by Adam Nevill
Stephanie looked over her shoulder warily, remembering Fergal wasn’t far away or in any kind of mood they would want to engage with.
Margaret said, ‘I go,’ and started to teeter to the stairs to begin a short ascent, fraught with danger, in the heels. If the girl lived on the second floor she would either be in the room of the crying Russian girl, or in the room Stephanie had occupied during her first night.
Stephanie followed the girl to the stairs, eager to keep the conversation going and to warn her. ‘Are you from Lithuania?’
‘Albania.’
‘You moved in today?’
Margaret spoke over her shoulder, smiling. ‘Yes. Yes. Morning.’
‘Can we talk later?’
The girl mounted the stairs, her hips and bottom swaying in a manner that could only be provocative in the latex dress. ‘Er, yes. We talk. Er, later.’
‘After your date?’
‘Of course.’
‘I have coffee too.’
‘You’d probably best drink it yourself. She’s gonna be busy for a bit, like.’ Knacker stood where the stairs met the second floor.
Stephanie never moved beyond the bend in the staircase. Had he been listening? What had she said? Thank God she’d stopped herself in time. But would he still be angry with her?
‘Awright, darling,’ he said to Margaret, his eyes dreamy as he leered at the girl from head to foot. He made little attempt to let her pass, forcing her body to brush against his.
The date! Surely not!
Stephanie dipped her head and retreated down the stairs to the first floor. The thought that a pretty girl like Margaret would even contemplate going out with a weasel like Knacker sickened her. Foreign girls could get into desperate situations; she knew they came to England hoping for a better life, to escape poverty, so had Margaret fallen for Knacker’s lies about his affluence and professional success and been lured here? But lured here for what?
Not that. Please.
Continuing his admiration of Margaret, Knacker’s voice travelled down the stairwell. ‘You look beautiful, darling. Stunning, like.’
Stephanie hurried back to her room and threw herself inside before locking the door.
Within minutes she heard other footsteps ascending the staircase – maybe even two sets of feet – accompanied by Knacker’s horrible cackle and interspersed with his contributions to a conversation she couldn’t make out. Knacker was speaking to another man whose deep voice rumbled in the distance and then passed out of hearing. A voice that seemed too deep to belong to Fergal.
The appearance of strangers in the communal areas of the building should have brought relief, but only succeeded in amplifying her concerns about the nature and purpose of the new tenants.
She left her door open a fraction, so she could see who would eventually come back down the stairs. It hadn’t been open long when the cries began above her head.
THIRTY-THREE
Stephanie stared at the ceiling and listened to the sounds of exaggerated female arousal. Rising in crescendos, the cries would stop just short of a scream, while a bed rattled and groaned beneath what sounded like an eager bestial congress. Either Svetlana or Margaret was having sex, but probably Margaret as she’d seemed prepared for it.
The noise originated from above the ceiling of the room next to Stephanie’s; she could hear the coupling through the wall against which her bed rested. But was Margaret having sex with Knacker, or Fergal, or the third man who had just been on the stairs?
Punter.
Margaret having sex during her first day inside the house was more shocking than the idea of the participation of either of her landlords. And in the very room where the Russian girl had been crying before she had sex with a smelly male presence that didn’t exist.
Stephanie marvelled to the point of shock about how anyone could feel enough desire for that kind of activity inside this building. And yet here was another Eastern European girl, an obvious migrant, and one shaking a bed apart beneath an unknown male presence.
The sounds continued for fifteen minutes, unbroken, before total silence fell over the house like a black sheet dropped across an old and cruel birdcage. The interior appeared quieter than ever, as if the very bricks and mortar were muted in shock at this carnal display.
As Stephanie breathed normally again, she remained curiously exhausted from the tension the sounds had instilled inside her body. She knew all about sex – who didn’t? – and she had been active with Ryan, her third lover. But the noises had made her feel like a child who had stumbled across an explicit film and been shocked to her core by what she had seen. Her reaction to the sounds was not dissimilar to her reaction to the violence she’d overheard in the room next door.
Within five minutes of the noisy intimacy ending, there was movement on the staircase again. Stephanie moved to the door of her room and killed the overhead lights. Peered through the gap and heard Knacker’s voice on the stairwell. ‘Anytime, mate. You just call that number, yeah? Speak wiv me, like.’
When the first floor landing lights clicked on, Stephanie ducked back inside her room, though not before spying a pair of short legs dressed in khaki chinos and brown shoes that descended ahead of Knacker’s training shoes. So the man who had gone upstairs with Knacker had definitely not been Fergal. And this visitor had been with one of the girls, most probably Margaret: ‘You just call that number.’
Stephanie stood behind her door, paralyzed with bewilderment and disoriented with shock. Outside, a car alarm blipped and a vehicle pulled away from the curb, hurriedly. Upstairs, the toilet flushed. Stephanie glimpsed Margaret’s long, tanned legs, that ended in bare feet, coming down the stairs.
She pushed her door closed, locked it as quietly as she was able. When Margaret came out of the bathroom and returned to the second floor a few minutes later, the girl joined Svetlana in the Lithuanian’s room; Stephanie heard the two women talking above her head. She couldn’t make out what they were saying. A television came on. Feet bumped about. A mobile phone burst into dance music.
Knacker thumped up and down the stairs three times, and each time added his voice to the conversation in Svetlana’s room.
Stephanie sat immobile, in her own silence, looking at the black walls and the white ceiling of her room with fresh eyes, hoping hard enough for it to feel like she was praying, that her new suspicions about the nature of the house were not true.
THIRTY-FOUR
She crept out of her room to use the toilet, and to heat soup in the microwave, but never made it far across the first floor landing because the bathroom light had been left on, the kitchen light too. And like air freshener sprayed into a ruined building, a low lying but invisible mist of perfume struggled to survive a few feet above the worn carpet. More feminine preparations had been underway while she’d cowered in her room. More visitors were expected at 82 Edgehill Road and more visitors had arrived and were now heaving and sweating towards fulfilment on the second floor.
There was no attempt at concealment or discretion. The sounds of sexual congress were muted by layers of brick, wooden floors, wall cavities, carpets and soft furnishings, but the brazen animal noises were determined to be heard in the gloomy squalor of the house, like they wanted her to hear. Inside her head she heard Margaret say, ‘I have date already.’
Shocked and nauseous, Stephanie also recognized that she’d never felt so excluded and awkward in her entire life. Or so lonely while forced to confront the greatest human intimacy amongst people she didn’t know. The sounds of desire frightened her too, but there was also a disgust and horror at herself, for the loosening and warmth inside her own body as it considered arousal, like a disobedient animal, had come to life inside her.
The perfume, the moaning, the grunting, the memory of the Albanian girl’s long, tanned legs, Svetlana’s eyes, the creak-squeak-creak-squeak-creak-squeak of large beds, the bellow of an ape, all bustled inside her mind’s basest and most unruly depths.
The maelstrom she weathered bled into thoughts of livestock mating in wooden pens and metal cages. The house was bestial; it called out to her and a thing she barely recognized tried to respond, like a faint radio signal growing in strength.
She used the toilet quickly, abandoned any ideas about warming soup, and ran back down the passageway to her room, hot with shame every step of the way.
Inside, she hastily locked her door, threw down her bag, clutched her cheeks. Stared at her own mad face in the mirrored wardrobe doors: a face pale and pinched with nerves and disgust.
Who was she now?
Thoughts of herself as a confident girl with friends, qualifications, hopes and dreams, seemed like a consideration of another person; a stranger and a fiction she could not believe had ever existed.
Out there, beyond her door, strange men were moving up and down the stairs; men who had come to release themselves inside the girls above her room.
How did this happen to me? How did I even get here?
There was an awful momentum all around her that she couldn’t halt or even slow. Those things she’d heard, but could not see, seemed to be the least of her worries now; the house was no longer safe on any level. She had to get out, had always known this. But she’d returned again and again.
Why are you still here?
The question was smothered by a listless fatigue before the query concluded. Because she’d been defeated and had nowhere to go.
After bumping into Margaret, she’d called four youth hostels, but there were no free rooms until Wednesday. She’d reserved one, but today was Sunday. That meant three more nights here, unless she fled for the cheapest hotel she’d found; it charged forty pounds per night.
But after doing some sums, if she spent tonight, Monday and Tuesday in the budget hotel, she’d be broke by Wednesday morning and not have enough for a single night in the hostel. At least ten pounds would have to be used for food too. By Wednesday morning she’d have no money at all and nowhere to sleep … besides this room.
She gripped the back of her skull and rocked back and forth on the end of her bed.
The dark walls, the smell of neglect, the wet grey world outside, all seemed to get inside her so quickly now, to weigh her down and bind her in place with a kind of numbness. And more so each day. She worried she had become part of this horrible house. Maybe soon she wouldn’t be able to extend her limbs, and even drawing a breath would be an exertion. Could a person be drained of their dwindling resources, of their spirit, by a building? She didn’t know, but her belief that she belonged anywhere better was being exhausted.
The dreams.
She was being reduced, digested by the house.
You’re a fighter. Don’t give up. That’s why you’re still here. Two more days’ work and you can leave. That was the plan. You can’t sleep in the fucking street!
But when did courage and strength and stamina and determination become something else, like poor judgement?
She didn’t know any more; didn’t know anything about anything.
Flat-lined.
‘No!’ she stood up, her body shaking. She watched her hands as they trembled in front of her face. She dug her fingernails into her scalp to the point of them breaking through the skin. She wanted to hurt herself. Hated herself for being here, for getting herself into this mess. Loathed herself for not leaving and going … where?
Where can I go?
In the building outside her room, a man jogged down the stairs to the first floor. One of the girls followed him, laughing. They descended to the ground floor and their muffled voices passed under Stephanie’s feet.
A few minutes later, the girl returned upstairs with another man. What she could hear of the second man’s voice made him sound elderly. ‘Yes, well, you don’t need to worry about that…’
Moments later the other girl descended and then returned, in silence, accompanied by yet another man. Within minutes, both girls were having sex with their visitors. They made a lot of noise. It sounded like the girls were having sex with animals. When she imagined something pig-like, with a red face and black-haired flanks, rutting at a girl, Stephanie stood up and shook her head to forcibly suppress the image. At least it was over quickly.
She was so hungry she felt faint, so tired she felt sick.
She was being tortured. That’s what this was: torture. Mental cruelty. The whole world seemed to be in on it.
Nothing, nothing, nothing: you have nothing, you are nothing. Nothing.
Her anger at Ryan turned into a red steam of blame. This situation wasn’t his fault, her feelings were irrational, but she still snatched up her phone and bashed out a text message:
IT’S A FUCKING BROTHEL! I’M LIVING IN A FUCKING BROTHEL!
There was a knock at her door. And whoever was outside tried the handle, as though they didn’t have to wait for her to say ‘come in’.
She thought of the men she had heard tramping up and down the dark stairwell; maybe one of the latest arrivals was confused in the darkness and looking for the bathroom. With the lights clicking off so quickly, it wasn’t an impossible scenario. Her scalp iced. ‘Who’s there?’
‘Knacker.’
‘What do you want?’
‘Need to speak wiv you, yeah?’
I bet you do, you bastard.
His voice sounded suppressed, faux softened, with a thin spine running through it that ended in a wheedling probe; the very last thing she wanted to hear on this earth. But how often had the pimp been outside her room without her knowledge? Had he heard her call her three friends and ask, in a voice barely a safe distance from sobbing, if she could stay with them? Had he heard about the letdowns? Did he know that even Ryan had no time for her? Was he exulted in the darkness beyond her door, grinning as he revelled at her diminishing choices, the tightening noose, the downward spiral? Had the bastard come into her room and stolen her cash card?
‘Not a good time!’
‘There’s always a time for good news, like. Fink you’ll want to hear this.’
‘You reckon? I think I’ve been hearing enough, mate.’
‘Come on, Steph, open up. I ain’t speaking froo this fuckin’ door all night, like. You’ll wanna hear what I have to say. Trust me.’
Trust you?
Stephanie unlocked and opened the door, but didn’t let him in, even though he tried to move her aside by taking a step forward, right at her. She stood her ground. ‘What?’
‘All right, be like that. But somefing’s come up that you might want to get in on, like. Personal matter. We need some privacy to discuss it.’
‘There’s nothing I want to discuss with you. I won’t be here much longer. Especially now.’ She looked up at the ceiling. ‘I mean, you are fucking joking, right?’
Knacker feigned confusion. ‘Not sure what you mean.’
‘Yes you bloody do.’
He stiffened at her tone, his big eyes lidded, the top lip pursed.
‘Did you think I’d stay here? With that going on?’ She couldn’t bring herself to say it, to describe it.
‘That’s got nuffin’ to do wiv you. What other people do here, yeah, is up to them. Nuffin’ wrong wiv people making a livin’, like, in the privacy of their own home.’
She took a deep breath and tried to rally her reason through her rage. ‘Oh, that’s all it is, people making a living? Do you think I’m stupid? That bloody gullible? You’re running a criminal enterprise here.’
In response to the word ‘criminal’ Knacker straightened up like she’d called him something else that began with the letter ‘c’, and she dearly wished that she could. His face had gone so pale she thought she better shut the door. But what then? The windows were barred. And in that moment she worried they were barred to keep people inside rather than out. Fear made a swift return and panic capered behind it like a troupe of clowns. Her fear was stronger than her anger; it had been her natural state of being from the day she’d moved into 82 Edgehill Road.
&
nbsp; ‘You best watch what you say. You don’t know nuffin’. Using words like that in my house. My mother’s house. Who you fink you are? What’s them girls to you? Yeah? What they does is up to them. And they make a better living than you do, girl, if the truth be told. They’s not even from this country and they’s making hundred quid in five minutes. Tax free. Few months’ work and they is on holiday, like, for the rest of the year. South of France. Spain. They have the nice clothes and fings they want. While you’re working in some call centre, dressed like a pauper. You’s biting your nose to spite your face, woman. Pretty girl like you should be in Dolce and Gabbana—’
‘Stop! Fuck’s sake. Stop … you think I would do that?’ That’s why he had come down with the cheap wine on Friday, to sweeten his offer of her becoming a whore in his stinking, half-derelict house. She was being groomed. Groomed! How had that word entered her life?
All I wanted was a fucking room and a fucking job!
Life had become so surreal and grim it was comical. But if she released the mad laugh stuck at the base of her throat, there wouldn’t be a trace of levity in the sound that she’d bark into the dismal air. ‘Get away from my door or I will scream until the neighbours come running.’
‘Who’s gonna hear? That old perv next door? He’s already tried to book a dirty ride, like. Said he was impressed wiv what he saw.’
She closed her eyes, swallowed. ‘You’re making me sick.’
Knacker struggled to restrain a laugh. His eyes swilled with mirth. ‘No one expects you to go wiv some old bastard like that, girl. We’s talkin’ high-class gentlemen here. We’s got plans, like. Fings are moving very well. And as you got nuffin’, out the goodness of my heart, I’m just trying to give you a helping hand, like. All’s you got to do is give them a bit a company, yeah? These are solicitors and all that type of fing. Clients of ours.’
‘Clients?’ She wanted to shriek again with dead laughter. ‘Is that who I’ve been hearing, walking up and down those shitty stairs, clients? Fucking those illegal immigrants in your stinking rooms. Judges, no doubt. Bank managers and barristers. Shall we speak to the police and see if they agree with your pitch?’