Slatter The Cold House

1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-83541-255-8
Verlag: Titan Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 144 Seiten

When Everly's husband and young daughter die in a car crash she finds out nothing is quite what she thought... Secrets, lies and grief collide in this funny, tragic, intimate and utterly compelling horror novella. Written by the acclaimed author of the Sourdough Universe novels and winner of multiple awards including the Shirley Jackson and World Fantasy, this searing tale is perfect for fans of Rachel Harrison, Delilah S. Dawson and Sarah-Maria Griffin. Writer Everly Bainbridge's life is left in ruins when her husband takes their child to the supermarket one day and a lorry collides with their car. After the accident, a lawyer appears on her doorstep and tells her her husband was not who he said he was and she is a very rich widow. She retreats to a lonely house in the countryside to recover. But there's a well in the cellar, a spectacularly cold room, and one night, Everly wakes up with a foot hanging over the emptiness of the well and the echo of her daughter's voice in her ears... A short, sharp, emotionally layered story of horrific secrets and dangerous lies, this dark, fierce gem of a novella will keep you turning the pages late into the night...

A.G. Slatter has won a Shirley Jackson Award, a World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, a Ditmar, three Australian Shadows Awards and eight Aurealis Awards. Most recently, All the Murmuring Bones was shortlisted for the 2021 Queensland Premier's Literary Awards Book of the Year and the 2021 Shirley Jackson Award; The Path of Thorns won the 2022 Aurealis Award for Best Fantasy Novel and the 2022 Australian Shadows Award for Best Novel. She has an MA and a PhD in Creative Writing, is a graduate of Clarion South 2009 and the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop 2006. Angela's short stories have appeared in many Best Of anthologies, and her work has been translated into many languages. She lives in Brisbane, Australia.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Slatter, A. G.

Leseproben

2

And I’d got home, back to the flat that doesn’t feel right anymore because I’m the only one in it. And I filled the fridge and cupboard with all the things I’d bought, including the cheese and milk that sat in the car for too long while I took that idiot into A&E and waited with him the whole time. When they asked what happened, I said, ‘He fell’ and he didn’t contradict me, because maybe he figured no one would have much sympathy for him being, quite frankly, a cunt. Or maybe he figured he might score some good painkillers for a bit. Or just maybe it was the closest thing to human kindness he’d experienced in a very long while. I don’t know.

We hardly talked except for me asking if he wanted anything from the café, and him saying a Coke, and I bought him that and a sandwich because he looked too thin. Then when he’d been seen to – only three hours, some sort of a record – I asked for his address. In the car my victim – ‘Ike’ he insisted, but I’m willing to bet it’s ‘Ian’ – swore he’d learned his lesson about being rude in supermarkets, but I’m not sure he’s smart enough to extend that to other shopping venues or areas of life. I’ve no doubt he’ll be punched in the head in some pub or fast-food joint. Possibly even a Boots. Maybe church. But I told him I was glad to hear it as I drove him home, and dropped him off, and he said ‘Thanks’ as if I’d done him a favour, and maybe I had, and I thought that perhaps...

And I thought, after the evening’s events, that perhaps I needed to get out of the flat because it had been too easy to do something mean just because he annoyed me. Because if I stayed there any longer on my own, it would be too easy to become a much worse person. Because if I stayed in the place where they should be but weren’t and would never be again, I would just turn to stone and there was a tiny part of me that didn’t want that. A tiny fluttering thing of hope locked in the Pandora’s Box of me that said Don’t stay here.

Maybe all I needed to do was get away from the Notting Hill flat with its echoes and emptiness. Maybe I wouldn’t have hated it so much if I’d never had anything to compare it to. If there’d never been a before and an after. Before they left and after.

So, when I’d finishing putting everything away, I looked for the business card with its embossed gold lettering and, for better or worse, I called Albert Lowen.

*   *   *

Nick went shopping because I was trying to write a new novel (uncontracted).

Not even trying to finish, just trying to write, start, find a thread, a beginning, a middle, a story, whatever. And not even trying to write a line that didn’t make me want to throw up when I read it over – just getting anything down. I was not succeeding, a thirty-five-day streak of not succeeding at the very same task, which I suppose is a sort of success. Or at least consistency.

He went to do the groceries, as simple as that, because I was trying to get some words down and it’s hard to do so with a four-year-old pulling at your shirt and having a howl every five minutes about a different thing. I’d hit the point of hunching at the desk in the study nook like Gollum over his precious, trying to concentrate while a whining pierced my thin shell of calm.

‘Jesus fucking Christ,’ I’d muttered at last.

‘If those are her next words, you’re in big trouble.’ Nick, from his position on the sofa in front of the TV where a football match was taking places in between a variety of faked injuries and Oscar-worthy performances, pointed a finger at me and scowled.

‘How about you do something helpful? How about you go and get some food? The cupboard is bare because I’m a shit wife who forgets to shop.’

‘That’s true.’

‘Shit wife,’ echoed our child sagely.

‘Maybe,’ I said through gritted teeth, ‘you could take our daughter with you. Have the joy of saying no to every lolly she reaches for, and then dealing with the fallout that will have you wishing to go back in time and have a vasectomy.’

‘You’ll regret those words, you know.’ But he heaved himself upwards, ambled over to kiss my forehead, then gathered up the sticky-pawed fussing little girl. ‘C’mon, moppet. Let’s go shopping.’

‘Don’t forget the bags,’ I said, waving vaguely towards the pantry, head back in my non-starter of a novel. Mumbling as an afterthought: ‘Drive carefully.’

I didn’t notice how long they were gone. Got caught up because the moment the door closed behind them, and blessed silence descended? The words arrived. Sentences and paragraphs, pages and chapters. Not beautiful, but functional – something I could polish later. As long as there was something there, on page, on screen, on cocktail napkin or Post-it, I could work with it. I didn’t sit back and take stock until there were three messy chapters in existence, Tokyo-drifted onto the screen, and by then the sun was getting low. By then I thought they must have been elsewhere in the flat, keeping quiet so Mummy could get something done and keep her temper. Thought I’d find them in the main bedroom, on our bed, snuggled under the duvet, watching Frozen for the umpteenth time, and giggling together. But as I took a step to go and look, the doorbell rang, didn’t it?

Two coppers, both far too young to be doing their job. They gave their names, but I cannot for the life of me recall what they were.

‘Mrs Mitchell?’

‘No, Dr Bainbridge. Nick Mitchell is my husband.’

They paused, obviously confused by this feminist modernity; one cleared his throat. ‘Mrs – Doctor Bainbridge, there’s been an accident.’

*   *   *

Some people might have clung to the place, closed up the doors and windows and locked themselves in with nothing but the keepsakes and recollections, watched wedding and childbirth videos ad infinitum. Buried themselves in what had once been a happy home. Practiced self-mummification. Sought a dulling of the pain with booze and pills.

Believe me, I tried.

But it was like living in an echo chamber. Every day, the vibrations of what-had-been would shudder through me, as if a train ran up and down the track of my spine sending a tremor out to each extremity. Anything I touched rang with a memory, gave me a shock like I’d grabbed a live wire. Everything hurt too much, was too intense. And we didn’t have any wedding or childbirth videos anyway, and the dreams on the booze and pills were worse than anything.

By then the solicitor I didn’t know Nick had, had contacted me. Details of the will. All those assets I also didn’t know he had, all that money in bank accounts I never suspected. All of it mine now, or as soon as probate was granted. None of it could replace what was gone. But I could buy a house far away from the sunny Notting Hill flat. I could buy all new furniture that had never been sat on or slept in and white goods that hadn’t been leaned into to look for late-night snacks or used to wash clothes and bedding. I could sell all that or put it into storage. I could move into a hotel if it all got too much and wait it out. Could have gone shopping for new clothes. You name it, I could have bought it. Replaced it. Put all the old stuff into tidy bags and dropped it off at Oxfam, even the tiny dresses and shoes and shirts and rompers that still smelled like my little girl. The hairbrush still heavy with bright strands of strawberry red curls.

But I couldn’t do that any more than I could seal up the house with myself inside it. So I was stuck in this limbo between what I was doing and what I could have done, and maybe what I should do which was probably a different thing altogether. So I stayed in the house and didn’t write; deleted the file I’d been working on that day, burned the printouts of that stillborn book in the fireplace. Stayed inside and failed to see people. Left only to go shopping late at night when no one else was around and bought comfort food like a teenager with a credit card. Stayed inside and thought about how I’d not said goodbye to my daughter, not kissed her cheek one last time. Stayed in the flat and did all the stuff Albert Lowen later warned me against doing. Too little too late.

I slept downstairs in the lounge, on the sofa with a blanket over me, a pillow that smelled like Nick under my head. I bundled up Nick’s clothes and toiletries and shoes but couldn’t touch Ruby’s; couldn’t make myself get my husband’s stuff actually out of the house, so the bags just sat in the master bedroom, spread across the floor and the mattress. I closed the door to it and the one to Ruby’s room. Closed them the day after the funeral and didn’t go back in.

The only things I kept on me were the wedding and engagement bands on my finger, and a locket with a curl of Ruby’s hair in it on a chain around my neck. Only those items. Keepsakes. Only those things because they were so tiny that their echoes, their pulses, their tremors were small like a low-setting flick from a tens machine trying to loosen a muscle. Manageable. Always there.

*   *   *

HOW I MET YOUR FATHER

In a pub, because of course it was. No dating apps for us – we’d both tried them and given up with spectacular speed. A pub meet-cute in Notting Hill, he with his friends and me with mine, too much prosecco for us, too many pints for them, and a metric shit-tonne of empty crisp packets on both tables. Tables...