‘Smart decision. Pharmacy’s one of the fastest growing areas of healthcare; there are some great opportunities out there.’ Pete lifted his empty pint glass. ‘Same again? Or do you have to be somewhere?’
It was late by the time we pitched out of the pub, both slightly the worse for wear. As we said our goodbyes outside the Tube station, Pete asked for my number. Where’s the harm in that? I thought to myself as I punched it into his phone.
I was grinning to myself the whole way home. I couldn’t wait to tell Chloe about my evening. I’d dropped Pete’s name into our conversations a few times and she knew I had a slight crush on him . . . well, quite a large crush actually. It was a couple of days since I’d seen her and I knew she’d been very busy at work. She was involved in a big project, a play about mental illness that involved all sorts of complicated stage effects, and she’d sounded quite stressed about it the last time I spoke to her. Perhaps I ought to suggest a night out together. I could even invite Sammi along. It was two weeks since she’d moved in and the incident with the photo album seemed to be water under the bridge. Certainly, neither one of us had mentioned it since. I was pretty sure she hadn’t said anything to Chloe either, because if she had, Chloe would have told me.
When I got back to the house, just before eleven, the lights were still on in the kitchen. I found Sammi sitting alone at the table, drinking camomile tea.
‘Hi Megan, how come you’re back so late? Was there some sort of emergency at work?’ she asked as I filled the kettle at the sink.
I opened a cupboard, looking for the china mug that Chloe had bought me as a moving-in present. Emblazoned across the front were the words: World’s Best Friend, surrounded by pink hearts. It was a tongue-in-cheek thing we did, buying each other ‘best friend’ tat, the more saccharine the better. Then I realised Sammi was already drinking from it. I felt a jab of irritation and swallowed it quickly, telling myself not to be so juvenile; it was only a bloody mug.
‘Nope,’ I said, reaching for the tea bags – the regular ones, not camomile; I can’t stand that stuff. ‘I’ve been out for a couple of drinks with a colleague.’
Sammi sank her teeth into her lip as if something was troubling her. ‘Oh. It’s just that Chloe said you were going to go to yoga with her tonight.’
I smacked my forehead with the palm of my hand. ‘Shit, I completely forgot about that. Was Chloe really pissed off?’
‘I’m sure she’ll forgive you. After all, that’s what best friends do, isn’t it?’ Sammi said, reaching behind her neck and flipping her impossibly shiny hair over her shoulders, as if she were centre stage in a shampoo ad. ‘She sent you a text to ask if you were running late, but you didn’t reply.’
I groaned, remembering that I’d put my phone on silent for the Ethics Committee meeting and had forgotten to change the setting when we went to the pub.
‘I know how much Chloe was looking forward to that. I can’t believe she missed out because of me,’ I muttered, unable to believe my own stupidity.
‘Oh, she didn’t miss out,’ Sammi said. ‘I went with her instead.’
I frowned. ‘I didn’t know you did yoga.’
‘I don’t. It was my first time and I have to say, I really enjoyed it.’ I caught a spark of something in her eyes – amusement and pity fusing together. ‘I’ve told Chloe I’ll go again with her next week, if she’s up for it.’
‘Good idea,’ I said cheerily, as if I couldn’t care less. I got up from the table. ‘I’d better go and apologise. Where is she – upstairs?’
Sammi yawned, revealing the moist red cavern of her mouth. ‘I’d leave it till the morning if I were you. Chloe went to bed ages ago; she’ll be asleep by now.’
Ignoring her, I headed towards the stairs, pausing on the landing to see if there was any telltale sliver of light under Chloe’s bedroom door, but there wasn’t. I knew I’d still be asleep by the time she left for work in the morning, so I made a mental note to text her as soon as I woke up. I hated letting people down, especially my best friend.
11
The school bell rings and my heart skips. The reason I’m so happy is because, instead of hurrying home to Mum like I normally do, I’m going to Anouk’s house for tea! I haven’t been invited to anyone’s house since Year 3, so I’m very, VERY excited. It’s been fifteen days and six hours since I first met Anouk and my life has changed so much already. For one thing, I don’t have to hang out with Liam any more. His whiny baby voice was getting on my nerves and looking at his crusty eczema scabs used to put me off my lunch.
Everyone at school likes Anouk because she’s pretty and foreign, and because her hair is to die for. And some of that like is starting to rub off on me! The kids in my class treat me differently now. At lunch break they actually talk to me, and I’m not the last one to get picked when we choose teams in PE any more. Not everyone’s being nice; Eleanor Hardy’s still as mean as ever. The other day she called me a stalker, just because I went with Anouk when she had to use the bathroom. What a stupid thing to say! I wouldn’t be doing the job Miss Pickering gave me very well if I left Anouk on her own, even for a second, now would I?
Anouk’s mum Lucy is waiting for us at the school gates. She’s small and pretty like Anouk, but she doesn’t have the French accent. She was born in England, she tells me, but moved to France in her twenties to work as an au pair and that’s when she met Anouk’s dad. But then the company that Anouk’s dad works for decided to send him over to England . . . am I ever glad they did!
Anouk’s house is massive. It has electric gates that swish open all by themselves and a garage that’s big enough for three cars. Inside it’s full of brand-new furniture and there are big vases of flowers everywhere that make the whole house smell like a garden. When Anouk said come for tea, I thought we’d be having beef burgers or soup, which is mostly what I have at home, but Lucy has made something called a cass-oo-lay. It has big fat sausages and little brown beans in a thick gravy that’s better than any gravy I’ve ever had before. For pudding there’s chocolate mousse – made from scratch, not out of a packet! I wish I could have seconds, but I say no, thank you when Lucy asks me because I don’t want her to think I’m a greedy pig.
Lucy is ever so kind to Anouk; I love the way she calls her ‘darling’ and ‘angel’. My mum would NEVER call me ‘angel’. To her, I’m the devil. And when Anouk spills blackcurrant juice all over the table, Lucy just smiles and wipes up the mess with a cloth. I would’ve got a thump for that. I’d probably have to lick up the spill as well, just like I did the time I knocked over the vinegar bottle.
After tea, we go and play in Anouk’s bedroom. The walls are painted pink and she has this gorgeous floaty net thing over her bed and her own TV. We play with her doll’s house for a bit and then Anouk asks if she can plait my hair. It feels so good, sitting on her pretty, padded window seat, while she fusses over me. My hair’s a bit knotty (how embarrassing!), but Anouk doesn’t seem to mind. Afterwards, I give her the friendship bracelet I’ve made. It’s pink and purple because I know they’re her favourite colours.
‘Best friends forever?’ she asks, as I tie it on her wrist. I’m so happy I could cry. It’s as if something tight and crinkly has opened up inside me, like a flower reaching for the sun. ‘Best friends forever,’ I say back. Then I see the time on Anouk’s Cinderella alarm clock. Suddenly, I feel all breathless and light-headed, as if a big hand is squeezing my windpipe. I should have been home eighteen minutes ago. I jump up and tell Anouk I have to go.
I tell Lucy I don’t mind walking because it’s not very far, but she insists on taking me in her car. At least it means I get to spend another ten minutes with Anouk, but I make sure Lucy drops me at the end of our road because she mustn’t see inside our house. The plan is to let myself in with the key I keep on a piece of string around my neck and sneak upstairs without Mum noticing. But she’s lying in wait for me, like a crocodile at the edge of a river.
‘Where have you been?’ she
barks, pouncing on me the minute I walk through the door.
‘You know where I’ve been,’ I tell her. ‘At Anouk’s house.’
‘Don’t get smart with me,’ she says. ‘You should have been back half an hour ago. I’ve been sick with worry.’
We both know that’s not true. She’d be quite happy if I never came home again.
Then Dad’s voice drifts out from the lounge. ‘Leave her be, Janine, she’s home now, that’s all that matters.’ Mum takes a step back and it looks as if, just for once, she’s going to listen to Dad. I turn away from her and walk towards the stairs. Then she notices there’s something different about me.
‘Who did that to your hair?’ she says, grabbing the end of my plait and yanking me backwards so hard I nearly fall over.
‘Anouk,’ I say, trying my hardest to keep the wobble out of my voice.
Mum laughs, a horrible, cold, Cruella de Vil laugh. ‘Hasn’t anyone ever told her you can’t polish a turd?’ I don’t know what she means, but then a lot of what Mum says doesn’t make any sense at all to me.
‘I’m sick of hearing about this bloody Anouk,’ she hisses, breathing her stinky breath all over my face. ‘It won’t last – you do know that, don’t you?’ She unfolds her fist and whacks me across the head with the palm of her hand and for a few seconds all I see is stars. ‘Now get out of my sight,’ she says, pointing up the stairs. ‘I can’t stand looking at you.’ I don’t need telling twice.
12
Chloe
Do you ever wake up in the morning and feel out of sorts right from the get-go? Well, I was having one of those days. I was still a bit annoyed about Megan standing me up yesterday. We’d been talking about doing yoga classes for ages. It was Meg’s idea; she knew I’d been under a lot of pressure at work and she thought it would help me relax. I must say I’m surprised she let me down; it really wasn’t like her. Still, I’m glad Sammi offered to come instead. I didn’t fancy going on my own and being the only person in the class who didn’t have a clue what they were doing. I enjoyed spending time with Sammi. She gives the impression of being a bit aloof but actually, once you get to know her, she’s really quite sweet.
At least Megan texted me this morning to apologise; it turns out she went for drinks with one of the surgeons at work and totally forgot our yoga date. She said she’d tell me more when she saw me, but who knows when that will be. It’s a funny thing, but now that we live together we seem to be talking less than we did when we lived in different counties. It can’t be helped, I suppose, not when we’re both spending so much time at work these days.
I felt odd and rather irritable as I got ready, even though I’d slept well; at least I think I had. I wasn’t looking forward to going to work, which wasn’t like me. The deadline for the completion of the Neurosis set was fast approaching and there was still so much to do. Once I realised the scale of the task I’d set myself, the elation I’d felt at Richard Westlake’s endorsement had quickly worn off. As Bryan was fond of reminding me, expectations for this production were alarmingly high. The scriptwriter was hitting the headlines on a weekly basis, thanks to her burgeoning romance with a British director twenty years her senior. This, together with the casting of a young unknown in the lead role, had created a real buzz around the production. Tickets were selling like hot cakes and the theatre’s press officer was already fielding calls from journalists. Bryan was breathing down my neck every minute of the day and I knew that if I went a penny over budget, or failed to bring any aspect of the design to fruition, he would be absolutely unbearable. I loved my job, but sometimes I felt physically sick at the prospect of everything I had to cram in to each day.
Ivor, the theatre’s Construction Manager, was looking at me as if I’d just asked him to donate a kidney.
‘Oh no, that’ll never work,’ he said, his tongue working busily between his teeth as he studied the sketch laid out on the table in front of him. ‘It’s going to be much easier if we revolve the stage, instead of the mirror itself.’
‘But Ivor, as I keep telling you, I need the mirror to revolve, or the scene won’t be nearly as effective.’ I dug the heels of my hands into my eyes – why did I feel so goddamn tired all the time? ‘Surely you guys can make it work.’
I waited, somewhat impatiently, as his brain engaged in a silent calculus. Ivor had been at the theatre so long he was practically part of the furniture. He oversaw all aspects of set building and had responsibility for our in-house team of workshop technicians, as well as any external contractors. When I first joined the theatre, he was incredibly patient with me, and generous in sharing his knowledge; I would always be grateful to him for that. He had a tendency to be a bit of an old woman, however. He was partial to shaking his head and making clucking noises, while at the same time telling me that there was simply no way my designs could be brought to life, at least not in the way I was proposing. But then he would go away and think about it for a while, before inevitably announcing that he could now see a way around a problem that, just a few short days ago, was utterly insurmountable. It was irritating, especially today when I was feeling a bit off-colour, but it was just the way Ivor worked and there was nothing I could do about it.
Finally, he spoke. ‘I tell you what,’ he said, giving his chin an exploratory tug. ‘Leave it with me and I’ll get back to you once I’ve had a chance to mull over the options.’
‘Great, but Ivor . . .’ I gave him my sweetest smile. ‘Please don’t take too long about it, because the clock’s ticking on this one. Dress rehearsals start next month.’
He nodded as he began rolling up the sketch. ‘I’ll see what I can do, but I’m not making any promises,’ he said, frustratingly non-committal as usual.
Back at the studio, more bad news awaited me. One of the set’s key props was a chair, from which the main protagonist would deliver a number of streams-of-consciousness monologues. The chair would remain on stage for the entire performance and I wanted it to be a real statement piece – iconic and eye-catching, without being too distracting for the audience.
Somewhat limited by budgetary constraints, I’d spent hours (many of them at weekends) scouring second-hand shops and antiques markets in search of the perfect chair. Eventually, I found it on an obscure website – an oversized, baroque-inspired dining chair, fashioned entirely from clear Perspex. It had arrived that morning by courier, but as I peeled off its protective wrapping, I saw to my immense frustration that one of the Perspex arms had snapped off in transit. At first, I thought it might be salvageable, but on closer inspection it was completely beyond repair. The chair was a one-off, crafted by a design student back in the nineties. There was no chance of getting another one, so now I had to go back to the drawing board.
As I surveyed the now useless chair, my chest was drum-tight and I could feel my stomach cramping. All I wanted to do was relax with a soothing cup of peppermint tea, but there was simply no time.
Yet again, I ended up working late and when I got home I was so worn out I couldn’t even be bothered to eat. Megan was out – goodness knows where, I had totally lost track of her work schedule – and Sammi was sprawled across the sofa, watching TV in her PJs and an eye-catching Missoni-print robe. It was nice to see her using the sitting room for a change; she more often than not spent evenings holed up in her tiny bedroom. She claimed to be working up there, but sometimes I did wonder if she was avoiding us. I chatted with her for a while, before making my excuses and heading off to bed. As I got undressed, a huge tiredness came over me, a kind of lethargy in the face of my ever lengthening ‘to do’ list. It was like being given an algebra problem when your brain’s exhausted and you know there’s some distant solution, but you can’t summon up the energy to even have a stab at it.
I think it was around three a.m. that I heard the tread of unfamiliar footsteps coming up the stairs. I’d had a pathological fear of intruders since childhood and I was always reminding Megan to make sure she double-locked the front door when she
came back from a late shift. She was as security conscious as I was, and she always did . . . but someone was definitely climbing those stairs. The footsteps stopped outside my bedroom door and a moment later I heard the sound of the doorknob shifting.
‘Hello,’ I said, a faint question mark hanging over the greeting. No answer came. As the door opened, a funnel of dread opened up inside me. I felt as if I was riding a rollercoaster at the exact moment the car inched over the summit and plummeted to the ground below. The change in force had scrambled all my organs, my intestines throbbing as though my heart had tumbled there.
There was a long silence and then, to my horror, I felt the bed dip behind me and a strong pair of arms encircled me from behind. I went rigid with fear, scarcely able to believe what was happening. It was all I could do to breathe – but every time I exhaled, the arms squeezed me tighter and tighter to the point where I couldn’t get enough air into my lungs. I tried screaming, but no sound came out. I tried fighting, but my limbs were gripped by a terrifying paralysis.
I don’t know how long this went on for, but suddenly, without warning, I was released. In an instant, I was on my feet and moving towards the window. I glanced back towards the bed. It was empty, the pillows in disarray, the duvet lying in a tangled heap on the floor. I felt a brief moment of relief before, in the milky half-light of the breaking dawn, my eyes picked out an amorphous shape in the opposite corner of the room. Its hooded eyes were yellow, like an alligator’s, and I watched as they rotated slowly, scanning, evaluating. A sneer trembled like an electrical current across the creature’s top lip while, above it, crimson nostrils flared rhythmically. Suddenly, its mouth opened. A wide circle, twitching and trembling, that revealed an obscenely quivering tongue, the fleshy redness of its throat, strings of spittle strung across a dark cavity. It let out a long, slow sigh, like air that’s been trapped forever, deep underground.
The Housemate Page 6