The Girl Downstairs

by Iain Maitland

  It’s different for girls – young women, really. On the streets. They are weaker physically, and when they are wet and cold and hungry, they are vulnerable to offers of money and the inevitable descent into sex work.

  I hurry on. As fast as I can.

  I think I know where she might be.

  There is an old Victorian shelter down by the theatre.

  There is noise. Shouts and jeers and whistles towards me from the other side of the road. A group of young men, tipped out of a club, full of testosterone and alcohol, and looking for trouble.

  I slow to a hurried walk so I do not attract further braying attention. After one or two more yells in my general direction, they go on their way to break off car wing mirrors, pull up flowers and vomit in front gardens. A typical night out in Felixstowe.

  And I am now by the theatre and to the shelter. This ornate relic from a bygone age, looking out across the beach towards the dark, black sea.

  She is not at the side of it as I approach. Nor at the front.

  There is just one large, huddled-up shape.

  Curled up beneath the bench at the back.

  I shake the shoulder closest to me with a sense of urgency, to describe, to ask, to say Have you seen this young girl? She is homeless, she is young, she is hungry, she has nothing to eat, nowhere to go, this pretty little thing.

  And I realise suddenly I have nothing with me for the girl to eat or drink. I had worked myself into such a lather as I lay in my bed that, other than getting dressed and checking Fluffy was settled in his bed, I rushed out without thought or preparation.

  The huddled-up mass, after two or three increasingly firm shakes from me, groans and rolls over slowly. An old drunken woman, with sleep-stuck eyes and dribbling lips. She is repulsive. But in my madness, I have to press on.

  “Have you seen her?” I say.

  “The girl!” I shout. “The girl by the pier!”

  The woman looks at me through hazy eyes, unable to focus. Sleep or drink or drugs, I cannot tell. She is covered with layers of old clothes, jumpers, cardigans, and some sort of dirt-stained blanket. Incongruous, light-grey jogging bottoms cover her bottom half, other than a roll of vein-marked white flesh exposed and hanging over the top of the waistband. She wears blue, slip-on plimsolls.

  Whether she has wet or soiled herself, I cannot say. There is a smell that suggests a combination of both. Judging by the dark stain to the front of her jogging bottoms and down her legs, she has certainly wet herself.

  I shake her again, to rouse her from sleep. I ask her repeatedly, “Have you seen the girl?” The jumbled, incoherent nonsense of her mumbled reply suggests that, whether she has or not, she cannot tell me.

  I stop, think, wonder whether to carry on along the prom out of town towards Old Felixstowe.

  Or turn back towards the pier and to my car beyond and home.

  I see a police car patrolling the seafront, coming towards me from the pier. I drop my head, wrap my scarf around my face and hurry away to my bed and my sleep and my dreams. My nightmares, really.

  It is pitch black.

  At night.

  I am drowning in a canal.

  The sides stretch up smooth and high.

  And the water is cold and deep.

  I cannot swim.

  I am searching for something. And trying to escape.

  I cannot find what it is I want.

  And my hands slip away from the sides.

  I am thrashing about.

  Ever more desperate.

  And my head sinks beneath the water.

  I awake, drenched in sweat.

  2

  Tuesday, 19 November, 4.57 Am

  I have not slept well. It’s been a restless, troubled night. Reliving one of my nightmares over and again.

  And thinking about the girl. When I have been awake. I know what I am going to do.

  And I know why. In my moments of clarity, I understand how I have come to this.

  I got myself into a routine once I had retreated to my little home in Bluebell Lane to eke out my existence. I walk Fluffy across the fields before breakfast. I then have my breakfast. Porridge with fruit, usually. A banana. Or raspberries. I alternate them. I have a little chart on the wall to remind me which is which for each day. My memory is not always so good these days.

  In the mornings, I do the housework. The hoovering. Cleaning. Any odd bits of DIY that need attending to. I work to a list. I have my lunch with the news at one o’clock on BBC One. A sandwich, crisps and a yoghurt. In the afternoon, I take the long walk into town, for milk and bread and suchlike, to go to the library, to pick up a little something for Fluffy, get a local newspaper to keep abreast of what’s happening hereabouts. I like a schedule to my day.

  Teatime and the long dark evenings of winter are especially tricky for me. I try to keep my mind busy. I have a nice evening meal, a ready-made lasagne from the Tesco Exclusive Range with some salad and a glass of fruit juice; orange mixed with pineapple is a favourite of mine. (I mix them myself.) I listen to the radio, mostly Radio 4. And I read long into the night until I fall into sleep.

  Not much of a life. I have yearned for something better.

  Love. That’s what. To love and be loved.

  It’s what drives me on. Into madness. To do what I have done before. And am about to do again.

  When I cannot sleep, I read. As I am doing now. I am an avid reader of crime novels, Agatha Christie’s in particular, and adventure stories – Alistair MacLean is an old favourite; Dan Brown a more recent one. I am currently reading 10 Rillington Place by Ludovic Kennedy. It is about the serial killer John Christie. I picked it up from a second-hand bookshop in town. I don’t know why. It’s not a very pleasant book, but something about it caught my eye.

  John Reginald Halliday Christie, to give him his full name, killed his wife and other women back in the 1940s and 1950s. He then buried the bodies around his rented ground-floor flat. His own home! A silly thing to do. One of the other tenants later tried to put up a shelf in a kitchen alcove, peeled back the wallpaper and saw a stack of bodies piled there. You would think someone would have noticed the smell.

  You would expect that, after the bodies were discovered, Christie would go on the run. I would be prepared. And I would leave and start over somewhere, somehow. Cash in a holdall. Instead, he wandered about London, having a cup of tea at one café and an iced bun at another. Almost as if he were on a day trip to see the sights. One day, up by Putney Bridge, he was challenged by a police officer, and there it all ended; the game was up. If you’ve buried bodies in your home, you need to have an escape plan. A “plan B” as it were. At the very least, you need to disappear. And not get caught.

  But I digress. My mind wanders all over the place at times like these. And I have just stopped taking my medication. I do not think I really need it. I want to be happy and live well without it.

  I sit up and look out of the bedroom window, waiting for daybreak.

  Then I am up and getting ready to walk Fluffy. And on we go, into another day. But today, I have something to live for. A brighter future. Or at least a chance of it. If I can just find the girl by the pier.

  Just gone 11 a.m. There is knocking at the front door. Firm but insistent.

  I ignore it.

  I know who it is. And what she wants. She will go away. Eventually.

  Mid to late morning is a difficult time for me. I have done my chores and ticked them off the list. It is too early to start preparing lunch. And I always struggle with free time. I need to be occupied. I know that. I try to timetable my day and keep busy, busy, busy. When I am not doing something, my mind clouds over and I think my ever-darkening thoughts. And I know where they will take me.

  I now sit still, as calmly as I can, in a chair at the kitchen table overlooking the garden. I have my trusty old binoculars. I often get out and about with them both day and night. Today, I want to watch for the robin. I like robins. There is one that has been coming into
my garden in this colder weather. I have a little half-coconut shell nailed to the fence, and I fill the bottom of it with bird seed. I see the robin eating there some days. But all I see today is the Lump staring across the fence from his garden on the other side of the alleyway between the two properties.

  Knock. Knock.

  I blank it out.

  No matter how many times.

  3 Bluebell Lane probably sounds an idyllic address. It is a handsome enough house, although I have always thought of it as a cottage – the “chocolate box cottage” of my dreams. The word cottage has a nice sound to it. There is a small and tasteful extension – a nookery, actually.

  Everything about it is perfect. Other than the neighbours. The Lumbs – the Lumps as I call them – live next door at 1 Bluebell Lane, the last property before endless, open fields. Or they did. There is only one Lump left these days.

  The father was a rough-and-ready fellow who worked at the docks, most likely shifting things about and stealing them (as most dockers do). He spent much of his free time – day, evenings, weekends – in his workshop to the side of his house, and closest to mine, drilling and hammering and singing along to Meat Loaf CDs and driving me mad.

  He fell off a crane, or something high up, at the docks two or three summers ago and broke his back and died. Some sort of complications, I imagine. It’s been much quieter, rather peaceful in fact, ever since. But the Lumps are – the Lump is – still a thorn in my side.

  Knock. Knock. Bloody knock.

  Louder this time.

  It makes no difference to me.

  Mrs Lump was a nasty piece of work. A tall, solid woman, looking more like a beast than a man, she worked as a receptionist at my local doctors’ surgery. I think she was behind me getting struck off the list there early last year. So I have since had to go into Ipswich instead. It is an educated guess. She looked down her nose at me whenever we saw each other, and she never spoke. Not a single word. She always thought she was better than me. But then she got COVID-19, just when everyone thought the worst of it was over. She died quite quickly. I cannot say I mourned for her. She was a horrible woman.

  The son, the Lump, all six feet four of him, is a simpleton. There is no other word for him. He lives there alone now. I don’t know how. I think perhaps there were life insurance payouts for the father and mother. Even so, I do not know how he manages on his own. Bumbling and fumbling about. It can only be a matter of time before he burns the place down and they take him away to assisted living. I do not know what he does all day. He must be in his mid-twenties. But he does not work. Just stands there. Staring.

  The knocking has stopped.

  I knew it would.

  She has gone away. For now, anyway.

  I see the Lump, as I do most days at this time, by the fence on the other side of the alleyway that separates the two buildings. He is staring over, from his garden, watching me. It is as if he is in some sort of trance. I imagine he is standing against the fence urinating. That is how he looks to me. I will not be intimidated. I gaze out as if relaxed and at ease. I will not let him see how irritated I feel by his presence.

  Being struck off by the GP was unfair. Mrs Lump was involved, without doubt. According to the NHS website, a GP can only remove you from their list immediately without warning if a patient has been violent or abusive, or has behaved in a threatening way and the police have been called. Well, that is not me. I have a temper, as most normal men do, and it has been an issue at times in the past. But I am certainly not violent or abusive, and I do not behave in a threatening way!

  If I were like that, I would be picking up a knife from the block beside me.

  And I would be striding into the garden. Through the gate. To the alleyway. Into his garden.

  And sinking it slap-bang into the middle of the Lump’s stupid fat forehead. And I’d bloody well laugh when I did it.

  It is mid-afternoon. The schools are out. It is not yet dusk.

  I am back at the pier. On my own. With my hat, scarf and gloves. It is colder now.

  Looking for the girl. Before she settles down somewhere for the night.

  The pier, at least the length of it stretching out into the sea, is rotten and decomposing. Much like Felixstowe itself. I think it must be dangerous to walk on. It has been closed off for years. It can only be a matter of time before it collapses into the sea. Good riddance to it, I’d say.

  It would be better off gone. But it would be a major expense to remove it, and I believe the council bigwigs would rather spend money on schemes that only benefit their own back pockets. These people do very nicely out of us ordinary folk, what with their allowances and expenses and backhanders. And “jobs for the boys”, of course.

  The front of the pier is new and busy. A few years ago it was renovated, and there is now a pleasant enough restaurant and fast-food places where you can buy fish and chips and multicoloured fizzy drinks and 101 flavours of ice cream.

  She is nowhere to be seen outside.

  The girl. She is not begging. Nor hidden away, getting ready for another long, cold night.

  I know where she will be. Inside the pier.

  When the front of the pier was being rebuilt, many in Felixstowe hoped it would be something like the one at Southwold – upmarket, with small cafes and dainty knick-knack shops. An attraction, drawing in people from far and wide.

  What Felixstowe got was an amusement arcade. One huge aircraft hangar of a space, packed front to back, side to side, with machines. All you can hear is whirring and ringing and the shouts and yells and screams of teenagers. It makes Clacton look sophisticated.

  The cacophony and the menacing and unbridled feral children everywhere repel me. But I force myself to go in. To see if she is here, checking for left-behind change in the trays of the machines.

  I hope that is what she is doing. It could be worse. I imagine there are drugs to be had here, as there are where all teenagers gather these days. Or she could be in the toilets, in a clumsy sexual embrace with some young thug for a rolled-up twenty-pound note.

  I shake my head free of the image. Stride in, making my way to the change machines, putting in a five-pound note for two-pence pieces. To show I’m just an ordinary fellow having some fun on the machines.

  I have been in here before, of course. In recent months. For much the same purpose. I know what to do. And what not to do.

  When I was young, and the world was a nicer place, middle-aged men in amusement arcades could interact with children there. Smile at them. Share a joke with Mum and Dad. Maybe hand over a small cuddly toy they’d won. They were happier, more innocent, times back then.

  These days, as I know to my cost, you can no longer do anything like that. If a child falls over in front of you and is hurt and crying, you have to walk on by. Ignore the little chap. If a baby in a pushchair looks at you and gurgles, you turn away. You cannot even stand near a small child for fear of being called a pervert. As I have been. And more.

  It is easier with teenage girls. I have a kind of bond with them, almost an understanding, as if I were a kindly uncle. Uncle Philip, that’s me. They seem to be drawn in my direction. There is something about me. I think I seem much younger than I am to them. A ready-made friend. Of course, I know I cannot usually approach them one-to-one, and that I have to keep my distance on an individual basis. But two or three, in a small group, and I can start up a nice little chat.

  She is not in here. The girl. Nowhere to be seen. I’ve been all over.

  I was going to approach a group of teenage girls, but there is only one small group. They are younger, pretty pre-teens, and their mothers are nearby.

  There is a bigger group of teenage boys, aimless and aggressive, and they have spotted me.

  Teenage boys, yobs and thugs for the most part, scare me, especially when there is a gang of them. “Felixstowe’s Finest”, I think of them. Another of my little jokes. In reality, they are inbred, half-witted monsters. Most of the families in Felixstowe
have lived here for years, and the inbreeding is simply horrific on occasion.

  I have to keep moving and not catch their eye and walk away if they turn on me. There are no constraints nowadays; they can simply say and do whatever they want without any fear of comeback. A year or two ago, one young thug accused me of being “a paedo” – his exact words – because I was having a little chat with what must have been his girlfriend.

  He threw some sort of liquid at me from a container in his pocket. I assumed it was lighter fuel. I don’t know why. Then rummaged in his pockets for what I thought was a box of matches. To light and flick at me. I was too scared to move.

  But he could not find what he was looking for. There was a moment as he sneered at me, laughing at my fear. Then he turned and swaggered off. Afterwards, I went into the men’s toilets and used sheets of toilet paper to wet and wipe off whatever it was.

  I went home and changed my clothes. And I felt so humiliated that I plotted how I was going to get my own back. Which I never did. For a while, I drove round with a full petrol can on the passenger seat, just looking for him. Eventually, I thought better of it. Sometimes though, I wish I had taught him a lesson he’d never forget.

  I take one last look around the pier, watched by the gang of youths.

  She is not here.

  I leave as nonchalantly as I can. Inside, I feel my temper rising. But I can control it these days.

  Gone midnight, and I am back on the prom, heading to the pier. I am obsessed. I know it. There is nothing I can do. I will pursue this to the end. My own, most likely.

  I lay in bed for ages, thoughts of the girl rolling round my mind. My body aching in agony.

  And it came to me quite suddenly where she must spend her nights, sheltering from the cold and the strong wind. Beneath the pier. I do not know why I did not think of that last night. Sometimes I don’t think straight. I forget things.