The Wrong Move

by Jennifer Savin

  The glasses of fizz helped cement the occasion and Jessie began to feel herself relax, slowly making herself at home. It was an odd situation, knowing that although they now shared a postal address for the foreseeable future, neither she nor Lauren could say for sure whether or not a friendship would form between them or if they’d just be polite to one other in passing. As possible as it was that in two months’ time they’d both be sitting around the same table saying, ‘I can’t believe we’ve only known each other a few weeks, I can barely remember life without you!’, it was equally possible that their communication would be limited to a WhatsApp group chat that revolved around paying council tax and debating whether or not it was worth paying for a monthly cleaner.

  Suddenly, Jessie had a sense that they were no longer alone. She noticed a figure standing in the doorway of the kitchen, almost … lurking, silently observing the scene of domesticity before him. He wore black ripped jeans and a washed-out T-shirt, bearing the grainy image of an unidentifiable 90s grunge band. After a nervous cough, the man who Jessie presumed must be Marcus, dropped a heavy canvas bag down by his Doc Martens and stepped forward, giving a nod as he did so.

  ‘Marcus, this is Jessie,’ said Lauren. ‘Or do you prefer Jess? Sorry, I haven’t even asked.’

  He peered out from behind the side-swept fringe covering his eyes.

  ‘Either is fine,’ Jessie smiled. ‘Great to meet you, Marcus.’

  ‘Likewise. Looks like you’re settling in well.’

  Without another word, Marcus busied himself with searching through the cupboard closest to the fridge, then took out a packet of instant noodles. It looked as though there were Post-it notes on some of the cans in the cupboard, but Marcus closed the door before she was able to get a proper look.

  ‘Microwave free?’ he asked and yawned, running kettle water over coils of ramen.

  ‘Go for it, mate. How was the shop today, then?’ Lauren asked, without looking up from the prawn cracker she was loading with sticky rice.

  ‘Ah, you know. Same as it ever is.’ He stared over at her for a few seconds, then opened the microwave.

  On their walk back from Singh’s off-licence, cheap booze in hand, Jessie had asked more about Marcus and Sofie, the other flatmates. Lauren, only too pleased to answer, had dutifully informed her that Marcus worked in a music shop down one of the winding streets in the North Laine area, which specialised in selling vintage guitars. Jessie knew the one, it had a green exterior and a neon sign above the door saying ‘Basement Beats’. In the past she’d occasionally stopped to check out the vinyl on display in the window, but couldn’t recall ever having seen Marcus behind the counter serving customers or teaching a child how to tune their first bass. She struggled to imagine him doing either – he didn’t exactly radiate the vibe of somebody who’d tell you your receipt was in the bag and wish you a great rest of the day.

  Marcus began banging the bottom of a glass ketchup bottle over his packet noodles, before adding a squirt of mayonnaise and a sprinkle of pre-grated Red Leicester on top. Jessie visibly shuddered and shot a puzzled glance at Lauren, who merely shrugged. This latest bizarre combination was just one of many she’d seen her housemate of over three years concoct in their shared kitchen. Jessie smoothed her features back out, hoping that Lauren wouldn’t think she was judgemental. But she couldn’t help it – every movement these new flatmates made had the chance to take on a second meaning.

  Lauren savoured another bite of her prawn cracker, noticing the cheese Marcus had left scattered across the faux granite worktops. She made a silent bet with herself that he’d saunter back to his room without tidying it up.

  ‘I’m back!’ called a sing-song voice from the hallway. ‘But only for a minute, just grabbing some stuff. Henry’s here too.’

  The voice was reminiscent of a children’s TV presenter who Jessie couldn’t quite place the name of. In reality, it belonged to a woman with a heart-shaped face, blessed with high cheekbones and a light dusting of freckles, who managed a healthy eating café. Her blue tie-dye leggings fitted so perfectly they looked as though they’d been sprayed on. Jessie recognised the logo on them; a new ethical label that all the fitness bloggers had been going mad for lately. Something to do with being made from recycled water bottles?

  ‘You must be Jessie. I’m Sofe – welcome to the madhouse.’

  She immediately engulfed Jessie in a hug.

  Jessie attempted to twist her body round to reciprocate but found the back of her chair was in the way. Sofie didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, didn’t say, and continued wrapping her arms around the new face in her home.

  ‘Did you guys order from Blue Elephant? You know that’s my favourite,’ she said and fake-pouted, as a tanned man wearing a long-sleeved rugby shirt slid his arm around her waist.

  He was classically good-looking in a double-barrelled surname sort of way, with broad, weighty shoulders.

  ‘Sorry, I was going to message but I knew you wouldn’t be back for a while and poor Jessie here was about to die of starvation. Moving is hungry work, right, babe?’ Lauren used her fork as a pointer and aimed it at her newest flatmate.

  Jessie didn’t like that she had been made the scapegoat – the reason that Sofie hadn’t been told about their dinner – but quickly forced herself to nod in agreement. Lauren surely hadn’t meant it as a dig; she was reading meanings into things again. It never did any good being oversensitive or making rash judgements, she had to remember that. It was hard not to, given that she’d just made the leap to move in with these people. But, she reminded herself, this Jessie was different to the old Jessie. New Jessie didn’t forage through every conversation looking for the words that made her feel upset or afraid.

  ‘It’s cool. We had leftover sandwiches at my work and I’m staying out tonight anyway. I brought back some brownies that were going spare; they’re vegan.’

  Sofie, obviously unbothered, produced a pink-and-white striped paper bag from her patchwork rucksack and placed it next to the takeaway containers on the table.

  ‘You’ll have to pop into the café when you get a chance, Jess,’ she continued. ‘It’s just at the bottom of St James’s Street, and we run an open mic night in there every fortnight too, which is always fun. Plus, the drinks are cheap.’

  The thick-jawed man leant across the table and helped himself to a brownie.

  ‘She even sings at it. Rather well, unlike me, who got kicked out of the school choir for letting the side down,’ he laughed, kissing the top of Sofie’s pastel-pink head, complete with dark roots poking through at the crown.

  Even Marcus smirked. It was clear that, whoever this man was, he knew how to work a room.

  ‘Henry Goldsmith-Blume, by the way.’

  He thrust a colossal bear hand at Jessie to shake, the vicelike grip matching his booming oak-tree baritone perfectly. They seemed a slightly odd pairing. He clearly came from money and radiated an air of assured authority, learned from childhood. Sofie, on the other hand, in her millennial New Age gear and rows of gold hooped earrings, didn’t seem to be the type of woman who’d be especially fussed about inheriting a stately home in the Sussex countryside. But Henry’s arm remained firmly around her taut, caramel waist and she nestled into it.

  ‘Anyway, I hate to be rude, but we’ve literally just popped back so I can grab some contact lenses for tomorrow – I’m blind as a bat,’ Sofie said, rolling her eyes, as if to demonstrate how inconvenient they were. ‘But let’s definitely make plans to all hang out together soon, okay? Lauren can you add Jessie to the group chat?’

  Without anybody realising, Marcus had slunk back to his room, the only bedroom on the ground floor, food in hand. The hum of bass-heavy music tiptoed out of his speakers and under the door but fell short of the ears in the kitchen. He knew they wouldn’t be paying much attention to his whereabouts anyway. Nobody ever did.

  A short while later, from the balcony where she was inhaling smoke, Lauren listened to Henry’s car pu
rr as it moved away from the kerb outside. She could see Sofie sitting in the passenger seat, jabbing away at the radio, trying to find a station playing the sparsely worded house music she loved so much. Turning back towards the flat, Lauren watched through the window as Jessie made a start on the washing-up, for which she was grateful. Her dream of flat-sharing with somebody else who was as into cleaning as she was might finally be coming true. She smiled and ashed her roll-up out on the bare brick wall and flicked the butt into an old Heinz baked bean can, already half-full with yellowing ends. This was her chance to start over too.

  Later that night, Jessie sank below the covers in her newly rented bedroom and stared at the unfamiliar patterns on the ceiling, waiting for her body slip into a soft and drowsy state. Her life lay in boxes, bags and piles around the room. It had been a very long day and soon enough, her thoughts quickly wrapped themselves around one another and the exhaustion of moving kicked in. She felt truly weary. But as she neared the brink of sleep, a sound yanked her back into a state of alert. Some kind of shuffling. Or was it a scraping? The noise seemed to be coming from downstairs. It came again, muffled and almost rhythmic. Jessie’s heart rate quickened as she strained to decipher what it was that she was hearing. It wasn’t a sound she could identify as ever having come across before. Was Marcus dragging something across the floor? His bedroom was almost directly under hers. She continued listening, then after a minute, the noise stopped just as suddenly as it had started. Unnerved, Jessie pulled the covers over her head, the way she used to as a child, and took a few deep breaths. All houses sounded different, had their distinctive creaks and whistles that appeared at night, and took a bit of getting used to. That’s all it would be. Besides, she’d always been the anxious type, prone to succumbing to the tricks that her mind loved to play on her, she knew that. Didn’t she?

  CHAPTER THREE

  The next morning, a chink of light drifted through a gap in the curtains and settled over Jessie’s eyes. They flickered, then opened. For a moment she couldn’t quite place where she was, her surroundings were unfamiliar and it took a couple of seconds for her brain to catch up. It was the first official day of her new start, a feeling she paused to bask in for a few moments.

  She forced herself out of bed and pulled on a pair of jogging bottoms, with the intention of heading to her old gym along the seafront and re-registering as a member. She liked being able to watch the waves (which appeared either a glittering blue or dull brown depending on the weather) dashing up the pebbly shore and then retreating while pounding the treadmill. It helped to distract her mind away from any burning feet. She checked her phone. The time read 8.14am, still early for a weekend. But after a few deep yawns and stretches to help her adjust to being back in the land of the living, Jessie shuffled out of her bedroom and into the bathroom next door. The flat was quiet. She guessed Lauren and Marcus must still be asleep. It was a peculiar feeling, being in her own home but feeling like she had to creep around like a cat burglar. Through bleary eyes, Jessie laced her toothbrush with a slug of Aquafresh and began to clean her teeth, almost on auto-pilot. Forward, back. Up down, repeat. Spit.

  She then clipped her fringe back and carefully pushed cleanser deep into the groves on either side of her nose, then washed away the residue. Apart from the sound of the running tap, the flat was silent. Jessie flipped her head up and moved closer to the mirror to inspect her skin for any blemishes; her entire body jumped when she realised there were four eyes, rather than the expected two, staring back at her. She let out a sharp yelp.

  ‘Sorry,’ muttered a pallid reflection in the mirror, just over her shoulder, before quickly retreating back into the shadows of the not-quite-light hallway.

  In the second it took her to turn around, Marcus had gone. Jessie touched the mirror, as if to reassure herself that it really was just her face in there now, as his footsteps faded away, back towards the direction of the stairs. How long had he been there? Watching her. Studying her. Perhaps she’d noticed him just as he’d appeared and he hadn’t been watching her at all, making for an unnecessarily awkward encounter? An awkward encounter with a housemate who she was keen to get along well with. Jessie pushed the door firmly shut and slid the bolt across, feeling uneasy. In her half-awake state she hadn’t realised it wasn’t properly closed, which was unlike her. Flat-sharing, having lived with a partner and then family for so long, would take a bit of getting used to. It was such a peculiar set-up: living in close quarters with complete strangers, who could walk in on you during intimate moments. Sleeping in a bed that was never truly just yours. The layout of the flat, its smell, everything about Maver Place, her home, was alien. Including the other tenants.

  Pushing the incident with Marcus from her mind momentarily, Jessie cautiously headed downstairs to the kitchen in search of breakfast. She’d picked up a few choice items during her Prosecco pilgrimage with Lauren yesterday and settled on a pre-workout strawberry yoghurt. Her shelf in the fridge was neatly ordered in comparison to the others’. Sofie’s appeared to be mostly made up of cans of Diet Coke and half-eaten tubs of humus, one of which was several months out of date, suggesting she wasn’t often around, but there was still a Post-it stuck to it saying ‘Do Not Throw Away!’.

  Jessie slid her carton of semi-skimmed milk back into the fridge door, next to the cartons of various nut and oat alternatives. Lauren had scribbled her name on one with a smiley face while Marcus had gone for a simple underlined ‘M’ in thick black marker pen on his. A quick count told her that there were more varieties of milk stuffed in there than flatmates.

  By the time she’d reached the last spoonful of yoghurt, Jessie had decided she would give Marcus the benefit of the doubt. It was probably a simple mix-up as they got used to their new routines. Perhaps she should actually apologise for hogging the bathroom? Maybe now he’d be late for work at the shop and it was all her fault. Why else would he be awake so early? She had no idea whether or not any of her housemates worked on a Sunday and made a mental note to ask Lauren when she saw her later. Zipping up her grey fleecy hoody, Jessie tried to shut the front door quietly, so as not to disturb the neighbours, or Lauren, who she presumed was still asleep.

  She made her way along the garden path, enjoying not having her headphones in for once, just hearing the hum of traffic in the distance. It was the epitome of a crisp autumn morning, her favourite time of year. It became colder the closer she neared to the seafront, thanks to the wind bouncing off the water. She drew the hoody a little tighter and upped her pace, hoping that the gym would still be relatively empty. Despite having lived in Brighton several years ago while at university, the size of the seagulls there never ceased to amaze her. They were like cats with wings, circling and squawking overhead, forever angered. Jessie approached the gym door and made a beeline for the reception desk. The automatic doors groaned shut behind her.

  Back in the flat, Marcus, who had the day off work, stirred a saucepan full of baked beans while Lauren sipped a coffee at the table. She idly folded over the corners of a fashion magazine’s pages whenever she spotted an item of interest. The photography studio she assisted in was often used for editorial shoots by the publication, so she always made sure to pick up a copy. She loved feeling the glossy paper between her fingertips and seeing the models, who she’d run out to buy lunch for, pouting back at her from the pages, their bodies twisted into human origami positions. It gave her a thrill of pleasure knowing she’d played even a tiny part in it all.

  ‘Got much going on today?’ she asked, cutting through the silence.

  Marcus shrugged.

  ‘Just hanging out with the band. We’re hoping to get a new song finished.’

  ‘I look forward to hearing it,’ Lauren replied, eyes still on the models. ‘But you’ll be back in time for dinner? I’m thinking of doing a little welcome meal for Jessie.’

  ‘I’ll keep you posted.’

  ‘Sure. If it sways it, I’ll make lasagne.’

  Marcus nodded but
said nothing, preferring to concentrate on pouring his beans over two precise squares of toast, which he’d cut the crusts from. He topped the dish with one clockwise spiral of ketchup and another anti-clockwise one of mayonnaise, his signature finish.

  ‘I just think it would be nice for us all to make a bit of effort and make her feel welcome,’ said Lauren, closing the magazine and rising to her feet.

  She looked at the stray crusts on the floor by the bin and made a mental note to message Marcus about them later, not wanting to confront him in person.

  After hitting her 10-mile target, Jessie slowed the treadmill and wiped the sweat from her eyes with the back of her hand before stepping off. She’d made good time today. Over the past few months, working out had become her saviour when it came to dealing with anxiety, stress and misery. Taking up regular exercise, although basic, was one of the best pieces of advice that her counsellor had offered throughout their now concluded sessions. Hitting targets helped her to regain some control and feel good about herself, like she was worth something, after believing otherwise for so long.

  She headed to the changing room and retrieved her phone from her bag. There were two notifications: a text from her mum asking how her first night in the new place had gone, another showing she’d been added into a WhatsApp group chat. The chat was named ‘Flatmates!’ with several house emojis next to it. She clicked on the app and saw that Lauren was typing. She checked who else was in the group and saved the numbers for Sofie and Marcus, whose contact details she hadn’t yet stored in her phone.

  Jessie was immediately curious to see what photos they had all chosen for their WhatsApp profiles, the small circle icons offering a peek inside their respective, yet newly joined, worlds. Who knew what she could learn from the one image they’d chosen to represent themselves with. Jessie hadn’t managed to find her housemates on social media yet and Ian had only given her Lauren’s number as a point of contact. Lauren’s picture showed her wearing a cropped red leather jacket, glass of wine in hand and laughing, eyes closed. The photo was slightly blurry – perhaps whoever had taken it was laughing along too. Lauren obviously wasn’t fazed at the thought of being snapped off guard, preferring to be fully absorbed in socialising.