Five Stories High

by Jonathan Oliver

  I tried to stop him; put my arms around to hug him, but he winced and pulled away.

  “We’ll get through this, Robin,” I promised.

  He’d started cutting himself by then, but I only found out about that later. I didn’t know. I swear I didn’t know.

  I KNOW, I know. Why didn’t I get him to see a psychologist? It was obvious to anyone with eyes in her head that he was obsessional, and heading for a major breakdown. I no longer dared bring up anything up about night classes, or suggested that we bring someone else in to help with the work.

  There are no excuses for this. I clung to the hope that once the flat was finished he’d snap back to normal.

  Some nights I’d wake to find him sitting in the lounge or the dining room, muttering to himself. Then he’d get up, take a step towards the walls, and cock his head, like an artist who couldn’t get a painting quite right.

  I started to dread going home. I spent more and more time in cafés, and existed on a diet of tranquilisers and coffees. I joined a gym – not Robin’s of course – simply so that I could use the showers. After Meera’s hysterical reaction, I couldn’t bear to use ours. Sometimes I felt like there wasn’t enough oxygen in the flat.

  Then I had an idea to snap him out of it.

  I managed to grab his attention while he was repapering the lounge for the third time. “Robin, listen.”

  “What?”

  “After we’ve fixed up the flat, I think we should sell it.”

  A look of pure fear came over his face.

  “Wait – listen to me. You’re good at this, Robin. Maybe this is what we should do. Flip houses.”

  “You think I’m good at this?” he sneered.

  “You have an eye for style.” A lie, but I was getting desperate.

  “I’ll never leave this place, Mal. Never. She needs me.”

  “Who needs you?”

  “You know.” That’s what he said, You know.

  “Robin. It’s making you ill.”

  I tried to curl myself around him when he slept, but he kept pushing me away. An odour wafted off his skin. A new, sour odour. I knew what it was later, of course.

  He’d been slicing bits off his skin and... hiding them in the walls. They tried to accuse me of doing that, too.

  I ONLY FOUND out about the self-mutilation towards the end. He was up on the ladder one afternoon, and as he raised his arm, his T-shirt rode up. There was a wound on his torso the size of a man’s palm. “Oh my God,” I said to him. “How did you do that?”

  He blinked and then looked down, almost losing his balance. “Huh?”

  “On your side, Robin.”

  A crafty look came into his eye. “Oh that. Fell off the ladder, scraped myself against the floor.”

  I made him get down from the ladder and cleaned the wound with diluted Dettol. It was crusted around the edges, and although a smear of yellow fat glistened in the deeper areas, it didn’t looked infected. “You need to go to a doctor.”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Robin, it’s really bad. Shall I call Nikesh to come over and have a look at it?”

  “No.”

  “Robin. Please. We can’t go on like this.”

  “Like what? Just leave me alone. Stop interfering.”

  And then he went back to painting the ceiling and I went back to my avoidance tactics.

  Why didn’t I break up with him? Kick him out? Move out myself? I’d put up with fifteen years of Gerry’s shit, it wasn’t as if I didn’t have form where ignoring the obvious was concerned.

  WHAT MADE ME look into the flat’s history? Isn’t it obvious? There was the ‘man in the bath’ that Meera had seen; the fact that Robin’s obsessive behaviour had started pretty much since we moved in, and then there were the oppressive vibes I’d picked up, that hadn’t lessened despite the on-going makeover. I tried the neighbours first, hoping that someone – Robin’s old lady perhaps – could tell me about the people who lived here before us. I knocked on their doors, slid notes underneath them, asking them to contact me. Not one of them answered or ever came back to me.

  Nothing came up on the internet when I typed in Ogilvy, Irongrove Lodge.

  I contacted the solicitor who’d dealt with the sale and she gave me the address of the vendors, a Mr and Mrs Kavanaugh. They’d sold the flat via a holding company – ‘clever tax evasion’ the solicitor called it.

  I didn’t phone them. I decided to pitch up, taking the photo album along as an excuse.

  They lived in a semi in Bromley that had clearly been done up recently – there was still a skip in the driveway. Yeah, done up with my money, I remember thinking bitterly. Unfair – they had every right to use the cash from the sale of the flat however they saw fit.

  The woman who answered the door was brittle and irritable, and I had to work hard to convince her to talk to me. It was the wedding album that did it in the end.

  The interior of the house was spotless and a shrine to modernist chic, which clashed horribly with the house’s modest 1930s exterior. It was cold, very very white and must have cost the earth. Does this conspicuous excess make you happy? I wanted to scream in her face, this woman with her hair extensions and her fake tan and her fake tits that I probably paid for too. Will this make you happy? It fucking won’t.

  Sorry. It’s not right to blame her for my unhappiness.

  I listened politely, secretly hating her, as she spun her tale: The surprise lottery of discovering a reclusive rich uncle who was sitting on a million quid’s worth of real estate. She told me that Mr Ogilvy had died in the bath, where he was discovered by Barry, her hapless husband.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. “That must have been so upsetting. Were you close?”

  She gave me a shrewd glance. Perhaps I’d underestimated her. “No. We did what we could, but it’s quite a trek to get over there, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said, lying. It had taken me thirty-five minutes; less than your average commute.

  Did you speak to her?

  Good – so she told you the tale about her uncle keeping the flat as a shrine to his dead wife then.

  When she told me, it made sense in a twisted way. No wonder the flat is filled with bad vibes. We’ve got an angry ghost. Mr Ogilvy is pissed off that we’ve blundered in and are desecrating the mausoleum he built to his dead wife.

  I asked about Mrs Ogilvy. She knew next to nothing about her. She didn’t even know her name.

  SOMETHING DIDN’T SIT right with me. She was leaving something out. I’m tenacious when I want to be, and I couldn’t leave it alone.

  I tried to get hold of Barbara, the estate agent who’d sold us the flat – she’d come across as someone who could pull a few strings – but a colleague said she’d been asked to leave a few weeks earlier. He wouldn’t say why. I didn’t let this bother me. The colleague was friendly, and I lured him in with a bullshit story about being interested in buying another property. I said I was interested in the flat’s history – just idle curiosity, you know – and if I did decide to sell, he’d have first bite at the cherry.

  He looked into it. Perhaps he phoned Barbara to get hold of the gory details. I don’t know.

  He didn’t want to tell me at first.

  Mr Ogilvy hadn’t just died in the bath. He’d lain in it for almost two months before the niece’s husband found him. There was nothing about it in the papers or in the internet; not even a death notice. Apparently this kind of thing happens all the time.

  He’d turned into soup.

  Before Robin had gutted the bathroom, I’d lain in that exact spot, right where the man in the bath had died.

  I shuddered.

  Something else niggled at me. The niece said that her uncle had been so devastated by his wife’s death, that he’d kept the house as a shrine of sorts – a monument to a great love story.

  I didn’t believe her. It didn’t feel like the place was full of love. It was full of something else. Tension, pain, bitterness and s
orrow maybe, but not love.

  THREE OF MY clients dumped me while I was digging into the flat’s history. I’d let them down once too often. It was during this period that Robin spent six thousand pounds on a pink leather sofa that was almost a carbon copy of the one the removal guys had eked down the stairs.

  I barely registered it. In my own way, I was as obsessed as Robin was with the flat.

  It hit me that Mr Ogilvy’s niece wasn’t the only one who could help me get to the bottom of things. There was the bridesmaid in the photos – the grumpy one with the dark eyeliner. I thought about hiring a private detective to track her down, but in the end I did it myself. It was simple. I knew when and where John Ogilvy had got married, and with a bit of luck she’d acted as the witness as well as the bridesmaid. I could get her name from the marriage records.

  And that’s what I did. I got lucky.

  I also found out the name of the bride: Joyce Leanne Ogilvy, née Tanner.

  The bridesmaid had an unusual name with an atypical spelling: Jackie Marie Yankowitz, and she’d kept it – either she hadn’t got married, or didn’t believe in taking a man’s name. She worked as a campaigner against domestic violence and had a strong online presence.

  I should have known then, what I was about to find.

  I found her on Facebook, sent her a friend request and a message, and she wrote back almost immediately. I asked to meet her in person, and she invited me to visit her at her home in Norwich. I told Robin I had to go away to a conference for a night – lost in re-papering the bedroom, he barely registered what I said – and left.

  I booked myself into a B&B, the most characterless, innocuous place I could find on TripAdvisor, and headed out.

  Jackie still wore tons of black eyeliner, but other than that she barely resembled her scowling younger self. She was skeletally thin, but welcomed me in warmly. Her flat was tiny and clean, and smelled slightly medicinal. She didn’t ask me why I wanted to know about Joyce. She knew.

  The letters were laid out on the coffee table and she pointed at them. “This is all I have of Joyce. It’s all that’s left.”

  She watched me while I read them. They were spaced over a period of four years: 1982 to ’86.

  Here. Take them. She let me keep them, and I brought them with me when they locked me in here:

  Jacks

  You won’t believe it. I’ve met a man!

  There’s a bloke that comes in every week with a bunch of business people. He always orders a T-bone and the blue cheese salad and always sits in my section. Anyway that bitch Frankie was shouting at me again because I’d messed up an order and I was crying in the toilets and then I heard shouting.

  And guess what???

  It was this man and he was giving her a bollocking and he was saying how dare you speak to her like that? Frankie had a face like a smacked arse and it was the best thing I’d ever seen in my whole life!!!

  He was waiting for me when I left at the end of my shift and he asked me if I was okay. He took me to the café down the road and bought me a Fanta and a cup of tea. You shouldn’t let people walk all over you, he said. And I told him everything, Jacks about how I couldn’t go home because of mum and Gary and that I really needed this job while I get my art sorted out and he just listened really well like he could see what I was all about. He’s not very good looking, not like the type what I usually go for because he’s older and at first I was worried he was married but he isn’t. And we went out to dinner the next night and he said he’d help me find a job so that I didn’t go back and work for that bitch Frankie but he didn’t try and kiss me or anything jacks altho I wouldn’t have minded.

  I’m seeing him again tomorrow.

  His name is John.

  More soon I love you

  Love Joyce

  Jacks

  I’m sorry sorry sorry I haven’t spoken to you in the longest time but so much has happened.

  So you know that we were being kicked out of the squat because of all that bollocks with the fire regulations and John said come on Joyce you can move in with me. So I did and its really good, Jacks. It’s this apartment in this really old house and I really like it.

  But here is my BIG NEWS so he comes home and he says lets get married and you don’t have to work you can stay at home and do your art and painting and fix this place up!!!!

  And I said yes, Jacks!!!!! I’m getting married!!! What do you think mam would have said? Well I don’t have to worry about that bitch anymore it’ll be just him and me he says and you of course. I want you to come and be my bridesmaid altho it will be a very quiet wedding as he doesn’t like lots of people around him. Its on the 15th at the registry office in Clapham and please please say you’ll be there

  I love you

  Love Joyce

  Jacks

  This is going to sound strange but when you write to me again can you just put it Post restante so that it doesn’t come here? Its just that after you and he had that fight at the wedding he doesn’t approve of me seeing you. I know its so silly.

  But I’m happy Jacks I really am because I’ve started decorating the flat and he says I can do anything I want well within reason. And he loves me so much Jacks that he doesn’t want anything to happen to me or any bad influences. I’ll call you soon from the phone box so that he doesn’t see it on the phone bill.

  Jacks

  I know what you said about him trying to control me and maybe you’re right, but its only because he loves me SO MUCH Jacks!!

  He said I can redo the kitchen, and I know exactly what I’m going to do with it. I saw a picture in Homes & Gardens. I’m thinking red, what do you think?

  Jacks

  It’s really hard for me to get to the post office so sorry this has taken me so long to write to you. I have to do it quickly when he is at work but I think he’s asked the old lady in flat 2 to keep an eye on me and tell him if I go out. I think he’s told her that I am schit schizophrenic or something and can’t go out by myself.

  He’s still not happy with what I’ve done in the bedroom and I think he’s right. Do you think I should go for a yellow colour in the bedroom I don’t know jacks if that is such a good idea.

  I’m very sorry about everything that is happening with you, but don’t worry about me thank you for offering to come and get me but I’m fine and I love the flat so don’t worry

  Love Joyce

  Jackie waited until I’d finished reading them before she spoke.

  “Classic abusive behaviour,” she said. “Cutting the person off from their support network.”

  Jackie told me the rest. After Joyce’s wedding, she’d returned home to Norwich to help care for her grandparents. She’d tried to get to London whenever she could to check on Joyce, but money was tight and she said, “I stupidly didn’t want to cause any trouble for her.”

  Jackie said she didn’t realise the extent of the abuse. “I was young. It was only when I saw him telling her what to do – and even what to eat – at the wedding, that I thought something was up. He was trying to control her.”

  Funny, that, isn’t it? That was what I was accused of doing to Robin.

  I didn’t control Robin, but I could see why it might have come across that way. Especially after Gerry said what he said during the trial.

  Jackie said that the next time she heard anything about her friend, Joyce’s mother called her to say that Joyce had killed herself. She gave me the last letter Joyce had sent to her:

  I love you Jacks but I can’t go on and I love the flat but I have to get out and he says that if I try then he will find me and that will be it he says that I am his and that hes given me everything and I shouldn’t be so ungrateful as I came from NOTHING and

  I want to say goodbye and that I love you and that I’m going to give him something to remember me by I LOVE YOU JACKS

  I stopped reading and looked at her. She was crying. “Did you see him again afterwards?” I asked her.

  “Yes,” she said
. “Once. At Joyce’s funeral.”

  Apart from Joyce’s mum, who Jackie said “was a waste of space”, they were the only two people there. He’d successfully cut her off from everyone she’d ever known.

  “I know what you did,” Jackie said she hissed at him. “I have proof.”

  Joyce had killed herself but he’d driven her to it.

  She said that she’d screamed at him, “If you ever have another relationship again I will make you suffer.” And he’d replied, “She’s already doing that.”

  Jackie paused to cough. I didn’t know then how sick she was. She was fighting breast cancer, and she was losing.

  I told her that when we’d bought the flat, the furnishings had all looked brand new and that John Ogilvy’s niece seemed to think that he was trying to keep Joyce’s memory alive.

  Jackie shook her head. “That bloody flat. It killed her as much as he did. Joyce got obsessed with the bloody thing because she was trying to control something in her life. Perhaps she thought controlling her environment would make up for the chaos in her marriage.”

  As I was leaving Jackie gave me the letters. I didn’t want to take them, but of course I did.

  I thanked her and went back to my B&B. I didn’t sleep that night.

  Perhaps you’re wondering why I haven’t said any of this before. Isn’t it obvious? Because, as Robin would have said, “it’s mental as fuck”. Jackie didn’t come forward to back me up because by the time I went to trial, she was dead.