral was bad enough, I couldn’t bear to go back to the house itself, even for a short while.’

She fell silent. There was a moment when I thought she was going to say something else.

‘I don’t know what to say.’ My eyes searched hers.

She shrugged and then smiled.

‘It’s not much of a place, as I recall – probably in desperate need of attention, in the middle of nowhere. I don’t have time for a project like that. It’s yours, honestly. Sell it, keep it, rent it out, move in. I don’t mind. Whatever you want to do with it.’

Larkstone Farm. Compared to London, it was the middle of nowhere. In the wilds of Derbyshire. It wasn’t a working farm, not any more; I couldn’t remember whether it still had any land. Steph leaned across the table and topped up my glass of wine.

But live at Larkstone Farm? It seemed incredible that this should happen right now. I was effectively homeless, bunking down with my friend Harriet, except she’d already left for her new job in Berlin. I had a few more weeks till the notice on her flat ran out. She’d done me a favour, but I was still struggling to find somewhere else affordable.

‘I …’ I tried to gather my thoughts. ‘What did the lawyer say, did you tell him?’

‘I did. It’s entirely up to us what we do with the place. But whether you move in or sell up, it has to be cleared of all her stuff. And someone really should be there whilst that is happening, if only to keep an eye on things. If you want it, it’s yours, that’s all I’m saying. And I’d be glad not to worry about it.’

My mind leapt ahead. I could sell it, buy something smaller, closer to London, giving me some cash to fall back on when the commissions slowed down. Or I could live there whilst I decided what I wanted to do. Now that Elizabeth was gone, why shouldn’t I stay there? It was just a house. To live rent-free would be a huge relief. Did Steph really want to waive her inheritance?

And besides … Maybe I needed to go back, to see the place just one more time, to put the past behind me once and for all. Elizabeth was dead. I was never going back to Paul and I’d had more than enough of London with its sky-high rents and unaffordable houses. I could work wherever I was, couldn’t I?

The thought was exciting, the timing perfect.

‘Why don’t you think about it?’ said Steph.

Elizabeth had married my father when I was a baby, not long after my real mother died. I should have been young enough to think of her as my mother, but somehow I never did. She used to say how I screamed and screamed in her arms, wriggling to get out. Perhaps it was my fault. I had rejected Elizabeth before she’d ever rejected me. Then my father had died too, barely four years later, leaving Steph and me with Elizabeth, growing up at Larkstone Farm. Just the three of us.

As I sat at my painting table, back in Harriet’s basement flat, I could hardly bear to dwell on it. The house, my childhood, my old life in Derbyshire.

I looked up through the window, the one that faced the street. I could see the feet of the passers-by, boots and shoes slapping against the pavement, buggies rolling in the wet, listening to the steady swish of cars cruising down the road. The temperature had dropped since the funeral at the beginning of the month, the first bite of winter in November – so early.

Derbyshire was something I’d pushed to the back of my mind. There, where the rain fell straight and sharp, like needles on your back, punishing. In London it ran along the paving slabs, splashing into gullies, a smooth plane of water brimming with dirt, lapping at your feet. I’d never gone back, not after that first day I went to university. I’d never wanted to go back.

The laptop to my side chimed. I couldn’t resist a quick check. London, it was the life I’d chosen to lead, but it was hard being on my own, here in the midst of all these people.

It was an email from David, my agent.

Dear Caro. Great news, you’ve had an enquiry for a commission to illustrate for Cuillin Books. It’s a collection of fairy tales. Now that should be right up your street. The brief and the text are attached. You’ve got about three months to do it. Let me know what you think? D.

I wriggled in my seat and tapped a reply.

Dear David, that sounds promising. I’ll take a look and let you know.

I liked to play it cool, but the truth was it was unlikely I’d have turned it down, whatever it was. Fairy tales, though. He was right about that; I had a soft spot for fairy tales. I clicked on the file. Then I saw the title.

The Pear Drum and Other Dark Tales from the Nursery.

The Pear Drum.

My fingers halted in mid-air. I felt my stomach heave. It filled my head; the words, each letter a different colour like bulbs around a make-up mirror. And the thing itself, as vivid as the day I first saw it, my stepmother’s pear drum.

I snapped the laptop lid down onto its keyboard, stood up and walked away.

Later, I tried to view it dispassionately. The Pear Drum and Other Dark Tales from the Nursery. It was an odd title for a book of fairy tales. A bit of a mouthful and not the kind of thing you’d give to a young child. It seemed strange that it should appear in my inbox now, after Elizabeth’s funeral, prodding my memories of the past.

I closed my eyes, the words leaping out at me despite my attempts to distance myself. Pear Drum.

The pear drum was something I had deliberately buried in the past. But it was always there, a part of me I could not shift, hidden in a corner of my consciousness. Perhaps that was why I’d ended up in London – as far away from Derbyshire as possible. I was beyond that now. Time had passed.

I would have been about six years old when I first saw the pear drum. I wasn’t sure. The memories of my childhood had always been patchy, especially those first years. But this was perhaps my earliest memory. It was like a black curtain – before the pear drum, after the pear drum. I tried not to think about it too much.

We’d just come home, after some kind of family gathering. Elizabeth was dressed in black linen, pearls about her neck. Elegant – she’d always been elegant. She’d dropped her handbag onto the hall table and grabbed my tiny hand. She pulled me into my father’s old study, long painted fingernails overlapping about my wrist. The room was at the back of the house, behind the stairs. I knew it had been my father’s room from the pictures on the wall, the bookcase and the desk by the window. An armchair was positioned beside the fireplace, the stove blackened with age, the iron griddle top layered with dust. My stepmother didn’t normally use this room.

In the corner furthest away from the window stood a crate, large enough to hide a child in. I pulled back, reluctant to let myself be dragged any further.

‘Stop that caterwauling, Caroline!’ I must have been crying already. ‘It’s time I showed you something!’

Elizabeth let go of my wrist and I stood there shivering, the scent of her perfume conflicting with the lingering smell of old leather and damp unloved books. She was already dragging the lid of the crate open, fingers pulling at the double catch, resting the weight of the lid against the wall. Her arms reached inside and I swear I thought there was a dead body within.

But what she brought out from the crate was the pear drum.

It wasn’t a drum at all. It was like a mechanical violin, or ‘hurdy-gurdy’. Its real name, as I discovered later, was ‘organistrum’, but Elizabeth had always called it her pear drum.

It had a pear-shaped body with strings and a broad, oversized decorative arm. At the wide end was an S-shaped handle which turned a wheel against the strings. But the arm was actually a box into which the strings disappeared. It could be opened to reveal the workings inside, the keys, the ‘little people’, my stepmother had called them. Pressing down on the pegs alongside the box made them dance, creating the notes.