by Adam Nevill
TWENTY
Stephanie waited in her room for over an hour but Ryan didn’t call. Eventually she phoned him.
‘Thanks for calling,’ she said when he picked up.
‘Steph, you OK?’
She remained silent for a few seconds. The sound of his voice brought a lump to her throat. ‘Not really.’
‘What’s going on? Your message worried me.’
But not that much.
She looked at the door; beyond her room the house was having one of its quiet periods. ‘I’m in a bind. A real bind here. Look … I’m sorry, how are things with you?’
‘All right. You know, still doing the night shifts. Contract, but it’s still work…’ He said other things but she found herself unable to pay attention; she was too engaged with trying to work out how to explain her situation to him. He finished what he had been saying with, ‘You? Workwise?’
‘Bits and pieces. Shit mostly. Nothing changed there.’
‘So what’s this mistake?’
‘This house. This … place that I’m staying in…’ She kept her narrative to details about Knacker being ‘unstable’, and things of that nature: the deposit he would not return, her parlous financial state, the missing bank card, and her need to move out fast. And though some of Ryan’s old protectiveness towards her reappeared, she was disappointed that he didn’t immediately offer money; at one time he would have done so, confident that she was good for a loan, that she was not dishonest and hated dishonesty. With the little bit of money her dad left her, she had also helped him by covering the deposit and a few months’ rent on their first place together. Had he forgotten? She’d never asked him for anything else, besides to let her go, and repeatedly during the last three months of their time together.
He must suspect that if she was calling him she had no one else to turn to. But if she wasn’t mistaken Ryan’s voice was different now: quieter, less tight with emotion, as it had been whenever they’d spoken closer to the time of their split. She also intuited a wariness because she had made contact with him. How things change. ‘You’re seeing someone?’ she blurted.
He went quiet for at least three seconds. ‘Yeah.’
It hurt, but only as a residual instinctive jealousy, as an infuriating sense of proprietorship over someone you didn’t want to be with anymore. Though she’d never stopped loving Ryan, she didn’t want him back. Not long ago, she’d even prayed he would meet someone else. All the same, she couldn’t prevent her ego getting mixed up in his romantic affairs, particularly now she needed his help.
‘Steph, can you blame me? I mean, you broke up with me.’
‘I’m fine. Totally fine with it. I thought you might be anyway.’
‘You?’ he said, and his voice tensed as he entertained that thought.
‘Few one night stands and a gangbang but nothing serious.’ He knew this was not true, but Stephanie sensed a bristling from his side of the phone. ‘I’m joking. There’s been no one. It’s not something I even think about.’ At least that was the truth. ‘Hardly a priority in my current situation.’
‘Good,’ he said too quickly to have thought out his response.
‘But I need to get out of here and you’ve already answered my question. I’m sorry I bothered you.’
‘Don’t be like that.’
‘I’m not being like anything. I only thought … wondered if I could crash at yours until I can save a deposit on a room. But that would be complicated.’
‘Steph, you know I would help you out. No question. But things are tight here.’
She hadn’t asked him for money.
‘We’re saving too,’ he added.
‘Don’t tell me you live together? You’ve only just met her.’ She wished she could take it back and hated herself for wanting to hurt him. In her mind she’d built Ryan into a guaranteed escape route – albeit an unwise one fraught with emotional attrition. But she now had one less safety net; the call confirmed it and the idea made her feel limp. Thank God she hadn’t fled to him after her first night at the house, loaded down with bags. It would have been awful. But worse than this?
‘Sometimes you just know,’ he said, his tone subdued by a combination of sullenness and passive antagonism she remembered only too well.
This was going nowhere. ‘Sure. Look, I better get off. I need the credit on my phone to look for rooms.’ Her voice was starting to break, which would only get worse the longer she stayed on the line.
No, wait, don’t go. I’ll call you back. He used to say things like that all the time, but they were way past all that now. Instead, he said, ‘Try Joanie. Or Philippa. Bekka.’ And that really sobered her.
‘They’re in Stoke. I’m not going back there.’ I’m never going back near her: near Val.
For Ryan to even suggest she return to her home town was another example of him no longer truly thinking about her. Or even worse, no longer caring about her much. They were truly moving on and forgetting each other.
‘You’ll be all right,’ he said, and sounded relieved the conversation was closing. ‘You’re a clever girl, Steph. Don’t need me to tell you that. Something will turn up.’
‘That’s what I’m worried about. In my fucking room.’
‘What? This bastard landlord trying it on with you?’
‘No.’ Not yet. ‘Look, I wouldn’t have called if I wasn’t desperate.’
‘Cheers.’
‘I didn’t mean it like that. But … No one would believe me. This house.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘It’s not right. It’s all wrong. There’s people … girls who keep talking and crying, but I don’t know if they are there. I can’t find them.’
‘What?’
Stephanie began to cry. She sniffed. ‘Things are going on here.’
‘What things?’
‘I don’t know. Someone was in my room, Ryan. My room!’
‘What? Where is this place?’
‘Edgehill Road. I can’t stay here.’
‘What number?’
‘Eighty-two. Can you help, please?’
‘But who was in your room? I don’t understand.’
‘They weren’t there when I switched the light on. In the bathroom … another one … a voice. Everything is wrong.’
‘What? Are you saying—’
The credit on her phone ran out with a bleep and it took all of her scant composure to resist throwing the handset against the wall.
She bit down on a stream of curses before they left her mouth – obscenities that would have made her feel even more desperate – just as someone announced themselves with three playful raps on the door.
TWENTY-ONE
It was Knacker. ‘Awright, darlin’.’ He was holding a bottle of wine and two glasses. ‘Didn’t like the fought of you being on your own down here on Friday night. Fought you might like to celebrate moving in, like. House warming.’
Had he been listening outside her door? The thought of Knacker knowing Ryan was no longer an alternative for accommodation chilled her. ‘No. Not a good time. But thanks.’
Reeking of aftershave, Knacker stepped into the room without invitation, his body moving at her and around her at the same time. He came so close she pulled back as if from a blow.
‘Don’t be like that. I can see from a mile away that you been crying again. Somefing upset ya?’ He raised the wine glasses. ‘Nuffin’ funny, like. No offence, sister, but you ain’t my type and I don’t mix business wiv pleasure. It’s not like I’m short a that kind a fing anyway.’ He spoke as though he were rejecting a proposition from her. ‘Just offering a bit a hospitality, like.’
She could not refuse him entrance. It wasn’t really her room, but a token of his charity; she’d been in it for one night and her ownership of the space hadn’t been established. The realization prompted a vision of his face going stiff and white with rage if she told him to piss off; followed by another of her standing outside in the rain with her bags at her feet.
‘Mind if I sit?’ Even if she had minded it wouldn’t have done any good, and when he sat heavily on her bed she shivered with revulsion. He was steadily erasing the last vestiges of her resistance. Deliberately too, and with relish, and she hated him for it.
‘No wonder you can’t keep a fella, girl. Face like that. Who’d wanna look at that all day?’
‘You…’ Her voice died when Knacker raised his chin provocatively. He was wearing a new red Helly Hansen ski jacket and Diesel jeans with his pristine green trainers. A peacock hooligan; she’d never liked them.
‘I hear you met Fergal. Me cousin. Said he seen you downstairs.’ As he spoke his eyes slid about as he scoped out the room behind her. ‘That the post?’ He rose and snatched it off the little table. ‘What you doing wiv it?’
‘I … picked it up.’
Every trace of mocking humour vanished from his eyes so quickly it shocked her. ‘I can see that, but it ain’t yours.’
‘I know.’ She swallowed. ‘Your cousin, he…’
‘What?’
‘Startled me. And I forgot I had it in my hand.’
Knacker was delighted and sat down again. ‘Startled you! I like that, “startled”. You don’t hear that much. You’s got a nice way of putting fings, girl. You just need to smile a bit and the world’s your oyster.’
‘What was he doing? Downstairs, by that door?’
Knacker frowned. ‘It’s his house as well as mine. He can do what he likes.’
It struck her as odd that a cousin would be a co-owner of the house. ‘Who lives down there?’
Knacker started to sniff. ‘No one. Out of bounds.’ He uncapped the wine bottle. ‘That whole part of the house is.’
‘Why?’
‘We need to do a bit of work on it. Here, you want some a this booze or not? Don’t often touch it much meself. Loopy juice. I get a couple in me and people’s holding me back, like. Does somefing to me head. I prefer a bit a weed, bit a coke. But I don’t fink one glass will hurt.’
Knacker’s cousin, Fergal, resting his head against the door in an unlit corridor, as if meditating, had not appeared like preparation for renovations. And Knacker was trying to change the subject.
‘Decorating?’ she said as a prompt.
‘Bigger job, love. Structural work first, like. We gonna have our hands full.’
‘A man lives down there though? I’ve heard him go out in the morning. Or was that your cousin?’
Knacker avoided her eyes, sniffed. ‘Probably.’ He passed a glass brimming with white wine at her. ‘Here you are, time to stop nosing about and start drinking.’
Stephanie took the glass and resigned herself to using the coffee table as a seat.
For the next thirty minutes, stupefied by her own awkwardness and reticence, and never offering more than monosyllabic answers if she could help it, Stephanie fielded the landlord’s quick-fire questions about her temporary work, her stepmother, her friends, what she studied, with Knacker taking a special interest in her psychology A level: ‘Been finking about doing somefing like that meself’.
She did her best to mentally screen the bragging monologues that formed the majority share of his discourse, and mostly looked at the floor with a dazed expression on her face, hoping her lack of engagement would cut short the duration of his visit. He didn’t seem to notice, and his face grew redder from the wine. As well as his fondness for undermining her, he found selling an idea of himself as a wily, tough, financially successful man even more delightful. He claimed he had been a paratrooper, that he had property ‘all over’, he was a builder, did ‘electrics’, and once had a nightclub in the rave scene. Spain was a popular topic. He’d done ‘a bit of everyfing. You name it, done it. All of it.’
He wanted to impress her. Which was futile as she hated him and considered him ridiculous. She found his expectation of approval astounding, considering how he had bullied and insulted her from her first day at the house; a memory of his taunts made her stomach writhe at the very sight of him. But Knacker appeared unable to accept her evident dislike. Either that or he was stubbornly resisting her signals, which made her nervous.
As his self-aggrandizing gathered momentum, she found herself acknowledging, with difficulty, that permanent roles had already been assigned: he had the upper hand and would not take kindly to her digressing from this position. Just like the bullies she’d encountered in casual work. Just like her stepmother. In her unfortunate experience of what she understood to be a form of narcissism – because her stepmother had been diagnosed with a narcissistic personality disorder while her dad was still alive – her only real defence would be a retreat and a removal of herself from his presence. Only that wasn’t possible until she had more money. She wondered if her frustration was contributing to her perception of him and the house, and perhaps even warping that perception.
‘… You see, girl. Life is what you make it. End of the day, like, what you need to remember…’
What to do? She had no work lined up for the following week, and only £120 to her name. Once Knacker the arsehole left her room, she would call her friends in Stoke, like Ryan suggested, and see if she could borrow a sofa tomorrow. But for how long? Indefinitely? The work situation in her home town was as impossible as anywhere she’d known, and her stepmother was there. Going back to Stoke would not only be an admission of defeat but a dead end. She wondered if she would ever have the strength to leave it a second time, and alone, without Ryan.
It would take six days for her new cash card to arrive. She couldn’t stay here that long. But if she went to Stoke she’d still have to come back here to collect the new card. What to do? She wanted to scream and keep on screaming.
‘End of the day, when all is said and done, like, I’m a fighter, me … You’ll never … a McGuire…’
She began to eye her uninvited visitor’s new clothes and she pondered the absence of any evidence of renovation in the property. Knacker had lied about this room being newly decorated. In fact, he’d told so many lies she doubted even he could keep track of them, but he would become instantly hostile if she pointed out contradictions. Her thoughts were throttling her; they’d been a noose all day and most days for months now.
‘Problem with most people—’
‘What’s her story? The girl next door.’ She asked the question to prevent Knacker from giving her any more advice about life.
‘What you talking about? Who lives here, who lives there? What’s it to ya?’
‘Perfectly natural to want to know who you’re living next to in shared accommodation. And you seem to have an interest in your tenants.’ She opened the palms of her hands to indicate his increasingly sprawled posture, or lack of posture, on her bed.
And that was going too far, because now he’d started to go pale, and his eyes were lidding. There was also a shrug as he sat upright, and a rustle as both shoulders rotated inside the ski jacket.
She kept her tone of voice level, struggling to suppress the sarcasm. ‘It’s just that I keep hearing them. Girls. Upset. But they won’t speak to me. In the bathroom—’
‘I don’t get you. I don’t get you at all. You get the best room in the house for forty quid a week. Which, I might add, may come under review sooner than you fink if you keep this up. Who lives here, who lives there? Other people’s mail in your hand. It’s none of your fuckin’ business. You is prying. What’s your game, eh?’
‘I don’t have one. I’m just—’
He wasn’t listening. He was working himself up. She remembered what he’d said about the effect alcohol had upon him. She swallowed.
‘I’ll tell you what your game is—’
The door opened so quickly they both jumped.
TWENTY-TWO
A ginger head thrust into the room. The neck behind the head was absurdly long and ribbed with cartilage visible through pasty skin. Without invitation, Knacker’s cousin, Fergal, stepped inside.
‘Fuck’s sake, Fergal! You nearly give me a heart
attack!’ Knacker started to grin. But Fergal didn’t acknowledge him. Instead he stared at Stephanie with what she took to be a limitless malevolence. It was similar to his expression when she’d first seen him downstairs, only this was worse. There was so much hatred and rage in the man’s bloodless face she couldn’t breathe, became dizzy, scratched around her mind for any reason she might have angered him.
Stephanie was sure he was going to hit her because he walked right at her. It took all of her will not to cringe or flinch. Her hands shook, so she squeezed them into fists.
Fergal halted one step away from her. He bent over so his face was no more than an inch from hers. And stared at her with such aggressive intensity, she looked away, and to Knacker for an explanation.
Knacker appeared anxious too, which made Stephanie’s terror ratchet even higher.
‘Come on, mate. Got some plonk here. Have a glass.’ There was a conciliatory tone to Knacker’s entreaty that did nothing to restore Stephanie’s confidence.
Up close, Fergal smelled unwashed, oily, sebaceous. His jeans were greasy, stained, the hems trodden down to a black mush of fabric and filth under the heels of his dirty trainers. He looked and smelled as if he had been sleeping in the street.
Fergal finally grinned into Stephanie’s face and revealed yellow and brown teeth. As quickly as he’d entered, he took a long stride backwards and sat heavily on the bed, then thrust his legs apart, as if claiming territory, and knocked Knacker’s knees together. Knacker stiffened, then quickly grinned and clapped his cousin on the back.
Fergal snatched the bottle from Knacker’s hand. Inside his long spidery fingers and prominent knuckles, the bottle appeared to diminish in size, as well as being instantly stripped of any of the civilized values that accompany the drinking of wine. The man put the bottle to his lips and gulped at it; his sharp Adam’s apple moved unpleasantly in his throat as he swallowed like a savage.