And You Keep Asking Yourself, Where Is Emily?
- Heidi Colthup
- Apr 10, 2024
- 4 min read
It’s funny, I never thought it would end like this. I always expected a massive row — he’d storm out and I’d be left weeping neatly into a lace handkerchief. I’d get sympathy and all our friends. He’d be forever cast as the villain of the piece and in a town as small as this he’d never date another woman here.
A telephone rings in the hallway of the large house. It goes unanswered. The hallway is narrow and dark, the ceiling high, and as the estate agent will say when the house goes on the market, all the original Victorian plaster mouldings are intact, making this a very desirable property, despite the unfortunate events. At 3pm the central heating switches on automatically with a click and a gentle whoosh. In the front sitting room that overlooks the road there is a quiet ticking from the rosewood mantle clock; it will continue to tick for another three days and then remain silent until the house clearance company remove it two months later.
I never thought I’d fall in love again after Emily’s father left us. It’s hard for a single mother to start dating. Emily was eight when I met Andy. We went bowling the first time she met him; he showed her how to hit a strike. She laughed so much and said how she thought it was just like playing with giant marbles. We drank raspberry Slush Puppies and poked our blue tongues out at each other as we took our turn to bowl.
The telephone rings again; there is no answerphone. The house falls silent. The sun has set and the road outside is busy with people driving home from work. No one looks up at the dark Victorian property; it seems empty and waiting for its residents to come back from their dull jobs in Maidstone or Ashford. The orange sodium street lights come on one by one along the road and a mist rises from the river that runs on the other side. If one stood in the front sitting room where the rosewood mantle clock still ticks, and looked out of the window the river can be seen. It’s a small river, little more than a stream, but some locals fish for trout at the weekends.
I was pleased when Andy and Emily became close; he took her fishing across the road. After a few months Andy moved in. We were a family now. We redecorated, Andy cooked wonderful meals, Emily’s grades at school improved, we even considered getting a dog. Life was good. We didn’t argue too much, no more than normal families argue. We had holidays, Christmases, parties, life was good. I never thought it would end like this.
The traffic outside the house thins. Lights go on in the houses along the street. People have come home, they’re cooking dinner, drinking glasses of wine, and watching television. This house remains silent. No one has come home. No lights have gone on. The house remains still. The hours pass. The central heating switches off at 1am. The house waits in the night. The sun comes up. People begin their day, they drive to work again, they go to school, they go to supermarkets. The road outside is busy again. The house is still silent.
One moment you’re thinking about putting washing out on the line and the machine blows a fuse, tripping the whole house. So silly, so simple and normal. It could happen any time, any day. It was the last of the washing for Emily — she’s starting university next week — we were going to take her and get her settled into her Halls. I’ll miss that now. Maybe she won’t even go.
A postman walks up the pathway outside the silent house. He lifts the letterbox flap and posts four white envelopes and some junk mail. He’s whistling an old Carpenters’ song. The letters plop onto the mat inside the house. This is the only noise until the telephone rings again in the afternoon, just before the central heating switches on.
At 5pm the road is flooded with blue flashing lights that illuminate the silent front sitting room. Two uniformed police officers ring the doorbell. They bang on the door. The taller officer’s airwave radio crackles, she speaks into it, “No reply. Want us to break in?”
The other officer is peering in the front window, “No sign of life here, Rachel. You sure there’s something wrong?”
“That’s what the caller said. Come on, I’m breaking it.”
They force open the door. They search room to room, calling out as they go. In each room they try the light switches, none work.
“Rach, here. I’ve found her. Watch out, there’s marbles on the top step. She must have slipped on them and fallen down the cellar steps. Looks like her neck broke.”
Within an hour the house is full of light and uniformed bodies searching, photographing, and taking notes. Later that night the local newspaper uploads the breaking story, ‘Woman Found Dead In House in Smarden, Husband Suspected, Daughter Missing’
The next day Andrew Smith’s body was found in his angler’s tent on the riverbank opposite the house. The post-mortem showed that he’d died some hours before his wife but cause of death was unknown. The local paper soon ran the story, ‘Shocking Double Deaths in Sleepy Smarden’
