You Let Me In

by Lucy Clarke

  ‘No,’ I answer, surprised.

  ‘Never learned as a child. Somehow as an adult I didn’t find the need to learn. Always lived in cities.’

  ‘So why Cornwall?’

  He looks at me as if the answer is obvious. ‘Your sister.’

  Fiona has always maintained that it was Bill’s idea – that he was ready to get out of the city. That they wanted to bring up Drake by the coast.

  Outside, there is a loud vibration as a motorbike throttles to life. Bill turns in the direction of the noise, his brow tightening, lips thinning. Then he lifts his glass and finishes the whisky.

  ‘Mind if I have another?’

  ‘Sure.’ I fetch the bottle and hand it to him.

  The neck clatters against his glass as he pours a generous glug. I watch, uncertainly, wondering about the car he needs to drive home. I can’t think that Bill has ever been here without Fiona or Drake. I have the strange feeling that Fiona doesn’t know he is here.

  He swirls the whisky around his glass. ‘So,’ he begins slowly without looking at me. ‘He drives a motorbike.’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Your neighbour. Mark.’ He looks up. ‘The man Fiona’s been fucking.’

  Shock pinches my features.

  ‘I see that you know.’

  ‘I … well … I found out … by accident. How did you …’

  ‘Drake got hold of her mobile, somehow found his way into her messages.’

  My stomach drops at the thought of it – the awful shock, the cruel struggle for Bill to hold it together in front of Drake.

  ‘Have you talked to Fiona?’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘You and Drake – you’re her world. It was a fling. Not even that. It’s over. Fiona told me. He meant nothing.’ Everything I’m saying feels wrong. I’m speaking in clichés.

  Bill finishes his drink and carefully sets down the glass.

  ‘What do you do, Elle, when the person you love confounds you completely? When there’s something about who they are that is destructive?’ He is looking at me intently.

  I don’t know the right answer.

  ‘I worried about the move to Cornwall,’ Bill says. ‘I thought Fiona might find it too quiet after the city. She loves it here. She likes walking the beaches. She loves Drake having all this space to explore. But she misses her work, I know that. There are certain things Fiona needs – we all need – to feel good about who we are. I just wish they didn’t include having sex with twenty-something-year-old men.’ His laugh is bitter.

  ‘It was a mistake. A one-off.’

  ‘You believe that’ll be the last time?’ He looks at me. The set of his face is altered, distorted. It is like looking at a stranger. I can’t help thinking of the person I glimpsed crouching outside my house a few nights ago. ‘People don’t change, Elle.’

  ‘She loves you, Bill. Please, talk to her.’

  ‘If we talk, it blows the game apart.’

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Maybe I fuck someone else.’ His voice is dark, angered. ‘Even the slate.’

  Unease spreads down my spine: something about the moment echoes back to my past. I feel the strange flicker of dislocation, a sense that something has changed. That I have underestimated or misjudged.

  There are moments in life when a situation or an individual that has previously felt known to you will swing round and surprise you so completely that it knocks the very breath from your lungs. Those moments – if they come – alter you, cause you to doubt yourself, your judgement, your safety.

  I feel this moment turning on me – as if I’m standing in the shallows, watching a rogue wave rising. I find myself being dragged from the present, towed out into the past, into a small office with a wooden desk and a metal filing cabinet.

  I know what it is like for fear to reduce you to something static, vulnerable. I had always thought that if I were in danger, I would claw and rage and fight and kick.

  Only I didn’t.

  Now, when Bill comes towards me – when I feel that first touch of skin, uninvited, fingers brushing my throat – something primeval overtakes me. Rage pumps through my veins and I react instinctively, powerfully. My muscles fire and I shove my hands hard into his chest.

  There is a backwards step, a deep thud, an explosion of glass.

  Then stillness.

  I stand blinking, staring at the space where the coffee table had previously been. It is difficult to comprehend its former shape as something solid because now only the wooden base remains, the glass top shattered into thousands of glinting pieces that stud the lounge floor.

  And in the centre, him.

  Bill.

  Not a stranger.

  Bill, my brother-in-law.

  As he moves, shards of glass tinkling to the ground, it is like I’ve been startled awake. My fingertips tremble. The floor feels as if it is liquid, moving beneath me.

  I watch as Bill’s mouth begins to twist around words, but I cannot hear them beyond the roar of blood in my ears.

  Then he is standing, glass raining from his shoulders, as he glares at me, white-faced.

  My hearing comes back in a rush – like exiting a tunnel, ears popping.

  ‘What the hell?’ he booms.

  ‘I … I thought … you were going to …’ I stop.

  ‘To what?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You were crying, Elle. I went to hug you.’

  My fingers lift to my face – explore the hollows beneath my eyes – and come away wet. I shake my head, bewildered. ‘I didn’t realise …’

  He dusts his trousers, empties out his shoes. Glass fragments are bouncing from him. Then he turns from me, moving towards the door.

  ‘Bill, wait!’

  He stops. Swings back. ‘You thought I was making a pass, didn’t you? And THAT was your reaction! You threw me halfway across the room. I never realised quite how repellent I am.’

  ‘Bill, I’m—’

  He lifts a hand, cutting me off. Then he turns, leaves.

  I hear his footsteps travelling towards the front door. Hear the suck of air as it opens, then the slam of it shutting.

  I listen. There is the faint double beep of a car alarm, then the more distant sound of a car door opening then closing. I don’t catch the engine starting, just the low crunch of gravel beneath tyres and the scrape of the underside of the car against the pothole just beyond the edge of the drive.

  He is gone.

  I squeeze my eyes shut. The memory is crimson-fresh, like blood that hasn’t had a chance to clot.

  A fragment of glass, caught in my jumper, falls onto the wooden floor with the lightest clink. I bend down to examine it between my fingertips. Strange to think this had once been part of the table top. Its very form has shifted, altered irreconcilably.

  It was Bill, but also not Bill.

  Me, but not me.

  I leave the room, crossing the hallway. As I pass the gilt-framed mirror, I do not look up: I don’t want to see the bloodless tone of my skin, or the darkness in my pupils.

  Strangely, my mind is locked on how I would write this. The power in my hands, my wrists, my shoulders as I’d pushed.

  I ascend the staircase to my writing room.

  2004

  Elle tipped back the shot glass, a fiery red liquid sliding down her throat. She slammed the empty glass on the bar top, grinning at Louise. Then she led the way out onto the floodlit terrace of the nightclub, the cool spring night refreshing against her flushed skin.

  There, standing near the exit, smoking, was Luke Linden.

  Elle felt a flutter of excitement, the night holding fresh promise.

  ‘There is no such thing,’ he said, pausing to draw deep on a cigarette, ‘as an anonymous night out in this town. Now you’ll forever know my weakness for grungy bars and Welsh reggae singers.’

  Beside her, Louise’s voice turned skittish as she enthused about the band, how she loved reggae, that he should
check out this new group she’d discovered a few months ago …

  Elle wasn’t listening. She was concentrating on the pleasing feeling of her palms skimming the hem of her short dusky blue dress. Her body had that warm, boneless feeling that came when she’d been drinking, making her feel light, loose-limbed.

  As Louise turned, pointing over her shoulder towards the band, Luke Linden’s gaze moved to Elle, to the hem of her dress. His eyes lingered there for a moment, then rose to her face.

  She enjoyed the way he was looking at her, not with the darting eyes of the boys her age, but with a steady, unapologetic stare.

  She found her lips parting lightly, her mouth turning into a smile that she’d not worn before – a pursing of her lips.

  Then Luke Linden made a small movement with his head, a nod, as if an agreement had been made, something decided between them. A thrill shivered through her body.

  Louise turned back to them. ‘Want to watch the band?’

  ‘I’ve got an early meeting,’ Luke Linden said, ‘which I need to be fresh for.’ Then he stubbed out his cigarette and bid them goodnight.

  Maybe it was the noise out on the terrace, or perhaps it was the alcohol coursing through her, but Elle had missed it – the clue he’d handed her.

  With her mood dampened by Linden’s departure, Elle returned to the bar and ordered another round of drinks for her and Louise. They drank and danced, bodies glistening with sweat, balls of their feet burning. At close, they stumbled out onto the street, their skin chilled by the late spring air.

  Their ambling, drunken path home took them down a stretch of road inhabited mostly by students. One of the houses was illuminated with strobing lights, the front door lolling open, a group of students spilling onto the pavement. Elle tugged Louise’s hand, following the pulsing music into the house party.

  Inside, a disco ball spun above a crowd of cramped bodies. Two girls danced on a sofa, heels sinking into the depths of the cushions, raised hands brushing the ceiling. The air smelled of spilled beer and sweat, bass drilling through the thin walls.

  Elle squeezed out into the hallway, feeling the beat of the music change as she climbed the stairs. The rhythm was mellower, sexy. She felt her hips slink from side to side as she squeezed past a tiny girl with bright blonde hair wearing vivid pink lipstick.

  Upstairs, a bluesy voice belted from a speaker somewhere. The smell of weed was heady and thick, drifts of smoke tinged purple by the hypnotic formations of a lava lamp. Behind another door there was a small group of people huddled around a desk where a line of coke had been cut, its path lit by a study lamp.

  ‘Elle! Hey! Didn’t know you were here! Cool!’ It was a boy – Carl – who took one of the same modules as her, Fiction of the Indian Sub-Continent, and had read Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and declared, ‘Not much of a page-turner.’

  He grabbed her by the hand, saying, ‘This line’s yours.’

  She looked at the group of people standing around, shrugged, then bent over the desk and pressed a finger to a nostril, feeling the coke zing through her system, making her eyes blink, then widen as a golden beam shone into her chest.

  Later there were shots – of absinthe, of tequila, of a sickly red liquid that tasted like cinnamon and burnt sugar – and then later still, there was that elfin girl with the pink lips, who tasted of cherry and cigarettes as they’d kissed to a roar of cheers.

  And then, all at once, the sun had risen, the light revealing the bare springs of the sofa she was lying on, the threadbare patches of carpet, the chipped polish of her nails.

  She stumbled into the morning, intent on getting back to her house, to a bed with clean sheets, where she could pour a long glass of water, line up the painkillers for the hangover she knew she deserved.

  As she moved through Bute Park, dog walkers and joggers eyeing her in last night’s dress, her heels clacking along the concrete, she glanced at her watch. Just before nine. She had a vague recollection of an appointment. Something she was meant to be doing. No, not an appointment, a meeting.

  With Luke Linden.

  21

  Elle

  ‘Don’t be afraid to draw from personal experience – it’s the richest resource you have.’

  Author Elle Fielding

  Pushing open the door of the writing room, I pace to the far wall, swing round, stride back again. Back, forth. My feet thud against wood, thoughts flashing dangerously: Bill’s face up close to mine, so close I could see the open pores of his nose filled with tiny beads of grease; the crash of glass, high notes of sound as it shattered; the twist of Bill’s lips as he swore; the knock at the door moments later—

  No, wait! I halt, fingers outstretched as if pushing at something. That isn’t right. That was before. That was a different room, a different man.

  The images are stretching and blurring, the heat of emotion melding them together. Bill’s features distort, reshape into a thinner face, darker eyes. Eyes I can’t read.

  I push off again, feet drumming across floorboards.

  The narrative isn’t clear. There are question marks, patches that seem as if they have two versions: his, mine.

  I stop pacing and place my hands on my hips, breathing out hard. I can’t unpiece it all.

  Seized by an idea, I’m drawn towards my desk. I stay on my feet as I open a Word document and type something.

  No. Wrong.

  I delete it. Type a different sentence, then another.

  I continue typing as I lower myself into the chair, knees folding beneath the desk.

  My fingertips race over the keys, a dance, feeling my way into the story, my eyes never leaving the screen.

  It is gone midnight when I lean back in my chair, fingertips sliding free of the keyboard.

  I’ve been at my desk for hours, not daring break the writing momentum to so much as fetch a drink.

  The room is in darkness, except for the glow of my laptop. I flick on my desk lamp, blinking against the sudden light. I’m aware that if anyone is standing in the dark bay, they would be able to look up and see me spotlighted. Alone.

  My thoughts swim back to Bill’s earlier visit and swirl there, a dizzying eddy.

  People don’t change, Bill had said.

  But I’m not sure that’s true. We do change. I have changed. I’m no longer the carefree student of years ago, who had a restless energy, wanting to tear through the skin of the world and go explore. Nor am I the girl of later, the one who got lost for years, who walked the streets searching for something, who barely ate, who didn’t sleep. I’m not sure I’m even the woman who gradually emerged – the one I liked best – who married a good man, who once lay on her back in a warm ocean, hair fanning around her, weightless, marvelling, It’s all so beautiful.

  No, I’m a different woman altogether now.

  I drag my focus back to my screen, saving my work and shutting down my laptop. I stand, stiff-legged. The heating must have turned off an hour or two ago and I’m chilled to the bone. I can feel a tension headache tightening at the front of my skull. I must get in the habit of bringing a jug of water to my desk.

  I’ve barely eaten since the food poisoning and I can feel the waistband of my trousers gaping as I cross the room. I must eat something – keep up my strength.

  I reach the door, my fingers sliding around the cold pewter handle. I push downwards, but there is no release in the door mechanism. I try again, assuming I’ve made the movement incorrectly. But again, there is nothing. No click. No releasing. The door stays shut.

  Unease scuttles down my neck, like an insect falling beneath the neckline of my jumper. The door is jammed.

  I try a third time using both hands.

  The door doesn’t move. There is no give.

  I flick on the main room light, then crouch to look more closely at the mechanism of the handle. I blink. It is impossible – yet I can see it.

  There is the rectangular block of metal pushing into the mechanism: the door is b
olted.

  My palms are flat against the door. I hold myself very still, listening.

  All I can hear is my own breath, quick and shallow.

  My mind is racing. The key for my writing room is downstairs in the bureau. It’s an externally locking door – I couldn’t lock myself in, even if I wanted to.

  Have I been locked in?

  My throat turns slick with bile.

  I talk myself clear of the idea, focusing on the possibility of a broken spindle, or loose bolt.

  I spin away from the door, pacing across the room. The hurried tread of my feet echoes through the silence. My mobile is in the kitchen. The Wi-Fi router I keep downstairs is switched off. There is no way of calling anyone.

  What do I do?

  I will have to force my way out. I face the door, my eyes mapping it: solid oak, no weak points. There’s no chance of me shouldering it open. Even if I use my office chair as a battering ram, it’ll crack and splinter long before the door gives.

  The lock mechanism, that’s what I need to focus on.

  Yanking open the desk drawer, I search through potential implements: pens, a pair of scissors, paperclips, a metal ruler. I grab the latter and hurry back to the door, crouching low as I try to slide the ruler between the gap in the frame and the door.

  Too thick! There is no space to slot it. Even if there was, I’ve no idea how I’d jiggle a metal bolt out of position.

  I drop the ruler and flatten my hands against the door, smoothing them over the sanded planes, as if I can intuit some divine answer.

  My mouth feels dry, my tongue thick against the roof of my mouth. The thought of a tall glass of water becomes an acute desire. Thirst lights a flame of panic: what if I can’t get out?

  It could be days before anyone realises I’m missing.

  I grab the handle, pulling, pushing, jostling.

  Nothing fucking works!

  I launch myself at the door, slamming my shoulder against it. A deep pain ricochets down my arm. I pull back and throw myself at the door a second time.

  I do it again and again, till the bones and muscles and skin of my shoulder feel hot and flayed.

  I shiver at the foot of the door, arms hugged to my chest. The wind is beating against the glass wall, breathing the cold night into the room. It must be around one in the morning. The heating won’t be on again until six.