The Girl Downstairs

by Iain Maitland

  She carries on eating.

  I continue. “He got some sort of payout when his parents died, I think, so he can afford to live there on his … anyway … I think he must have seen you when we walked Fluffy the other day. He’s got a bee in his bonnet about you … that’s why he keeps turning up.”

  She tips her plate towards her, scoops up the last forkful of baked beans and puts the fork in her mouth. It’s as if she is not listening to me.

  I look at her. She looks at me blankly.

  I don’t know what to say. I don’t want to scare her.

  She chews and swallows the last mouthful and speaks. As if it’s something and nothing.

  “He’s knocked a couple of times when you’ve been out on your walks.” She looks at me with a steady gaze. She then shrugs, as if to say it’s no big deal; don’t worry about it. She reaches for a piece of toast on her side plate.

  I reach slowly for a slice of toast, too, butter it carefully and dip it into my bowl of tomato soup. I am thinking what to say. I need Rosie to hide away, to stay safe. But I do not want to say that. To make her feel she is in danger.

  I see him for what he is. Very clearly. A simple boy with strong urges and a raging temper. He is alone next door. With nothing to do. I imagine him on his computer, looking at photos of young girls, watching videos of them. Pulling at himself, fuelling his urges, stoking his obsessions.

  Then he comes here. To peer at her through windows. To imagine her. To watch her in her bed at night. And, at some point, when he is close to boiling over, he will force his way in to have her. I will need to stop him. But I do not think – given my age and size and his utter brute strength – that I will be able to do so.

  “He’ll make a nuisance of himself if you let him.” My words taper off as I feel myself repeating what I have already said. I then try to add something different. “He’ll keep coming back now he knows you are here … if you talk to him.”

  She pulls a dismissive face as she chews her toast. But she does not speak. She glances away.

  “How many times has he come knocking?” I ask as casually as I can. I make my voice nice and calm. A little chat.

  She shrugs. “Twice. Once yesterday. Once this morning.” She laughs, as if she thinks he is rather sad. “When you walk the dog.”

  I nod, suddenly angry at the thought that he must have come straight round here after we clashed first thing. He has no respect for me at all. None whatsoever.

  “Do you –” I do not know quite how to phrase it “– lie low?”

  She is thinking how to answer, what to say. I can see that. She finishes her toast. Reaches for her glass of water. Swallows a mouthful.

  “I answered the door. He’d have just kept knocking and ringing otherwise. I –”

  “What did you talk about?” I interrupt, knowing I sound worried. I need to make it as casual as I can.

  “Nothing really. He wanted some coffee … and, um, something else this morning … I can’t remember. I said he’d have to come back.”

  There is a silence. I am formulating my thoughts and questions.

  What else did he ask? What else did you say to him? Did you talk about me? I am not sure how to put these questions to her in a casual manner.

  But before I can speak, she is up and out of her seat, clearing away the lunchtime plates and bowls and glasses, and the moment has gone.

  Rosie wants to spend some time alone this afternoon. Listening to music, she says. She is cheerful. Perhaps more cheerful than I have seen her.

  She disappears into the nookery with Fluffy walking stiffly behind. He has a touch of arthritis today. He will need lifting carefully onto the bed.

  I sit in the dining room, my new book, Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, open at the table. It is an old favourite. I like the judge best. There is snowfall again, a steady sprinkling, enough to cover footprints and give us a fresh clean sheet of white by morning.

  I am not really reading.

  I am watching the lane.

  Waiting for his imminent arrival.

  I can hear the shower running in the nookery. I shut my eyes, thinking my thoughts. I open them again. I must not be distracted.

  The Lump will be sitting alone in his house.

  Thinking of Rosie.

  Working himself up to come here.

  There is silence in the nookery. The shower has been turned off. The toilet flushed. The door between the shower and the bedroom shut. Then nothing. It is the silence that torments me most. Thoughts of what she might be doing.

  He will leave his house any moment.

  Dressed in his coat and boots and stupid bobble hat.

  And he will walk to my cottage. Stand at my gate.

  I hear Rosie come out of the nookery. Footsteps on the stairs. Into my daughter’s room. Back and forth across the floorboards. Then down the stairs again. The door to the nookery shut carefully behind her.

  The Lump will look at me. His hand on the gate.

  I will stare back.

  It will be a battle of wills. I will not give in.

  Rosie is out of the nookery again. Through the kitchen, into the bathroom this time. I imagine her rummaging around in the bathroom cabinet. And in the cupboard under the washbasin. Searching for powders and ointments.

  He will march up the path.

  Knock on the door.

  I will ignore it, willing him to go away.

  Rosie is out again, back upstairs into my daughter’s room. I hear the creak of the wardrobe opening and shutting. Hurried footsteps coming back down the stairs. The nookery door shut loudly this time.

  Knock. The Lump will hit the door hard.

  Knock. Knock.

  Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock. Knock.

  Rosie comes out of the nookery, and I hear her footsteps as she walks towards the dining room. She stands in the doorway. And looks at me, smiling. She has spent an age getting ready, and now I can see why.

  She is wearing my daughter’s best special-occasions dress, all black and slinky. A prom type of dress. Her hair is brushed and groomed and tied back. She wears high heels.

  I have a sudden memory of when my daughter was small. Collecting her from a playdate with a friend and getting there too early. My daughter and her friend had taken women’s clothes from a playbox and strutted up and down, five-year-olds playing at grown-ups. And that is how Rosie appears now.

  The make-up of a clown.

  The yellow and purple bruised arm and ankle at odds with the dress and heels.

  And yet … it is oddly endearing.

  I do not know what to say. Whether I tell her she is beautiful. That her hair is lovely. Her make-up perfect. Her dress an utter joy.

  But I hesitate, knowing I will stumble over the words, stuttering out clumsy sentences. But she waits there, expecting something from me. Compliments. Words of praise. Encouragement. And so I simply say she looks so nice, and that seems to be enough for her. She smiles and waltzes away. I hear her in the kitchen, clinking glasses and bottles and making orange squash for the two of us.

  So I follow her there, my heart full of hope and expectation. But I see her glance at the clock on the wall. Just gone a quarter to five. Then a look at me, with her anxious little face, and she says she will make tea whilst I walk Fluffy.

  She says it quite lightly. As if in passing. Like it means nothing.

  She hands me the dog lead.

  I know what she is doing. She wants me out of the way. By five o’clock.

  And that suddenly makes me angry. So very angry.

  Rosie is not happy. Then again, neither am I. Not at all.

  I told her it was too cold for Fluffy to go for a walk. That his arthritis was playing up. I put the lead on the side. Said I would make tea. Soup and bread. Let him out in the back garden later.

  She has gone back to the nookery. Leaving Fluffy with me. She will be cursing me.

  As the hands on the clock in the kitchen move towards five o’clock, I go in
to the hallway and switch on the outside light. Then to the dining room, where I stand, watching. Looking out into the darkness. The outside light is not a strong one, but it illuminates the path down to the gate. Everything beyond is pitch black.

  There is silence in the cottage. No noise from Fluffy lying on the sofa in the living room. Nothing from the nookery. The cottage is hushed, too. It often seems to me to be a living thing. The cottage. Forever creaking in the cold and groaning in the wind. But now it is still and waiting for something to happen.

  The Lump is about to appear in the narrow shaft of light. He will walk up the path. Knock on the front door. Expecting Rosie to answer it. Dressed up. Inviting him in. She will hear him at the door, but will not come and answer it. I will. And I will tell him to go away.

  All I can hear is my breathing.

  And the beating of my heart.

  I am scared. Of confronting him. The Lump.

  I watch the snow coming down. There is so much of it already. A thick blanket on the ground and on the fence and gate and on the trees. But it is slowing, this latest snowfall. Just a dusting, really. Maybe adding half an inch, perhaps an inch, this time.

  There must be layer upon layer now. Snow. Then turning to ice. And more snow falling. And more ice forming. Another layer of snow. I wonder how long it will go on. I think, maybe, it will be like the first national COVID-19 lockdown, when everyone was shut away for weeks on end.

  It has a mesmerising effect, this snow. I am in something of a trance, just waiting. It should be peaceful and relaxing standing here. But I know he will step out of the blackness and into the light at any moment, and I will jerk and twitch and snap into life.

  I glance towards the gate, having been diverted by the snow falling from the heavens.

  He is there.

  He has his hand on the gate, ready to push it open. He looks at the cottage, through the haze of the snow and the outside light, and sees me. I pull back the net curtain in the living room. So that he can see me clearly, watching him, waiting. The net curtain is stuck to ice on the window, and it tears itself free, a ragged, dirty piece in my hand.

  There is a long moment of quiet agony when I think he is going to slam the gate open, storm up the path and bang on the door, rattling the handle. Rosie! he will shout. Rosie! Rosie! Rosie! Over and again. And she will come running out of the nookery. I do not know what I would do at that point. The point that I lose her.

  My mind flips and turns and rolls, deciding what to do, dredging up my courage to do it, knowing it will be the end of everything either way. One way or the other. I swallow and brace myself. Then, as suddenly as he appeared, he turns and is gone, walking back, one step, two steps, into the blackness. Back to his house.

  I stagger back and sit down, realising that my neck and back and shirt are soaked with sweat.

  And Rosie is suddenly out of the nookery and into the kitchen, banging about with pots and pans. Making the tea. Everything back to normal.

  Fluffy barks and follows her in. Just in case there are scraps to be had. His paw up, the little beggar.

  I think, maybe, just maybe, with her coming back in and him walking away, that I have won the day.

  But, just in case, and because I am a clever fellow, I have come up with a sudden plan to make sure. As I move into the hallway to go upstairs to change, whilst she fiddles about in the kitchen, I will detour into the nookery. I will turn off the heating. And then the water at the stopcock.

  We will have our tea of hot mushroom soup and brown bread rolls warmed through in the oven, followed by a butterscotch Angel Delight, made with blue-topped milk (a little more than necessary, to give it that extra whippy texture). And we will play cards or read a book and draw or whatever until it is time for bed.

  Then she will hurry back in and say the bedroom is so-oo cold and that the toilet does not flush, and look at me to fix things. And I will go in and um and ah and pull a long face and express disappointment and sadness and say that it will need a plumber and that I will call one just as soon as the weather improves.

  Meantime, she will have to come and sleep upstairs in my daughter’s bedroom.

  Next to mine. Safe from him.

  And that, I think, will be a very nice and simple solution to the problem of the Lump.

  The sing-song voice has gone.

  I have not heard it for ages now.

  It will not come back.

  I feared the sing-song voice.

  Yet I wanted to hear it.

  Loved it in a way.

  And now it has gone.

  And I am still in my cell.

  I cannot stretch out fully.

  Nor stand up straight.

  And I will die here.

  And there are shouts and screams all around me.

  But no sing-song voice.

  Some people say that alcoholics have to hit rock bottom before they can possibly come back up.

  That the desire to recover – to live – has to come from them. Not from their loved ones, cajoling, bullying, threatening.

  I think this is all true. My live-or-die moment came after the death of my wife. But not straightaway.

  My wife was cremated. Given the circumstances of her death, the cremation was not held locally at the Seven Hills Crematorium. There were only a handful of us there – including her parents, who spoke to me in the most cursory way; her sister, who looked at me coldly but never spoke; and two of her closest friends, who ignored me. I felt like a stranger. I think they all thought I was drunk. It might have made it easier if I had been. But I was not. I lived every second of it.

  The night Laura committed suicide, I went back to the cottage in the early hours. In this time of utter clarity, I could see all that had happened came from my drinking. I did think about taking my own life then; I do not, now, know how I did not, nor why. Bizarrely, I remember thinking I had work at nine o’clock the next day. And that I needed to stop drinking for that. After what seemed like hours looking at it, I finally screwed the lid back on the whiskey bottle and placed it on the kitchen windowsill. I swore to myself I would never drink again. I went to work the next day as if nothing had happened. But I had still not hit rock bottom. That came later, after I was made redundant. The disciplinary procedures that I had been facing – those more formal meetings – were put on hold after my wife’s death. But with various departments already merging, my job soon became redundant. I walked away with little more than a smile and a wave goodbye to colleagues one Friday afternoon. Then what? I had nothing left at all. Not even a routine to my day.

  I tidied and cleaned the cottage when it stank.

  I walked into town to get shopping when I had run out of toilet roll and newspaper.

  I sat and stared into space, working out how to do it.

  I tried to take my own life. I lined up bottle after bottle of vodka and packets of tablets I bought from different supermarkets around town. I took a handful of tablets with each mouthful of alcohol until I passed out. I thought, as I lay back on the bed to die, that my mind would flash back over happy moments of my life, but all I recall was being sick over myself and a thin stream of hot chunks running inside my shirt and down my neck. I think that must have been what saved me, getting most of the tablets out of my body. I woke up some time later, the next day, and just lay there for hours, beyond crying.

  I tried again a day or two later. A high-backed chair in the cellar. I put a length of rope around the strip of light in the ceiling. Stood on the chair. Put the rope around my neck. Kicked the back of the chair with my right foot and tumbled forward. The light strip came away from the ceiling, and I lay on the floor with it and plaster and debris all around me. The rope had come loose, too. I had never been very good with knots.

  I lay on the sofa in the living room day after day. Night after night. Ignoring the outside world. The neighbours’ noise. Letters falling through onto the doormat. The odd knock at the door. The refuse collection van driving down and round and back o
ut again.

  Just waiting to die.

  My wife and daughter. The shame. The grief. The drink. My failed suicide attempts. It is hard to explain now. But I seemed to have gone beyond all of that. And was going to somehow die. Just by lying there. And giving up the will to live. I think I would have done had it not been for a local vicar who, tipped off by the vicar who handled my wife’s cremation, had come knocking. Time and again, with no response.

  I have a recollection of the noise of splintering wood. The breaking in of my front door.

  Of people swarming round me. Paramedics. A vicar, eyes shut and hands clasped together tightly in prayer.

  Being lifted, groaning with pain, to be taken away. Waking up in a darkened ward full of old men shouting and farting uncontrollably.

  I spent five or six days or so in hospital. Weak. Incoherent. Rambling. I remember my arm being strapped. And in pain. Fed by drip. In and out of sleep. Vague conversations. Doctors and students. Falling in and out of consciousness. At some point, I seemed to be awake more than I was not. A talk from a young nurse. Slapping her arm instinctively as she tried to inject me. Crying my apology.

  Then sitting up. Looking around at other hopeless cases in the beds opposite me. Not meeting their eyes. The shame and embarrassment of having fallen so far. I wanted to look at myself in a mirror but dared not ask for one. I would have looked old and unkempt. And thin, in some sort of NHS nightshirt with my bare arse showing. Going to the toilet seemed to be a big deal, pissing in some sort of container and being taken to the toilet in a wheelchair. Messing myself.

  I was moved about as they needed different beds. Was visited by doctors and women with clipboards who asked all sorts of questions. I got quite angry with one or two of them going on and on at me. Exhausted, I started crying with another. I was completely and utterly fed up. Strangely, I did not seem to want to drink. Whether they had given me something to stop the urge, I don’t know.

  Eventually, they gave me a haircut and a shave, and I felt a little better about myself, although I did not look in a mirror.