Five Stories High

by Jonathan Oliver

  I DON’T EXPECT anyone to believe me. Why should they? I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t lived through it. It’s obvious why I didn’t tell the truth from the start, but I’ve got my reasons for doing so now.

  And it’s going to hurt to talk about Robin, but I have to.

  I know what Helena and everyone were thinking when we first got together. He’s just after her money. He’s looking for a mother figure. She’s old, divorced, desperate.

  All untrue.

  I wasn’t looking for anyone. I don’t get lonely. I never have, even when I was a child, and I’m an only child. I’m used to depending on myself. I’m good at it, especially after fifteen years of being married to Gerry. Now that’s true loneliness – clinging to an empty marriage, living in denial.

  Robin and I had an instant connection. We just knew. There’s a line in a romantic movie – I can’t remember which one – where one of the characters says that true love is ‘like coming home’ or something cheesy like that. That summed up our relationship. It wasn’t a grand passion. It was comfortable. Both of us were home bodies. We liked nothing more than staying in and snuggling on the couch watching box sets. I didn’t mother him; he didn’t fill the void left by the son I never had. Apart from a blip in my late-thirties, I never wanted children, and Robin said he felt the same.

  The sex was good; that’s all I’m going to say about that. That’s nobody’s business but mine.

  What I’m trying to say is that it just felt right. We were meant to be together. And he didn’t pressurise me to move into my place. It was a natural progression. After our first night together, he just didn’t go home.

  Before long we started talking about buying a place together.

  I was in a good place financially. I had the money from the sale of the Cobham house, and my investments. After twenty-five years, I was sick of the office environment, and I wanted to find somewhere where I could work from home. What Robin brought in was negligible, and I’m not going to say that money didn’t mean anything to me, but our relationship wasn’t built on that, so what does it matter? Yes I did encourage him to further his education. I knew he wasn’t happy working in the gym. It wasn’t him. He was more cerebral than he let on.

  I knew straight away that buying the flat was a mistake. There was nothing I liked about it. And the building’s name, ‘Irongrove Lodge’, sounded like something out of a low budget movie starring Christopher Lee. I’d whispered this to Robin when we read the plaque outside it, but he’d looked at me in confusion. “Who?” he said.

  Honestly, I was keen to go for one of the off-plan Canary Wharf residences I’d found when we first started looking, but Robin had his heart set on a fixer-upper, “A place with some history, Mal.” When the estate agent showed us in, the first thing that got me was the smell – or rather, the absence of any smell. No hint of anyone’s cooking. Nothing. How can a house smell of nothing? Perhaps that was the first warning sign. And it was quiet, as if it was a black hole that inhaled all sound. In the nine months we lived in the building I never caught a glimpse of our neighbours. And I never heard any sign of life: no reedy classical strains wafting down, or the thunk of drum ’n bass. No, that’s not true – a few weeks after we moved in, Robin said he’d almost collided with an elderly woman on the stairs, and she’d given him a nervous glance and pressed her hands to her chest when he tried to introduce himself. He said he’d called after her, “Is it cos I is black?” but she scuttled away. We laughed about that for days. But I’m not laughing now. No one came to my aid when I found him. None of them had come down – or up, the flat’s on the third floor – when I was lying keening on the floor, sticky with Robin’s blood and screaming for help. I suppose we eventually assumed the other flats were investment properties, like those mansions with darkened windows in Chelsea. I asked the police if they’d questioned our neighbours after I was charged, but no one would tell me anything.

  I wasn’t that bothered by the décor when we had our first and only viewing – I can look past that sort of thing – but I didn’t feel welcome in the place. I never did. It was simple as that. I always felt as if I was trespassing. The estate agent tried to give me the hard sell, but she’d picked up straight away that Robin had fallen for the place. And he’d fallen for it hard. She knew she had it in the bag the second he walked through the door.

  I urged him to at least check out a few other places before we made an offer, but he said, “I don’t need to, Mal. It was like when I met you. Love at first sight.”

  His words had the effect he hoped for. I put in an offer before I could change my mind.

  When Barb called me back with the ‘good’ news, Robin burst into tears. It was the only time I ever saw him cry.

  “SHALL I CARRY you across the threshold?” Robin said, on the day we collected the keys and went to check out our new place properly for the first time. We weren’t going to move in straightaway – the flat needed so much work I’d decided it was best if we stayed in the duplex for a couple of months while the bulk of it was done.

  “We’re not married,” I said, but we did it anyway. He did it easily. He was six foot two and fit. I’m five two and have never been able to put on weight.

  We were both giggling, needlessly worried that one of the neighbours would appear on the stairs and catch us. He carried me over to the couch and we should have... you know. But then the excitement, his enthusiasm, the fact that we were doing this together, was blunted as I was overcome with a feeling of overwhelming dread. He tried to kiss me, but I pushed him away. The air had seemed to shift and ripple. Like an eye had opened under the floor. I can’t explain it better than that. But it was as noticeable as being punched.

  “What is it?” Robin asked, hurt.

  I made some excuse about needing the loo, and went into the bathroom. I’d done little more than poke my head in there before. It was a depressing space. A pale pink bath, pastel grey tiles with a watery pattern, and the tiles on the floor didn’t match the walls. The grout in a small area around the bath was discoloured – the only sign of decay I’d seen in the flat so far. I bent down and scratched a nail in it. It was embedded in there.

  We hadn’t thought to bring any toilet paper, so I opened the bathroom cabinet. Inside it I found an old tube of Anusol, and an empty aspirin bottle with a fading sticker on it reading: ‘Mr Ogilvy, Flat Three, Irongrove Lodge.’

  I showed it to Robin. “Shall we see what else the old owners have left behind?”

  He perked up and we went rooting through the cupboards and drawers like little kids. It felt like we were doing something vaguely immoral – like we’d broken in and were pawing through the cupboards in a stranger’s house. It’s your house, Malika. Don’t be so bloody daft, I told myself.

  I didn’t know then that it would always feel like someone else’s home.

  The kitchen cupboards were full of mugs and plates, all in that careful shade of dusty pink. One of the plates was slightly discoloured – an interloper.

  The wardrobes in the bedroom were empty except for a shabby tweed coat that smelled of dried leaves. Robin tried it on and pranced around. The sleeves were way too short for him. I tried to laugh, but I wanted to grab it and rip it off him. The ridiculous sight of him in it was somehow more obscene than amusing.

  We opened the bottle of champagne we’d bought along and Robin started talking about which room he was going to start renovating first. The place needed a lot of work, and I couldn’t see how he’d manage to do it, keep up with his classes and start doing some Open University courses.

  I decided I’d call Louis and ask him to give me a quote to makeover the place. Louis was a pain in the arse to deal with – he takes his camp act way too far – but he’d done a great job on the Cobham house. I knew Robin was keen to do the work himself, so I arranged for Louis to pop round when he was at work.

  It backfired on me spectacularly. Robin blew up when he discovered I’d gone behind his back. He was beside himself
with fury. It shocked me; I didn’t think he had that much rage in him. So of course I backed down and promised him that he could have full rein over the flat’s redecoration.

  It was the biggest mistake of my life.

  HE THREW HIMSELF into it with the fervour of a recently converted fundamentalist. When he wasn’t at work he was gorging on home improvement sites and YouTube life hack clips. He even started a clipboard and created what he called “a mood board for the lounge.”

  I stupidly laughed at it when he showed me.

  His face shut down. “What’s so fucking funny?”

  “It’s just... I didn’t see you as the type who’d throw himself into this.”

  “You think interior design is just for gays and women?” he said, genuinely angry. “That’s a bit sexist, Malika.”

  I apologised, but it was two days before he forgave me. And because I was so eager not to rile him up again, I agreed immediately when he suggested we give up the lease on the duplex and move into the flat while the work was done. I arranged for someone to clear out the flat – I couldn’t bear the thought of being around ‘Mr Ogilvy’s’ furniture.

  A look of panic came into his eyes when I told him this. “I can deal with that.”

  “I thought you’d be pleased. It means you can start the work almost immediately.”

  I was relieved when the man and his son pitched up to do the job when Robin was at work. It was strange at first seeing the place without its flousy, over-stuffed sofa and blousy curtains. It looked larger, more vulnerable now it was naked. It hadn’t completely lost its unwelcoming atmosphere, but I certainly felt more comfortable in it. The only trace of the former owners was an ancient two pence coin that was hidden under the couch. That and the wedding album the men discovered in the wardrobe when they were dismantling it of course.

  I couldn’t stop looking at it. And Helena was fascinated by it as well when I showed her. We even made up stories about the couple in the pictures. The note inside it simply said: Clapham, 1982, but I assumed I was looking at Mr and Mrs Ogilvy in their heyday. The furniture remover’s son said Mr Ogilvy looked just like a famous pornographer or something like that, but to me the couple looked sad. As if they’d caught a glimpse of their future and all they could see was tragedy. The pictures reminded me of those grainy images that producers like to pepper crime documentaries with. The album itself smelled a little of must and old paper, and something else I couldn’t put my finger on.

  There were spaces where other photos had been removed, or never filled, although there were traces of old glue on some of the pages.

  Something made me hide it from Robin.

  I squirreled it away in one of my old suitcases.

  I don’t think he ever found it, but I don’t know for sure.

  EVEN I HAD to admit the furniture I’d bought after my split with Gerry didn’t look right in the flat. It was too small and looked cheap. That feeling that I was an intruder in a stranger’s house crept back in. It was especially potent whenever Robin and I made love; I was self-conscious, as if someone was listening to us. Robin was oblivious.

  Sitting up in bed eating crackers and drinking wine out of paper cups, our plates all still packed in their boxes, Robin declared that we should camp out in the bedroom and subsist mainly on takeaways so that he could work on the flat ‘as a whole’. I should have put my foot down then, at the start. But no, I agreed, and pretended to be enthusiastic, accompanying him on endless trips to home improvement exhibitions, and even, God help me, driving all the way to Essex to the Lakeside Ikea because there was a shelf he wanted to see ‘in person.’

  Samples and paint cards and tester pots and fabric swatches started arriving en masse. I thought the neighbours would complain about the avalanche of junk mail we were getting – I’d wake every morning to find a snowdrift of it on the hall floor, but again, we didn’t hear a peep from them.

  He was keen that we see this as a fresh start and ‘buy all new things’. I agreed, although I was concerned about cash-flow. I’d managed to hold onto my main clients when I’d split from the firm, but I’d been neglecting them, and Robin seemed to think that I had an endless supply of money. He wasn’t good with finance. He couldn’t stick to a budget. My barrister went on and on about how he came to the relationship in debt; how I’d paid it off. That was true. He spent and spent and spent.

  If I’m honest, and this is going to sound awful, he was starting to bore me.

  The flat and its makeover was all he wanted to talk about. He would obsess for hours about colour schemes and cupboard handles and whether or not we should pull up the parquet and replace it with engineered wood. Perhaps, I thought, Robin’s found his passion. I convinced myself that perhaps interior design could be a new career for him. And what better way to learn the ropes than in our own place?

  I didn’t know then that he was skipping and cancelling his fitness classes. When he started the work in earnest, I began disappearing to coffee shops every day. The dust and stench of old glue as he steamed off the wallpaper caught in the back of my throat. And he couldn’t seem to stick to just one job. Back and forth he’d go, jumping from room to room. The noise and bustle in Starbucks and Costa cafés was almost a relief compared to the chaos that was building at home.

  As the work progressed, there was something obscene about the half-naked walls in the lounge. The curls of wallpaper he’d removed revealed patchy pink plaster, like the skin of a burn victim. And he’d started to talk about the flat as if it were a person. “This is going to do her the world of good.” Or, “This shade is going to bring out her bones.”

  It took him a week to choose the right wallpaper. He didn’t tell me how much it cost. I’d given him a credit card, and I was genuinely shocked when I got my statement.

  But still, I thought, it’s making him happy.

  But it wasn’t making him happy, was it? It was killing him.

  The day after he’d finished the lounge, I came home to find him steaming off the new paper. “It’s not right, Mal.”

  I’m an avoider. The bloody psychologists they sent me to were right about that, but I put my foot down and insisted that he stop what he was doing. That it was good enough.

  We didn’t have a fight exactly, but he shut down. It hit me then that it had been over two months since we’d last had sex.

  One night I came home from my self-inflicted exile to find the flat empty. I don’t know where he was. Something lay crumpled next to the new coffee table (which I later found out cost over seven hundred pounds). A body. There’s a body. I yelped, horror and fear flooding through every cell. I edged closer to it. But it was just a bundle of tweed. The coat – the one we’d found in the wardrobe. And next to it, a hoodie. The one Robin slung on after a hard day spent knocking tiles off walls.

  The door slammed behind me. Robin was home. He looked exhausted. His hands were pocked with tiny cuts from the work; his nails were black. “Did you go to the gym in that state?” I asked.

  He shrugged like a sulky teenager.

  I pointed at the tweed coat. “Did you put that here?”

  He gave me a blank look and shrugged again.

  NUDGING ROBIN TO stay on track and finish at least some of the rooms was a full-time job, and my work started to suffer. He lied to me and told me that Ryan, his boss, had cut his classes, which was why he had more time to spend on the renovation.

  The new kitchen he wanted cost over seven thousand pounds in total. I’m not going to harp on about the money – that’s all in the court transcripts – but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t feeling the financial strain.

  Finally, we had three okay-ish rooms almost completed. He was showing signs of wanting to move onto to the bathroom instead of finishing the lounge, dining room and kitchen, so I suggested he work towards a deadline – a house-warming party. Neither of us were social people, but I thought it might give him some focus.

  I had to strong-arm him to invite his friends, and he was nervou
s about meeting Nikesh. He was still a little stiff with Helena, but only because he (wrongly) thought she was a snob. I’d been asking to meet Kelly and Steve from the gym for ages, but Robin had been reluctant. I asked him if it was because he was embarrassed about our age difference, and he denied it. “To be honest, Mal, I just don’t like them that much.”

  I believed him. I didn’t like them either. They took against me from the instant they arrived.

  Yes, we did have a small fight that night, but it wasn’t as fraught as Steve and Nikesh said it was in court. You have to remember that Robin and I weren’t used to having company. He was nervous about showing off what he’d done to the flat; I was tired and irritable and regretted suggesting the bloody thing in the first place. And in any case, I had every right to follow-up when Steve said Robin had been skipping his classes.

  When I said something like, “What do you mean you haven’t been at work?”

  Kelly snorted as if to say, Like you didn’t know.

  And then I got it. They thought it was me who was keeping him from work. But I was the one who’d invited them around!

  Meera’s outburst shook all of us. Me especially. I never liked going in the bathroom. Of all the places in the flat, the oppressive atmosphere was far more prevalent in there. After everyone left, I tried to talk to Robin about what had happened. He refused, and I decided to give him his space. My stomach was churning. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, I kept thinking. We were supposed to be happy. A team.

  I so badly wanted it to go back to how it was in the beginning.

  I lay down on the couch and I must have dozed off.

  It was still dark when I woke, a crick in my neck.

  There was a sound coming from the kitchen. Heart thudding, suddenly sure that I was going to come face to face with Meera’s ‘man in the bath’ or something worse, I tiptoed in there.

  It was Robin. He was rubbing at the newly-painted walls with his knuckles. They were bleeding. “It’s not right, Mally,” he said. “I can’t get it right.”