“Has the surveyor’s report arrived yet?” he asked me one evening through mouthfuls of chicken nuggets, potato waffles, and peas, clearing his giant plate in minutes.
“Not yet,” I said, taking my time over my stingy portion. Ever since James decided I was putting on weight, he insisted I eat from a child’s plate with plenty of space visible around the edges. He says portion control is the name of the game.
“Chase them up, will you?” he said of the surveyors. “What’s taking them so long?”
What was taking them so long was the fact that there was no surveyor’s report.
On our estate is a small, private graveyard with a mausoleum. It was once attached to a chapel which belonged to the house. The chapel no longer stands, but the graveyard is still consecrated ground, and the mausoleum houses the remains of the aristocrats who once inhabited this stately home.
When James bought the house, tumbledown and unlived-in for years, he was advised to keep an eye on the mausoleum. In days gone by, the river had been rerouted and it now ran within damaging distance. More recently, a sizable part of the nearby woods was chopped down, causing drainage issues in that corner of our land and threatening the mausoleum further. The time had come for a survey, and the task of arranging it had fallen to me.
But there was a problem: James insisted we use a company run by a couple from the village, Euan and Samantha Saunders. I had gone to school with them, and they had bullied me mercilessly through every year.
I was an outcast at school: firstly, because of being poor, and secondly, because, while I was not alone in living in a single-parent household, I was unique in not knowing who my dad was. It was a goldmine for Euan and Samantha.
My mum always said I must’ve inherited my mad, blond hairfrom him because no one else in the family had locks like mine. I spent my childhood staring whenever I saw a bushy-haired man, looking for other similarities between us and trying to work up the courage to ask him if he was my father, but I never did.
To this day, the sight of Samantha and Euan turned me back into that same girl they tortured mercilessly, and they hadn’t evolved much further themselves. The last time they had been to Langley Hall, they had made unnecessary trips to the house together, asking to use the toilet, asking for glasses of water, insisting on coming in to pour it themselves. Turning up as and when they felt like it because I had to make allowances for their medical condition—they both had the same one. Talking about how “it’s alright for some” and “there’s no justice.” We all knew they meant more by that than the fact that I lived in Langley Hall.
There were smirks and looks exchanged, loud laughter whenever I walked away. I tried to tell myself they were just jealous. True, I had my health, while they had their medication, but there is only so far that sentiment can take you.
“I thought we might try a different company this time,” I had said to James when he first raised the issue of the survey.
But he said, “Shop local,” and that was the end of the discussion.
I shouldn’t be made to feel uncomfortable in my own home—aside from when James was there—so I put the matter on hold until I devised a strategy to make myself comfortable when they were around. To date, no such strategy had presented itself.
As a stopgap, I went down to the mausoleum and I gave the walls a good shove myself. I leaned on them with my full weight and I kicked the corners. I wandered among the trees along the riverbank until I found a good, sturdy branch. I took it back to the mausoleumand whacked the walls with it. I ran at the door with it, like a battering ram. Nothing moved, not so much as a pebble fell, not even a little bit of crumbling.
So it seemed rock solid to me, and I told James the surveyors had been and they had said it was fine and they would send their report in due course. That, I felt, deferred the problem for another five years, by which point, hopefully, James would be in there himself. For now, I just had to wait for him to forget about the report.
I put it to the back of my mind as I returned to Project Kill Your Husband, looking through cupboards and drawers for innocuous household items that would suddenly present themselves as the perfect murder weapon, knowing that out in the countryside beyond there was a plethora of toxic plants. If only he would let me cook for him properly.
Chapter Two
“How much?” James said, as I poured myself a bowl of cornflakes. “A serving is thirty grams.”
He put the kitchen scales down in front of me, but I didn’t use them; I already knew what thirty grams looked like. It was a tiny bite of breakfast.
I put a few back in the packet.
“Now you’ve had your fingers all over them,” he said. Well, I was the only person who ate them. He watched closely as I poured the milk, lest I got greedy with that as well.
“Don’t forget they’re dropping off my dry cleaning today,” he said, as he stuffed toast into his mouth and headed for the door. Before he left, he looked back at me. “You should get your glands checked,” he said. “You’re putting on weight like nobody’s business.”
For all the chips, nuggets, and fish fingers James shoveled down his neck, he hardly ever put on a pound; he was almost as thin as whenwe first met. The only signs of the passing of twenty years were a few gray hairs and a sightly receding hairline. Otherwise, he had the same smooth complexion, the same bright blue eyes, and the same pointy face, although more and more I was thinking he looked fox-like.
I didn’t top my cornflakes up immediately after he’d gone. I’d fallen for that before, taking out forbidden snacks as soon as the door slammed, only for him to return minutes later and catch me, mid-Monster Munch.
He nearly tore the house apart looking for more. He ripped open the kitchen cupboards and cabinets, he yanked a drawer right out and cutlery scattered across the floor. Then he went into the lounge, where he pulled the door on the dresser so hard, he damaged the hinges.
“Where is it?” he shouted at me.
“There isn’t any more,” I whimpered.
“Tell the truth, Daisy!” he yelled.
“I am! Grocery delivery brought it by mistake and I didn’t tell them.”
