Watching You (22 page)

T
hey’re gone. The good cop, bad cop routine is over. It was quite a show. They think they’ve discovered the truth, but they have no idea what I’m capable of…what I’ve done for Marnie and what she’s done for me.

I move downstairs, unlocking the rear door to reach the garden. Few residents use the grassy area unless they have kids. Elijah and Daniel used to kick a ball against the wall and play hide and seek. Skirting the side of the building, I follow a concrete drain that smells of weeds and wet masonry. The basement windows are barred. Crouching beneath one of them, I raise my head and peer through a crack in the blinds, one eye painted by a smear of light coming from inside.

I can see the caretaker moving back and forth behind the glass. He’s pulling at a rowing machine, his knees and elbows working like pistons. I run my fingers over the windowsill. He has an alarm system, but it’s not back to base. No dogs to worry about. These things must be checked.

Bees are buzzing in my head, but they are quieter now. Waiting. Retracing my steps, I enter the rear door and cross the foyer, glancing up the stairwell to make sure nobody is coming. I knock. The door opens a crack.

“What do you want?”

“
We need to talk.”

Z
oe pushes her finger through the ring of condensation on the plastic tablecloth. The pizzeria is busy, but mostly doing takeaways. Few people bother dining at the Apollo, which has no air conditioning and only a handful of tables. The heat from the pizza oven has plastered a lock of Zoe’s hair to her forehead and the air is thick with the smell of baking cheese and fresh cardboard.

Occasionally, Zoe glances at the door, waiting for Ryan Coleman. The chef, Ricardo, is an older man with liver spots like dark freckles on the back of his hands. He works the dough under his palms, fashioning it into balls.

He glances at Zoe. “Your boyfriend is on a delivery.”

“He’s not my boyfriend.”

“You could do worse,” says the chef.

Zoe blushes.

What is she doing here, she asks herself. How will Ryan react? They’ll both be embarrassed. Awkward. Searching for something to say.

A girl at school called Steph Gables had bragged about having been all the way with a boy, but nobody believed her. Zoe didn’t want to do anything like that, but she wanted to talk to someone. It’s not as though she hadn’t kissed a boy. At Ruth Kasmauski’s birthday party they played spin-the-bottle and her turn stopped on Toby Hendricks. They were sent to the cupboard for five minutes with the door closed. It was a broom cupboard with cleaning supplies, and everything smelled of bleach and disinfectant that made her eyes water. They stood in the dark, pressed against the opposing walls, listening to each other breathing. Eventually Zoe could stand it no longer and leaned forward, mashing her lips against Toby’s, tasting soft drink and potato chips. Their teeth clicked together. She pulled away. Toby kept his hands at his sides. The buzzer sounded. Someone hammered on the door and they emerged to a chorus of wolf whistles and cheers. Toby grinned at his mates and adopted a swagger that teenage boys seem to perfect.

Zoe didn’t understand what the fuss was about. Sex was everywhere—on TV, in magazines, and online, but nobody Zoe knew was actually
doing
it. They were groping their way through adolescence, literally and figuratively, waiting for the accidental right time or wrong time.

Her can of Pepsi has grown warm in her hands. A scooter pulls up outside. Ryan swings his leg off the seat and unclips the helmet strap, hooking it over his forearm. He brushes hair from his eyes and opens the door backwards, only seeing Zoe at the last moment. He stops.

“Hi,” she says.

“Hi.”

“Is everything all right?”

She nods, feeling foolish. “I was in the neighborhood.”

“Oh. Do you want a pizza?”

“No.”

“OK.”

“What time do you finish work?”

“Ten.”

“Oh.”

The chef has been watching them. “You can take ten minutes,” he tells Ryan. “Eric can do the next run.”

Ryan leads her through the kitchen and outside to the rear alley where there are plastic chairs arranged around a cut-off drum full of sand and cigarette butts. Zoe sits and presses her hands between her thighs.

“Did you listen to the CD I burned for you?”

“Yeah, it was good.”

She nods.

A minute passes.

“What do you want to do?” he asks.

“What do you want to do?” she counters.

Ryan shrugs.

“Do you want to kiss me?” asks Zoe.

“Yeah, I guess.”

He leans forward. She does the same. It only lasts a few seconds, but for that brief moment Zoe seems to float, barely breathing, outside her body. She feels his tongue between her lips and lets it rest there. A strand of Ryan’s hair brushes against her eyelids. She doesn’t push it aside.

Ryan pulls away and takes a breath. “I have to get back to work.”

Zoe looks at her watch. She doesn’t want to go home. She wants to sit with Ryan and float outside her body again.

The chef opens the kitchen door. Orders have to be delivered. Zoe collects her schoolbag from inside and follows Ryan to his scooter. He puts a pizza satchel in the rear carrier box and waves, doing a U-turn and fishtailing the scooter’s back wheel as he disappears around the next corner, heading toward Westbourne Grove.

Lowering her head, Zoe gives a skip and starts walking home.

E
lijah has taken a blanket from the bed and draped it over the handle of the wardrobe, making a cubby house with a woolen door. Sitting in the wardrobe, he presses his ear against the back and listens. He knocks his knuckles against the smooth wood. It echoes. He puts his eye to the crack and listens again.

He can smell his mother’s clothes hanging above his head. Other smells belong to his father, a man he can barely remember. Sometimes he wonders if he existed at all, yet he has memories that he can’t explain, of riding high on a man’s shoulders, yelling that he was king of the castle. He has other recollections of funny voices and belly button farts and kicking a ball in the garden.

Elijah calls out from the bedroom. “Mummy?”

She doesn’t answer.

Elijah presses his ear against the wall again. Hooking his fingers into the crack, he pulls the wooden panel back and forth. The edge of the plywood pinches his fingers. It moves sideways an inch. A black and white paw sweeps across his fingers. A cat. The paw comes through the crack again.

“Mummy? There’s a kitty.”

No reply.

Elijah leans against the wooden partition, pushing his fingers further into the gap. They touch a metal hook that pivots. The panel falls away and the cat jumps backwards, running off.

Elijah crawls forward. “Here, kitty, kitty…”

Marnie is worried about Zoe. She should be home by now and she’s not answering her mobile or responding to texts. She tries again, leaving her a message.

Elijah has been quiet. She goes looking for him.

“Are you hiding from me?” she asks, peering under his bed. She looks behind the door. “Am I getting warmer? Where are you?”

She checks the living room, looking in the obvious hiding places, behind the sofa and the door. Then she moves along the hallway. “You know you’re not allowed in Zoe’s room,” she says, peeking under the bed, spying the laptop again. “Elijah? Please come out. I’m getting worried now. I don’t want to play anymore.”

She returns to the main bedroom. The wardrobe door is open. Elijah has dragged a blanket off the bed and hooked it over the door handle. She crawls toward his cubby, hoping to surprise him.

“Ha ha!” she says, lifting the blanket. The wardrobe is empty except for shoes and hanging clothes and assorted toys. Something is different. Wrong. Instead of a rear panel there is a hole where one shouldn’t exist. Someone or something has broken through the double-brick wall between the two buildings.

“Elijah?”

Marnie crawls forward, her skirt catching on her knees and then the jagged bricks. Her hands feel a smooth surface. Another floor. Another room. The curtains are closed. The darkness seems to coat Marnie’s lungs and fill her mouth.

“Kitty, kitty.”

It’s Elijah’s voice. She can’t see him. “Where are you?”

“In here,” he says. “There’s a pussy cat.”

“Come to me.”

She stands. The carpet is threadbare and sticky underfoot. She can see the outline of what could be furniture—a bed or a sofa—but the place smells closed up. Abandoned.

“Leave the kitty alone, Elijah.”

“But he’s all by himself.”

“He doesn’t belong to us.”

The floorboards creak beneath her. The room is so dark she holds out her hands, feeling ahead of her. She touches a wall and searches for a light switch. It flicks upwards, but nothing happens. Glancing at the ceiling, she can just make out the empty light socket. Someone has removed the bulb.

“We have to go, Elijah. Come to Mummy.”

The hallway has more light. Marnie peers into a second bedroom. The curtains are open. She can see a tall single bed with a chamber pot beneath the springs. Women’s clothes are draped on the bed. Support hose. Worn shoes. Above the fireplace there are Lladro figurines, girls in pastel dresses holding parasols and bunches of flowers. Marnie knocks over a hat stand, catching it before it topples. A wig is displaced. It looks like a squashed animal. Roadkill.

Moving along the hallway, she finds a light switch that works. The wallpaper seems to be hanging in ragged strips. Then she realizes that photographs and pieces of curling paper have been stuck to the wall. Her eyes scan them quickly before settling on something familiar. It takes her a moment to recognize herself in one of the images…then another…and another. There are pictures of her weddings, her graduation, her mother’s funeral; Zoe on a merry-go-round in Brighton, riding a scooter, walking to nursery, Marnie at her gym class, sanding a cabinet, painting a bedroom, sitting in a deckchair, shopping, riding her bike, having coffee with Penny…

Arranged haphazardly between these images are receipts, ticket stubs, business cards, photocopies of bank statements and telephone bills, a street map, a library card, a parking notice, shopping lists, registration papers for the car…The wall is a scrapbook, a ragged wallpaper of clippings, images, and ephemera that document her life.

Marnie gazes in wonder, letting her eyes travel from the ceiling to the skirting board. Fear, like a small animal, scurries around her chest, looking for a place to hide. Once when she was a young girl, she went to the movies with one of the foster kids, an older boy. They were supposed to see
Never Ending Story,
but it was sold out so they sneaked into
Nightmare on Elm Street.
Even when Marnie covered her eyes she could hear the music and the screams. If she covered her ears, she could see the shiny blades that were Freddy Krueger’s fingers.

It was dark when the film ended. They caught the bus home and walked to the farmhouse from the main road. The boy ran ahead of her. He turned off the porch light and all the other lights inside the house. Then he crouched in the darkened hallway as Marnie opened the front door and reached for the switch, but touched his hand instead. Marnie screamed and wetness ran down her legs into her boots. That’s how she feels now.

She turns her head toward the kitchen. A cat is sitting in front of the fridge, wanting to be fed. Elijah is kneeling on the floor. There is a coffee cup in the sink. Toast crumbs on the counter. A plate.

“Go back home, Elijah.”

“But the kitty?”

“Go!”

Something in her voice frightens the boy. His bottom lip trembles. He does what he’s told.

A cupboard is open. The jars are labeled. Flour. Rice. Pasta. The cat curls around her ankles, rubbing the side of his head against Marnie’s bare feet. There is a note on the fridge beneath a magnet. She recognizes the handwriting as Zoe’s.

I want to thank you for the laptop and for helping me with my dad’s Facebook page. I’ll try to meet you tomorrow at the library.

Elijah yells from the other bedroom. “Are you coming, Mummy?”

“Stay in your room.”

“Did you find Malcolm?”

A question gets caught in her throat. She tries again. “Who?”

“My friend, Malcolm.”

“Just stay there. Don’t come in here.”

Marnie notices the ladder. It stands in the middle of the kitchen, rising to a hole in the ceiling. She stares up at the dark square. Taking hold of the cross spars, she climbs, hand over hand until her head rises above the hole and she’s peering into the ceiling cavity. A torch has been left next to the opening. Finding the switch, she points the beam of light ahead of her, revealing a crawlspace that stretches the length and breadth of the ceiling. The air is hot and stale below the tiles. Insulation squares are squashed between the beams and ceiling joists. Boards have been placed across them, stretching to the far end of the sloping roof where it narrows as the angle disappears.

She can see bedding. A thermos. Tissues.

Crawling forward, she keeps her weight on the beams, holding the torch in her right hand. Ten…fifteen…twenty feet, crawling deeper into the cavity.

This is a bad idea,
she thinks,
a bad, bad idea.

She stops at the bedding. The insulation batons have been removed. Pinpricks of light create thin beams that brighten her fingertips. She leans down and places her eye to the light. She’s staring down at her bedroom. She can see her duvet and the pillows and her dressing table.

Shuffling sideways, she finds another pinprick of light. This one is over Zoe’s bed. Another looks down into Elijah’s room. The kitchen. The living room. This is someone’s vantage point…a hiding place.

Beneath her a key rattles in a lock and the door opens, changing the air pressure. It’s not
her
door…not Zoe…Marnie crawls across the ceiling and peers through the hatch. A shadow passes beneath the ladder. Something heavy hits the table. A tap is turned on. Soap squeaks from a dispenser. Hands are washed.

A voice screams inside her head.

Run!

Where?

Just run!

Her mobile phone is digging into her hip. Rolling onto her back, she pulls it free, her hands shaking. Joe O’Loughlin has left her a message. She doesn’t read it. She types a reply:

It’s not enough. She presses 999, cradling the phone in both hands. The person below her is moving. He’s gone into another room. She’s at the top of the ladder. Somebody answers her call. She cups the phone and whispers.

“I need the police. A man has been watching me.”

“What man?”

“I’m trapped in his ceiling.”

“Please can I have your name and address?”

Marnie gives her the details. “Just send the police.”

“You say you’re trapped. Do you need the fire brigade?”

“He’s here now.”

“Who?”

The man below her has walked back into the kitchen. She can see his shoes. Marnie stops talking and tries not to breathe. She can’t see his face. He’s standing at the base of the ladder.

The operator is still speaking. “Hello…hello…”

He’s climbing. Marnie scans the crawlspace, looking for a means of escape or a weapon or somewhere to hide. She moves across the ceiling on her hands and knees, wincing with each shuffle, trying not to make a sound.

Stupid cow! Stupid cow!

He’s been talking to Elijah through the wall. He’s been watching them from the ceiling…giving presents to Zoe.

The ladder creaks again. Marnie closes her eyes for a moment, sipping on the darkness. Then another sound reaches her. It’s further away yet closer in every sense that matters.

“Mummy?”