Page 12 of Hide In The House

‘What? Why?’

‘Because you can’t stay up there all day,’ I reply simply.

‘What are you going to do?’ the woman asks, clearly sceptical about my intentions if she were to come closer.

‘I just want to talk,’ I say before reminding her of something important. ‘And I’m not going to hurt you. You still have the knife, remember.’

It’s almost as if the woman had forgotten that she was still holding a murder weapon, but no sooner have I reminded her of that fact then she seems to possess the courage to do as I asked and descend the staircase.

I wait for her to reach me at the bottom before giving my next instruction.

‘Join me in the kitchen,’ I say. ‘And let’s figure out what happens next.’

I head for the kitchen, turning my back on the woman with the knife, but I hold no fear as to whether or not she might strike me with it. She’s not a killer. She’s just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Like me. I guess we’re the same. But will we be able to agree on the same course of action from here?

I enter the kitchen and see all the remnants of breakfast that I saw when I broke in here earlier. That incident when I smashed the window and intruded in this home almost seems like an innocent act in comparison to what has occurred since then, although I’m sure the police would disagree, which is why I suggest what I do once the woman has joined me.

‘We’re not going to tell anybody about this,’ I say calmly. ‘We are just going to leave this house and keep this a secret forever.’

The woman looks at me like I’m mad, but fortunately, it’s a look that I’m used to, so I don’t baulk.

‘You can put the knife down,’ I say. ‘Your fingerprints on that weapon are the only thing that can link you to any of this, so I suggest you stop getting them all over it.’

The woman isn’t so traumatised by recent events as to see that it isn’t a bad idea, so she puts the knife down on the table. Sure, her fingerprints are still on the blade’s handle, but that can be dealt with later.

‘We just leave?’ she asks me.

‘We just leave,’ I reply.

‘But what about the bodies?’

‘The bodies stay exactly where they are. We don’t need to move them because they already suggest the story of what happened.’

‘What story?’

‘She stabbed her husband to death before accidentally falling down the stairs,’ I say simply. ‘That is what happened, right?’

‘Well, yeah, but-’

‘-then there’s no need for anything else,’ I say. ‘You were never here, and neither was I.’

The woman stares at me as if it can’t be that easy. But it can.

‘Or, if the police don’t buy that, they will see the broken back door and assume an intruder killed them. But that broken window could just as easily be part of a serious domestic dispute between the husband and wife here, so the police may very well conclude that they were fighting each other and not go looking for anyone else.’

She thinks about that before nodding.

‘You promise you won’t go to the police?’ she asks me.

‘And get myself embroiled in a huge investigation?’ I reply. ‘Why would I?’

‘How do I know I can trust you?’

‘The same way I know I can trust you,’ I say. ‘Neither one of us should have been in this house, but here we are. Now the only way we get out of this mess without ending up in handcuffs is if we pretend we were never here at all.’

That makes sense, and she knows it.

‘Okay,’ she replies quietly, and I nod.