It was like something out of a cartoon, Una thought. That coyote running out over the edge of a cliff. And he's doing fine until he notices how casually he's breaking the laws of physics. He only falls when he realises that he should. The safety of ignorance before understanding, the precious calm before the fall.
The calm in number two Hope Street lasted all of fifteen seconds before the panic muscled in and took its place. In the very same moment, everyone was on their feet. A moment later and everyone was at the lounge door. The houses in Hope Street were built during a time where smaller doorways were preferable because it meant the rooms would be easier to keep warm, and so the crowd quickly bottle-necked, frustration and fear flaring like wildfire.
Una and Alasdair were near the back of the crowd, seated by the window. Una had found herself unable to overcome her habit of stepping aside to let others go before her. She glanced up at the corner of the room and, while it had not changed in any visible manner, she felt the threat of it had intensified, like a magnifying glass focusing the late autumn sunlight.
'If everyone just goes one at a time,' someone said. It sounded like Bryn, his voice far too reedy to carry any weight or credence, no matter how good the advice was. Everyone was pushing towards the door. Whenever they relaxed just a moment to consider the logic of the situation, someone else pushed from behind and that only made them redouble their efforts.
The fear was animal. The smell of it seeped into the room, made it dense and primal.
Una heard the door clatter open as the neighbours fought to free themselves, popping out into the hallway like champagne corks. She heard their footsteps faltering on the path outside.
She felt Alasdair's hand in hers and felt his own impatience coiled up tight within it.
'We're going to be too late,' he said. He looked behind him at the window. Then he kissed Una on the cheek and stepped across the room to examine it closer.
The window was locked. Alasdair recognised the residents' committee approved window fasteners bolted to the levers on both opening panes; they were the same model he had himself and he had a key for them somewhere, probably at home in the glass jar where he and Una kept such domestic ephemera. Instead he picked up the dining chair that Kelly Dormer had been sitting on, and thrust it legs first towards the glass. It took a few attempts before the glass gave way, more with a creak and a crack than with a satisfying shatter.
'That's my window!' Carla Bretton squeaked from the front garden, apparently having been one of the first to escape from the house. Alasdair ignored her. He hammered away the remaining shards of glass with a broken chair-leg, and tore down the curtain to cushion the jagged teeth they left behind in the frames.
'You can't break my window!' Carla said. 'When this is all over I'll have to fix it. You're paying for it, Alasdair Felton. I tell you right now, you're paying for it all. Otherwise my lawyers will hear of this, you mark my words.'
She hovered on the other side, her hands flapping. Behind her, the crowd of residents watched from a safe distance.
'And those are my best curtains,' Carla said. 'You have no respect for other people's property. Those were my mother's curtains. She had them made after she got married and I kept them as a reminder of her. Those are precious things. You can't treat them like that.'
'Carla,' Alasdair said, 'please step out of the way so my wife can get out of your house.'
But a polite request was not enough to move Carla.
'This is an outrage,' she said and she started pulling the curtain away, her little fists grasping the fabric and ripping it over the remains of the broken glass.
Alasdair shot a glance to his wife, then to the door which remained blocked by the dwindling jumble of remaining residents.
'One moment, dear,' he said. He vaulted out of the window with a deftness that belied his years, then took Carla by the shoulder and gently guided her away from the window. She was still arguing, still flapping her arms as Penny Moon stepped in with an apologetic expression to lead her away.
Una approached the window and smiled. She set her hands on the ledge, made soft by the curtain, and watched as Alasdair hurried back across the garden to help her.
'What a wonderful thing you are,' she said.
And then the house became unlivable and she died.
After the Meeting
Five people were left in number two Hope Street when it became unlivable after November's residents' meeting. Alasdair had seen Una fall at the window as though she had simply been taken by a swoon like one of the characters from the Regency romances she had a weakness for. Elsewhere, Cyril Styx, the large gentleman from number three, had got stuck in the living room door and his wife Brenda had been tugging at his arm from the other side. He'd spent more time complaining that she was hurting him than appreciating how she was trying to help. Both died where they stood, both had tears in their eyes. Bryn's partner Howard had been on the toilet upstairs when everything went wrong. He had eaten something the day before which had disagreed with him and as a result he missed most of the stampede because, when he realised what was happening, he was determined to make himself presentable and avoid showing either himself or Bryn up. The final resident to die was Lewis Potterton, who had been waiting behind to help both Cyril Styx through the door or Una through the window, whichever opportunity came first.
Alasdair had stared at empty window where Una had fallen. He could hear Lydia Potterton screaming behind him, but he felt numb and disconnected because there was nothing else he could do other than find a way to come to terms with the hole that had opened up in his world. If he had pushed Cara out the way, he could have helped Una immediately. If only he hadn't been so patient and polite, his wife would have been standing there with him. He shook the thought out of his head. There was no time for such speculation, the street wasn't done with them yet. It occurred to him that he'd left his watch on the small table beside the sofa in Carla Bretton's front room. It had started to worry at him of late, his wrist coming out in a rash where the leather of the strap rubbed against the softening folds of his skin. But Una had given it to him the Christmas after they married and in some ways it reassured him that she was there looking after it for him.
He retreated back up the path and put his hand on Lydia Potterton's shoulder.
'Let's go home,' he said, emphasising the word home in a way that made it sound as inclusive as Una would have wanted. Lydia nodded. She would be strong for her daughter, but there would be time for that later. For now she was unashamed to be led.
They walked a few steps up the path before Alasdair turned back.
'Carla,' he said. 'There's room at ours should you need it.'
Carla was standing on her lawn, staring at her broken house. For the first time in her life, she didn't know what to do, or what to say.
Number Four and Number Six
Three more weeks passed before two further houses on the street became unlivable, and when they turned, they did so within hours of each other. At number four, Judy Khamen woke in the night, untroubled by dreams. Lying alone in her dark bedroom with only the memory of the woman she had once loved keeping the bed warm beside her, she felt a knot of cold panic ripen inside of her and for a moment, she wondered if Francesca had come back while she'd been asleep. If she turned her head just a little, taking her eyes off the ceiling and looking at the pillow beside her, she imagined she would see Francesca there, her hair a comb of richer shadows spilling down the back of her neck to pool on the silk sheets.
Judy was a personal injury lawyer and only the previous week she had been delivering a series of presentations to a handful of financial companies in Midholme, detailing her own company's position on the merits of liabilities insurance. Francesca had been a liability and Judy had known that when she first met her. She'd heard people describe how someone's smile could be wicked, but she'd never seen such a thing until she'd met Francesca. And there it was: a shard of something mischievous in her eye that widened into somet
hing beautiful and dangerous when she smiled.
Judy was already in a relationship at the time. Marjorie was an older woman and they'd fallen in together by one of those happy accidents where people who fit together find themselves in the right place at the right time. She was a pleasant soul. Homely. They'd been together for the best part of three years, and while their definition of 'best part' didn't quite align (for Judy it was duration, for Marjorie it was quality), Judy was content.
Francesca didn't give a fuck.
Weeks later when they met again, Judy recounted how her world had since fallen apart now that Francesca was in its orbit. She told how Marjorie had fled. She told Francesca the things Marjorie had said to her, how her face had looked ruined, painted bright with anger and tears. She told Francesca how everything now felt hollow and empty.
Francesca looked at her pointedly.
'I will break your heart,' she had said.
Judy weighed up the risks, then bet everything she had, starting with a kiss.
Lying alone in her bed at number four Hope Street, watching the darkness clot around her, she considered staying where she was and letting the dying house take her with it. It had been months since she'd last seen Francesca and everything she owned now felt brittle and grey, whether the house was liveable or otherwise. Why should she save herself? What was left to be saved?
But she pushed herself up and out of bed anyway. Sitting on the edge for a moment, her toes arched down to the bare floorboards. She allowed herself the luxury of time to wake up. If the house took her, then so be it. She was in no rush. She took her time finding some clothes to wear, a warm coat, a few paperbacks, some boots. Her hand passed over a locket that Marjorie had given her one Christmas, but she left it where it lay on the dresser. She found her phone and her wallet instead, she found the phone charger and put everything into a canvas bag, one of the ones she had picked up at a conference a few years earlier. She trudged down the stairs, the wallpaper curling and blackening behind her as she laid her hand on the door handle and turned it.
*
Just over an hour after Judy Khamen locked the door of number four behind her for the very last time, Brandon Vine, who was renting the house at number six, woke briefly in his bed in a similar state of distress.
In his barely awakened state, it didn't occur to him that his panic was anything to do with the house at all. He attributed his fear to the usual things that woke him up in the night: the upcoming round of redundancies at the consultancy firm he'd been working at for the past seven years; the fact that he was ill-prepared to complete his tax assessment this year; the sheer volume of grey in his beard; the nagging sense that there might be a lump on one of his balls; the sinking pit of knowing that he had now been single for four years, seven months, and three days.
These were familiar fears, each of which had woken him periodically in the past. And on this occasion, as on any other when they had troubled him, he stomped out of his bedroom and crossed the hall to the bathroom where he dosed himself with the homeopathic anxiety medication his mother had sworn by.
Back in bed, he fretted briefly that his failure to believe in homeopathy would render the tablets redundant, but this worry didn't stop him from falling back asleep again, and for the first time since he'd been a child, he snored.
The expression of sheer contentment on his face when he died might have been read as evidence that he knew his concerns would never bother him again.
An Invitation
As Christmas approached, there were only three houses left in Hope Street that had not yet become unlivable. They stood out like pools of bright sunlight punctuating an otherwise unpromising day. The residents who had outlived their home's decline remained in the street, clustered together, their shared survival granting them a collective experience more profound than any number of residents' committees or contrived community events. For the first time, they recognised how they were all alive, how they were all human, how they were all still there. For the first time, they recognised how important the simple commonalities were between them. They were precious hand, and footholds in each other that they each clung to desperately.
Alasdair Felton was still at number seven and he had taken it upon himself to continue Una's charity as she would have herself, were she still there. If this was her legacy, he was grateful for it. The house would have been empty without her, unlivable in its own very particular and equally dangerous way. Instead, he busied himself with the needs of his guests, considering ways to break the house further into tiny domestic polities which could accommodate more refugees should the need arise.
Lydia Potterton and Monica still lived in the small spare room in the attic and they filled the space Lewis left with a memory of him which gave him a greater stature than he could have ever filled in life. Downstairs, Carla Bretton had claimed a curtained-off section of the lounge, and made herself a nest of scatter cushions and blankets in one of the box beds Alasdair had constructed. The result had an appearance part Bedouin tent, part Scottish bothy, and part child's den. There was something transitory about it which appealed to her, and in a peculiar way, she felt as though she had finally become the eccentric gypsy seer she had always imagined herself to be.
Bryn Purbrick had moved into Suzie's old room, which hadn't been redecorated properly since the mid-1990s because Una had desperately hoped she would come home one day, and because she was terrified she would leave again if the room hadn't been exactly as she'd left it. One wall was still covered with a collage of curling clippings from the NME and Melody Maker, Rolling Stone and Select. The kohl-rimmed eyes of minor starlets peeked out between demo reviews and interviews with musicians; heavy on supercilious snark and wretched word-play. When Bryn woke in panic during the night, when his simple dreams would be invaded by the more nightmarish truth that Howard had died, he would calm himself by picking his way through the clippings with a torch. He didn't really know what any of it meant, he didn't know who any of these people were, but in a curious way it grounded him, it kept him whole.
At number nine, Penny Moon now hosted Milton Bream in her own room, and Judy Khamen in her father's. Stephen and Deirdre Spiller and their three kids had also moved in from number ten. They had missed much of the previous activity on the street; they'd been in Portland for the past six months, where Deirdre had been working on a project and Stephen had been failing to write a novel. They returned to find their home had become unlivable while they were away. Penny Moon had already left a note in their driveway, wrapped in plastic and set in place with a hefty pebble.
'There's a room for you all at ours,' it said.
'You're not alone,' it said.
And so the Spillers had moved into Penny Moon's upstairs lounge, and being of similar dimensions to the condo they had shared for the past six months, it felt more like home to them than the house they would never enter again.
Throughout all of this, the Dormer family at number twelve remained on their own.
'We simply haven't got the room,' Daniel said when Alasdair brought up the subject one afternoon. He'd come round to invite the family to a Christmas meal with the other residents. It had been Monica's idea. She'd raised it over breakfast one morning the previous week, idly trying to imagine how Christmas might work now that everyone was in different places. She worded things delicately so as not to upset her mother.
'This place is too small for us really,' Daniel said. He spread his arms to encompass the lounge. 'And Hilary suffers from terrible claustrophobia. It's a family thing. My father was exactly the same.'
Hilary ducked behind his mother's legs, his eyes downcast.
Alasdair nodded.
'I understand,' he said. 'I really do.'
He didn't mention that all the houses in the street were built to the same design, and that while many had subsequently acquired alterations of some description, none were quite so large as the extension which stretched out into what had once been the Dormer's back garden. Thirty squ
are metres of additional lounge space on the downstairs, two more bedrooms up top.
Alasdair inclined his head and made his move. At the door, Daniel watched him walk down the path.
'I don't know why they stay,' he said.
Alasdair stopped and turned back. He looked at Daniel a moment, trying to see the same hand, and footholds on him which were so clear and apparent in everyone else on the street. But the man was smooth and soft, like a curl of butter on a warm day.
'It's their home,' Alasdair said. 'Why should they leave?'
'It's not their home anymore.' Daniel looked imperious in the doorway. Part sentry, part bouncer. 'Circumstance might be unkind, but there's nothing anyone can do when it gets in your way. It's a message. We should listen. We all should listen. It started with the Pottertons. Maybe it's still happening because they stayed.'
Alasdair shook his head slowly.
'No,' he said. 'I don't believe that at all.'
Daniel remained unmoved.
'Well, it's something to consider.' He plunged his hands deep into his pockets and looked up at the threads of cloud crawling across the grey of the sky. 'And if it's true,' he said, 'perhaps your wife's compassion has put everyone at risk. If the Pottertons had been sent packing when their house went wrong, who knows how many people would still be alive?'
When he looked down again, his smile was stiff and straight.
'Christmas dinner will be at two,' Alasdair said. 'You're all welcome. Bring a bottle if you can spare one.'
Number Nine
Late on Christmas Eve, Penny Moon's house became unlivable. Judy Khamen noticed the signs first. It was nearly nine o'clock and she was in the back garden with a cigarette. She found herself strangely content with her new life. She had always liked Penny, but even Milton was less of a dick than she had assumed. She liked the closeness of the situation. The warmth, the tolerance, the fact you had to lean into the wall to let people past in the morning. If it was not the companionship she had wept for, perhaps it was the companionship she had needed.
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