Home for Truths: The stand-out domestic suspense thriller for 2020 Read online

  Alan Agnew

  Home for Truths

  Suicide, Suspicion and Silence

  First published by The Imperial Press 2020

  Copyright © 2020 by Alan Agnew

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Alan Agnew asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

  First edition

  Editing by Kirsty Agnew

  Advisor: Mackenzie Littledale

  Advisor: Patrick Docherty

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

  Find out more at reedsy.com

  For my wife, Kirsty,

  Love As Always x

  “Other things may change us,

  but we start and end with family.”

  Anthony Brandt

  Contents

  Chapter One - The Funeral

  Chapter Two – Jimmy

  Chapter Three – Jimmy’s funeral

  Chapter Four - Returning ‘Home’

  Chapter Five – the present, 1 day after the funeral

  Chapter Six – 2 days after

  Chapter Seven – 3 days after

  Chapter Eight – 4 days after

  Chapter Nine – 4 days after

  Chapter Ten – 5 days after

  Chapter Eleven – 6 days after

  Chapter Twelve – 6 days after

  Chapter Thirteen – 7 days after

  Chapter Fourteen – 8 days after

  Chapter Fifteen – 9 days after

  Chapter Sixteen – 10 days after

  Chapter Seventeen – 11 days after

  Chapter Eighteen – 11 days after

  Chapter Nineteen – 12 days after

  Chapter Twenty – 12 days after

  Chapter Twenty-One – 13 days after

  Chapter Twenty-Two – 13 days after

  Chapter Twenty-Three – 14 days after

  Chapter Twenty-Four – 14 days after

  Chapter Twenty-Five – 14 days after

  Chapter Twenty-Six – 15 days after

  Chapter Twenty-Seven – 15 days after

  Chapter Twenty-Eight – 16 days after

  Chapter Twenty-Nine – 16 days after

  Chapter Thirty – 17 days after

  Chapter Thirty-One

  About the Author

  Chapter One - The Funeral

  I wrote two eulogies for my dad. Not two versions. Two separate accounts of his life. The first is how I want to remember him. The life and soul, gregarious by nature, first to the bar to buy the drinks, would talk to anyone. He would make impromptu speeches when not his party as a show of support and affirmation rather than attention-seeking. A confessed man of the world. He was comfortable talking about most subjects. He was warm. He was genuine. He was admired. He died 30 years ago. The second eulogy is how many of the faces gawping up at me as I stand by the pulpit remember him. He was quiet, grumpy, a recluse. His appearance dishevelled. He died three days ago.

  The front row is vacant of any family, and we sing hymns my dad would not recognise. There are no tears, no silent minutes for personal reflection. We leave in an orderly fashion walking past the standard-issue coffin without as much as a pause.

  The turnout at the church is generous, reflecting more the monotony of village life rather than respect for my dad. There is little else to do on Tuesday mornings with the library shut and village hall closed for renovation.

  Strange faces came to me after the service. ‘Hi, Phil Jenkins.’ The florist was young, her discrete blonde fringe covering her eyebrows stopping just short of her hazel eyes. She has a warming smile, nestled beneath her high cheekbones, silent features giving her a natural beauty with a soft handshake, putting me at ease instantly. ‘I wish I had known this man,’ she says sincerely, ‘so many here have talked so fondly about him, thank you for choosing our family florist to colour his life.’

  Others queued before me to pass on their condolences and to reassure me what a good man he was. How could they say this? I wanted validation, but I knew not to ask, I would only learn about the time he once waved in their direction at the post office or donated a tatty old jumper to the village jumble sale. Only one or two remembered my dad from before.

  Roger and Mary were welcome faces amongst the tide of black suits, starched white shirts and grey hair in the pub after the service. Roger, now much thinner in face and body, thinning white hair and boasting sprawling sideburns pointing in every direction. His black suit now two sizes too big. His eyes unrecognisable. Their trademark glint had disappeared, obscured by cataracts, his pupils shrinking in size and void of sparkle. Only his handshake remained as I remember, firm and genuine.

  Roger and Mary Knight were best friends of my parents back in the day. I cannot remember many weekends when they weren’t all sat around the dinner table, putting the world to rights. The wine would be flowing, plenty of gossiping about the neighbours’ gardens, moaning about the traffic, conspiracy theories about the new building in the high street, the volume of debate increasing as midnight neared. Sunday morning, I would be first up for my paper round, met by the aroma of the night before, a perfect pairing to the scene. The fulsome waft of cooking fat and garlic from the kitchen with half rinsed stacked dishes dumped in the sink, lingering cigar smoke from the dining room and the living room consumed by the heady aroma of alcohol lingering from abandoned glasses. Their appearance almost art as the red wine stain blends into the splatter of remaining lipstick and the rings of sticky brandy, creating asymmetrical shapes on the coffee table. The stereo would silently hum, the tape long finished but not switched off. It wasn’t just weekends, Roger and Mary were present for every occasion, birthdays, Christmas, Easter, cup final on the TV and of course funerals.

  Roger bypassed the ‘sorry for your loss’ protocol and put the spotlight firmly on me.

  ‘Now then Phil, you looking after yourself lad?’ he inquires in his Northern dulcet tone.

  It was a loaded question. He would have known from my dad of the supposed slippery slope I had been on ever since my marriage break up. I can only manage a shrug.

  ‘Ah, she was not all that anyway,’ as if offering me a platform to rant which I did not need. If anything, I wanted to argue back she was all that, she was fantastic, was too good for me, and when she realised it, she left.

  I wish she were by my side, talking to these strangers connected only by postcode. Caroline could talk about climate change or currency fluctuations just as comfortably as she could about growing rhubarb in the allotments. She would put me at ease, by finding some safe ground on which I could small talk when required, she was clever that way, how I miss her right now—these forced conversations, with the script already written.

  Roger launched into a perfectly honest monologue about my dad’s lost will to live, and how he’d spoken often about wanting his pain to be finally over, from a time even before the cancer.

  I hold my clenched fist deep in my pocket, dad had never mentioned this to me. A punch to the gut would have been more merciful than hearing this now. Maybe he did say, and I hadn’t w
anted to hear? My dad could feel down, a little depressed sometimes.

  I’d visited him in the early days, and we occasionally spoke on the phone, mainly to check in on his wellbeing. ‘Good’ was the standard response, drawing an impenetrable veil over his life with one little word. I had accepted his excuses at face value: Empty fridge? The local store had closed early. Messy house? He’d been suffering from a cold. Overgrown garden? He’d lent his tools to a neighbour, who’d promised to return them on a day that never came.

  Roger’s bluntness continued, the privilege of a 50-year friendship. ‘He lost his fight years ago, that’s the real cost of injustice, losing your spirit, your peace, and your ability to sleep at night. The death certificate may say cancer, but that was not the cause.’ He held his hand on my shoulder. ‘If there is anything I can do, please let me know. I can’t even imagine how tough it must be for you having lost your mother, your father and of course brother.’

  Chapter Two – Jimmy

  I still remember the piercing scream of my mum all those years ago. I have heard it a million times since. My mind went into overdrive, trying to calculate what was wrong, dismissing any theories as quickly as they formed. I heard my dad’s hurried footsteps. I remember the relief that followed, whatever was wrong dad would fix it.

  I was wrong. His scream was a deep guttural roar. I froze as the house fell silent for what seemed like an eternity. The heat of adrenaline racing through my 11-year-old body, shooting to the ends of my palms, causing sweat and a tightness in my stomach. I tried to shout. No sound would come. My mouth was dry, the blood physically draining, and my body unrecognisable.

  I found myself fighting my body with my mind. I walked downstairs against my will when all I wanted was to curl up on my bed, turn the lights off and to wake up again. The crying of my parents, such a foreign sound. I could not work out if they were muffling their cries, or my senses had shut down to protect me. I walked through the dining room, conscious I had not taken a breath of air.

  As I reached the connecting door to the garage, I caught sight of my mum held tightly in my dad’s arms; both collapsed on the floor. Our eyes met, they were drained of their natural blue colour, and flooded by tears, then suddenly reforming as they met my gaze, like a fish returning to the water. The tears emptied down her cheeks, and her pupils sparked as she leapt to her feet, tossing my dad to the floor and ran towards me, pouncing like a cheetah on its prey. She slammed the door shut.

  The blast of the door physically awoke me from the deepest of dreams, yet I was already awake. My young mind could only process a little at a time, and I felt rejected and abandoned.

  Fight or flight.

  I ran for the door and out of the house. Our neighbour, Donald Lloyd, was standing on our driveway and I ran straight into his arms, clinging tightly to him. I grabbed hold of his leg like a drowning boy clutching at a life raft. Did he realise how serious my situation was?

  He must have known it was severe. I had always been too scared to meet his gaze before. I remembered thinking back to those finger-wagging lectures about his fragile grass as he led me across his garden to his front door. Pointing me away from the scene, he asked if I was okay and what had happened all in the same question. Dazed, I barely shook my head. Had I answered his question? I couldn’t be sure.

  I sat at the dining table of his living room, aware of my surroundings but still lost in a trance. I tried my best to block out the noise coming from just the other side of the wall separating our houses and the two different worlds right now. I remember scanning the room, searching for a distraction.

  Donald’s room, the same shape and size as ours but configured so differently. It was separated into four different living spaces even though he lived alone. In one corner, where my toys were stacked high, stood an imposing dark rosewood grandfather clock surrounded by old paintings of ships. Parallel to this was an old wooden writing desk with matching chair and purposed desk lamp, a floor to ceiling bookcase full of hardback volumes, and then finally a small TV with single armchair facing.

  I sat at the dining table all afternoon, not wanting anything from the many people that approached me, all speaking in hushed tones, some in uniform. It became a badge of honour, telling people I was fine. It was dark outside when my mum and dad sat down in front of me, adopting the same hushed tone as all those before, and told me my brother was dead.

  Chapter Three – Jimmy’s funeral

  The days that followed were long. I hardly spoke, nobody did. The church was full, the whole village in attendance and most of Jimmy’s school. They were grouped for the service, their red school jumpers with black ties gave the visual impression of an overflowing poppy field in the church. As the coffin was carried into the church, everybody bowed their heads, some out of respect, and others said afterwards they were too afraid to watch. I stood at the pew looking around the church, feeling rebellious for not bowing my head. I watched my mum bury her head into my dad like before; he held her tight.

  Although I was only 11-years-old, the funeral was the third I had attended following the passing of my grandparents the previous year. This one was different. For my grandparents, speech after speech detailed their lives, the places they had visited, their many achievements, and the families who grew up around them. Yet for Jimmy, my dad spoke only about how he would be missed and what he had not achieved, how his 14-year-old son would not be coming home for his favourite tea of bangers and mash. He would not be playing football on Saturday with the team. He would not be going to college. He would not be enjoying his first pint in the pub. He would not be travelling around the world sending back postcards for the fridge. He would not be bringing a girl home to our sleepy village and showing her his first school or where he snuck his first cigarette. My dad spoke about how Jimmy had been so cruelly taken from us in the prime of his life.

  I didn’t understand, he’d not been kidnapped. He had killed himself. The screams I heard on 19th February 1986 were my parents discovering his body hanging from the joists in the garage. Nobody had told me this at the time, but I heard my mum talking on the phone in the same hushed tone, and I heard others saying similar in the days leading up to the funeral. My lasting memory of the day was silly. I counted how many people approached my mum and dad after the service and simply saying ‘let me know if there is anything I can do?’ I counted 18.

  As the colder weather began tailing off in the weeks that followed, so did the visitors. Nobody had to pretend anymore. I would listen to my mum crying in Jimmy’s room for hours at a time. I was helpless, unable to comprehend it all. His bedroom door remained shut, only my mum was allowed in. It became her shrine.

  My dad had massive mood swings, and it scared me. We could be in the car and all of a sudden he would swear at the top of his voice, banging his fist on the steering wheel, speeding after someone as if in a car chase. Other times he would disappear, sometimes for days, my mum wouldn’t know his whereabouts and didn’t care. Then out of the blue, he would give me presents and gobble me up with his big outstretched arms and hold me, telling me how much he loved me, tears filling his eyes. I learned to tiptoe around him.

  Months passed before my dad paid attention to his appearance and returned to work. I was back at school, and mum finally started talking about something other than Jimmy or the funeral. We even managed a holiday in Brixham, my mum inviting my best friend Davy, filling the empty chair staring back at us at dinner time. It took a special effort from all of us to maintain a veneer of normality.

  My parents got me a bunk bed so I could have friends over to stay most weekends. They even bought me a television. I was the only one of my friends to have this, which meant spending more time in my room, but I think that suited everyone. We still did activities as a family of three, but it always felt a little forced. Days spent planning for a picnic, a trip to the seaside next month, and everything put on the calendar like a binding contract.

  The school became a minefield of piercing reminders t
hat would invariably cause distress for my mum and dad. I remember the parents evening in my first year at Baysworth Secondary, the same school Jimmy had attended. They were rushing to meet with my teachers in the assembly hall when they both stopped suddenly and stared at the trophy cabinet, a picture of the U15 County Cup Winners 1985 with a grinning Jimmy standing centre of the back row. My mum reached for my dad’s hand and did not let go throughout the rest of the evening. Every other parent was being dragged around to each teacher station gripping in one hand a cup of coffee in a polystyrene cup, a rolled-up timetable in the other. My mum and dad ambled at their own pace, in perfect unison, having a private grieve amongst the first-year pupils, parents, and teaching staff.

  Some occasions seemed more poignant than others, Jimmy’s birthday, the 19th February each year, Christmas and New Year. I grew accustomed to these occasions being unpredictable, sombre, tearful, and occasionally hostile, all on the same day.

  On my 14th birthday, things took a more dramatic turn. I was excited about my party, we hired a clown and organised games, and I had my entire class coming. The first time I sensed all was not well was finding my parents in the living room talking with the door closed. The door was never closed. I walked in, and they stopped talking abruptly, staring at the black screen of the television from their seat on the sofa. I was immediately sent away. I returned an hour or so later to find them in the same position, but this time I was sent to my room. The phone started ringing with a frequency I had never heard before, each time my mum answering, and the return of her hushed tone. One by one, my friend’s parents apologetically arrived to drop them off for the party. Either they noticed the lack of decorations or they knew somehow my parents had not left the living room all morning.

  It was my parents who were centre of attention on my birthday. In the end, only half of my class came. The clown did some funny tricks, but there were no games, all the parents confined themselves to the kitchen with my mum and dad. We opened our goody bags and finished them off before the cake. I blew out my candles. There were no photographs and an hour after the party started, my party was over.