“Okay. I actually slept, I think, which is unusual.”
“You get addicted to the sleep here. Wait and see.”
Dora took a plate. “This place is huge, isn’t it? Does it belong to some rich old family?”
“It’s mine, actually. A gambling debt paid off.” Quietly, he said to her, “Friend and I slept on the beach, five years ago. Just after he got let out of prison. I was already living here, had done for what, ten years? But he wanted to sleep without any walls around him. Down there, where the ghosts are. My friend talked in his sleep and I swear, he told me where the deeds were. Place was abandoned before that. It’s been mine ever since.”
“What about your friend? Didn’t he want part of it?”
He indicated the painter. “He didn’t want it. I let him stay here for free. Do what he likes. He’s got the good deal out of it. None of the stress, all of the gain.”
At breakfast the painter blinked constantly, squinted, his fingers pinched knife and fork as if they were paintbrushes. He talked about nothing but his method, the brilliance of it. “No big deal,” he said, but answered almost every statement, every hello and goodbye, with “I’m glad you asked that,” as if practicing for an interview.
“How’d you sleep?” Dora asked him.
“Oh, I sleep very little. Two hour bursts in the chair where I fell. You saw me.”
“Have you seen his painting? Incredible. Five years he’s been at it. Stroke by stroke by stroke,” Roy said. “What a talent! Pure genius! Should be famous, probably will be once he’s dead. You watch, they’ll knock this place down in order to get at his work of art.”
Roy winked and Dora realized to her horror that he was being cruel.
“You’ve been friends a long time.”
“Cycling club together, believe it or not. Then he goes and kills a girl, gets locked up.”
“You got forty years free to live a life, ya cunt. Did you use those forty years, mate? Or didja let ’em slip by with the bottle and the needle? You coulda done that locked up,” the painter said.
“You know I used them, Al. I used them better than you would of.”
“Yeah, well.”
The painter said that the spirit of the girl he’d killed came to him and told him he needed to confess, so he did. He said he’d paid his debt “and that’s more than I can say for some.” He said he learned how to paint in prison and that it was the best thing to happen to him. “Gives me focus, right? Not like this bastard, ay. Coulda been something, never was. Aspiring Olympic cyclist, that’s the best we can call him.”
“Not my fault, and there’s nothing wrong with being aspiring,” Roy said with a shrug, a grin. “My sick mother.”
“Today it’s your sick mother!” Larry called out. “Yesterday you survived colon cancer. Last week you reckoned you had a family to support.”
“It’s always something,” the painter said.
“I had a traumatic incident when I was just a kiddie,” Roy said. “I’m not saying what. But let me tell you. A man with two faces is a man to be feared, that’s what I reckon.”
Dora had seen his two sides, the neat, handsome one and the dirty, pathetic one.
“All that was a long time ago.” He seemed to like talking about himself over breakfast, when he had them captive.
“You know what’s not a long time ago?” Larry said. “The stink in my room. Go easy on pumping the air freshener willya, mate? My room stinks of lilac.”
“Need to keep the rooms fresh,” Roy said. “Each one has had a death in it. As you know.”
Dora realized he had been opening their doors and spraying the stuff in. She’d smelled it, too.
“If I don’t spray every day the smell gets on top of me. Of you, too. Look, at least you’ve got a roof over your heads. Don’t know what you’re whining about.”
“You don’t have to treat us like dogs, and we don’t have to be grateful,” Larry said.
“You can always live in your car. Or out on the street.”
“I couldn’t sleep in a car,” Julia said.
“You couldn’t fit in a car,” Roy said. Larry laughed the loudest at that one.
The doctor said, “I can help you sleep anywhere. You know I’m a whizz with sleep.”
Julia shook her head. “Give me a chance to recover from the last one.”
“Sleep would be nice,” Dora said.
“Sleep is nice,” the doctor said. “I find it hard myself. Never been able to sleep. Well. Not since my sister went missing. You know? You blame yourself.” His hair was dyed red and washed out.
“Who can sleep in this place? Talking, talking, all night long. I can’t sleep,” Julia said.
“You are asleep, and you’re the one talking,” the doctor said. “Not being able to sleep is a terrible thing. People don’t understand if sleep comes easy for them. My mother always slept. Got pissed and slept for hours. Days. She’d do it in the afternoon so we’d get home to a cold dark house and no food. We ate a lot of tinned soup. We never slept well, my brothers and me. You never knew when she’d wake up and she’d want us up at the same time. She’d come in and stare at us until we woke up. Stand by the bed just staring. Unless she got sick of waiting, then you’d wake up with a slap in the face. A bloody nose. And she’d say, Oh, no a bloody nose! You’d better get up, and all of us had to. What I’m looking for is peaceful sleep for all. You can’t do damage when you’re asleep. You can’t think about your own guilt. You fight the monsters you know.”
“You can’t blame yourself, mate. You were only seven,” the painter said.
“Yeah, well. I just want it to be over with. I wish we’d found her. There is nothing more painful that what we went through. What we’re going through. ”
Dora said, “But you were only seven. You did nothing wrong. None of your choices made it happen. Mine did. My own pathetic monster hunting, my pathetic . . .”
“It probably wasn’t your fault,” Julia said, but she didn’t look at Dora and Dora thought: they know, they know what I did and she felt her heart pounding so hard she thought it would break. She was dizzy, her fingers tingled and she broke out in a cold sweat.
She clutched her chest.
“She’s having a heart attack!” Julia said. The doctor washed his hands at the sink and kneeled next to Dora.
“It’s a panic attack. It’ll be okay. Don’t worry. I’ll help you sleep,” and he took her arm.
His fingers were like ice.
He gave her a bottle of pills, saying, “Take two as required and see me if pain persists.” He laughed, as if it wasn’t a joke he must have made a dozen times.
FIFTH DAY
SATURDAY
BREAKFAST
Dora didn’t know what the doctor had given her but when she woke up she felt calm, able to be with people.
•••
Mrs. Reddy was at breakfast without her family. She sat in the corner, eating cereal that was placed before her, drinking coffee. The doctor sat with her, rising to wash his hands every few minutes.
“She’s a bit tired still. Family are having a break away. How’d you sleep, Mrs. Reddy?” the doctor asked her.
Her mouth was droopy and her eyes dull.
“How are you feeling, Dora? After your panic attack? We’ve all been there. You can tell us about it if you want,” Julia said. “You know it’s good to talk.”
“You just want to hear another sad story,” Larry said. “You’re a fucken pariah.”
“We all love sad stories,” Julia said.
Dora said, “I don’t know if you’ve been married, or in a long-term relationship . . .” In the breakfast room all the cutlery was silent. “I . . . but you know when it starts out, you can’t imagine it being over. Like a friendship, like you know your friend from high school, who you think will be your friend f
orever? And they fade away and you think of them every now and then till you don’t. Long term relationships you start in love but you end up hating each other. He fucked around on me which makes him an arsehole. Not a monster. But if I thought of him as a monster I could pretend he was evil, that I never loved a monster. I told my kids he was evil, didn’t I? Told them so many stories about how awful he was they didn’t trust him.”
Luke came and sat with her. She’d imagined his past by now, wondered what it was he’d done to make him want to live here. It wasn’t what he’d seen, it was what he’d done. She was sure.
“Tell us about it,” he said. He put his hand on hers.
“I wrote a story about it,” she said. “This isn’t my story. This is made up.”
No one told her that a safe place could be dangerous too.
When she was five, her bedroom was safe if she pushed her chair against the door. Her sister could not get in to pinch pinch pinch.
But you couldn’t trust safety. Like that man you thought you loved. Loved you. How quickly he turned.
When she was twenty-five, she could lock herself in the toilet, stuff toilet paper in her mouth and scream scream scream, then she would be safe from hurting the children, safe from taking up the cord from her electric frypan and swinging it around like a lariat, spinning it against the flesh of those nagging, smelly children who trusted her because she was Mummy.
“Don’t forget your lunches,” she says to her children, her two little girls.
She dropped the children at school and tried to decide what to do for the day. The phone rang. She knew it was Derek. He called every day at 12:15, when his boss went to lunch.
“Stop harassing me, Derek,” she said, her words clear, her vowels round. “Leave us alone.”
“I want to see the girls,” he said. “You have to let me see them.”
“Don’t threaten me. You don’t scare me anymore. And leave the kids alone, you monster.”
“I’m not threatening. Please. I just want to see them. Make sure they’re okay.”
She hung up on him.
The girls were allowed to walk home from school, together. She’d walked it with them a dozen times, pointing out the house with the Safe House sign on it. The house that had been checked, that would be safe for them to run to if there was danger.
If a monster came for them.
“Yes, we know,” said the oldest. She was placid, unhurried. “They told us at school. If there’s a stranger or you’re scared, go to that house.”
“And?” she said.
The girl shrugged. “And if Daddy tries to kidnap you,” she said. “Because if you see Daddy, you should run as fast as you can. Daddy has long teeth, sharp, he hides them with other teeth. He has a sharp knife, he told me he wants to see your insides. He wants to keep you locked away forever.”
She reminded them every day. Daddy was evil.
Eventually they believed her.
She made some chocolate spread sandwiches at 3:15, poured some milk, and waited, sitting high on a kitchen stool, for her children to return from school. She would wait until their mouths were full then ask them about their nightmares.
“Hello, my little darlings,” she would say.
Her children never come home.
Derek called her at four p.m. “Why did the kids run away from me? What have you told them?”
She felt icicles in her brain, a knife in her heart. “What have you done with them? Where are they?”
“They ran away from me, I just said. Up the pathway. By the time I drove around they were gone.”
The pathway led to the Safe House and she felt a sense of relief.
“They haven’t come home,” she said. They didn’t speak. She knew, admitted, suddenly and clearly, that Derek was not a bad man.
“I think I know where they might be,” she said.
“I’m coming over,” he said.
The girls were not at the Safe House but they’d been there; their killer even taunted Derek, goaded him and made it so clear what had happened that on the spot Derek became a killer himself.
He said he didn’t regret it, not for a minute. Even though every minute of his life was spent behind bars now.
She is safe now, in the warm house of her body. All the torrents and currents are hers, and she always knows when she is about to cry.
Nobody spoke for a few moments. Nobody moved.
Then Freesia said, “Did they die?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
“Your ex must really fucken hate you,” Larry said.
They all started to eat. “That’s why I’m here. I deserve this shit hole,” Dora said.
“Hey!” Roy said. He seemed truly offended. “This place isn’t that bad,” but it was, really; the grime, the size of the rooms, the food. All of them were there as a last resort. “We do our best,” Roy said.
Julia said, “Half of us are here because we think we deserve it. But if we really wanted to suffer we’d be out on the streets. So we’re weak and pathetic, really.”
Then Freesia said, “All men are monsters. You were right. You tried to keep them safe. You kept them safe from the monster you know. You can’t know about them all.” She seemed tireder, sadder, and she had a cold that caused her to sniff constantly.
“He wasn’t really a monster. He just didn’t love me enough. He was the only boyfriend I’d had. The only man.”
“Seriously?” Luke said. She wondered if she was using sex with him to make her feel wanted. She didn’t understand you can say “no.”
Freesia said, “If you thought it, it was for a reason. It wasn’t all your imagination. Your anxieties.”
“He wasn’t a monster, though. I made them run to a monster.”
But Freesia had already lost interest and was flirting with the doctor. She was keen on Luke too. She was keen on all the men. She was tiny, her teeth bad, with her mouth shut her cheeks caved in a bit. She had pictures of herself as a young girl. Even then she looked damaged, Dora thought. She looked at herself in the mirror and understood that no one could tell, looking at her. She was soft. She’d had so few traumas in her life.
It was true that her husband had affairs. He slept around. He became more and more obvious as time went on and that made her less and less attracted to him and that made him go further and further afield, and closer, too, with her best friend falling into his arms.
Luke was her first after him. He assumed she was something else, someone not terrified, someone sexy, sensual, who slept with strangers because she wanted to. It’s not her but it could be her.
The painter said, “That bloke will be haunted by your little girls, wherever he is. They’ll come to him, they’ll say their names. That’s what happened to me. I didn’t even mean to kill that poor girl but it doesn’t mean she left me alone. Save me save me save me confess. Feeling sorry for herself. Don’t you hate self-pity? Like that bitch up there.”
He jerked a thumb at the ceiling. “She’s up there using her disability as an excuse. It sickens me.” Dora wondered who he was talking about but at the same time didn’t want to know.
“She really can’t look after herself anymore,” the doctor said, washing his hands. “I’m pretty sure she’d rather be able to look after herself. She’s terrified of baths, you know. Water of all kinds. We have to put her to sleep to wash her.”
“She’s one of my best girls,” Roy said.
“Poor woman was badly burned in the last place she lived. The only place she finds peace is asleep. So we help her out.”
Dora checked her phone but no one had called her. She wondered if they thought differently about her but knew that none of them really cared.
She watched Luke, and he looked back at her. “Come visit,” he whispered in her ear.
•••
On his floor there was thick, old carpet in the hallway. She had shoes on but wondered what it would feel like on bare feet. It looked sticky and dirty.
Luke was happy to see her, it seemed. He squeezed her arse, gave her a drink, told her he needed a shower and drew her in with him. She hadn’t done it like that before; her ex-husband had been a very private person about the bathroom.
•••
They sat wrapped in towels, looking out over the beach. Dora thought she could hear a murmuring through the wall. Crying, interspersed with periods of silence.
“Who’s next door?”
“That poor woman. I think the nurse is the only one who sees her. She looks pretty bad. She used to live in a group home but someone dropped her in a hot bath. Her legs never worked but now they’re fucking terrifying. We’ve all seen them. Everyone sneaks in for a look. You can. Door is never locked. Someone knocked the lock off coz he wanted to get a look at her. Don’t worry,” he said, raising his hands, “That guy’s gone. Killed himself.”
She’d heard this quite a lot since she’d moved in. There were memorials around the building for dead tenants. Murder, suicide, natural causes. Small urns, paintings, statues, mostly with a sea motif, and when she looked closely she could see a name and a date.
“Funny thing is, she’s always smiling. Makes it even freakier, to be honest.”
•••
Dora felt wide awake, wired by coffee and pills the doctor had given her to make her feel better. She paused to listen at the burned woman’s room.
Dora stared in. The woman was in bed, covers thrown off, nightgown pushed up over her breasts. Her legs were terrifying; scarred, flaking, dark brown in some places as if the flesh had rotted. Yet she was smiling.
Dora tugged the nightgown down, straightening it over her knees and her shins.
She went back to her room. Things had been disturbed in there, she was sure.
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