by S. L. Grey
The night after Mark returned home late from his first visit to the therapist, the alarm went off at three a.m. I was lying in bed with Hayden when it shrilled, jolting me awake when for once I’d managed to snatch a few minutes of sleep, sending my book, which had been lying on my chest, skittering to the floor. This time, Hayden didn’t scream. She merely sat up and blearily complained about the noise. I fought to keep calm for her sake. “It’s fine, baby. I’ll make it stop.”
I ran to the door. “Mark!” I hissed down the dark corridor, ears straining for alien footsteps or voices. He didn’t come. He didn’t answer. “Mark!” Horrible scenes flashed through my mind: they’ve broken in again and they’ve got him. They’re torturing him, breaking his fingers, burning his skin on the iron, smothering him with a pillow. And somehow worse than this, the thought that he was hiding, that he’d locked himself safely in the bathroom and was leaving me and Hayden to deal with it alone.
Hayden’s voice snapped me into action. “It hurts my head, Mumma.”
“It’s fine, baby. It will stop soon, you’ll see.”
I couldn’t let them get in. I couldn’t let them get us. But what could I do? There was no lock on the door. I tried to move the chest of drawers toward the door, but I could only skew it away from the wall at an angle, my back muscles popping. As it jolted away from the wall, in the dim light cast by Hayden’s night lamp, I spotted a dark object lying next to the baseboard behind it: an unfamiliar hairbrush, blond hair matted in its tines. Hearing footsteps, I gathered Hayden into my arms, still unsure of the best action to take. The door burst open, but it was Mark—just Mark. He hadn’t left us after all. He looked calm and unruffled; he’d even taken the time to dress in jeans and a sweatshirt.
He flicked on the main light, making us blink. “You guys okay?”
“I was calling for you, Mark. I was worried—I thought…I didn’t know…”
“I’ve been checking the house. All secure.”
“You’re sure?”
“Positive. Been trying to kill the alarm, but the code isn’t working.”
I shifted Hayden’s weight on my hip. She was getting way too heavy to carry. Mark reached out for her. “Here, let Daddy carry you.” After a moment’s hesitation, I handed her to him. I should have been relieved at this show of concern for his daughter, but instead I felt uneasy.
“Can you see if you can turn it off?” he said to me.
“Yeah, but shouldn’t we call the cops just in case?”
“I checked the house, Steph. Why waste their time?”
A vicious inner voice piped in that if I had a job—if I hadn’t chosen to stay at home with Hayden—then maybe we’d be able to afford the five hundred rand a month to hook the alarm up to a security company. And it could just be a glitch, couldn’t it? “Apparently it went off a lot while we were away.”
“Who says?”
“One of the neighbors—a student—told me.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I meant to. You’ve been distracted lately, Mark.” Not to mention borderline insane.
“Noisy, Daddy!” Hayden cried.
“Can you try and switch it off, Steph?” he said again.
I ran down to fiddle with the alarm. It died the second I touched the control pad. I didn’t rearm it, rationalizing that even if someone did break in, it was useless. Instead I scurried through the house, double-checking the windows and doors, jumping at every sound.
When I returned to Hayden’s room, Mark was moving the chest of drawers back into place. The hairbrush behind it had gone out of my mind. Hayden was tucked into bed, and her eyelids were drooping.
Mark smiled at me. “Well done. I’ll get someone to come and look at it tomorrow. Probably just a loose wire.”
He turned off the main light. His elongated shadow drifted across Hayden’s duvet—an eerie Nosferatu shape. I shivered. Hayden was now breathing steadily.
“She’s out, Steph. Come on. Come to bed.”
I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Hayden alone in the room. Or maybe I couldn’t bear the thought of being alone in bed with Mark. “No. I’m going to stay in here with Hayden.”
“Why don’t we bring her in with us?”
I stared at him. He’d been against letting her sleep in our bed from the start. We’d never discussed why, but I’d assumed it was a habit that Zoë had got into and it was the kind of clingy behavior he was reluctant to encourage in Hayden. “Seems a shame to move her now.”
“Okay. Sleep well.” He kissed me chastely on the cheek and left the room. I crawled into bed with Hayden, convinced that sleep wouldn’t come, but it crept up on me almost immediately.
Hayden woke me up by stroking my hair. Bright sunlight filtered through the crack in the curtains. “Mumma! Mumma, get up. Mumma. Look.” She was pointing under the bed.
“What?”
“Look, silly! Look at the funny lady.”
“What funny lady?”
“Look!”
I swung my legs off the bed and got groggily down on my hands and knees. All that was under there was one of Hayden’s socks and the Mermaid Barbie. I dragged it out and handed it to her. “This funny lady?”
Hayden put her hand on her hip in a perfect imitation of my mom when she’s exasperated at Dad. “No, Mumma!” She clucked her tongue and took Mermaid Barbie from me.
“Where’s Daddy?” And what time was it? When I tracked down my cell phone—I’d left it on the nightstand in Hayden’s room but stupidly hadn’t thought to use it last night—I saw it was almost nine. Hayden was usually up at six. Jesus. Had she been unsupervised for three hours? I carried her downstairs and saw with relief that Mark had left a note on the kitchen table, saying that he’d tried to wake me earlier but couldn’t rouse me and had left only when he heard I was awake. Why didn’t he call out to me? He must have crept out of the house; I didn’t hear the creak of the front door or the jangle of the gate slamming shut.
“Did Daddy make you breakfast, Hayden?”
She nodded. “Yucky cereal.”
“Did you eat it?”
“No, Mumma. I want eggs with faces.”
“Please can I have eggs with faces.”
“Please, Mumma,” she said, sweetly.
I made Hayden a boiled egg, drawing a smiling face on the shell as I always did, and cut a piece of toast into narrow slices for her to dip into the yolk. I didn’t feel like eating; I wasn’t sure if I could even stomach coffee that morning.
“Spoony, Mumma!” Hayden said.
“Please,” I snapped back.
“Please, Mumma.”
I opened the drawer, looking for one of the special novelty spoons she liked, but most of them were in the dishwasher, which I’d forgotten to turn on last night. I dug through the knives and forks, metal rasping against metal, until I found one, although it was covered in a fine patina of black mold. I dropped the spoon straight into the trash, then yanked out the drawer and heaved it onto the counter. The plastic tray was spotless, as was the rest of the cutlery. It didn’t make any sense. Maybe Mark or I had accidentally put a dirty spoon into the drawer without noticing.
Hayden called for a spoon again, so I distractedly grabbed one from the dishwasher, rinsed it, and plonked it in front of her. Then I went through the rest of the kitchen. Nothing else appeared to have been touched, but it didn’t feel right. Paranoia nibbled: maybe it was all an elaborate ruse, like in one of my crime books, engineered to drive me mad. To split up Mark and me.
Maybe I was the one who needed a psychiatrist. No. That was bullshit. I wasn’t crazy.
“Mumma! Look!” Hayden grinned at me and chucked a piece of buttery toast on the tiles.
“Don’t do that, Hayden.”
She did it again.
“Hayden. I’m warning you.”
She giggled, and then, making sure I was watching her, picked up the last piece and dropped it. She wasn’t doing it to irritate me; she was simply playin
g a game, but I wasn’t thinking at that moment. Rage surged, and I grabbed her bowl and flung it into the sink, where it shattered, screaming, “I said, fucking no!” I had never raised my voice to Hayden before, and for a second we both stared at each other in mutual shock.
Then Hayden gasped and burst into tears. I picked her out of her tight seat and cuddled her to me. “Sorry, Mumma,” she stuttered between sobs.
“No. Mumma’s sorry, baby.”
Then we were both crying. The scene is etched in my mind, as clearly as if it’s a still from a movie. Me holding Hayden in my arms in the center of the kitchen, both of us howling, the tiles littered with squished eggy toast.
“Don’t cry, Mumma.” Hayden leaned back and stroked my face. “I will let you play with Princess Elsa.”
When we’d both calmed down, I dressed Hayden and then let her play with the iPad while I cleaned up the mess and the broken bowl, fighting the guilt that kept surging up. Not showing any signs of being affected by my appalling behavior, she continued to shout, “Mumma! Look!” whenever she managed to get to the next level of the game she was playing. Another jab of guilt: I’d been using the iPad and its store of addictive kids’ games as a babysitter since we’d returned from Paris.
When the mess was cleaned up, I was hit with the urge to confess what I’d done. I called Mark, but his phone was off. I thought about calling my mother, then changed my mind. I mourned the fact that they were my only two real choices when it came down to it. I scrambled in my handbag for an emergency Urbanol, but the packet was empty. I was supposed to take them for only two weeks: the meds were a short-term solution for the anxiety I’d felt after the home invasion. If I needed more—and I was fairly sure I did—that would mean another trip to the doctor, an expense that probably wouldn’t be covered by Mark’s medical aid. I’d have to go without. And considering how Zoë had died and his current fragile state of mind, I could hardly tell Mark I was in the market for tranquilizers. Instead I practiced the breathing exercises the police counselor had taught me until the anxiety stopped frothing in my gut.
Getting out of the house might help. Perhaps I should do what I’d thought of doing the other day and head off to the beach. Afterward, Hayden and I could kill time shopping for groceries. She loved going to Pick n Pay and being wheeled around in the shopping cart. But since she was absorbed in her game, I decided to wait until she got bored before I suggested an outing, and checked my emails instead. There was nothing from the literary agent, but I didn’t allow myself to indulge in a spiral of doubt about that. I clicked onto Facebook and scrolled through the random boastful updates about other people’s lives, relieved that I hadn’t posted a message letting everyone know about our plans for the Paris trip.
I was about to log off when a message from the Petits zinged into my Gmail in-box:
We are sorry for the trouble about the woman who it seemed was dead there in the apartment courtyard. And we are sorry that we could not arrive at your house there in Africa. Can you tell us, did you have any other experiences during your time in the apartment or now? It would be good if you would leave a good review for the other guest who might like to stay there.
Wishing you good cheer.
I barked out a laugh, startling Hayden. Leave a review? Leave a fucking good review? Desperate to share this nugget, I tried Mark’s phone once more. This time it went straight to voice mail. I forwarded the email to him, then sent him a text message urging him to check his email.
Hayden was thankfully entranced by the iPad once more, so I amused myself by making up a review for the Petits’ place:
Not only did the Petits—if that is even their real name—not show up to our house or let us know that they had changed their arrangements, but their apartment was a fucking mausoleum and nothing like they described it on the site. Think the Overlook Hotel but with less charm and more creepiness. The building was empty except for a mad squatter, who invited herself to our apartment and then threw herself out of the window. It’s an awesome spot for anyone who likes being traumatized and enjoys the ambiance of creepy empty concrete buildings that stink of old food and shit.
I didn’t send it to them; instead I wrote:
ARE YOU SERIOUS?????? A GOOD REVIEW? Go fuck yourselves. Also, why are there no other people living in your goddamned building????
I didn’t send that either (it’s still in my drafts folder). Instead, I wrote a furious email complaining about our treatment and sent it to the house swap site, copying in the Petits. Now bubbling over with righteous indignation, I stared at the computer screen. It was definitely time to get out of the house and blow off some steam. I gathered up the sunscreen, Hayden’s beach toys, and a towel, shoved them into a bag, and headed out. I strapped her into the car seat, and she babbled away happily to herself as I tried the engine. It just ticked over. The battery was dead. The alternator had been playing up for ages, and I knew it was only a matter of time before it died. I tried it again and again, despite knowing it was useless, while sweat stuck my dress to my back. Without the air-con, Hayden and I had to get out of the hot car as soon as possible. I hit the steering wheel with my fists, mouthing, “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” so that Hayden wouldn’t hear me cursing out loud. She’d already witnessed enough out-of-control behavior from her mother for one day.
I’d promised her the beach, and now what? With no car, the day stretched ahead interminably. Hayden and I could walk to the park, but it would be steaming at this time of day. And we couldn’t take a minibus taxi to the beach: Mark had made me promise that I’d never use one with Hayden because he saw them as unsafe, and I couldn’t disagree.
I climbed out of the car and unstrapped her. Oddly for her, she didn’t question or whine about the change of plans.
“Hey.”
I turned to see the guy from next door. “Hi, Karim.” I tried to smile at him but could only manage a grimace.
“Car trouble?”
“Mm-hmm. My own fault. Needs a new alternator, but I’ve been putting it off and now the battery’s dead.”
“I’d offer to give you a jump start, but I only have a scooter.”
“Thanks. We were only heading to the beach anyway.” Hayden gave him a shy wave. “Do you want to come in for coffee?” It popped out before I could stop it.
He was taken aback. “Now?”
“Yeah. Look, it was just an idea. It’s fine if you don’t have time.”
He checked the time on his cell. “Sure. Why not? I have to get to work, but I’ve got time for a coffee.”
“Great!” This time my smile was genuine. I didn’t care that he was only being kind, that he might have read the desperation in my eyes.
He was good enough to play Frozen with Hayden and Mermaid Barbie while I made the coffee. I felt fluttery and excited, like I was on a date. I know how that sounds, but it had been weeks since I’d hung out with anyone my age.
“I’m sorry about last night,” I said, when Hayden was absorbed with Princess Elsa and her Duplo castle (fuck knows where Mermaid Barbie had got to), and he sat with me at the kitchen counter.
He was looking at me in confusion. “Sorry about what now?”
“Our alarm. It went off last night again. We’ll get someone in to fix it soon, I promise.” Thinking, Before or after we buy a new alternator?
“Oh. I didn’t hear it.”
“Were you out late?”
“Nah. I was in all night. Strange that it didn’t wake me—I’m a light sleeper. Hey, I meant to ask, where did you go?”
“When?”
“You told me last time you went on holiday.”
I took a sip of scalding coffee. “Paris.”
“Oh, cool.”
“Not really.”
And then I found myself telling him everything. Well, almost everything: I left out the part where I discovered my husband clutching a dead cat. Karim was an excellent listener, interrupting only once when I told him about Mark discovering the hair in the closet.
“Hair trimmings or something. Mark said there were buckets of the stuff.” I didn’t mention Mark’s twitchy behavior after he’d returned from disposing of it, nor did I dwell on the fact that I hadn’t actually seen it for myself.
“Ew.”
I told him about the peculiar noises we’d heard in the night, the oddity of a building in a desirable area being empty. And then I came to Mireille’s suicide. Verbalizing it really underscored the bizarreness and the horror of what we’d been through. I was also aware that it didn’t sound plausible.
“That’s hectic,” he said when I wrapped up the story, adding a footnote about the Petits sending me a message asking for a review.
I didn’t know him well enough to gauge if he believed the story or not.
He drained his mug. “Listen, thanks for the coffee, but I’d better get going.”
“Really? I can make you another.” I knew I sounded desperate, and again I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be alone. I didn’t want Hayden and me to be alone, counting the hours until Mark got home.
“Sorry.” He started heading for the door. “I’m going to be late. Great coffee, though.”
He waved at Hayden, and I followed him to the front door. I reached around him to let him out, my bare arm brushing his. “Thanks for listening,” I said.
“It was quite a story. And thanks for the coffee.”
“Karim…what I told you about Paris. It was all true. I know how it must sound. Sorry for unloading on you; we hardly know each other and you must think I’m some kind of—”
He waved me into silence. “I didn’t think you were bullshitting me. Thanks for telling me about it. And sorry you had to go through that.” He paused. “We should do this again.”
I felt a momentary charge between us—I’m sure I wasn’t imagining it or searching for an ego boost—then he left.