The Siren Read Free Page A

half-truth or selfishness in the suggestion. ‘Help me get the pram over the wall.’
    Rachel nodded reassuringly. ‘You know I’ll look after him. I’ve always tried, you realize. And, Kim, please don’t tell anyone else what I’m doing.’
    Kimberly nodded silently, then hung back until both of them were out of sight. She finally made her decision and turned – but not towards home. Instead she left the cemetery at the
south-west exit, then broke into a run.
    Change was in the air, and it smelt sour. Maybe there was something bad coming, or perhaps it was already blowing in and opening up gangrenous wounds in her current life. One thing was certain;
it was stirring up the one memory that she never wanted to revisit: hot pavements and the sound of her own footsteps echoing on them as she ran for help.

 
    THREE
    Rachel was in the habit of deliberately studying her own house each time she approached it, no matter how short a time she’d been away or which elevation she was facing.
It was a habit she had developed as a form of motivation, a reminder of how far their hard work had brought them and what they could accomplish when they remembered to work together. She had
finally realized that such achievements had been brought about by nothing but her own determination. And, although her motivations subsequently changed, her habit of staring at the house
remained.
    It was a mid-terrace residence with a small passage that led from the back garden straight through to the street at the front. Including this in its overall ground plan made the house several
feet wider than the neighbouring properties. It had allowed Rachel and Stefan space for an upstairs bathroom and an en-suite extension to their bedroom. The house was one hundred and seven years
old and had spent the entire post-war period mostly in the hands of the same family.
    The first thing they had done was hire a skip. Apart from three brief trips to the landfill site near Milton, it remained outside for a full week as layers of the house’s history were
stripped away and discarded. The thick brown and cream lounge carpet, the wood cladding from the chimney breast along with the two-bar electric fire with the fake coals. A free-standing kitchen
unit and a Belling cooker. The twin tub with its flaking paint, rusting from the bottom up. A double bed with velour headboard and the plastic laundry basket printed with orange and yellow flowers
all over its lid. Interior doors, strips of old skirting, the sink, the bath, the immersion heater, and on and on until all that remained had been a windowless, featureless shell.
    They’d then extended outwards at the back and upwards into the loft. And the builders had used the narrow side passage each time new building materials were delivered. Everything from
wiring and plaster to shelves and cushions was replaced.
    But the passage itself stayed, too convenient to be deprived of it for the sake of a few extra square feet of floor space. They’d never worked out how to give the place a more contemporary
feel, and so this passageway and the one surviving plum tree stayed as relics of the house’s original guise as a cramped and unfashionable Edwardian family home.
    Although Rachel always studied her own home in this way, she rarely thought about it in any depth. For some reason today was different, and by the time she’d manoeuvred Riley’s
pushchair in through the patio doors, she was preoccupied with the idea that she was leaving the one place they’d truly made their own.
    She corrected herself: the one place she’d truly made her own.
    Rachel drew a deep breath and wondered if living alone somewhere new would really be any better.
    It was her exchange with Kimberly that had brought about this occasional sentimentality, Kimberly whose pregnancy had brought her a sense of purpose as well as a beautiful baby boy. Rachel loved
this house but it was just a house, a means to an end. Her next steps were all