No One Gets Out Alive (3 page)

As far as she could tell there was a self-contained flat on the ground floor, another on the third floor, and six bedrooms in the communal section of the building: three bedrooms on the first
floor, three on the second floor, but only one complete bathroom. Grim. The idea of someone not washing their hands after using the toilet this morning made her wince.
What sort of people lived
here?

She checked the time on her phone.
Better get a move on.

She laid her shampoo and conditioner bottles behind the blotchy taps at the top of the bath. When the room was sufficiently cloudy with steam to give an impression of heat, she braved the cold
and removed her robe, her t-shirt and underwear. She didn’t shiver as much as shake. By the time she stepped into the cascade of water, her feet and fingers were numb.

The window was closed, the heating was on. How could it be so cold?

As dawn struggled through a cleaner portion of the window, daylight revealed an aperture blocked with painted iron bars, fixed to the exterior wall.

What would you do in a fire?

The windows in her room were not barred, so maybe this was a security feature of the lower floors – something else she hadn’t noticed yesterday in her determination to get out of the
cell. But it was yet another reason to get out of here. The very idea of moving again was exhausting, but she couldn’t remain here. She wanted to run someplace familiar.

Ryan.

Whenever fear and anxiety had overrun her since she’d arrived in Birmingham, her first thought was always to call her ex, Ryan, and ask him if she could return to his room – at least
until she found work in Coventry, or somewhere nearby. But that wouldn’t be possible until the weekend, because she needed the next three days’ work giving out the samples. She’d
make £120. And a return to Coventry would also be an act of outright desperation; the very idea made her feelings crawl around on all fours in the form of guilt and grief.

She didn’t want to go through all that again. She didn’t want to be with Ryan. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind about that. Her being at his place would be inappropriate and
near unbearable. And a sorry-faced return to Ryan’s life would involve her sleeping on Ryan’s bed
again
, while he fidgeted on the floor in a sleeping bag.

Going back to his room, but not back to him, would mean tears, mostly his, and a revival of the discomfort and awkwardness that would overwhelm a few nights in his room. His desperate need for
them to get back together would take him over. It was one of the main reasons she’d shifted down to Birmingham to find work: to cut them off from each other.

Stephanie thought herself into brief surges of hope, which sank into a familiar cycle of stifling frustrations and ended in dread.
Nothing new there.
She always seemed to be inside
houses owned by other people, restless with anxiety or paralyzed by regret. How could she have been so foolish as to believe she could make it on her own in a strange city?

Conscious of the time, she washed her hair quickly, constantly rotating her body under the water that struggled to escape the limescale-encrusted shower head. After a few uncomfortable minutes,
she climbed out of the bathtub and wrapped herself in the towel while her teeth chattered.

Not having to use the bathroom for much longer was the only relief she could draw from the experience. She could pick up a scourer and cleaning spray on her way home from work, from a pound
shop, and just use the sink until she moved out. No one need know. As she thought about how bearable she could make her time at 82 Edgehill Road, she heard a voice.

The cold forgotten for a moment, Stephanie stepped away from the bath, because she was sure the voice had come from the tub.

Steam clouded to the ceiling. She swiped her hands before her face to clear her vision.

Silence.

And then she heard it again: a faint voice down by the floor. But not one directed at her; the speaker seemed to be talking into a corner, or even at the floor. Maybe from under the floor?

She followed the direction of the voice and wondered if there were tenants on the ground floor and some weird acoustic or cavity in the building was throwing voices into the nearby rooms.

She lowered herself to her hands and knees. But the carpet was filthy enough to make her rear back to her heels and bat the gathered hairs and grit from her damp hands.

‘What is my name?’

Stephanie stood up and backed against the nearest wall. Opened the bathroom door to let the steam escape so she could see the woman who had spoken, and only a few feet from her face at that.

What is my name?
The question had risen as if someone lying inside the tub had spoken out loud.

And whoever was speaking now continued to mumble as if they were drifting away. Stephanie could almost catch the words that appeared to originate, impossibly, from beneath the bathtub. She moved
closer, swallowed the constriction in her throat, and knocked on the bath, hoping that would make it stop. ‘Hello? Can you—’

The speaker either didn’t hear her or ignored her and continued to talk in a quick stream of words, to herself, or to someone else she could not see. It was a woman urgently communicating
something to someone that wasn’t Stephanie.

On all fours, Stephanie moved her hands around the carpet at the base of the bath, though she wasn’t sure what she was looking for. A waft of wet rags and a hint of sewage buffeted her
face. The room below must have a hole in the ceiling and she was overhearing a one-sided conversation or a television.

Stephanie’s ear touched the side panel of the bath’s surround.

‘. . . before here . . . that time. Nowhere . . . to where the other . . . the cold . . . is my name?’

A television, it must be, or a radio play, overheard from a room beneath the bathroom. The voice had to be coming from below. She didn’t want to believe it could be coming from anywhere
else.

Stephanie gathered up her things and hurried into the warmer corridor of the first floor. She came to a standstill on the landing, sluggish with shock and bewilderment, and wondered what on
God’s earth she had moved into.

When she left her room, dressed for work in boots, her last pair of smart black trousers and a white shirt under her coat, the interior of the house was still dark enough to
require lights in the communal landings and on the staircase.

The ceiling lights were on timers and didn’t remain switched on for long. They came on for a few seconds to reveal dated green wallpaper, torn down to plaster in places, or interspersed
with long panels of newer paper, painted white. There were scuffed skirting boards and ancient wainscoting so thickly covered in paint it was impossible to determine the original decorative
features. And if she was quick enough, she could reach the next circular light switch before the darkness fell with a horrible suddenness behind her. Not a building she would want to move through
at night. She suppressed the thought.

Uncomfortably eager to leave the building, Stephanie jogged down the stairs. She wondered if she would ever have the courage to cross the threshold later when she finished work, even if it was
just to collect her stuff and . . .
go where?

As she turned into the last flight of uncarpeted stairs leading to the hall, she heard the scuffle of leather-soled feet on the floor tiles: footsteps preceding the unlatching and the creak of
the front door. It gave her a start until she realized it could be one of the other tenants leaving the building ahead of her. She sensed a man. But this place was for girls only, so maybe this was
the landlord.

If she could share her experiences, she might receive an explanation about the noises in the house. Stephanie hurried down.

The front door closed before she made the bottom step. She raced along the ground floor passageway, the heels of her boots scraping and clattering across the tiles, to struggle with the front
door.

Outside, the world was reluctant to reach whatever served for light in this grey time of year, but there was no one on the path and the gate was closed. She could not be that far behind whoever
had just left the building.

On the short front path six wet rubbish bins stood sentinel on either side of the little rusty gate that rose as high as her hips. The rest of the front yard was a combination of broken paving
slabs, litter and long weeds. Clumps of wet leaves, drooping from unkempt trees, flopped against the ground floor windows and concealed the lower storey of the house, which was why she hadn’t
noticed the security bars yesterday. Behind the ancient white cages of iron bars, all she could see behind the windows were black curtains. Rain rustled the pennants of crisp packets and plastic
bags caught up in the unruly privet hedge that screened the front of the house from the street.

Gripped with a need for human contact, Stephanie unlatched the gate and stepped into Edgehill Road. Traffic from the T-junction at the end of the road became loud around her head. She looked
left and right. The streetlights glowed yellow and lit up the vertical descent of the rain that had fallen for hours. The road surface appeared oily, the cars heavy with a second skin of water, the
trees tense with cold. The dim and miserable world was soaked but empty. So where had the man gone?

Stephanie looked at the house. Sooty red bricks running with dirty water. Black drainpipes. Old wooden sash window frames on the second floor, visible above the trees. Faded curtains. Only the
top floor windows boasted venetian blinds. Not a flicker of light escaped the interior. The building appeared deserted. She could not recall it looking this way yesterday. Must be the light and
weather, or her lack of sleep. Had the sun not briefly appeared for yesterday’s viewing she doubted she would have even set foot inside.

Huddled into herself, with her head dipped from the rain, she made her way to the top of the road to find the bus stop and typed a quick text message to Ryan:

Stephanie arrived back at the house after seven. The rain continued to fall hard upon North Birmingham. The streetlights in Edgehill Road were spaced so far apart, and issued
such thin light, they made the houses exude a vaguer, more inhospitable aspect than they had done that morning. Or perhaps they seemed menacing now that she had something to feel intimidated by.
She wasn’t sure. But she wondered if there had been any daylight here at all while she’d worked indoors at the vast Bullring shopping centre in the city, a world of steel, glass,
marble, white electric light, and the trappings of affluence that ejected her into the rain once her day’s servitude was complete.

The people she had worked with, and the location, had felt impersonal and never close to familiarity, as if to communicate the message:
Don’t get used to it.
She couldn’t
help taking that to heart.

Usually she made friends on temp jobs, during the long hours of boredom and repetition that always felt more stressful than important work. In the past, she’d even exchanged phone numbers
and email addresses with the other girls she’d worked with in warehouses, factories and while stewarding live events. But the bright lights and designer clothes shops of the Bullring had
given airs to the other two girls she’d worked with, an attitude demonstrated by many of the shoppers as if they were all accustomed to, and unimpressed by, the opulence. Her two colleagues
both considered themselves to be models.

And what recession?
Amongst crowds laden down with logo-emblazoned paper bags with string handles, expensive hair styles, new clothes, smart phones, the shopping centre had suggested an
exclusive annexe existing beyond any world she was familiar with. While she had resorted to blacking-out the scuffs on her one pair of boots with an eyeliner pencil, others seemed to exist in
effortless affluence. It mystified her like magic. Where were all the people, like her, who had no money? Were they hiding themselves away in wretched buildings like she was?

Beside the thirty-minute break, when she’d sat on a bench in the Bullring and watched silent news reports on a huge television screen about flooding in Cornwall, Yorkshire and Wales, she
had been on her feet for the best part of eight hours. She’d become so tired she’d begun to slur her ‘Hello, sir, would you like to try our new Italiano range of wrap? Only two
hundred calories per . . .’ She’d called two women ‘sir’, and the edges of her vision had started to flicker by late afternoon. She needed eight hours’ sleep but had
had less than three the night before. Her stomach burned with hunger.

Relief that the working day was over plummeted at the sight of the house. The building appeared wetter, grubbier and even more derelict than when she’d hurried away from it that morning.
The whole place seemed sullen and eager to be left alone in the cold darkness. Whatever optimism and comfort the building once possessed was long gone. The house’s character seemed so obvious
now.

Don’t think like that.

She paused in the hallway to turn on the light and inspect the post: fliers for Asian mini-markets, fried chicken and pizza delivery services mingled with cards for local taxi companies. There
was nothing addressed to the tenants, beside one final demand from British Gas for a Mr Bennet. Everything else in a white envelope was addressed to ‘Dear Homeowner’.

Not having notified the bank or the doctor’s surgery of her change of address was a small mercy. She’d do all of that when she found a new room in another building. And if she stood
any longer looking at the faded walls, the uncarpeted stairs leading to the first floor, and the solitary closed door at the end of the ground floor hall, she worried she might not get up the
stairs to her room.

Stick to the plan.
She’d rehearsed it all day.
Eat, then go and see the landlord and give notice on the room. Ask if you can leave your bags here until Monday morning. Get
your deposit back. Find a new place this weekend. Accept that the month’s rent paid in advance might be gone, but still try to get a refund so you can stay in a cheap B&B over the weekend
until you find a new room.