House of Lies: A gripping thriller with a shocking twist. E. Seymour V.

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       Chapter 5

      I pause and catch the wary expression on my face in the hall mirror. Little Miss Horizontal is no more. Little Miss Vertical took her place.

      No welcoming smell of spice, or meat cooking, or sweet aroma from onions caramelising in butter, the air feels dead. Inert. There is no sound, not even from the spare room inhabited by Reg. I glance at my watch. It’s past six-thirty. He can’t still be asleep. Everything is silent. Then it dawns on me. Tom is at work. Emergency cover for a chef calling in sick, possibly, or perhaps the crisis that morning was not averted.

      I briefly consider driving to the hotel restaurant and pleading for his return. The thought shakes me. I’m not needy and yet events of the day and Tom’s atypical behaviour make me so.

      Numb with disappointment, I wander through to the kitchen, expecting a note scrawled on the shopping pad we keep by the fridge-freezer. It’s blank. This is how our home feels. Vacant. Gone. Something missing. A bubble of panic floats up from my tummy, pings off my heart and pops the moment I hear movement from upstairs. Tom, I think, yet the tread is not his. Tom’s is soft, like a panther stalking prey. This is clunky and shouty and ‘I’ve got enormous gonads.’ Has to be Reg. Dim of me, but it doesn’t occur that it might be a burglar.

      Reg bursts in. I don’t fancy my brother but, with his slim, snake-hipped physique and his angular looks and dangerous eyes framed by jet-black hair, I admit that he is breathlessly good-looking. The facial ironmongery – nose and tongue stud – and cross hanging from one ear and tattoos on his arms – do nothing to detract from his film-star features. Even his tangled teeth look sexy.

      “Hiya,” I say. “Vick says you can eat at hers tonight, not that it looks as if I need you out of the way.” My eyes drift around the empty-looking kitchen.

      Reg doesn’t speak, but draws up a chair, twists it around and sits on it astride. Poser, I think. Then I catch his troubled expression.

      “You may need to sit down, Roz.”

      I follow his eye-line to the comfy chair squashed in the corner, and spike with alarm. “It’s not mum or dad, is it?”

      He snatches a smile and his thick eyelashes flicker. “No worries. They’re fine.”

      “Well, what then?”

      “It’s Tom.”

      “Has something happened? Has there been an accident?” Tom travels everywhere by bicycle. I permanently worry that a reckless lorry-driver or motorist will knock him off and splatter him across the road.

      Reg clears his throat. His musician hands, with their impossibly lithe and dexterous fingers, grasp the top bar of the chair and the knuckles show white. Christ. “He’s gone,” Reg says bluntly, which is Reg all over.

      “Gone where?”

      He shakes his head. “Cleared out. Scrammed. Vamoosed.”

      “What?” I don’t gasp. I pull a face and smile at the sheer preposterousness of Reg’s words. “No,” I say, “that can’t be right. We only had a minor disagreement, nothing serious. Nothing …” I run out of negatives.

      Reg awkwardly pushes a box of tissues in my direction, as if he thinks it’s the done thing to do. Too shocked for tears, I shake my head. Stubborn. Resistant.

      “I don’t believe it.” Searching his face for a positive sign, I find none.

      “It’s true, Roz.”

      “You’ve misunderstood. You’ve got it all wrong.” My voice is hoarse and shaky and vulnerable, something that Reg detests almost as much as I do.

      “I haven’t.”

      “You СКАЧАТЬ