‘I thought you were meeting Shane tonight.’
‘I was. But I’ll cancel.’
‘Don’t cancel on my account.’
‘I can’t be arsed going,’ Mike said. He winked. ‘I’ll use you as an excuse.’
‘Oh, gee thanks.’
But she was glad.
They drifted into the kitchen, Natalie to the fridge and Mike to the pile of junk mail they’d been steadily building on top of the microwave.
‘That menu for the Italian place,’ he said. ‘Is that in here somewhere?’ He started to sift through it. Then, a moment later, ‘What does she look like, this woman? The one with the glasses.’
Natalie described her in as much detail as she could recall. Blonde hair, very straight and sleek, in a long ponytail. Slim but not thin, perhaps a bit stocky. Wearing a suit. Older by a few years, maybe late thirties, early forties. Black glasses in very thick frames. The expensive, trendy kind.
‘Thick black glasses,’ Mike repeated softly.
He’d stopped going through the menus and now seemed lost in thought.
‘Yeah,’ Natalie said. ‘Why? Does she sound familiar?’
‘Ah …’ He hesitated. ‘A little bit.’
‘What? You’ve seen her too?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mike said. ‘Maybe.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, try to remember.’
He frowned, thinking. ‘I can’t, sorry. Maybe I’m just imagining things. Or picturing someone else. It’s just when you said about the glasses, and the ponytail …’ He went back to the menus. ‘That’s probably all it is. I’m thinking of someone else who matches the description. Someone I know. I just can’t think of who— Ah!’
He held up the menu, triumphant.
‘Yeah,’ Natalie said. ‘Maybe.’
But she wasn’t convinced.
Was there a chance this woman was following both of them? Or had Mike just happened to see her on another occasion when she was following Natalie, but Natalie didn’t know she was being followed? The latter made more sense.
If any of this did.
Mike disappeared into the living room to get his phone so he could order their dinner online.
Natalie stayed in the kitchen, thinking about what he’d said. The word paranoid had stuck in her gut. Was she being paranoid?
The visit from Alice had unnerved her. She kept thinking of the look on the woman’s face as she swept that flower pot off the table, the force of it sending shards as far as under the sofa in the living room. It was like a mania or something. The kind that could power violence. And what Mike didn’t seem to understand was that it wasn’t even that woman – or what had she done – that had pushed Natalie off-axis, but the fact that that woman had somehow figured out their address. That was what had really scared her. Because if that woman had, who else could? What if that someone else was actually, properly crazy and wanted to hurt them?
But Mike couldn’t understand that, because he didn’t believe that that’s what had happened. He thought Alice was probably just a neighbour, nothing more, nothing less.
‘Half an hour,’ he called from the living room.
‘Plenty of time to light the fire,’ she called back.
She heard him sigh, followed by the scrape of the grate against the tile of the fireplace.
She pulled the half-full bag out of the rubbish bin and swept the rest of the junk mail pile into it, then tied a neat knot in the top of the bag. Their wheelie bin was parked around the back, by the garden gate. She went to unlock the back door, but the bolt wouldn’t turn.
Natalie frowned at it, tried again.
The bolt wouldn’t budge.
But then she tried turning it in the opposite direction and found that it moved easily.
Click.
The pins of the mechanism had slid into place.
She’d just locked the door.
Which meant that the door had been open.
The problem was that Natalie had definitely, absolutely, positively locked the door before leaving the house that morning. She could clearly remember doing it: before she’d left for the Dylan, she’d let herself out to put a couple of beer bottles into the recycling bin, then gone back inside and locked the door.
‘Mike?’ she called out.
From the living room: ‘Yeah?’
‘Did you come home today?’
‘Huh?’
‘Did you come home during the day?’
‘No, why?’
The word paranoid materialised before her eyes. Could she really remember locking the door? Actually doing it, the action itself? Would she swear on her life that it had been this morning she’d put those bottles out? Could it have been yesterday? Was it possible?
‘No reason,’ she called out. ‘Never mind.’
_________
Natalie walked into the room that was supposed to be her office and realised that she hadn’t crossed its threshold in almost a week.
The bookshelves were still empty. Taped-up boxes littered the floor. Mike had assembled her desk one Saturday morning but it was unceremoniously pushed up against the radiator under the window and drowning in packages, torn-open bills and loose, curling receipts.
Once upon a time, Natalie had imagined that her spirit would lift every time she’d walk into this room. In her mind’s eye, she’d be sitting behind that desk bathed in early-morning light, drinking coffee from a delicate teacup and powering through her to-do list with joy in her heart. Or, at the very least, reading the showbiz section of ThePaper.ie while guzzling coffee straight from whatever receptacle had been nearest to hand while still in her pyjamas; hair greasy; yesterday’s mascara smeared beneath her bloodshot eyes; not pretty, but happy.
But weeks after their move, the room was more dumping ground than creative haven. Every time she as much as glanced through its open door, she felt an invisible weight pulling on her, slowing her down. Standing in there, in the midst of the mess, the weight grew heavier and heavier, until it began to feel like a ship’s anchor tied to her ankles in water far beyond her depth.
Everything had just felt so heavy lately.
Intellectually, she knew she was lucky. She had her health, and Mike, and this house. She made a sizeable income from something that took relatively little effort and which afforded her complete freedom and the privilege of being her own boss. And it was something that, until recently, she’d absolutely adored. It had never felt like a job until the day that stupid woman had come knocking on her front door.
At night now, she regularly dreamed of flickering screens with claw-like hands coming through them, like in that horror movie Mike had forced her to watch one Halloween. She didn’t need a psychologist to figure out what they meant. Each morning she’d open her eyes with the intention of having a good day, of being her old self, of feeling good and positive and happy. But by the time her feet were on the floor of their bedroom, the invisible weights would fall back into place and she’d become inexplicably exhausted.
But who could she talk to about it? It was the very definition of #firstworldproblems. Who would understand? Carla? As if. She’d think Natalie was inventing problems just to have some, because on paper her life was perfect. How would she even begin to explain to that girl – stuck in an awful job, poorly paid, and going slowly insane living with her parents – that despite the house and the money and Mike, and having a job Natalie was embarrassed to even call a job, life had started to feel like one long hangover? Meanwhile, Mike thought she ‘had’ anxiety and suggested she go to her GP to get something to make it go away.
He’d meant pills, which frightened Natalie. She wasn’t there yet. (Was she?) He’d also quoted some motivational poster he’d seen at work. Worry doesn’t take away tomorrow’s problems, it only steals today’s peace. She would’ve slapped him in the face if she could’ve mustered up the energy.
She had managed to unpack most of the rest of the ho
use, albeit half-heartedly, filing things away rather than finding a home for them. There were a couple of cupboards upstairs where boxes and bags and loose items had just been shoved inside, every which way. Natalie found she only had a few hours in her each morning to Do Life before she was suddenly down to the dregs of her energy levels and only capable of lying on the couch and watching mindless TV.
That’s where Mike found her most evenings. He hadn’t said anything about it directly and had never mentioned Alice or Black Glasses again. But he had his own problems. Actual problems, he’d say. There was something at work, some scandal brewing. She could feel him tossing and turning in the bed beside her at night, sense his distraction when he came home each evening.
It wasn’t all in her head.
Two more times since the day of the incident at the deli, Natalie had found the back door unlocked inexplicably. Most recently she’d checked it, gone upstairs to deposit something, then come back down to find it unlocked again. Not even five minutes had passed in between. She hadn’t told Mike, but she’d called a locksmith to come out and check the door. The guy had said everything was fine and offered to change the locks, but she’d declined, purely because she didn’t want to have to explain why she’d done that to Mike.
And things were missing. The biggest was a box of books, treasured ones: a few signed editions and special gifts, including the book of poetry she’d given Mike on the night he’d proposed. Moments before he did. They were in Rome and, on the morning of their last full day, they’d visited the Keats–Shelley House at the bottom of the Spanish Steps. She’d bought the book because it seemed so impossibly romantic and the perfect souvenir of what had been a blissful weekend, conveniently forgetting that Mike didn’t like to read, let alone read poetry, and that it was destined to sit untouched on a shelf for ever more. Now she couldn’t find it, sitting on a shelf or anywhere else, and the more she looked, the more items she noticed were missing. Some clothing, including one of her favourite dresses. A bottle of perfume she’d received as a gift that she’d never even got around to opening. One of her handbags. Mike’s explanation was that moving house always resulted in things going astray. He told her they’d turn up eventually. And no, he didn’t think it was weird that the only thing of his missing was the poetry book.
The days bled into one another. Each one managed to feel interminable but also ephemeral and inconsequential. Natalie felt, for the first time in a long time, that she was wasting time, wasting her life. Some days, she literally was. After Mike left for work, she’d crawl back into bed and wouldn’t get out again until the sky began to darken.
She was still posting to Instagram once a day, but she was phoney in it. Sometimes she even reposted old photos with new captions. If anyone had noticed, they hadn’t said anything. Thankfully, on social media, it was easy to make it seem like everything was okay. The contracts Ellie Fox had sent on were still sitting on a shelf somewhere, still sheathed in the envelope they’d come in, still unblemished above the dotted line.
And then the bill arrived, changing everything.
Again.
_________
She found it sitting face up on the mat in the hall not long after Mike had left for work one Friday morning: a plain white envelope. It had a stamp, but no postmark. Their address was on a sticky label that had been run through a printer but there was no addressee, no name. There wasn’t even a To The Residents. The first line of print on the envelope was the first line of their address.
Natalie took it to the couch, sitting down to open it up.
Inside was a single sheet of A4 paper, still crisp and smooth except for the two sharp creases that had made the page small enough to fit inside the long, narrow envelope. It was immediately obvious it was a bill or a receipt of some kind, from a place called Shanamore Cottages. There was only one item listed: ACCOMMODATION COTTAGE #6. This had cost €632.41 on October 24 and had been paid with a Visa card that ended in 3711. A slip of a receipt, printed from a credit card terminal, was stapled to the upper right-hand corner of the page, further evidence of the transaction.
Mike’s Visa card ended in 3711.
Natalie stared at the page, trying to force the ink on it to rearrange itself into something that made even a little bit of sense, because this made none at all.
The obvious, easy explanation was that this was just a mistake. A mixed-up name or a stolen credit card. Identity theft. Natalie should call Mike and tell him about it, tell him to call his bank right now and report the fraud.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she picked up her phone and checked the calendar. Every couple of months Mike would go to Cork for a night or two; his company had a branch down there. Since it was cheaper to bring the Dublin staff down south than vice versa, if there was a training day or an all-in meeting, they held it at the Cork offices. Natalie always made a note of these trips because she didn’t have her own car – she’d never got her full licence, so there was little point in her having one – and she would have to plan accordingly. But as far as she knew Mike always had his accommodation arranged for him by his employer, and she didn’t think he’d even been down to Cork that recently.
And where the hell was Shanamore?
According to her calendar app, Natalie was right: on October 24, Mike had been at home. She opened her phone’s internet browser and typed ‘Shanamore Cottages’ into Google. Shanamore was a village in East Cork, near the sea. A tiny one, by the looks of things. Natalie had never heard of it and she was pretty sure Mike had never mentioned it.
The cottages were a complex of holiday homes a kilometre outside the village and three more from the beach. One of the search results was tonight’s rate for staying there as per Booking.com; it seemed like you’d have to stay there for a long time, maybe more than a week, to rack up a bill that high.
Or maybe this was a bill for several shorter stays, Natalie thought. After all, this was a receipt, not a reservation. Maybe Mike had stayed at the cottages for a night here and there, paying as he went, and then requested a receipt for the total amount. Natalie had been back and forth to London a lot over the summer and often times she was away at a hotel or a resort for a PR event or a junket. Could he have gone to this place then? Why wouldn’t he have told her about it, though? It just didn’t make any sense.
It made even less sense when she heard the swing of the letterbox and the gentle thud of post landing on the mat. When Natalie went into the hall, she found a collection of bills, a small packet from Amazon and the latest issue of her Stellar magazine subscription fanned out on the floor. Whoever had put the receipt from Shanamore Cottages through their letterbox, it wasn’t their postman.
She would just ask Mike tonight, when he came home. No doubt there was some simple explanation, something obvious she’d failed to think of.
Natalie brought the newly arrived mail back to the couch. She refolded the page from Shanamore Cottages, slipped it back into its envelope and tucked it under the couch cushion she was sitting on for safekeeping. Not to hide it, but because it was the closest spot to hand.
But that night, Mike walked in the door looking particularly tired and annoyed and stressed, and when Natalie asked him about his day he began to unload, telling her about how someone who worked under him had paid a large sum of money into the wrong account and although they’d got it back, he was getting the blame for the mistake, for what could have happened. Natalie imagined she could feel the receipt beneath her like the princess had felt the pea. It may as well have been whispering: Ask him. Ask him now. But the timing wasn’t right, so she decided to leave it until the following day. Come Saturday morning, Mike’s mood had improved but it seemed delicate, precarious. So Natalie waited. Saturday slipped into Sunday and, before she knew it, she was waking up on Monday morning without having said a thing about it.
She came downstairs while Mike was in the shower, flicked on the coffee machine and then went to retrieve the bill from the underneath the couch cu
shion.
But it wasn’t there.
Natalie lifted all the couch cushions and stared, disbelieving.
She got down on her hands and knees and looked under the couch.
She checked under the seats of both the armchairs, even though she knew she hadn’t put it under there.
Had Mike found it and moved it? Why would he have done that? When would he have?
Natalie didn’t know what to think.
When Mike appeared, hair still wet from the shower, moving in a cloud of that cologne he put on too much of in the mornings, she asked him about it.
‘Did you see a white envelope? It just had our address on it, typed. I left it under one of the couch cushions ...’
He shook his head, no. ‘Why would you put something under the couch?’
‘Under the couch cushions. You didn’t see it, at all, anywhere?’
‘There’s post in the kitchen, isn’t there?’
Natalie knew the little pile of mail on the kitchen counter did not include the Shanamore Cottages receipt.
Mike started opening and closing cupboards, looking for his travel mug.
‘Did you get up last night?’ she asked.
‘No, why?’ He had poured his coffee and was now screwing on the mug’s lid. His back was to her. ‘Did you?’
‘No.’
He turned around, raised his eyebrows. ‘Then why do you ask?’
‘I was just wondering.’
‘Did you sleep okay?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You didn’t wake up?’
‘No. Don’t think so. Why do you ask?’
He smiled. ‘I was just wondering.’
‘Shanamore,’ Natalie said then. ‘Have you heard of it?’
‘What’s with all the questions this morning?’
‘Have you?’
‘What?’
‘Heard of Shanamore.’
Mike shook his head. ‘No.’
‘Never?’
‘No.’
‘So you’ve never been there?’
Something crossed Mike’s face then. Confusion? Or annoyance?
‘Why are you asking me about – what’s it called?’
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