The rot in the garden is getting worse. There are now small pockets of mulchy, foul-smelling earth in amongst the beds, as if the land is softly rotting from the inside. Iain says the mould on the steps is perfectly natural (despite the fact that we’re having a dry summer). I’ve tried washing it off with the power-hose, but within hours it’s back. [loc. 721]
Another Newcon Press novella; a quick and not wholly satisfactory read. Claire and her husband, the mostly-absent Iain, have moved from London to the countryside, where Claire is doing up a cottage adjoining their house for the AirBnb market. One rainy night, Claire hears someone outside the house: it turns out to be her old friend Dean, who had taken her drunken vow to help him hide a body rather more literally than she intended.
That's the beginning of the story. In a series of flashbacks we see how Claire's friendship with Dean -- and with Dean's wife Mae -- has evolved over the years. Dean and Mae supported Claire when she was a single mother enduring a series of breakups with ghastly men: their son Zack and Claire's son Jake are close friends. And now Claire has helped Dean bury a body: but whose?
Claire's gradual disintegration is mirrored in the rot and chaos she perceives around her. She alienates her only local friend, the reliable (and aphasic) Sam; she becomes obsessed with rumours about the farmer who lives alone up the hill, whose wife went missing. She repeatedly tries to get Dean to tell her the truth about the dead body he brought to her: but it becomes obvious that not only is Dean being dishonest with his explanations, but honesty hasn't ever been a defining trait of his. The body wasn't, isn't, the only burden he's bestowed on Claire over the years.
The end of this novella is really the only ending that would work, but it felt somehow ... inconclusive: unsatisfying. But it works.
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