Cuckoo: A haunting psychological thriller you need to read this Christmas. Sophie Draper

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.

      She adjusted the shape of the thing onto her lap as she sat down on my father’s old chair. It was so big each end rested on the chair arms on either side of her. She began turning the handle and the thing fired up. I almost jumped at the sound. It was a drone, hesitant at first. It got louder, a vile, screeching sound that filled the room, forcing me to step back and clasp my hands against my ears. But as I listened, the sound consumed me; loud as it was, it was seductive too, a slow lingering melody filling the room.

      It was the weirdest kind of musical instrument you could ever have thought of. But the pear drum wasn’t the problem. It was the story that went with it.

       CHAPTER 3

      The M1 stretched out in front of me – endless tarmac, sweeping clouds, the trees bordering the roadside skeletal black. London was behind me. It hadn’t taken so long to leave.

      It should have surprised me, the ease with which I’d turned my back on so many years in London. Except it did not. Never mind Paul, it was as if I’d been waiting for an excuse, my sudden inheritance prodding my inertia. I’d been in London seven years – didn’t they say that life moves in cycles of seven years?

      It wasn’t like anyone was going to miss me. Not Paul at any rate. He and I were done and I certainly wasn’t going to miss him. I missed Harriet, though – I’d just started to get to know her. We’d met at my first public exhibition. She’d been loud and brash and I’d been quiet and shy. She’d made me laugh and she’d said my paintings made her cry. She’d been the voice of reason telling me to get out of there when things had gone so badly with Paul. Her generosity and kindness when I’d needed somewhere to go wasn’t something I was used to. I’d never told her about Larkstone.

      She’d been full of remorse over her job in Germany.

      ‘I can’t leave you like this,’ she’d said.

      ‘Yes, you can,’ I replied. ‘Absolutely, you can. I got out of there and I have a new life. You’ve been amazing, but now it’s your turn to follow your dreams.’

      Harriet had been offered СКАЧАТЬ