Hold My Hand (18 page)

Down below, in the courtyard, they can hear the sound of the others returning form the village. They are laughing, carefree. Lily feels despair soak her bones. They won't come looking for me. Won't ask where I am, even. I'll be shut in there and none of them will give a damn. Why was I born? Why did you make me be born, if life was always going to be like this?

Hugh dips his head down, sniffs at the scalp by her ear. Winning is good, he thinks. Especially here. In Daddy's bedroom. I'm the man of the house, now, I'm the one in charge.

“Never mind,” he says. “It won't be for too long. Just a while. And then I'll come and get you.”

Chapter Twenty-six

Michael Terry, I hate you. You
and
your skanky wife.

It's not just the stained sheets, or the upended ashtrays on the Persian rugs, or the streaks of  oil-based makeup on the sofa cushions, or the broken glasses – three of them at least if you count the stems – on the front path where my daughter could have gone to play, or the great gash in the paint on the drawing room door-frame where you and your friends imported thousand-watt speakers to keep me and my daughter awake at night with, or the bleached stain on the dining room table where one of your friends tipped over a drink and nobody bothered to mop it up, or the fact that you used every single utensil – pots, pans, plates, bowls, glasses, mugs, cups, platters, cutlery, cooking irons, steamers, Tupperware, in both kitchens – to save yourselves washing-up and leave it for me to do once you'd gone, or the white powder – oh you are
so
Primrose Hill – I just spent an hour scraping out of the cracks in the coffee table, or the used condoms I had to pick out of the trap on the septic tank with rubber gloves, or the great big burn on the surface in the east kitchen where you put a casserole dish down without bothering to use a trivet, or the skid marks you feel it's okay to leave in your lavatory even though there's a brush
right there
, or the way you all balled up your towels and left them, damp, to suppurate rather than hanging them up, or even the fact that, after the way you treated us all week, the high-handedness and the order-throwing and the never-say-pleases or thank-yous, you didn't bother to leave even the tiniest tip, not one of you. You're probably the sort of people who use minimum wage as a justification for not tipping in restaurants.

No, it's none of those things, hateful though they make you. It's the way you've treated your room.

No-one behaves like this. The Gallagher brothers don't behave like this. What is it with this room, that it obviously makes its inhabitants mad? Turns them into some weird hybrid of human being and pig?

They've torn the place apart again. It's all back the way it was when she first arrived – the tester torn down, the paintings awry, the bedclothes ripped off and tossed through the open cupboard door. Only, it's worse. I don't know what they thought they were doing. There's a red wine stain on the naked mattress. And what looks like a patch of dried blood, to boot. And there's more. It looks as though they've gone through the contents of the jumbo-sized vanity case Skanketta Terry had with her when she arrived. Face cream. Body scrub. Shampoo. Poison by Calvin Klein. Palmer's Cocoa butter. Talcum, in a pot with a fluffy pink puff. Foundation. Fake tan. All of them, squeezed and shaken and ripped open and
thrown
around the room. There's eyeshadow trodden into the carpet. Conditioner – at least, please God let it be conditioner – sprayed all over the curtains.

You are
so
losing your deposit.

What makes people do things like this? Do they do it in their own homes? Do they?

It's ten o'clock at night and she's only got as far as clearing all the plates and glasses – dumped down and left, their leftovers unscraped, wherever the eaters ran out of steam – out of the rooms and into the kitchen. Yasmin starts school tomorrow, and then she'll be alone all day, in this big empty place, with all the time in the world to be methodical, to blitz from room to room, disinfecting the surfaces and oiling the wood. But now she's seen this, she can't leave it alone. All she was going to do was strip the sheets, but now that Yasmin's asleep, she's on her hands and knees on the mattress, dabbing at their disgustingness with stain remover.

What sort of person?

And the weird thing is, she feels as though she's being watched. Keeps catching herself, gasping and flipping round to look at the open cupboard door.
He's coming
. That's what keeps going through her head.
He's coming.
And when she looks more clearly at the shadows, distinguishes dark from semi-dark, of course there's no-one there.

Did I lock the door?

Of course you did.

Did I?

I don't remember.

He'll be back

He can't be back. He's never been here.

He's coming back and I can't get away.

She checks her watch. Quarter past. Will there come a time when I don't automatically recheck? When I just get into bed and stay there? It's not just the Kieran thing: it's the country thing. People round here don't spend their lives lying awake listening for the sound of breaking glass.

Better go down and check. I don't remember. Don't remember shooting the bolts. Don't remember rattling each of the ground-floor windows, one after another. Don't remember turning the big heavy key that sits permanently in the scullery door.

She goes down via the flat and puts her head into Yasmin's room. She is fast asleep, way gone; limbs splayed with such abandon she looks like a rag doll. She's been trying the spare bed again. The sheets are all piled up, thrown back as though she got out of bed in a hurry, the pillow slipped over the side between bed and bedside table. Never mind. She'll decide one day. She'll settle. Maybe I'll just leave it like that; not bother to remake it. She's just going to unmake it again.

The dining room still smells: fag smoke, stale wine. She passes through the ground floor slowly, methodically. Anteroom windows. Drawing room windows. Far kitchen. East wing door. Front door. There's a bolt undone at the top, but of course the key has been turned. Of course. I remember it now. I remember, because I had that stupid thought as I turned it:
locking out is also locking in.

She glances over her shoulder. The trouble is, a house like this is meant to be full of people. Not people like the Terrys, perhaps, but without them, with their noise gone when they took off the way they descended, like a flock of starlings, the contrast is even greater. Without them, the shadows are thicker, the dark places darker. Without the restlessness of human presence, every sound, every adjustment in the building's five-hundred-year-old frame, resonates like gunfire. When they go, because they were there I am more aware that I am alone.

She peers out into the garden and the yard beyond as she rattles the dining room windows. She has never seen darkness like it. Hills on every side hide the lights from the village, and clouds obscure the moon. The only illumination comes from her own windows: the lights in here and in the four-poster room show frost-blanched winter privet as crouching trolls, the old yew a hunchbacked giantess, the knot where a branch must have been removed years ago a single, staring eye.

It's beautiful. Come on, it's beautiful. People would give their right arms to be living like this.

The windows are secure. She draws the curtains to shut out the night.

Half past ten. Up at seven to get Yasmin fed and tidied in time for school. She needs a proper breakfast inside her: needs to make a good impression. The last thing she needs is to be a labelled an attention-deficient townie before they've had a chance to get to know her. Her reading's bound to be behind the others'; they didn't seem to do much at that last school apart from refuse to exclude people and send the kids who came in carrying knives to the counselling team.

She turns off the dining room light, quickly pulls the door to. Kitchen windows. Scullery. All fine. The tap is dripping and she twists it closed. Maybe I should put those curtains on to wash. One of them, anyway, before I go to bed. They're so heavy they'll take a week to dry. Damn those Terrys. I'll call Tom Gordhavo in the morning and give him the full run-down. He needs to know, or I'll be paying for the breakages myself. Imagine. What can have got into their heads that they thought it was – what? Funny? – to vandalise their room like that? How long did they stay in it after they'd done it?

She remembers the discarded slips of origami'd paper she collected from the carpet; pages from porn magazines cut down to size so they showed lips and breasts and unmanned penises, folded over and over again. Of course I know what got into their heads. It doesn't take a rocket scientist.

She feels surprisingly weary as she mounts the flat stairs. The way she used to feel, in London, when lack of sleep weighed heavily. People like the Terrys, she thinks, are bullies. They get as much pleasure from dominance, from causing trouble to other people, as they do from their behaviour itself. I lived like that for too long. It wears you out. I'll be glad of my bed tonight.

The room stinks of spilled perfume. It'll take a steam cleaner and a pint of Febreze to get that out. Vile. Vile people. Thank God they're gone. Thank God, she thinks, we're alone at last.

She takes the dressing-table chair over to the window and stands on it. The pole is a long way ahead, at the full stretch of her reach. She knows she should wait until the morning and fetch the stepladder, but tiredness makes her obdurate. She wants the Terrys expunged from the house, and she wants it done as soon as possible. She strains, gets her index finger onto the bottom of the first hook and pushes. It pops out. There, she thinks. Drops her hand down to shake her arm out. It is aching already from working above her head. Damn you, Michael Terry.

It takes five minutes to liberate, hook by hook, the curtain from the rings. By the time it's done, she is sweating. Her calf muscles ache and so do her shoulders, the arches of her feet cramping from too long on tiptoe. I must look crazy, she thinks, from outside; teetering on a chair at eleven o'clock at night. The thought makes her glance down at the empty garden. Silver moonlight is beginning to break through the clouds, dappling the frost-crisp lawn.

Bridget drapes the curtain over her forearm. There. It's all worth it. The light is so strong, now, that she can see the relief on the monochrome landscape below her. Flecks of silver in the granite walls of the house catch the light, glitter. Everything is shiny, polished, as though it has been washed by rain.

A light comes on in the east wing.

Chapter Twenty-seven

Bridget has an out-of-body moment. Sees herself wobbling on the chair, curtain beginning to slip. How funny, she thinks, calmly, observing herself. My ears are cold. Like someone's rubbed them with ice.

And then a rushing sensation, and she's back in her own nervous system. And the cold has become burning heat and then cold again, and then with another rush she's boiling. Can feel just how cold the winter night is, coming off the window. Swallows. Blinks to clear her eyes, hopes that what she's seeing is an illusion.

The light is still there, in the first-floor window opposite the one where she stands, in the blue room. Filtering, warm and gold – Tom Gordhavo insists on yellow-tinted light bulbs for atmosphere – round the drawn curtain.

I locked the doors. I locked them and there's someone in the house.

The strength deserts her thighs and her knees give way. She has to grab at the window latch to stop herself tumbling to the ground. Yaws like a sailor in stormy seas, leans her shoulder against the panes.

The light is still there.

What do I do?

She stares and feels the prickle of hair on her shoulders. She's cold again, now.

Is it moving? Or is it me? It looks like it's swinging side-to-side, like someone's walking up and down with it. Or maybe it's me. Maybe it's the rush of my pulse, screwing with my vision.

It could be anything, Bridget. It could be a timer switch. You've never looked out of this window at this time of night before; maybe it goes on every night and you just didn't notice.

No, but… I cleaned that room today. I would have seen it. Surely I would have seen it?

There's someone in the house. Someone in the house with us.

What do I do?

Call the police.

Come on. What if it
is
a timer switch? You'll get a reputation for crying wolf and then if you need… really need them… go and look. Go quietly and listen, and if you hear anything, come back and barricade the door and call for help.

But what if that's what he wants? What if he's waiting for me, if he's turned the light on to lead me up there, away from Yasmin, if he's waiting and when I come…

He can probably see you now. Silhouetted in the window.

She gets off the chair. Crouches below the sill. Struggles to contain her breath.

Ok. Ok. Think.

Maybe if I just ignore it. Assume it's nothing. Lock myself into the flat and get into bed and in the morning…

With all my clothes on.

Like I'd sleep.

I have to go and find out.

Like a stupid girl in the movies, walking alone through a darkened house towards the sound in the cellar.

Or what? Or wait for him to come to me?

After the light in the bedroom, stepping into the corridor is like being enfolded in pitch. The urge to turn and run is intense. She longs to put a hand out and flick the switch as she finds herself standing beside it.

Yes. And let him know you're coming.

I should have something. A weapon. Even the chicks in the movies find weapons before they go into the dark. A fire-iron or something. The iron. A statue or a vase. Something heavy. Everything I can think of is downstairs. There's nothing here.

Yasmin's here. All alone in her room. I should lock her in. Keep her safe if anything happens to me.

She glances back over her shoulder at the darkness beyond the bedroom door.

If I lock her in, I'll be locking myself out and I'll stand no chance.

I need somewhere to run to.

She looks forward again. Into the dark. Struggles to swallow. Her mouth is dry. She can't see a light at the end; the two-door room in the middle cuts it off.

Six rooms. Six gaping rooms between where I am and the light.

She casts her mind through them, sees herself exploring each room in the blackness, tries to remember what is in each, what she has moved and dusted and checked as she's cleaned. On the bedside tables. The dressing tables. The windowsills. A house like this should have alabaster tables lamps, brass candlesticks, pokers. Except that Tom Gordhavo has taken everything that could be stolen, and nailed down the rest. It has the look of gentility, Rospetroc, but it's as much of an illusion as a country house hotel: decorated with a mind to a light-fingered clientele and a writ-happy society. There's nothing there. In those gaping spaces.

Except…

He could be.

Just because he turned the light on in the blue room doesn't mean he stayed there. He could be anywhere. Waiting in the dark. To come from behind me.

She freezes. Feels sweat prickle from her scalp.

Go back. Go back and lock yourself in. Call for help. They'll understand. You're on your own. Better safe than sorry, they'll say.

She remembers the indifferent eyes of the Streatham police. The night-after-night of calling them out to a house where the threat was long gone. The gradual slippage down the priority list from five minutes, to ten, to twenty. The look. Attention junkie. Domestic timewaster.

I can't afford to do it. I can't, unless I know it's for real. I can't be the hysteric of Meneglos, coming here from the city and getting freaked out by a bit of silence and country stillness. Attracting attention to myself, having to explain…

She goes on. Puts her back to the wall and works her way forward. Listens to the house. Feels it listen to her.

Oh, Yasmin, I am frightened. I'm so sorry, my baby. So sorry.

Soft tissue injury. Such an innocuous phrase for so much pain. Nights without sleep because the swelling was so bad I could find no way to hold myself that didn't hurt. Lying there next to him, hearing him breathe and wishing him dead. Probing my mouth, the hole where my tooth used to be, with my tongue. Not crying, not ever crying, because salt makes wounds more painful. And because he took tears as reproaches, and reproaches made him angry.

Don't look at me like that. Don't you fucking look at me like that. I said I was sorry, didn't I? What do you want from me? What do you expect?

She reaches the door to the green room. It gapes, the space beyond unknown. She finds that she is trembling.

Why? Why am I so timid? I survived. I survived Kieran. I will survive again. He can't get me. It's only an electrical anomaly, a timer switch, something to do with the stupid fuses.

Bridget summons her courage, jumps into the gap. Snatches at the handle and pulls the door closed. There. Now if he comes from behind me, I will hear him.

The pink room door is closed. She feels the handle, makes sure the catch is engaged, moves on.

The centre room. I have to cross it. There are hiding places here, places I can't see behind.

Lying on the bedroom floor, begging him to stop. The way time would slow to a crawl as I watched him draw his foot back, as I curled in to protect my face.

She's only little. It's so unfair. She's seen enough. She needs me.

She remembers: in the corner, she noticed it before. Tucked down between the wardrobe and the wall, a handle. What looked like an axe handle. Don't know why it's there. It's probably been there for decades.

It's better than nothing.

She crosses the room as quickly as silence will let her, plunges her hand into the space. Gropes among the dust-balls, the cobwebs, until her hand closes on the reassuring warmth of wood.

It clatters as she pulls it out, as she whirls to face the room.

Nothing there.

She isn't comforted by her weaponry. Arming yourself makes danger more concrete. Pressure is making her sick. She has to swallow several times as she steps into the corridor, pulls the door shut to her left, to her right, advances toward the light.

Can I hear him? Is he there?

She pauses before the lintel. Strains to hear any sounds of movement, hears nothing but the sound of her own pulse. Thud, thud, thud.

I have to go. I have to do it.

Bridget steps forward.

The room is empty. The lamp lies on its side on the floor in front of the bedside table. It rocks from side to side, as though caught in a breeze.