The Downstairs Neighbor

by Helen Cooper

  After the mammoth hill, the stairs in our tower block almost kill me—the lift’s clapped out again. I duck under the line of washing that Joan from 310 always strings across the corridor, damp sleeves flapping in my face, and vault over a skateboard left at the bottom of the last flight of stairs. Then I burst into our flat, hoping he’s not early.

  “Mum?” I dump my bag, throw my coat in the direction of the pegs, rush through to the kitchen. She’s standing at the window, staring out at our grotty view, the mottled window giving an impression of permanent drizzle. Or maybe she’s not really looking at anything. She seems to do a lot of gazing into space lately. My cousin Becca reckons it’s because she’s in love, all moony and dreamy, but to me she looks lost in worries. Becca says I just don’t want to admit she’s been swept off her feet by a toyboy from the floor below.

  Mum turns and I’m so relieved by the way she smiles at me, pleased to see me, that I run to her and hug her hard. She feels thin beneath her post office uniform. Is she losing weight to impress her boyfriend? The word lovesick snakes into my mind. It’s so weird to think of her like that.

  I go to fill the kettle. I always make the tea when I get home from school, and we have one chocolate biscuit each, sitting in the same places at the kitchen table—Mum at the end nearest the door and me to her right, where the storage heater chugs out its hint of warmth. That’s the ritual. I hope we’ve got time to do it before Toyboy arrives. The kettle’s so slow. I press my fingers against the sharp chips in the rim of the sugar bowl and feel steam kissing my nose.

  At last we’re sitting at the table, biscuit tin between us, Mum with her slim fingers wrapped around her mug and her dark hair tumbling over one shoulder. And I can’t think of a thing to say. In the past this wouldn’t have bothered me: I’d slurp my tea and drift into a daydream. But now I’ve got to make this daily ten minutes count for more than the whole evenings she spends with him.

  “How was school, love?” she asks, seeming to break out of a trance.

  I spray Hobnob crumbs down my front in my hurry to answer. “Got a B in geography.” Suddenly it doesn’t seem good enough, though I was happy with it earlier, especially as maps make me feel dizzy and dwarfed. The world’s so huge and I’ve never been outside the Midlands. When the weather forecast does its sweep of the country I feel embarrassingly breathless, unnerved but mesmerized by the scattering of cities, the peep of Europe in the bottom-right corner of the screen.

  “That’s my girl,” Mum says, and I beam. She’s still distracted, though. She’s only nibbled half a biscuit, hasn’t raised an eyebrow about the two I’ve gobbled before dinner.

  “Amy got detention,” I tell her. For extra drama I add: “Her third this week!”

  Mum does an uh-oh face at me and I giggle.

  “What did she do this time?” she asks.

  “Miss Stone found cigarettes in her pocket. But they were actually her nan’s.”

  “Didn’t Miss Stone believe her?”

  “You know Scary Stoney.”

  Mum laughs mid-bite, and I feel like I’ve won a prize. “Stern Stoney,” she says.

  “Shouty Stoney.” I grin.

  We’re just warming to it, thinking of more S-words, when I hear the front door and my heart dives. Even the sound of him coming in and kicking off his shoes infuriates me. He doesn’t knock anymore. Leaves his sneakers next to ours as if he’s one of the family.

  “Hi, girls,” he calls in his posh voice—well, posh compared to us, anyway. He’s from down south, somewhere. I think he moved up here for work. Even though he’s been Mum’s boyfriend for seven months now, and our downstairs neighbor for a few more before that, I know almost nothing about him.

  He strolls over to Mum and kisses her. I can’t help watching, can’t help feeling he’s squeezing her too tight. After they’ve pulled apart, his hand paws her hair.

  “Cup of tea?” he asks, even though surely he can see we’re in the middle of one.

  To my surprise, Mum says, “I’ll have another, thanks, darling.” It annoys me that she calls him “darling” when she calls most people “love.” And that she’s having another cup of tea just because he’s offered.

  “Can’t tempt you?” he asks me, waggling the teapot. He always uses the pot instead of just plonking the bags into the cups like I do. Maybe Mum prefers it that way, doesn’t want to hurt my feelings by saying so. Maybe she’ll pour away the second half of the mug I’ve made.

  I shake my head, mumble something about homework. Mum offers me a smile as I flee the room, but he doesn’t glance at me. He’s staring at Mum, like always.

  5.

  EMMA

  It wasn’t Gilbert’s exercise regime that disturbed Emma’s sleep that night. It wasn’t even the phantom pings of longed-for messages on her phone. Instead it was movement and voices overhead, a dance of disquiet that suggested the Harlows’ world had not settled back to normal since Steph’s fraught phone calls earlier in the evening.

  Emma probably wouldn’t have been sleeping, anyway. Lately her worries were as nocturnal as her hamster, her brain churning with images that would make her reach for the notepad next to her bed, drawing them in thick pen-strokes to try to purge them. She’d always been a compulsive doodler. A scribble in the corner of her schoolwork would escalate into a carnival of figures or a catalog of designs. But, just like back then, there was a spiky anxiousness to the faces and shapes she now sketched.

  She kicked her duvet aside and snatched her dressing gown from its hook. Her phone told her it was ten past midnight. As she padded through her flat, the night turned her furniture into crouching lumps, her framed photos into colorless oblongs and squares. The rattle of Gilbert’s wheel mingled with the sounds from above, creating the impression that he was controlling the neighbors’ conversation, cranking it up, like an organ grinder.

  She hesitated at the under-stairs cupboard. Told herself she was simply checking on her pet. When she opened the cage Gilbert didn’t even pause, trawling onward as though he had targets to reach. There was nothing else to do once she’d topped up his water (and marveled at his total indifference to her), but Emma didn’t move.

  The voices were audible here. As clear as Steph’s had been earlier. There were four now, though: Steph’s and Paul’s were so familiar to her, but different tonight, distorted by anxiety, and it didn’t take long to work out that the other two were police. A shiver rolled down Emma’s spine. She hadn’t been aware of the police arriving: She must’ve slept for a while after all. She’d heard Paul get home around eight thirty p.m.—car door slamming, footsteps shaking the stairs—and she’d been drawn again toward the cupboard: Would he have news of Freya? What would he and Steph say to each other? Would they be pragmatic or panicked, bickering or united? Then her phone had beeped and she’d spun toward the sound, boomeranging back to her own life.

  Only to be disappointed. It hadn’t been the text she’d hoped for. Instead it was an email from one of her favorite suppliers, Mimi, who earned her living trawling antiques fairs and had sold Emma some incredible finds over the years. That jade-green beret with the flame-gold silk lining. The authentic flapper dress with pearls sewn into the black fabric, like stars in folds of night. Emma hadn’t yet confessed to Mimi that she’d had to close her shop—or that there might be a delay in paying her final invoice. So she was still offering her things, this time a collection of 1940s Bakelite bangles in citrus shades. Emma had touched her wrists, imagining the feel of them clinking together along her arm, lime green against burnt orange against sunshine yellow. She knew just how to polish them up, how to stack them asymmetrically for display. Then she’d snapped back to reality, closing down the photo Mimi had sent. Suddenly she’d felt cold and exhausted and had dragged herself to bed without even cleaning her teeth.

  Next time she’d woken she’d felt the change in the building. A sense that the top part of the hous
e was vividly awake. Usually at this hour there was just her dead-of-the-night worries and the yowls of the neighborhood tomcats. Now there was drama from above, a seductive diversion from her thoughts.

  “I suppose she’s been a bit . . . short with me lately,” Steph was saying. “But she’s been stressed about her mocks, and this big tournament . . .”

  “Have you noticed her acting unusually, Mr. Harlow?”

  “Not really.” Paul’s voice had a squeezed quality to it. “But I admit I’ve been kind of distracted myself.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  “You know . . . work . . . life . . .”

  Emma thought of how self-contained Paul often looked when jogging alone by the river, arms pumping at his sides. So different from when he was running loose-limbed with Freya, or laughing as they got into the car. But the same could be said for Steph, when caught unawares. Emma had several times glimpsed her entrenched in thought, blinking out of a reverie when her daughter or husband appeared.

  Emma’s chin jerked when she heard Paul add, “Sweetheart . . . can I talk to the officers alone?”

  He’d spoken so quickly she wasn’t sure she’d heard right. The answering silence felt leaden, even from a floor below.

  “What?” Steph sounded shocked. “Why?”

  “There’s something I need to discuss with them.”

  “Then discuss it with me too!”

  “Steph—”

  “I’m your wife! Freya’s our daughter! This isn’t the time to—”

  “I know.” Paul’s voice was wound even tighter. “Except . . . I need to.”

  Emma imagined what was happening in the spell of quiet that followed. Paul reaching toward Steph, trying to placate her? Steph staring at him in confusion? She could only picture Steph in her suit and Paul in his dark running gear.

  “Will you excuse us a moment, Officers?” Steph’s usual polite tone was suddenly back.

  One of the PCs said, “Of course.” Then there were footsteps followed by more quiet. Emma strained to hear if the police would say anything while Steph and Paul were presumably out of the room. The officers talked in lower voices about how they ought to proceed, given that they couldn’t record Freya as missing for another sixteen hours. “Is something going on here, though,” one of them hissed, only just audible, “with the parents?”

  Before they could say more, the footsteps returned. Except one set kept moving, over Emma, until the slam of a door made the whole house quiver. A louder crash and a startled cry had her leaping up, banging her head. The noise had seemed to come from the stairs, or the hall. She scrambled out of the cupboard and dashed to her front door. Steph was sprawled at the bottom of the staircase, one hand flung against the wall, her fingers as white as the emulsion behind.

  “Oh, God—are you all right?”

  Steph just lay there, her body at one awkward angle, her head at another. She’s snapped her neck, Emma thought in sheer panic. Relief coursed through her (with a snatch of her mum’s voice accusing her of a dramatic imagination) when Steph sat up and began touching her face. Emma realized her neighbor was on the verge of tears: the kind jolted out by a slip or a shock but rooted in something else. Her cardigan had dropped off her shoulders and a large tortoiseshell hair clasp had landed on the stair behind her, its black teeth facing up.

  Emma stepped closer. “Are you hurt?”

  Steph seemed dazed. The foyer lightbulb flickered, adding to the surreal atmosphere. “I don’t think so.” She prodded at her ear and her finger came away stained with blood. Emma had a strange flash of déjà vu, but before she could pin it down, the door to the upstairs flat opened.

  “Steph?” came Paul’s voice. His shadow stretched the length of the stairs, elongated by some trick of the light. “Shit, are you all right?”

  Steph stared ahead, her eyes pink. “I slipped.”

  “You’re bleeding!” Paul rushed down toward her. He was wearing work clothes, but with no shoes, his shirt crumpled. He stalled when he noticed they had company and Emma felt him taking in her blue, bed-matted hair, the Z tattooed on her ankle. Her dressing gown suddenly felt tiny and transparent, like a nightmare in which she realized she was naked in public.

  Paul’s eyebrows knitted but he turned away from her, reaching for Steph’s shoulders. “Darling—”

  Steph moved so his hands grasped the air. “Leave it, Paul. Go back to your private discussion.”

  “Please, Steph. I know it looks bad . . .” As Paul implored his wife he glanced again at Emma, a look that made her feel like an intruder. She began to retreat into her own flat. Before the door swung closed, she saw Paul leaning toward Steph, and Steph jerking away, drawing up her knees, like a threatened creature curling into a ball.

  Something flamed in Emma. A kind of recognition. Her heart boomed as she leaned against the inside of her door, failing to make out their murmuring voices. After a few minutes she turned the latch and opened it a crack. But the foyer was empty, the lightbulb still flickering, Steph’s hair clasp lying on the stairs with wisps of blonde hair in its jaw.

  6.

  CHRIS

  He must have traveled this route a thousand times. Usually in the passenger seat, his feet poised over his extra set of pedals, suburbia conveyor-belting past as his student drove excruciatingly slowly. The same tree-lined streets and chained-up bikes; the same cars in the same drives. Smug joggers and couples pushing elaborate prams.

  Chris also spent a lot of time parked in various spots around Kingston, glimpsing snapshots of other people’s lives while he waited for his learners. Sometimes he’d see a man in a designer suit taking crafty swigs from a hip flask, concealing it when his picture-perfect wife and son emerged from the pristine house behind. Or a homeless guy rummaging through the Waitrose bins, digging out a mushy avocado, shooed away by a self-important store manager. The divide between rich and poor, happy and miserable, genuine and false felt so flimsy around here. And Chris always teetered just the wrong side of the line.

  Today Kingston felt watchful. Almost certainly it was Chris’s imagination, his mood, but he’d sensed it from the moment he’d left home several hours before. Neighbors herding their kids into giant Volvos had seemed to blast glances toward his house—but maybe they’d seen the police parked outside the night before and didn’t know who they’d been visiting. Even now, Chris seemed to catch the eye of every pedestrian as his student, Dylan, steered them haphazardly through the streets. He cut the lesson slightly short, needing to gather his thoughts before the next.

  “Good effort, mate,” he said when they pulled up with a bump of the curb and a final stall of the engine. Dylan was a student at Kingston Uni, and one of the most timid drivers Chris had ever taught. “Just need to work on that hesitation at junctions. The stalling’s getting less frequent, though, hey?”

  Dylan paid him and got out of the car, and Chris watched him trudge toward the student halls, his walk as apologetic as his driving. He wanted to shake him: You’re bloody lucky, you know. Young, free, privileged. Why hide behind that floppy fringe? At the same time, there was a twinge of something—protectiveness, almost. Sadness? Chris gazed at the student block tower and saw people cooking and chatting behind the bare windows, toasting Friday night with their beers. Loneliness shivered through him, like a reflex.

  Shifting into the driver’s seat, he flipped down the visor against the low March sun and headed to Chantry High School. Kids of all ages were swarming out of the gates, unleashed for the weekend. Usually he was glad of his car’s logo, separating him from the parents in 4x4s yet assuring everyone he wasn’t some weirdo lurking outside a school, but today it made him feel conspicuous. He was glad when he spotted Jess’s short legs in black tights weaving toward him. She was riffling through her handbag, checking her phone, oversized sunglasses tobogganing down her nose. Eventually she looked up and scanned for his car. He
waved and moved back into the passenger seat, wondering how many times a week he did this shuffle-over, this relinquishing of control.

  As soon as she got in, he could tell she was upset. She took off her shades and her maroon school blazer but just sat there, staring at her lap.

  “Jess? You okay?”

  She nodded, still didn’t put on her belt.

  “Ready to go? Shall we try a reverse-park again this lesson?”

  At last she pulled her seat so far forward that her nose almost touched the wheel, snapped on her belt, and set off. Jess was usually a pretty vocal driver, shrieking, “Oooh, red light!” or “Where’s second gear gone?” at regular intervals. If he asked her to switch lanes or stop on a hill she’d act aghast: “Chris, really?” She was silent today, though, and when she attempted the reverse-park she ended up jutting out almost perpendicular to the pavement, then clipped the shiny Audi behind. That was the final straw: She threw up her hands and dissolved into tears. “I can’t do this!”

  Chris glanced behind to check there was no visible damage to the other car’s bumper, praying there was no expensive bill to be covered. “Come on, it’s okay. Pull up over there and turn off the engine.”

  She got herself under control and did as he said. They sat for a moment as the car exhaled around them.

  “What’s wrong?” He reached toward her shoulder but thought better of making contact, veering awkwardly away. Jess pressed her fingertips against her cheekbones, leaving oval prints in her makeup. “If you’re worried about bumping that Audi, it’s a poser’s car anyway.”

  One corner of her mouth turned up. Slowly she lowered her hands. “Haven’t you heard?” she said.

  “Heard?”

  “About Freya. Nobody’s seen her since yesterday.”