by Alex Marwood
Out on the landing there’s a cupboard set into the wall, by the stairs up to Thomas Dunbar’s flat. It’s where the Landlord keeps his tools, whatever tools those are, and he keeps it locked. But today she finds the door hanging open, and can’t resist the urge to have a look. And in the back of the cupboard, barely visible in the gloom, she finds the door.
This isn’t right, thinks Cher. That’s an outside wall, I’m sure it is. lf I open it, I’ll just step through to three storeys of thin air.
But she steps inside anyway, and closes the door behind her so no one can see what she’s doing. Aside from the door, the cupboard contains nothing much beyond a broken vacuum cleaner and a collection of rags, which hang from nails hammered into the risers of the stairs above her head. There’s no one out on the landing, and the house sounds quiet, but she feels uncomfortable, as though the silence is a sign that someone is hiding nearby, listening. In the stifling darkness, she feels her way over the back wall with her fingers until she finds the latch, lifts and pushes. The door resists for a moment, as though it’s not been opened in many years, then it scrapes back over dusty floorboards and her world is once again filled with light.
It’s a grey light, a dead sort of light. A light that bleaches the colour from the world, makes everything dusty. Cher steps over the threshold and finds herself in an attic room, all sloping rafters and thick cross-beams, the light seeping in through a single skylight ten feet from where she stands. This is not right, she thinks, even as she steps in. It shouldn’t be here. But here it is: a jumble of beds and bassinets, all scratched and broken and covered in dust.
She jumps as she sees a figure move into view from behind a curtain; breathes again when she sees that it is just herself, blurred by a haze of crackled silvering in a console mirror half-covered by an old sheet. A miniature rocking horse, skewbald, its mane missing in hanks, sways back and forth on its rockers, as though its infant rider had leapt from its back and fled at the sound of her arrival.
It’s not right, she thinks again, and walks out to where thin air should be. But, oh, look, it’s three times the size of my room. Four times. It just goes on and on. Look at that big pile of velvet curtains. I could have those for my window, not be woken up at dawn every day, and that tapestry cover would look great on my bed. I could come back tonight, when nobody’s looking. Imagine: all this space, and nobody knows it’s here.
Except him, says a small voice by her shoulder. He knows it’s here. And he knows you’re here, too.
She starts awake, paralysed for a few seconds beneath the sheet by the force of her dream. Her limbs are pinned to the mattress, her muscles prickling as though pierced by a thousand red-hot needles. Her eyelids open before she is able to move, and she is briefly confused to see the same old dingy bedsit, the scuffed flat-pack wardrobe with the peeling laminate, the brave little splashes of colour she has tried to add by Blu-tacking photos of models and pretty rooms, carefully cut from the pages of glossy magazines, to the faded flowered wallpaper. Psycho the cat sits near her on the bed, and purrs with pleasure to see that she’s awake. He’s not been as cuddly, lately. Until the heatwave hit he would have inserted himself into her arms as she dozed, and slept along with her, but he prefers just to be nearby at the moment, to submit to the briefest of hugs and extend his chin for rubbing.
She pulls him into her arms and feels him settle against her chest. Kisses his satin forehead, speaks low, soft words of love into his twitching ear. My first love, she thinks, and it’s a cat. How sad is that? Then: where is it? Where did it go? The dream-room behind the stairs was so real – its smell, its dry air still somewhere inside her so that she can barely comprehend that she isn’t there. It was a dream, Cher, she scolds herself, but a bit of her wants to go right out on to the landing and jemmy that cupboard door open, just to check.
She stretches out and checks the time on her phone. Gone half past six. She’s slept the afternoon away again. She sits up in her frowsty bed. She’s fallen asleep with the window closed, and the room is like an oven. She is sticky with sweat, her hair glued to her scalp. No wonder I’m having mad dreams, she thinks. My brain’s boiling.
She slides out of bed and pulls her dressing-gown – satin, kimono-style, £16.99 in TK Maxx, or it would have been if she’d bought it – over her pyjamas, goes over to the window and throws it wide. Psycho drops down from the bed and pads across the floor, jumps up on the windowsill in search of coolness. The heat hasn’t even started to leave the day and, though the shadows are changing in the garden below her, there’s no sign of an evening breeze. A fan, she thinks. I’ll probably have to buy one of those: too damn bulky to slip under my coat. But it would be so good, being able to just lie in bed with the air running over me like water.
Her thirst is pressing. She wanders over to the sink and fills a pint glass – all her crockery and cutlery comes from the outside tables of pubs and cafés, slipped into her bag, ketchup remains, beer froth and all, as she passed. The water’s lukewarm from the pipes, but, this far up the house, the wait for it to run cold is worse than drinking it that way. She drains it in a single breath, refills it and takes it back to bed. Gets out her hand mirror and starts to repair her face, licking a finger and wiping her eyeliner back into place.
Now she’s awake she can’t stop thinking about the new woman downstairs. That wasn’t a good start. She looked as if she thought she was going to be stabbed in her bed when Cher came in through the door. It doesn’t do to be in bad odour with your neighbours. But aside from that, Cher is a kindly girl. The woman looked like she had lived through a train crash and it’s her first night in a new house. She deserves cheering up – even if she has taken over Nikki’s room.
I should tell her, she thinks. Let her know, before that lady throws all her stuff away. She might want it.
She grabs her phone – a Samsung because she doesn’t believe in iPhones herself – and scrolls through the contacts. It doesn’t take long. Nikki is the third of six numbers the phone contains. She hits the button to send and listens as the phone rings out. No voicemail. Nikki doesn’t do voicemail. Says if anyone really wants to get hold of her they’ll keep trying.
Okay, thinks Cher. Whatevvs. Sod her if that’s her attitude. She tucks the phone into her bra, in case, and jumps from the bed, finds her flip-flops and ties her hair up off her face with a scrunchie. She can’t shake off a feeling of melancholy about Nikki, though. I thought she was my friend, she thinks. I’d’ve at least thought she’d have said goodbye. Then she shrugs the sadness to the back of her mind and starts to clean her face. In Cher’s life, no one lasts for long. If you let it get to you, she tells herself, you’re done for, so let her go. If she doesn’t want to talk to you, then fuck her.
She wonders about putting on more make-up and dismisses the thought. ‘We’re all girls together,’ she tells the cat, who blinks his jade eyes to show that he’s listening. ‘We don’t need slap.’
She heads for the fridge. The supermarkets have become a lot more canny about tagging their branded goods, but the own-brand equivalents don’t seem to matter to them in the same way. Apart from sherry. Sherry, the old tramp’s standby, often has a big black bold alarm strip round its neck. But Cher has yet to develop a taste for the grown-up things: olives and sherry and vermouth and red wine. Her favourite drinks of all are neon blue, but they’re surprisingly hard to nick.
In the fridge, along with the cheese slices and the ketchup, she has a bottle of Sainsbury’s own-brand Irish Cream, just a couple of inches taken off the top. She snatches it up, along with a bar of chocolate and a multi-pack of meat-flavoured Golden Wonder crisps, and heads down the stairs where her knock is greeted by silence. But she feels, as much as hears, that movement has stopped behind the door. She knocks again and listens. Gerard has turned his music off, which must mean that he’s gone out. He never stops with it, from when he gets up in the morning until eleven on the dot each night. The only times there is silence is when he goes out. Weird bug
ger, thinks Cher. Far too much time locked up in there, if you ask me.
She hears Collette call out to ask who it is. She doesn’t sound friendly. She sounds like she might have had one visitor too many already today.
‘Only me,’ she says. Then, when the announcement is met by silence, adds: ‘Cher. From upstairs.’
‘Oh.’
She hears the sound of the snib being slid off the Yale lock before the knob turns. Not taking any chances, then. I did that to her, thinks Cher, ruefully.
The door cracks open, and Collette peers at her. Cher brandishes her gifts and flashes her a wide smile. ‘Peace offering.’
‘Oh,’ says Collette. ‘Thank you. But really, there’s no need. I’m not offended. Don’t worry.’
‘All right, then,’ says Cher. ‘Housewarming present.’
‘I – no, really, I’m okay. I don’t need anything. You don’t have to…’
‘Oh, come on,’ says Cher, ‘I’m doing my best, here.’
‘I’m really tired,’ says Collette, and her face looks for a moment as though it might crumple into tears. ‘Really. I should just go to bed.’
Cher’s not taking no for an answer. She stopped taking no for an answer when she left the Wirral. ‘It won’t even start to get dark for a couple of hours. Call it a nightcap.’
Collette sees that she’s not going to get away with rejecting her and reluctantly lets the door swing open. Walks ahead of Cher into the room and stands in the middle of the carpet, looking around as if she doesn’t know what to do next. ‘Sorry. It’s a mess.’
She’s clearly been sleeping again – or lying in bed, at least. The duvet is thrown to one side, and there’s a deep indentation in the thin pillows she’s piled on top of each other. On the floor, there’s a small pile of clothes.
‘That’s okay.’ Cher reassures her, ‘you should see mine. And I’ve been here months.’
‘It’s not – it doesn’t help that the place is full of Nikki’s stuff,’ says Collette. ‘I don’t really know where to put anything. I can’t help feeling she might want it all back, some day.’
Cher looks around at her former friend’s familiar belongings. Waste not, want not, she thinks. If Nikki doesn’t want it… ‘Well, anything you want to send my way…’
Collette whirls round, looks shocked. ‘I can’t do that! It’s someone else’s stuff!’
Cher shrugs. ‘It’s not like I’m going anywhere, is it? If she comes back, I’ll give it her.’ She waves a hand at the sweatpants, the emerald green vest top Collette is wearing. ‘And anyway, it’s not like you mind helping yourself, is it?’
Collette blushes, looks at the floor. ‘I’ll get them laundered,’ she says. ‘It’s just till – you know. All my clothes are dirty. I’ve been travelling. It’s just till I…’
Cher dismisses the protestations with a cackle. ‘Don’t worry. I won’t tell if you don’t. So… We having a drink, or what?’
Collette springs into life like a clockwork doll, starts bustling about, pantomiming busyness. ‘Of course. Yes. Let me just…’ She picks the pile of Nikki’s clothes off the single armchair, drops it against the wall behind. ‘I don’t know where the glasses live, I’m afraid.’
‘That’s okay.’ Cher goes straight to the left-hand wall cupboard of the kitchenette, gets down two tumblers. ‘I know my way around. Plates and stuff are down here,’ she pulls open the door by the sink, ‘with the saucepan, and there’s this drawer here, for knives and forks and stuff. Have you got any ice?’
‘Ice?’
‘Nikki always had ice.’ She crouches down in front of the little fridge and opens the freezer compartment. A half bag of frozen peas, and an ice tray. ‘Thought so. You might want to throw that milk away without opening it. It’s probably been here since before she went away.’
She gets out the ice tray and runs it under the tap. Bangs a couple of cubes into each glass and fills them up with Irish cream. Takes a big gulp from one, sighs and tops it up again. ‘There. That hits the spot.’
Collette sits down on the bed. She looks hopeless, tentative. ‘I got crisps as well,’ Cher says, handing her a glass. ‘D’you want me to put them in a bowl?’
Collette takes the glass and looks at it as though she’s never seen the stuff before. ‘Nah,’ Cher answers herself, ‘what’s the point in making washing-up?’ and flings herself into the armchair, hooks a leg over an arm and takes another swig. ‘Trouble with this stuff,’ she says, ‘is it doesn’t really feel like booze at all, does it? And once you start drinking it, it slides down your throat like it’s coming out of a spittoon.’
Collette takes a sip, raises her eyebrows. ‘I’ve never drunk this stuff before. I though you just put it in cocktails, like curaçao.’ She takes another sip. ‘It’s delicious.’
‘Never drunk it? Girl, where’ve you been?’
The look Collette gives her is startled, suspicious. It’s like we speak a different language, thinks Cher. ‘Oh, you know, here and there,’ Collette replies, eventually. Then adds: ‘It’s been Cristal champagne for me, 24/7.’
They fall awkwardly silent and sip their drinks, eying each other. She looks like my friend Bonny, thinks Cher, only older. I wonder what happened to Bonny? She was meant to be going back to her dad, but I know she didn’t want to go. Not like that matters to social services.
‘So how are you settling in, then?’ she asks, to fill the silence.
Collette shrugs. ‘Oh, you know. Okay. It’s all a bit strange.’
‘Better once you’ve got your stuff.’
‘Yeah,’ says Collette, and looks away again. That can’t be it, wonders Cher. That tiny bag I saw her with earlier? No one moves in somewhere with that little stuff, do they? And then she remembers the duffel bag she’d arrived with herself, seven months ago, and does an internal shrug. Hossein had a suitcase, but from the way he hefted it one-handed up the stairs, she doesn’t think it was full.
‘It feels a bit like moving into someone else’s grave, though,’ says Collette, suddenly. ‘What happened to this Nikki? Where did she go?’
‘I wish I knew.’ This much is true. Cher’s had few friends in her brief life, and has felt the loss of Nikki surprisingly strongly. Nikki was kind to her, let her watch the telly, used to make her fry-ups on Saturday mornings, the two of them nursing their come-downs in companionable silence. ‘She just – I mean, I know she was bothered about making the rent, but it’s not like he could just have thrown her out on the street or anything.’
‘What was she like?’
Cher remembers. What do you say? Bright orange hair and a ginger complexion; a tendency to eczema on her ankles, and an embarrassing passion for Johnny Depp… ‘Scottish,’ she says, eventually. ‘She came from Glasgow. I guess maybe she went back there.’
‘Mmm,’ says Collette.
‘She didn’t even say goodbye,’ says Cher, mournfully.
Chapter Ten
The Landlord doesn’t suit the heat. Or the heat doesn’t suit him. Either way, on a day like this, he would usually spend most of it in his flat, the curtains drawn. On a day like today, he likes to lie beached on his leather sofa, naked, watching his DVDs with a fan playing over his flesh, drinking Diet Coke from the bottle and occasionally lifting up his belly to let the air get to the crevices beneath.
But today is rent day, and rent day gives him purpose. He is out on the street by eleven o’ clock, shuffling up Beulah Grove in his Birkenstocks, sticking to the shade to keep the sun off his pate. Behind him, he drags a shopping trolley in Cameron tartan. He likes to take this with him when he goes to Beulah Grove, not just because of the convenience, but because no one would ever assume that someone pulling a shopping trolley might also be carrying large amounts of cash. The Landlord is a lot wealthier than most of his neighbours, but they’ll never spot it from the way he looks.
He pauses at the foot of the steps to take a breather, and surveys his domain. Though he doesn’t have a lot of time for beauty, Roy Pr
eece can see that number twenty-three is a handsome house, in a road of handsome houses. If it were in one of the gentrified boroughs – City-money Wandsworth, perhaps, or Media Putney – it would be worth two, three million, even in its current state, even with the railway running past the bottom of the garden and the old bat in the basement. As it is, with the Farrow & Ball front-door paint going up all over and the front pullins full of SUVs, he’ll have enough to live like a king for the rest of his life when he gets shot of the place. Go somewhere where life is cheap, and buy as much of it as he can.
The Landlord reaches into his back pocket and pulls out a handkerchief, mops his glistening face and the top of his head, and tucks it back in. The exertion of walking up from the station in the heat has left deep, damp stripes down his shirt. But it’s clean sweat, he thinks, and sets off up the steps.
Thomas Dunbar has left an envelope on the hall table, neatly separated from the piles of junk mail, most of it addressed to long-gone residents. He’s the only one of his tenants, as far as he can work out, who is actually gainfully employed. Punctilious, quiet, respectable. He works at the Citizens’ Advice and, since the hours there were cut back, has involved himself in some organisational role with a furniture recycling charity. He has paid his rent on time in every month of the thirty-six he’s been here. Never any trouble, with Thomas. Or, it seems, with Gerard Bright. His envelope’s there next to Dunbar’s, the Landlord’s name in neat block capitals on the front. The Landlord tucks them in his pocket, doesn’t bother to check their contents. He knows that Dunbar’s will contain a cheque for the precise amount of his debt, made out in careful, neat script, the gaps scored through with a ruled line and a capitalised ONLY, and that Bright’s will – God help him for leaving it out for anyone to nick – contain cash. Of course, he’s probably in there anyway, he thinks, listening, although there’s no music playing. Watching through the keyhole, for all I know. Anyone tried to nick it, he could be out there before they got to the front door.