Behind Closed Doors (Season One: Book 7) (Jessica Daniel) (22 page)

Whatever was happening didn’t appear to be too friendly, with Glenn jabbing a finger. There were clearly words exchanged before the yellow light disappeared, signalling that the door had
been closed.

‘There’s a whole gang out there,’ Jessica said.

‘We’ve had problems with kids in the past,’ Heather replied, still not moving from her bed but sounding a little annoyed. ‘You shouldn’t be by the window. When the
alarm goes, we’re supposed to return to our rooms and not get involved with anything.’

‘I’m not getting involved, I’m watching. They don’t look like kids to me.’

Below, the group turned and started to walk away. As they moved from the shadow of the house into the clear light of the moon, Jessica could see from their builds that they were all young men.
They walked freely, without the burden that came from years of hard work. As they reached the start of the garden, one of them crouched, picking something up before turning and throwing it towards
the house. Jessica couldn’t hear it but she could sense the laughter as the six of them bolted up the driveway.

‘I think one of them threw a rock at the house,’ Jessica said.

‘I told you, we’ve had a few problems with kids. Moses and Glenn deal with it. They look after us in all ways.’

‘Why doesn’t someone contact the police?’

Jessica turned to see Heather staring at her, scowling. ‘Because it’s our business.’

As the young men disappeared over the brow of the driveway, Jessica moved back to her bed, feeling Heather’s eyes watching her in silent disapproval.

SEVEN MONTHS AGO

Jessica burst through the front door and threw her keys towards the basket Adam had placed in the hallway to try to ensure she never lost them again. She didn’t bother to
see where they landed, hurling her coat at the peg and bounding through to the back room where they still had all the boxes that hadn’t yet been unpacked.

Behind her, she could hear Adam closing the door, doing whatever it was he did but she couldn’t care less. She reached across the first stack of boxes, pulling the largest one towards her
and running a fingernail across the tape to open it. Pulling the flaps open, she began hunting through the items, wondering how they had managed to amass so much junk in such a short period of
time. Empty picture frames, plant pots, extension leads, ornaments, coasters, empty boxes within boxes, books she’d never read, Christmas cards from years ago.

So much crap.

Jessica shoved the box back onto the pile and opened the one next to it.

‘What are you looking for?’ Adam asked behind her.

She didn’t bother to acknowledge him, continuing to hunt through more piles of scrap that she couldn’t remember buying. Most had probably been Christmas and birthday presents. No one
ever knew what to buy, so they invested in some sort of tat in one big merry-go-round of rubbish nobody actually wanted.

‘Jess?’

‘What?’

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Something.’

‘What?’

‘Just something.’

Soft toys, a board game she knew for a fact was missing pieces, a cracked, empty CD case, cushion covers with no cushions, tea towels, a remote control for a television she’d had in her
bedroom when she lived with Caroline.

Why had she even kept all of this stuff, let alone moved it around with her?

‘Can I help?’ Adam asked softly.

‘No.’

‘I might know where whatever it is that you’re looking for is.’

Jessica didn’t look up, shoving the second box back into place and starting on a third. ‘Do you know the number for a skip company?’ she asked.

‘Should I?’

‘I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.’

Adam sighed. ‘You don’t have to take it out on me.’

Jessica kept her tone level, knowing it would annoy him more if she wasn’t shouting. ‘I’m not taking anything out on you, I’m asking a perfectly reasonable question about
whether you know the phone number for a skip company.’

A pause.

An old telephone which probably didn’t work, a manual for a lawnmower Jessica had never owned, a bag of random buttons, batteries, some old keys for something Jessica couldn’t
identify, rawl plugs, sink plugs, dishcloths, a pack of scouring pads, more soft toys, a wooden frog she’d carved at primary school.

‘I don’t know the number for a skip company,’ Adam eventually replied, calmly. ‘But we can find one if that’s what you want. What do you need it for?’

‘All of this. I don’t know why we bothered moving it, let alone put it in storage in the first place.’ She turned, thrusting a candle holder into the air. ‘What are we
going to do with this? It’s just shit. You can’t even give this type of stuff away. If I took it to a charity shop, they’d turn me away for taking the piss.’

Jessica threw it into the corner of the room, enjoying the clang it made and hoping it had broken.

Adam said nothing as she reached for the next box, ripping the top open and continuing her search.

‘We should talk about things,’ Adam said.

Jessica ignored him, having found the box she was after. She dropped paintbrushes and a roller on the floor, pulling out a steamer to remove wallpaper and a scraper.

She turned, barging past Adam, heading into the kitchen. Jessica could sense him behind her as she set the tap running, allowing the water to flow into the hole at the top of the steamer.

‘What are you doing?’ Adam asked from somewhere behind her.

‘What does it look like I’m doing?’

‘Jess, please don’t do this.’

‘You don’t even know what I’m doing, so how can you tell me to stop?’

‘I know what you’re thinking.’

Jessica shook her head as the water overflowed out of the spout. She wrenched the tap off, sealing the steamer.

‘Well, aren’t you the clever one. Reading my mind, knowing what I’m thinking. You should go on television if you’re that clever.’

‘You know that’s not what I meant.’

Finally it was the reaction she wanted, his tone short, his patience tested.

Good.

She wanted him to be wound up, to feel what she was feeling. That calmness he always had was so frustrating that it made her want to antagonise him as much as she could. To push him, wind him
up, make him grit his teeth and shout, to want to punch the wall in the way she did.

Jessica pushed past him, heading up the stairs towards the spare bedroom. She shoved the door open, kicking the plastic box of soft toys to the side. Where did they all come from? Were they
breeding or something? It was ridiculous, they were both in their thirties and yet there were cuddly things everywhere.

She shoved the cot to one side, fumbling the plug into the socket and waiting for the steamer to heat up.

Adam was behind her again, waiting in the doorway, watching.

‘Please don’t do this,’ he said, calm again, which only made Jessica more determined.

She ignored him, facing the wall as a steady mist seeped out of the end. Jessica pressed it to the wall, counting to ten in her head and then removing it, slicing the scraper through the soggy
yellow paper and slashing it away from the surface.

‘Jess.’

‘What.’

‘Please stop.’

‘No.’

‘You don’t have to do this.’

Jessica didn’t reply, pressing the steamer to the wall again.

‘Jess . . .’

‘Just leave me alone.’

Jessica stripped away another patch of wallpaper, scraping hard against the wall until a trickle of plaster dropped onto the brand-new carpet.

Adam hadn’t moved. Jessica could sense him, still in the doorway, still composed, not shouting, not angry, not wanting to throw things. She hated him.

‘Do you remember what you said when we decorated this room in the first place?’ Adam asked quietly.

‘No.’

‘It was a Friday and you’d had a long week at work – as if you ever have anything else – and I’d got stuck in the city centre because there was an accident on the
roads and everywhere was gridlocked. We got home and looked at each other, hungry, tired and generally just annoyed at our lot. But we still had this house of ours and we still had each other. We
ended up eating breakfast cereal for tea because we didn’t have a freezer and then we came up here. The floorboards were exposed, the walls were bare and crumbling in places, then covered
with this awful paper in others. You said it was like the worst hotel ever.’

Jessica tried to stop herself, but couldn’t hold back a gentle laugh. Of course she remembered, she would never forget that weekend. She tried to turn the laugh into a cough, turning away
from Adam and pressing the steamer to the wall even harder, stripping away another layer. Wanting to be angry.

‘We stayed up until the early hours, stripping paper and clearing every last thing out of here,’ Adam continued. ‘We had to open the window because the room was full of steam
from that thing and it was so smoggy. Outside it was cold but it somehow made everything in here all right. When we were done, your hair was full of little pieces of wallpaper, there were bits
stuck to your cheeks, your ears, your arms, everywhere. It looked like you had the worst acne scars going.’

Jessica closed her eyes, trying to blank him out.

‘We slept for a few hours, covered in shite, and then we got up and carried on working. I was supposed to be hanging the wallpaper but it was impossible because you’d made such a
mess with the paste. It was too thick, then you tried to water it down but it was too runny. When you finally had it sorted, you got it everywhere. We could barely walk around because the floor had
more paste on it than the walls and our shoes kept sticking. You’d already ruined one set of clothes, so we stood in here for eleven hours, in our underwear, trying to get the wallpaper on
the wall. The whole time, I was trying to stay quiet because you’d been going on about how we didn’t know what we were doing and that we should pay someone to do it. You never brought
it up but I could see it in your face the whole time: that smug “I was right” look that you’ve been working on for years.’

Adam paused for breath as Jessica switched off the steamer, resting her forehead against the wall, listening.

‘You were right, obviously,’ he added. ‘We’d spent the best part of twenty-four hours getting rid of a bit of old wallpaper, covering ourselves in paper and paste,
wrecking our clothes and generally making a massive mess. By the time it was dark, we’d only just started painting. Then you changed your mind about the colour, saying blue was too boyish, so
you wanted yellow instead. There was only one roller, which you insisted you wanted, so I was stuck with this puny little brush doing the edges as you went crazy with the paint. You were going up
and down, side to side, diagonally, whatever took your fancy and it was beginning to dry strangely. Because we’d been at it all day, we left it for the night and went back to bed.’

‘I slept amazingly that night,’ Jessica whispered to herself.

Adam must have overheard, replying, ‘So did I,’ as he crossed the room, hugging himself into her back. Jessica closed her eyes, desperate to be angry but feeling his calming
influence spreading.

‘The next morning,’ he continued, ‘you kept going on and on about how hungry you were, bullying me into going to that burger place’s twenty-four-hour drive-through to get
us muffins, coffee and hash browns. You ate all of yours, half of mine, and then we started all over again, this time painting properly. By the time it was finished, it was dark again, we’d
spent over two days sorting out one room, and you were covered in a crusty mess of paper, paste, paint, dust, plaster and God knows what else. We stood in here looking at each other and I
couldn’t stop laughing. You didn’t even realise how ridiculous you looked. You were in the shower for forty-five minutes before you were satisfied it was all gone. Then we came in here,
sat on the floor and had a cup of tea looking at the room we’d created for our son.’

Jessica pressed her forehead harder into the wall, feeling the coolness as she remembered the feeling she’d had that day.

‘When we’d finished drinking, we knew it was time for bed. We’d barely slept in two days, we’d eaten nothing but junk, drunk nothing but tea and we each had to be at work
in a few hours. But neither of us wanted to move. I don’t know about you but for me it was the sense of what this was going to be. We’d not only made something inside of you but we were
creating this place too – just the two of us. You were right that we could have hired someone to strip the walls and paper the room but this was something just for us, even though we were
rubbish at making it. I sensed that as we sat and stared at these plain walls. I was knackered but I’ve rarely had such a fun time because it was two days with you. Two days of messing
around, joking, laughing, being shit at something but not caring.’

Jessica could feel Adam’s breath on her ear. She wanted him to stop speaking because she didn’t want to hear about the good times. She wanted to embrace the fury within her. To pound
the walls, to hammer his chest, to shout at him, to have someone to blame.

Instead, he carried on, as smoothly as before. ‘Finally you stood and you pulled me to my feet. You hugged me and I could have held onto you all night. You looked around the walls and
said: “Look at what we’ve made.”’

‘You touched my belly and said: “We’ve made this too.”’

She felt Adam choke slightly but wanted to feel him hurting as much as her.

‘I did,’ he said. ‘And then you started laughing and said that any kid we ever had was not going to be allowed to grow up because you had no intention of ever redecorating this
room again.’

Jessica opened her eyes, staring at the yellow of the walls directly in front of her. That weekend was as special to her as it apparently was to him. So much mess, so much fun. She remembered
the paint and the paste in the same way he did but she remembered the laughter more. No cross words, no arguing, just two days of enjoying being with each other. If she could lock that weekend
away, she would return to it every chance she got.

She turned, resting on his breastbone but keeping her hands by her sides, not allowing him to hold her properly.