The Roommates

by Rachel Sargeant

  “There’s nothing here. Let’s go,” she whispers.

  Tegan takes no notice and carries on nosing around. A breakfast bar separates the compact lounge from the kitchen. She coughs. “Blimey, overgenerous with the air freshener at this end.”

  A frosted window on the back wall above the sink provides the only natural light in the flat. Nothing like the ketchup-smeared worktops and bottle-filled window sill of their student place, this kitchen is showroom-clean despite the old-fashioned units. The few worktops are clear apart from a box of low-sugar Alpen next to the kettle.

  The kitchen drawers contain nothing unexpected: cutlery, bin bags, tea towels. Tidier than Imo’s parents’ kitchen drawers.

  Tegan finds a mobile phone. “Damn, the battery’s flat,” she says, pressing the keys. She replaces it in the drawer where she found it.

  A panicky feeling comes over Imo and gets worse when she opens the drawer for another look at the phone. The shattered screen is a white spider web. Doesn’t Amber have this make? But so do a million other teenagers. She shuts the drawer.

  Tegan has a poke around the fridge. “Hummus, couscous and carrot sticks. I might have guessed she’d have vomit-healthy fodder.” She heads for a rummage in what looks to Imo like a broom cupboard but lets out a grunt when the door won’t move. “It’s got some kind of double mortice,” she says. “What’s down there that’s so precious?”

  Imo’s breathing rattles in her throat. She rests her hand on the fridge and makes an effort to focus on the drawings secured by magnets. A stick person with long, yellow hair and outsize red cheeks; a house with a green roof; a flower or is it a butterfly? But it’s hard to focus; she feels like she’s run a marathon. Her lungs are burning.

  “We’ll have to work the whole thing up and down on its hinges.” Tegan is still tapping around the door. “I’ll lift it on the handle if you get on the floor, put your fingers underneath in the gap at the bottom and push upwards.”

  Imo drops to her knees before she falls. She’s sweating and her panic is making her dizzy. As she reaches down to cup her hands under the door, she feels faint. Sophia. She’s about to discover Sophia, every nightmare coming true. But then she remembers where she is. Heat sweeps round her body and envelops her in stifling sadness. She lets out a whimper. Sophia won’t be here.

  Phoenix rushes in with Riku and gasps when she sees Imo. “We heard a cry. Are you all right?”

  “We might as well take her home,” Tegan says, rubbing her hands on her jeans. “We’ll have to come back with something to lever this door. It must lead to a cellar, like the other flat I went in.”

  Cellar. Head swimming, Imo wants to flee, get as far from this pain – this place – as possible. But an urgent, irresistible sense of purpose grips her. Clasping her forehead, she turns to Riku. “Can you get it open?”

  Phoenix gives another disapproving intake of breath and, surprisingly, Tegan takes her side. “If he smashes it, Jane will know someone’s been in her flat and she’ll call the police. My prints are everywhere.”

  But Imo ignores Tegan’s protest. Fighting her grief and the drill in her head, she steps up to Riku. “Kick it down now.”

  Riku glances at Phoenix, but she walks away, shaking her head. Then she comes back, balls her fists and nods. He taps from the handle to the hinge with his hand, pushes a foot into the floor and stretches his upper body behind his hips in a stance reminiscent of the Tai Chi people Imo sees in the park at home.

  His other foot comes up, kicks the door hard and something metallic clunks. Before Imo can react, he lands a second, devastating kick. A crack appears across the door and the lock mechanism bursts through. He crouches down and lifts the door from underneath in the way that Imo was trying to when she grew dizzy. More clunking and the hinge breaks. He grabs the side of the door before it topples and props it against the kitchen wall.

  Phoenix sucks in her breath and Imo too has a moment of doubt. What if they get caught? Despite her rapid, jumpy breathing, she listens hard for footsteps outside, but hears only silence. The scent of air freshener is stronger now the door is open. But Imo can smell something else too. Something darker. She looks through the door into the pitch black and takes a deep breath.

  Tegan steps forward, switching on the torch in her phone, but Riku holds her shoulder. “I’d better go first,” he says.

  Chapter 63

  Imogen

  Without arguing, Tegan falls in behind him. Imo puts on her phone light, the tremor in her hand making it jump around. Another cloud of air freshener hits her and she has to cough.

  They descend a short, narrow staircase. Riku’s phone flashes light onto the bare wall at the bottom. Tegan’s phone illuminates his back and shoulders, and Imo finds it comforting to see his solid shape ahead of them. Fearing that her shaking legs will fail her, she keeps her light trained on the concrete steps. There’s a sound at the top of the stairs and she stops. Prickles with sweat. But it’s only Phoenix catching up.

  Riku reaches the bottom and turns left into the cellar. He stands still and his torch begins a sweep of the space, starting with the wall nearest to them. Imo’s heart lurches when the torchlight picks out powdery plasterwork. She’s seen it before, whenever her darkest fears for Sophia visit her dreams. Every limb trembles and her clothes are damp with sweat. She can smell it, sour and rotten. Her eyes leave Riku’s projected circle of light and scour the dark space beyond. She strains to grow accustomed to the weak light that seeps round a grill at the top of the far wall. It’s a narrow strip-window – no more than six inches deep – below ground level that must be barely visible outside at the back of the property.

  A swaying shadow appears on the wall and makes her jump.

  “Relax, it’s a bloody tree outside,” Tegan hisses.

  Imo shines her phone on the damp, concrete floor and shrieks when a spider scuttles away. She has to shield her eyes as the others point their phones in her direction.

  Then, behind her breathless “Sorry” and her hammering heartbeat, she detects another sound. A whimper. Feeble, reedy. It stops before she can place it. Nothing. Her imagination.

  It starts again. A rhythmic murmur, ending each emission with pfff, pfff.

  Light right in her eyes again. “Stop it, Imo.” Tegan’s voice has a tremor in it. “Stop that noise.”

  “I’m not …” Imo turns away from Tegan’s torch, blinking hard until her pupils recover. Her own light picks out a drape at the back of the room. For a split second she thinks it’s a person and gasps.

  Riku follows her light. The drape falls away when he tugs it, stirring up a nasty smell of mould and dust.

  Pfff, pfff.

  Imo stiffens. A boy at her school once went into a diabetic coma. This sound is his sound. Human.

  “There’s another room through here,” Riku says, stepping through an opening that the drape had concealed.

  The others follow. There’s a solid structure in the middle. Her torch shines on a plastic bucket on the floor. Sick rises in her throat. It’s not her sweat she can smell; it’s stagnant urine. She directs the phone light upwards from the bucket, but Tegan gets there before her. Her torchlight rolls over the frame of a camp bed to a mound on a mattress. Tegan makes a noise – not a grunt, or a gasp – more like the thwack of a ball against a tennis racket. Her throat must be blocked. Imo’s is too.

  “It’s okay,” Phoenix croaks. She takes Imo’s hand and they approach the bed together. She lifts a blanket, filthy in the light from her phone. It might have been yellow once, or cream. Even beige would have been a proper colour, better than the crusts of matter and blood and stench that infest it now. Her torch picks out short, pale hair, matted into greasy clumps. The face is turned away. They lean over for a better look. It’s a face that’s haunted Imo’s dreams. Eyes closed and sunken into hollows. Cracked lips, a rash of scabs around her chin and upper lip. Loose, grey skin. Sophia. Dead.

  Imo crouches, hugging her knees. World spinning, ending. L
ungs on hold, not knowing how to breathe. Her scream long and silent, and through her shock she keeps her eyes on her sister.

  Phoenix gently touches Sophia’s shoulder. “Amber, can you hear me?”

  Amber.

  The spinning room slows. Imo stands up, steadying herself until the dizziness passes and she comes to her senses. Tears prick. Imo’s private hell breaks. Not Sophia.

  But why is Phoenix bothering? The smouldering stench of decay, the unnatural stillness – they’ve just heard Amber’s death throes. Imo looks away.

  “Amber?” Phoenix tries again.

  Amber starts her murmuring. Pfff, pfff.

  Imo gasps and realizes she’s still holding her breath.

  “She needs a drink.” Tegan casts her phone-torch over plastic water bottles littered on the floor and gives one to Phoenix. “Some of these are unopened. She must have got too weak to unscrew the lids.”

  Imo feels like she’s been punched in her belly, recalling her mother’s instinct to make them carry water bottles. Had her mother seen into this abyss?

  “And she’s too weak to eat,” Riku says. “There’s a shallow bowl of soup over here and what look like mouse droppings in it.”

  Imo retches but makes herself shine the torch so that Phoenix can lift Amber’s head and put the bottle to her lips. Her mouth doesn’t move and water cascades down her chin. Phoenix lifts her head higher and holds the bottle in place. Amber has a violent coughing fit. Imo’s worried she’s choking, but the coughing seems to bring her to consciousness and she gulps the water.

  “We’ve got to get her out of here,” Tegan says. “It’s getting late.”

  Imo’s heart races. At any moment, Jane Brown will be back. If she can lock one girl in a damp cellar and half starve her, what will she do to them? Maybe Riku can protect them, maybe not.

  “She must have been in here for days, weeks,” Riku says, scanning his phone over Amber’s shrivelled body. Her sleeve has slipped back to reveal dirty, fraying friendship bracelets over a wasted arm. “We’ve got to get her to hospital.”

  “And call the police,” Phoenix says.

  Amber coughs again. The dryness sounds caustic in her throat. She tries to sit up but falls back against Phoenix. Her eyes open and fix on Imo. “No,” she hacks, and has to close her eyes when the coughing takes over.

  Tegan finds another unopened water bottle and Amber glugs it down.

  The second bottle restores her briefly. “No police,” she chokes. But she falls back onto the bed, slipping away. “Too dangerous for Leo.”

  Chapter 64

  Phoenix

  Riku takes Phoenix’s place at Amber’s head and puts his hands under her shoulders and knees to lift her. He raises her about two feet above the mattress but can’t get further. Amber yelps in her sleep and he has to put her down. The same thing happens when he tries again. Amber’s tortured cry is hard for them to hear.

  “Stop, she’s tied down,” Imo shouts.

  Her phone lights the bottom of the camp bed. Around Amber’s ankle there’s a bracelet of weeping pus, and, in the wound, blue binder twine ties Amber’s leg to the metal bedframe. A wave of revulsion hits Phoenix and she thinks she might be sick. This girl has been secured on a lead long enough to reach her piss bucket and her rank soup, but too short to stretch her limbs, to walk.

  Tegan shines her phone into her handbag and brings out a pair of manicure scissors. Her hands shake as she tries to get a purchase on the binding at Amber’s ankle, and she lets out a stream of expletives.

  “Let me try.” Phoenix takes the scissors and slits the length of twine halfway between Amber and the bedframe, in the way she used to open hay bales when the circus had animals. “We can remove it properly when we have more light.” And more time. Jane could return any minute.

  Riku puts Amber on his shoulder and she flops over him like a ragdoll. Phoenix is close behind, shining the light for Riku as he climbs the steps.

  “What about the cellar door?” Tegan asks when they reach the kitchen.

  “Leave it.” Imo’s voice is firm despite her complexion looking almost as wasted as Amber’s. She holds open the main door of the building for them.

  As Riku hurries along the street with Amber over his shoulder, Phoenix runs behind and gathers Amber’s hands into hers to stop her arms from bashing into the wing mirror of a parked car. Amber’s fingers are ice.

  A middle-aged woman steps out of her house across the road. For a moment, Phoenix feels relieved. The woman will see Amber’s unconscious body and phone the emergency services. Then she remembers Amber’s strange warning about Leo. Could Jane have someone else locked up? Someone she will hurt if they go to the police. There’s no time to run back and search the house again.

  As Phoenix stands still in the road, Imo lets out a ridiculous, squealing laugh. “Sorry, missus, we’re a bit pissed.” She leans against Riku, blocking the woman’s view of Amber’s lolling head. She breaks into noisy giggles and looks back at Phoenix. Her eyes contain an urgent request to play along.

  Taking Amber’s hands again, Phoenix skips from side to side and gives a squeal of her own – although it’s no match for Imo’s. It’s too far away to see the woman’s expression, but her stance suggests pursed lips and affronted eyes. She gets in her car and drives off in the opposite direction.

  When they reach Tegan’s car, Phoenix goes in the back with Imo. Riku moves Amber gently off his shoulder and lays her upper body across them. Phoenix has a close-up view of the swarm of seeping blisters surrounding Amber’s mouth. They manage to bend her legs to fit her across the small car. She starts to keen and they worry that they’re hurting her. They take off their sweatshirts and tuck them underneath to soften her position.

  Amber’s dressed in the kimono she was wearing at the Freshers’ Fair but it’s grimy, torn at a shoulder seam and reeking of sweat and urine. Her teeth are chattering.

  “We need to keep her warm.” Tegan gets a tartan picnic blanket out of the boot. It smells new and it’s doubtful Tegan’s ever used it. They arrange it over Amber, but it does nothing to mask her stench.

  From the driver’s seat, Tegan reaches over with another bottle of water. “Make sure she keeps drinking.”

  Amber’s delirium isn’t as deep as Phoenix feared and she opens her mouth to take the drink. Phoenix props up her head so that she’s in a better position to swallow. Her drinking gets into an efficient rhythm and Phoenix strokes her hair as if nursing a filthy baby. Her hand touches something crusty on the back of Amber’s head in Amber’s faded hair. Between the slimy tufts is a black patch of dried blood. The wound should have been stitched days ago. She’ll probably be left with an ugly scar where the hair won’t regrow. But she’s lucky she’s still alive; head injuries can be deadly.

  When she’s finished the water, Amber sinks against Phoenix and, for the first time, Phoenix feels optimistic about her condition. Her sleep is silent as they travel back to the university.

  With no other students around, Riku carries her unseen to their flat and onto Imo’s bed. He pauses to catch his breath. Colour rises up his neck. Suddenly awkward among the girls.

  “If you want, I could run out and buy more drinking water and antiseptic,” he suggests.

  Tegan thanks him. “And some baby food. It means going to the supermarket off campus, if you don’t mind. Wait while I check my cupboard; we might need soup too.” They leave the bedroom together.

  Imo takes a large pair of scissors from her desk but hesitates at Amber’s foot.

  “I’ll do it,” Phoenix says. “Get a bowl of warm water and a clean flannel.”

  Telling herself it’s a good thing that Amber is conscious enough to flinch at the touch of the blade on her ankle, she presses the girl’s thin calf into the bed to hold the leg steady. “I’m going to cut this binding off your leg then we can bathe it.”

  She senses Amber’s body relax in response to her voice. Phoenix forces the scissor blade under the tight binding and
cuts it clean away. The ankle continues to ooze a mixture of blood and pus. The injury is at its ugliest on the outer ankle bone, but the soreness rings the entire leg. How she must have fought to get free, each struggle cutting deeper into her flesh. After how many days of incarceration did she lose the will and the energy to fight?

  Imo returns with warm water, soap and paper towel, and gets clean towels and flannels out of her wardrobe. Phoenix rests Amber’s foot over the bowl and splashes water on the wound. There’s no reflex reaction when she soaps and scrubs Amber’s soles. Alarmed, she asks Imo to take over the bowl so she can check Amber’s breathing. To her relief, it still sounds settled.

  By the time they’ve finished, the water is grey and awash with vile dirt from the cellar floor. They move the bowl away to ensure the filth doesn’t get into her ankle wound.

  Tegan comes in with a glass of water and a mug, just as they are dabbing Amber’s feet dry with Imo’s towel. “It’s French onion soup. No lumps and I haven’t heated it. I hope she can get it down.”

  Amber opens her eyes when they lift her head. Drinks the glass of water and manages some of the soup. They dab her face clean with paper towel, careful not to press on the blisters.

  Tegan takes the bowl to get more clean water and says she’ll add some of her shower gel. “It’s for sensitive skin and it’ll get her clean.”

  Between them, Phoenix and Imo manage to remove Amber’s tattered kimono and underwear.

  “I’ll chuck them in the bin,” Imo says.

  “Not yet,” Phoenix says. They could be evidence. Even if someone called Leo is in danger, she still plans to tell the police.

  “Who did this to you?” she asks, wanting to get her facts right for when she makes the call. It must be Jane Brown, but she wants to be sure.