You Let Me In: The most chilling, unputdownable page-turner of 2018. Lucy Clarke

       There is only one notable absence on these shelves: your book.

       5

       Elle

      I drop the final piece of naan into my mouth, then gather the takeaway dishes, following Fiona through to her kitchen.

      ‘Avert your eyes,’ Fiona instructs, glancing at the sink, which is piled with washing up. ‘One of those weeks.’

      ‘I’ll do them. It’ll take me a minute.’

      ‘You will not.’ She blocks the sink. ‘You can pour us more wine.’

      My sister’s relentless bossiness has a nostalgic flavour. I’m used to my actions being channelled, as if I’m something fluid, destined to flow around Fiona.

      ‘I’ve been meaning to ask,’ I say, watching her rinse the plastic takeaway dishes, then jam them into the recycling bin, punching down a cereal box to make room. ‘You know when you cleaned after the Airbnb, did you happen to go into my writing room?’

      ‘Oh God, don’t tell me I was meant to clean in there, too?’ She forces the bin door shut with a shove. ‘I had such a busy week that I only got over for an hour. I’m not doing it again, by the way. Next time you can find a cleaner.’

      ‘No, it’s not that – it’s just, when I went in there, the window was left open and it felt like things were different.’

      ‘Different?’

      ‘Like things had been moved.’

      Fiona turns. ‘What do you mean?’

      ‘I have this blue glass paperweight on my desk. Do you remember? Mum brought us them back from Malta.’

      ‘Yes, with the swirls of ink.’

      ‘It’s been chipped. I found the missing part lodged in my bedroom carpet.’

      ‘And?’

      ‘I think it happened while I was away.’

      ‘Thought you’d locked your writing room?’

      ‘I did.’

      ‘So, you think,’ Fiona says, an eyebrow cocked, ‘that the Airbnb renters broke into your writing room, chipped your paperweight, then tossed the broken piece into your bedroom?’

      I’d anticipated this reaction: dismissive, unperturbed. That is precisely why I decided to tell my sister.

      Fiona continues. ‘The glass probably got stuck to the sole of your shoe, and then you walked it around the house, and it finally came loose in one of the rooms.’ She slots a tablet into the dishwasher and clanks it shut with more force than is necessary. ‘I knew you’d get like this after renting your house. You need a dog.’

      ‘I do not need a dog.’

      I fetch a bottle of white from the fridge and refill our glasses. The fridge door is covered with photos, notes, and the first of Drake’s crayon scribblings. My gaze lands on the picture of me and Flynn standing in front of our campervan, alongside Bill and a heavily pregnant Fiona.

      I miss that camper. An old Mercedes Sprinter, which Flynn had spent months converting. We’d pull up at quiet beaches and cook dinner with the slide door pulled wide.

      I pluck the photo from the fridge, looking more closely. I remember the first time I’d seen Flynn – the long sandy hair, the sun-tanned face, the skateboard slung under his arm, the carefree curve of his smile. My stomach flipped with desire as I’d served his coffee, slipping an extra biscuit on the saucer. He’d come back to the café every day for a week before he worked up the nerve to ask, ‘Fancy hanging out after you finish?’

      I was twenty-four years old at the time and felt impossibly lost. I was working shifts in cafés and bars, sleeping at strange hours, barely leaving my rented flat except to go to work. I felt as if I were submerged … that life was happening to other people and I was watching it at a distance. I’d lost contact with my school friends and had distanced myself from Fiona and our mother. I didn’t know who I was or what I wanted until, on a Tuesday morning in spring, Flynn Fielding walked into the café with his skateboard. I could see the surface again; I could breathe.

      Fiona moves to my shoulder. ‘Remind me why you’re divorcing again?’

      I shoot her a look that says, Don’t.

      ‘You know what I’ve been thinking?’ Fiona says as I pin the photo back in place.

      ‘Here we go.’

      ‘You need to start dating.’

      ‘I thought I needed a dog.’

      ‘Date a man with a dog.’

      ‘Leave it with me.’

      We take our wine through to the lounge and settle onto the sofas. In the warmth of the room, I find myself yawning, my eyelids heavy. It’s not even ten o’clock.

      ‘So tell me about the tenants. What were they like?’

      ‘Sorry?’

      ‘Joanna and her family. The renters. When you did the handover, did they seem okay? You know, not paperweight-chipping maniacs?’

      Something passes over Fiona’s face. She inspects the stem of her wine glass. ‘Yes, they seemed fine.’

      I know my sister. ‘What aren’t you telling me?’

      ‘Nothing at all.’

      ‘Fiona …’

      There is a good three- or four-second pause before Fiona looks up, right at me.

      ‘Listen, I’m sorry, but I didn’t meet them.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘I went over the morning they arrived like we agreed, but they were out – so I just left a note with my phone number. I planned to check in with them later in the week, but then things got a bit chaotic and—’

      ‘You said you had! You told me you’d met them.’ My palm slams the sofa arm, surprising us both.

      It is just like my sister to not follow through with something that doesn’t directly benefit her.

      In the bright overhead light of Fiona’s bathroom, I’m confronted by how tired I look – the bags beneath my eyes settling into dark bruises. I’ve learned that you do not say you’re exhausted to a mother of a toddler who has been parenting on her own all week.

      I wash my hands, forgetting that the cold tap sprays water, which shoots over my top. I snap off the tap. Not finding any towels, I dry my hands on the dressing gown hanging from the back of the door.

      I remember offering to pay for a bathroom refurbishment – back when my book advance felt like it might never run out – but Fiona had given me one of her lethal, haughty stares, and I knew not to offer again. In a way, I’m pleased. There’s a sense of comfort in the bath edge lined with shampoos and conditioners, the plastic ducks and toy boats spooling from a net suckered to the tiles; there are toothbrushes jammed into a chipped mug, a bowl of tiny bottles of shower gels pilfered from hotels. There are no hidden cupboards for toiletries, or woven baskets to house neatly folded towels. It feels lived in and there is something appealing in that.

      I’ve often thought that people who know Fiona in a professional capacity – who are used to her straight-talking, razor efficiency – would be surprised if they stepped into her home. It is a valve, a little pocket of chaos to relieve the pressure of her exacting approach to her work.

      In that sense, I suppose we’re opposites. My house is my sanctuary: uncluttered, ordered. Everything has its place