Sweet Damage

by Rebecca James

  ‘I’m just renting one of the rooms. From a girl called Anna,’ I say.

  ‘Anna. That was the daughter’s name.’ He looks thoughtful, remembering. ‘It was just the three of them rattling around in that big empty place. Anna used to bring us cold drinks. Real friendly girl, she was.’ He grins. ‘Pretty hot too, if I’m remembering right.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound like her,’ I say. ‘Anna must be the shyest person I’ve ever met. Maybe you’re thinking of someone else? Anna’s blonde. Thin.’ I don’t mention that she’s not exactly friendly or that I’d have a hard time describing her as hot.

  ‘Yeah, she was definitely blonde, but shy? No way,’ Blake says. ‘Not the girl I’m thinking of. She was charismatic, you know; she had that talent for making people feel special. One of those people everybody likes.’

  *

  When I get back to the house I notice light and noise coming from the living room. I find Anna curled up on the sofa in her pyjamas. She sits up straight when I enter the room and says an abrupt hello before turning back to the TV. I offer her one of the beers I’ve brought home from the restaurant but she shakes her head without bothering to look at me. I crack one open for myself, then sit on the sofa opposite her and watch the movie until the first ad break.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ I ask, without thinking. There isn’t a lot she could do, stuck here in the house all the time.

  ‘Not much,’ she says, without a hint of irony.

  I decide to check out Blake’s story. ‘You won’t believe it,’ I say, ‘but this bloke, Blake, he works in the kitchen with me. Apparently he used to be a painter. And get this, he’s pretty sure he painted this house a few years ago. He reckons he knew you and your mum. Do you remember him? Big tall bloke?’

  ‘Not really,’ she says.

  ‘Are you sure? Blake was pretty clear. He went on about painting the dining room red, how much he liked you, said you used to bring them cold drinks.’ I try to laugh but she looks blank, bored even. ‘You don’t remember?’

  ‘No.’ Her voice is flat, uninterested, and my enthusiasm for the story suddenly seems stupid and out of place. Anna turns back to the TV and we watch the ads in silence.

  I sit there through the rest of the movie and finish my beers. We make polite, neutral small talk in the ad breaks, and all the while, the shadow of the conversation we didn’t have lurks like an unwelcome guest in the space between us.

  8

  OF COURSE SHE REMEMBERS BLAKE, AND THE OTHER PAINTERS. BUT TALKING about the past is something she’s not willing to do.

  Talking about the past only makes her want to scream.

  And if she starts screaming now, she’s not sure she’ll ever stop.

  9

  I WAKE WITH A SUDDEN START. MY HEART IS POUNDING HARD, AS though I’ve had a nightmare. I closed my curtains when I came up, and now I can barely see a thing. I stare out into the blackness and blink, my eyes wide. I lie there for a minute and concentrate on breathing, waiting for my heart rate to settle down. When I feel calmer I roll onto my side and adjust my pillow.

  That’s when I see it.

  The shape of a person.

  Watching me.

  There’s someone in my room.

  ‘Fuck!’ I push the doona off, fall clumsily to the floor in my haste, my legs tangled in the sheet. By the time I look up again the person, whoever the hell it was, is gone. I get up and go to the doorway, turn on the light. My hands are shaking.

  Though I know it’s unlikely, stupid even, I open the wardrobe near the door and check inside. There’s nothing there but my clothes.

  I run down the stairs, turning on every light as I go.

  ‘Hello?’ I shout. ‘Is someone there?’

  My voice seems to boom and echo against the walls, unnaturally loud in the still night, and the resounding silence only makes me more freaked out. The house suddenly seems too big, too empty, too dark. I feel vulnerable and isolated, as if I’m the only person in the world. When I reach the bottom of the stairs I check the front door. It’s locked. I check the dining and living rooms. The ballroom. There’s nobody there, no sign of disturbance, nothing.

  It suddenly occurs to me to worry about Anna. Maybe the intruder went the other way, towards her room. She could be in danger. I run upstairs and pound on her door.

  ‘Anna! You okay?’

  I don’t wait for a response. I open her door, find the light. She’s already sitting up, rubbing at her eyes.

  ‘Tim? What are you doing? What’s all that noise?’ she says, sounding annoyed. ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘I saw someone.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘In my room,’ I say urgently. ‘In my doorway. Watching me.’

  She pushes her doona off and stands up. ‘Are you sure? Oh my God. Is the . . . did you check downstairs?’

  ‘The door’s locked.’

  ‘Both doors?’

  ‘I don’t know. Shit. I didn’t—I only checked the front.’

  We go downstairs, Anna wrapping her dressing-gown around herself protectively.

  ‘You saw a person?’ she asks. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say. ‘It was too dark to see properly. They were just standing there.’

  The back doors are locked, the kitchen still and quiet. Nothing has been moved or taken.

  ‘I’ve already checked the other rooms down here,’ I say. ‘There was nothing. That’s so weird. I mean, how could someone get in without breaking a window or something?’

  ‘They couldn’t,’ she answers.

  She no longer looks scared, only tired, a bit impatient. But she doesn’t meet my eye properly and it makes me wonder if this is just her normal nerves or if she has something to hide.

  Was it Anna watching me? And if so, why? Maybe she wasn’t actually watching me, maybe she was just coming to talk, to ask me some question. Maybe she just wanted to make sure I was home. Perhaps I scared her off by shouting out. But why wouldn’t she just say so? Why would she lie?

  The alternative – an intruder – is even more disturbing. And it doesn’t make any sense. Why would anyone break into a house and not bother taking anything?

  I don’t mention any of my thoughts to Anna. It’s obvious that she doesn’t want to talk; she keeps her head down and her arms wrapped tightly around herself as we turn the lights off and climb the stairs. I say goodnight when I reach my bedroom and she makes some kind of noncommittal, distracted noise in response.

  My heart is still pounding and I can taste the bitter tang of adrenaline. In my mind I can still see the person standing in my doorway. I know it wasn’t a dream. The memory is too sharp, too clear, and it’s not fading the way dreams do. I try to tell myself that I must have been seeing things, that it must have been a combination of beer and fatigue. But I can’t shake the ominous feeling in the pit of my stomach, the growing sense that there’s something very strange about Anna London and her empty old house.

  *

  I go back to bed but spend the next few hours tossing and turning, and startling at every sudden noise, too jumpy to sleep. I finally get to sleep some time after four, but am woken a few hours later by the beep of my phone.

  ‘Shit.’ I sit up and reach for it, intending to turn it off, when I notice that it’s a text message from Lilla.

  Get up, lazy. I’m at your place. Open the door. I’ve only got 20 minutes!

  As I’m walking down the stairs I think about what happened last night. The dark figure I saw in my doorway. The whole thing seems distant now. The previously sharp memory is now hazy and smudged by the combination of sleep and the reassuring normality of daylight. And my fear seems like an overreaction.

  I open the front door and find Lilla standing on the front porch, hands on hips, dressed in her usual black. She’s wearing a miniskirt, showing off her perfect legs. Her short hair is rumpled, her lips are painted red. She shakes her head and launches straight in.

  ‘I cannot bel
ieve it,’ she says, pushing past me into the hallway. ‘I thought I must be totally mixed up so I almost knocked at the house next door, but then I saw some old lady coming out, and realised this must really be the one.’ She stops, looks around in astonishment. ‘Bloody hell, Tim. You live here? I cannot believe you didn’t tell me. Is this for real?’

  Her pushiness, her assumption that I should tell her everything about my life, sometimes makes me laugh. This early in the morning it only irritates me. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ I say. ‘What do you think?’

  She steps up close to me, stands on tiptoe and kisses my cheek. ‘You need a shave.’

  She walks down the hallway, running her hand along the wall as she goes, shaking her head.

  ‘Lilla,’ I say. ‘Keep it down, will you? Your shoes are bloody noisy. Anna’s asleep.’

  ‘Woops. Sorry.’ She smiles apologetically, pulls her shoes off and holds them in her hand. Then she goes to the dining room, opens the door and peeks inside. ‘Ooh, look at that. Nice. What a beautiful red.’

  She walks to the living room and opens that door too.

  ‘What are you doing? It’s seven o’clock in the morning. I need to go back to bed.’

  ‘I wanted to see where you were living. And I was running early for work,’ she says, heading for the room Anna called the junk room. ‘Wow,’ she says, stepping inside. ‘Look at all this gorgeous old furniture. Some of it’s just beautiful. Really valuable too, I bet. Why’s it all stacked in here? God, what a waste. Some people obviously have too much money to care.’

  I stand in the doorway. ‘Get out of there.’

  ‘Why?’ she says. ‘I’m not going to break anything.’

  I sigh and lean against the doorframe. I watch Lilla run her hands along an old timber dresser, open the doors, rummage through the old glassware. She opens the lid of a box and pulls out a handful of old papers and photos, flicking through them one by one.

  ‘Who are these people?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I say, stepping closer. ‘They’re not mine. Just put them back.’

  She holds a picture out towards me. A man, a woman and a small blonde girl of about eight are standing in a garden in front of a house. It’s clearly this house. I recognise the front porch, the stonework, the windows. The girl stands between the two adults, beaming straight at the camera, her two front teeth very prominent. The man, grey-haired and nondescript, smiles too. The woman, blonde like the girl, and beautiful in a cold way, isn’t smiling. Her chin is lifted and she stares off to the side. I assume it’s Anna and her parents.

  Lilla flicks to the next photo. It shows a group of people standing around a table with a cake sitting on it. A girl stands directly behind the cake, looking as if she’s just blown the candles out. She’s grinning at the camera, her head is tipped to one side. There’s a strand of hair caught in her mouth.

  ‘Look at her,’ Lilla says. ‘What a stunner.’

  Lilla’s right, the girl is stunning. The strange thing is, she looks just like Anna, only there’s none of the slouching, twitchy shyness of Anna. In fact, the provocative smile on her face reminds me more of Lilla than Anna. But it is Anna, it must be. I turn the photo over.

  17th birthday is written on the back.

  ‘So that’s who you’re living with?’ Lilla says, nudging me. ‘You didn’t mention she looked like that.’

  Because she doesn’t, I think to myself. At least, not anymore.

  ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I say. ‘We shouldn’t be looking through her stuff.’

  I put the photos away and drag Lilla out and across the hall, towards the ballroom.

  ‘Go on,’ I say, gesturing towards the closed door. ‘Have a look in there.’

  She opens the door and takes a startled step back. She looks at me and grins, then rushes inside, spins around, lets out a noisy yelp.

  ‘Shut up.’

  She puts her hand to her mouth. ‘Sorry. Sorry. But, Tim. This is so. Fucking. Awesome. This house. It’s just unbelievable.’ She frowns. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ She doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘You know, of course, that you’re going to have to organise a party here. There’s no way you can get away with living here and not having one. It would be criminal.’ And then she looks at her watch. ‘Shit. I’ve got to get going.’

  She pulls on her shoes, rushes over and gives me another kiss. I follow her to the door and watch her go down the garden path, get into her crappy old Laser and drive away. Lilla’s always like that, fast and chaotic and disruptive, like one of those strong, cool winds that can make you confused and disoriented, but can also wake you up and make you feel alive in a way that nothing else can. I wish I found it easier just to think of her as a friend. I wish her sisterly kisses didn’t remind me of the way we used to kiss, didn’t fill me with a miserable sense of having lost something precious. She knows the effect she has on me, and she enjoys it, enjoys the power. She wouldn’t kiss me the way she does, stand so close, dress that way, if she didn’t. I always knew she enjoyed creating a stir, being at the centre of things. Now I sometimes wonder if she enjoys hurting me.

  It’s already hot outside. I decide to make the most of it and head out for an early-morning swim.

  Fairlight Pool is quiet when I get there. I sit on the edge, dangling my calves in the water, enjoying the warmth of the sun on my back. There’s one old man swimming the length of the pool in a slow breaststroke, a woman doing a leisurely sidestroke and another doing a brisk freestyle. She’s as fast and as slick and as smooth in the water as anyone I’ve ever seen. At each end of the pool she does a neat flip and heads back the other way without pausing. I always feel an urge to race against people who swim well, so when she comes close I slip into the water and swim parallel to her, trying to match her pace.

  For the first three laps I stay ahead of her, but after that I have to slow down, and I swim the rest of my laps in her wake.

  ‘Nice swimming style,’ I say to her later when I get out of the pool. She’s drying off in the sun, her face turned up, soaking in the rays. She looks about fifty, and her body is long and lean, a swimmer’s body. She smiles without opening her eyes, or turning my way. ‘You too.’

  I think of Anna as I walk back to the house and feel a renewed sense of pity for her. I couldn’t live without the buzz I get from being in the water, the rush I get from being outdoors. I couldn’t handle missing out on all this. But she clearly wasn’t always this way, and I wonder again how and why she changed from the vibrant girl in the photos, the happy girl Blake described, to the miserable person I’m living with now.

  10

  I DON’T SEE MUCH OF ANNA OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS. I PASS HER IN the hall once on my way to work – she says hello, but keeps on going – and another night I find her watching TV in the living room when I get home from work, but I go straight up to my room. She’s stand-offish and cool, and if she talks to me at all, it’s only about something prosaic: an oven element that doesn’t work properly, or a window that’s jammed shut. Once she gives me a list of things she wants from the shops and I recognise the distinctive left-sloping handwriting from the note I found in the pantry. There’s nothing fresh or wholesome on the list. It’s all processed or tinned stuff. The shopping list of an old lady.

  ‘Is that it?’ I ask. ‘No fruit or veg? No meat?’

  ‘No,’ she says coldly. ‘That’s it. Exactly what I’ve written.’

  Her unfriendliness doesn’t bother me much. The house is big enough that we don’t get in each other’s way.

  So I’m surprised when I go down to the kitchen on Sunday morning and find her slicing apples, humming softly. She’s dressed in her usual clothes, but her hair is out of its ponytail, hanging loose around her shoulders and face. She looks more animated than she normally does.

  ‘Hey,’ I say.

  She starts, looks up.

  ‘You’re cooking?’

  ‘I’m trying to. I’m not very good, though. I’m having Marcus and Fiona o
ver for lunch.’ She smiles hesitantly. ‘If you’re free, you could join us.’

  I’m surprised, a bit intrigued. ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘If you’re sure, then, yeah, I will. I’m not doing anything else. Thanks.’

  I stand there for a minute, watching her slice apples, thinking about the lack of fresh food in the house.

  ‘Anna,’ I say eventually. ‘Do you want me to go down to the shops and get something? There’s not really anything here, is there? What are you making?’

  She points her knife towards the apples. ‘I’m making apple pie for sweets. I don’t know if it’ll work out, but I hope so. And soup for lunch.’ She puts her knife down and goes to the pantry, pulls out a tin of beef and vegetable soup.

  My astonishment must be obvious because she frowns, holds the tin out towards me.

  ‘It’s gourmet soup, not just any old thing,’ she says. ‘Look, it even has herbs in it.’

  I take the can from her and pretend to read the label. Gourmet or not, it’s still tinned soup. I look up, smile, shake my head.

  She snatches the tin from me and puts it down firmly on the benchtop. She folds her arms across her chest and stares at me. Her cheeks are flushed red, like a kid who’s been running around outside. And then she laughs, and suddenly I can see that other girl standing before me. The girl from the photos. And Blake doesn’t seem so crazy for calling her hot.

  ‘What, then?’ she asks. ‘What am I going to do now? I don’t have anything else.’

  ‘Isn’t that why I moved in here?’ I say. ‘To help you out in situations like this? I can go down to the shops. Get something.’

  ‘But I can’t actually cook.’ She looks abashed. ‘I have no idea what to make or even where to start.’ She turns back to the sliced apple. ‘I found this recipe in one of Mum’s old books, but it’s probably going to be a disaster.’

  ‘So why don’t you let me do it? I can cook. I’ll go down to the shops and get some fish. I know this snapper recipe. It’s a cinch. Takes five minutes but tastes awesome. Looks impressive, too. I’ll show you how to make it and then you’ll have something apart from tinned soup in your cooking repertoire.’