Girl Seven

by Hanna Jameson

This time I bypassed Jensen McNamara’s building and went up to my old block. It looked like it had been refurbished, or at least repainted.

  I tried to guess where the Williams kids might have lived, and buzzed a couple of flats. After some silences, a man answered.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Hi, is it OK if you let me in? I forgot my—’

  ‘Which flat, love?’

  ‘Well...’ Of all the people who could have answered I had to get a fucking inquisitive one. ‘Flat eighteen. Actually, I used to live in flat eighteen.’

  He didn’t say anything for what seemed like a long time.

  ‘I’m looking for Mrs Williams,’ I said, hoping the elaboration would loosen him up. ‘I just want to talk to her, or Mr Williams...’

  ‘Oh, child... You’d better come up here,’ he replied. ‘Flat six.’

  I was buzzed in.

  I almost turned and walked away, spooked by his tone of voice, but my bloody-minded need for information made me go inside. The interior was different. It may have been repainted but a stain had been left in the air that was still fresh and raw despite the years that had gone by. It was as if the scene had been replaying itself in my absence, and I was just here for another rerun.

  There were no broken syringes under my feet, and no graffiti on the walls, or blood on the stairs.

  I only had to go to the second floor.

  What had they done with my flat now? Burnt it? Boarded it up? Or, worse, rehoused another family in there? If there was a new family, would they even know what had happened?

  The door of flat six was ajar and he was waiting for me, peering through the gap. I recognized him and the name Angus came to mind. I didn’t remember him ever speaking to anyone, but I’d seen the face before. In fact, I think I’d rarely seen it in its entirety, only in fragments in half-open doors and curtained windows.

  ‘Oh, it really is you...’ He didn’t move as I approached.

  ‘Hey.’ I waved, unsure of what else to do. ‘Yeah, it’s me.’

  ‘Come in, come in.’

  He shuffled backwards behind the door to let me inside, totally hiding himself from sight. It crossed my mind that walking into a random strange man’s flat wasn’t the best idea, especially as no one knew where I was, but he looked old and physically wasted. I reckoned I might win in a straight fight, if it came to that.

  I didn’t attempt to look at him as I came in. He would show himself when he felt like it. The inside of his flat was smoky: tobacco, weed and incense. In the corner of the living room was an old-fashioned sprawling red sofa, with a regal pattern like medieval wallpaper.

  There was a suspicious-looking ginger kitten darting around the room next to the wall.

  ‘I’m so very sorry.’

  I turned.

  He was skinny enough to be obscured by small objects, with gaunt features, no hair and at least two rings on every one of his fingers.

  ‘My name’s Angus.’ He extended a shaky hand.

  I shook it and noticed that his fingernails were longer than most women’s, and filed to rough points.

  ‘I’m Seven. I lived... upstairs.’

  ‘I’m so very sorry,’ he said again, keeping hold of my hand.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Please... sit.’

  I didn’t want to, but for fear of seeming rude I backed on to the edge of the red sofa.

  ‘Is the Williams family still here?’ I asked. ‘Or maybe just the parents? I’d really like to speak to them.’

  ‘Oh, they’re gone. They’re gone.’

  He crouched, rather than sat, across the room from me, directing all of his words at the carpet through the protective barrier of his hands. It must have taken an extraordinary amount of courage for him to let me inside.

  ‘What? Where did they go?’

  ‘I don’t know, they just... went.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘After.’

  The movie posters all over the walls made the living room seem even smaller, trapping heat. There was Pulp Fiction, The Lost Boys, Labyrinth, The Goonies...

  ‘After I left, you mean?’ I said.

  ‘No, after... after...’

  ‘After one of their kids died?’

  ‘One of them,’ he whispered through a hole between his fingers. ‘This building is bad luck. It keeps its evil all stored up, in the walls. That’s why they tried to repaint it, see...’

  He giggled and halted, as if the sudden action had shocked him into silence.

  My head ached.

  ‘The oldest died, right?’ I pressed on.

  ‘The oldest boy, Nate. Not long after you left this cursed place, child.’

  I looked around me and felt oppressed by the eyes of the posters. ‘I’ve never been into superstition. How did Nate die?’

  ‘He was shot.’

  ‘A drive-by.’

  ‘The boy was only fourteen, same age as Nate. We’re turning the young into soldiers; what chance do they have?’

  I thought of my sister and the glass embedded in my father’s hand. What chance did any of us have if someone wanted us dead more than we wanted to stay alive? Through sheer force of will you could end anyone’s life, at any time. It wasn’t until that day almost three years ago that I’d understood the truth of how transient and abrupt all our lives are. If you wanted to stay alive more than someone wanted you dead, then that was all that mattered.

  ‘Did anyone find out why? Was he mixed up in a gang or something?’

  Angus shook his head, twitched and shook his head again. ‘No.’

  ‘No, no one knows why? Or no, he wasn’t in a gang?’

  He continued to shake his head. ‘No one knows. They weren’t in gangs, the children round here.’

  I wasn’t so sure, but it could easily have been a case of mistaken identity. What I wanted was a connection; anything to hang on to that proved all the deaths in this building were connected.

  The kitten leapt up on to the back of Angus’s chair and stared at me.

  ‘Did the police speak to you at any time?’ I asked, glaring at it.

  ‘I didn’t see anything.’

  ‘Yeah, but did the police—’

  ‘That’s what I told them, both times.’

  I sighed. ‘So officers came to speak to you both times?’

  ‘Yes... Yes.’

  ‘Just the officers? Did a man come to see you as well? Not a police officer, just a random guy?’

  He hesitated and stopped shaking his head. ‘A man.’

  I almost hadn’t wanted to hear it. ‘Just the one, on his own? What was his name?’

  ‘... I don’t know. I thought he was a detective. A plain-clothes detective. He spoke to everyone. When he left, my tabby... Kellogg died. Just had a seizure and died right there, by you.’

  ‘Maybe the man was cursed too?’ I said, attempting to sound lighthearted and failing.

  ‘No, it’s the building. It’s the walls.’

  Angus chanced a look at me, twitched, giggled, and fell silent.

  I didn’t want to kill her: the cat. I don’t imagine a child could understand the concept of wanting to kill something at that age, when death was still something abstract that was talked about in euphemisms.

  The cat was called Audrey Hepburn. She was seven years old and she had a bad leg from where she’d fought with a fox one night. She had a soft brown coat and rubbed her cheek against your knuckles when you stroked her.

  Looking after pets is more exciting when you’re young. When we visited Grandmother in London in the holidays, I was allowed to treat her like my own pet. Caring for an animal, feeding it and playing with it and brushing its fur, all felt like tiny rehearsals for being an adult.

  The logic in my mind was clear. So clear. I took the painkillers that I saw my grandmother take from the bathroom and put them in Audrey Hepburn’s food, breaking up the little soluble pills into tiny powder pieces to hide them amongst the jellied meat and biscuits. If I did that, Audrey Hepb
urn’s leg would hurt less.

  I don’t remember the details so much, just a vague sense of satisfaction at my good deed, and playing in the garden, and later the cat throwing up all over the kitchen and a trip to the vet and then Audrey Hepburn didn’t come back.

  Mum was cleaning up the vomit, shaken and white. She didn’t look at me so my father took me back into the garden and distracted me.

  My grandmother slapped me and thrust the empty pill box in my face and I cried and I cried and I cried. Not just because of the shock of being struck – my parents had never even tapped me on the wrist – but because I didn’t understand what was happening. Grandmother said Audrey Hepburn was dead. Dead. It sounded a large and ominous word even then. My parents said that she’d had to go away to a holiday resort for poorly cats, or some shit like that. Cat heaven.

  Grandmother didn’t speak to me again, unless it was in a strained and artificial voice put on to appease my parents. We used to spend most summers and Christmas Days with her, but never again after that. Mum visited her alone usually.

  It wasn’t deliberate. I knew it wasn’t. But Grandmother said, ‘The bad will out,’ so maybe if deep down you were evil, it didn’t really matter if it was deliberate or not?

  10

  I almost didn’t feel like me, walking to Noel’s flat the next day, hoping that his wife, Caroline, wouldn’t be there for some freak reason. I would never have thought I was stupid enough to try and do it. And it was stupid. It wasn’t brave. It helped, as I walked, if I thought of it as a video game; something that had no direct life-or-death effect on my life.

  It was getting too hot for jackets but my leather one was like a comforter. I’d feel too exposed talking to Noel in some skimpy outfit trying to find an excuse to get into his private computer.

  I didn’t like myself if I thought too much about it.

  I buzzed my way into Noel’s building by pressing all the other buttons at random, and took the lift to the eighth floor.

  ‘Fuuuuuuck,’ I muttered to myself as I knocked on his door.

  There was no sound, for a while. I hoped that I’d judged the day wrong and went to walk away when he answered.

  He looked about as happy to see me as a police officer or Jehovah’s Witness. I hated to admit it but he also looked better than I had seen him for a while. The lines around his eyes were less pronounced and his skin was more youthful. I could tell he hadn’t been drinking much or taking as many drugs.

  ‘Seven, what...? Hi.’

  I felt like the scum of the earth, but he was managing to be almost as big a jerk as me.

  ‘Can I talk to you?’ I asked.

  ‘Um...’

  ‘Sorry, I wasn’t asking. Did I sound like I was?’

  With a patronizing smile, I opened his door and walked past him into the flat. It looked different; more cluttered. Not everything had been put away or painstakingly cleaned. I could tell that Caroline had been living here again and it pissed me off even more that it hurt a bit. I’d never been under the illusion that he would leave her, but I’d never had her paraded around in front of me like this.

  His laptop was on the dining table, open.

  I pulled out one of the chairs around it and sat down.

  ‘Can I get you anything?’ Noel asked, sounding exasperated.

  ‘An explanation as to why you blew me off the other day would be nice.’ I looked pointedly at his wedding ring.

  His hand hovered in the air as if he were about to hide it from view, but then he rested it on the back of a chair. ‘I was going to tell you about it, but it just didn’t come up. I hadn’t seen you for a while and... Caroline doesn’t come running at my beck and call. How was I meant to know she’d come back?’

  ‘Because she’s come back twice now and you keep saying it’s the last time.’ I threw up a hand. ‘Look, Noel, I never asked you to leave her. I never asked you that or thought you would, even when you were crying all over me that she’d walked out again and all that shit, so... can I get a little respect here, please?’

  To my surprise, he didn’t become defensive. Instead he pulled out another chair and sat down also.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Let’s talk, if you want.’

  I’d hoped it wouldn’t be this easy. I needed an excuse to pretend to dissolve into hysterics and make him leave the room to make me tea or something. If anger wasn’t going to be on the cards, I was going to have to play for emotional devastation. I forced myself to think about my sister, and tightened my face to mimic a dramatic repression of tears.

  He tensed. ‘You think I haven’t been... fair.’

  I hated sounding this pathetic, but it was necessary.

  ‘Did you even care about me at all?’ I said, doing my best to sound strained.

  ‘Jesus, of course! I mean...’ He lowered his voice. ‘Of course, it’s just... It would kill Caroline if she knew. I mean, that would be it.’

  There were no photos of them together in his flat. I had another look around for some while he’d been forcing out the last couple of sentences, but there was still nothing. Whether they were together or not there was never any photographic evidence of it, not even a self-satisfied out-of-date wedding photo. I wondered if they both had Facebook accounts with albums of posed couple photos. Maybe that was where all their public affection was?

  I glanced at the laptop. ‘So, you think she’ll stay this time?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. If I can stop... drinking and... well, drinking.’

  I’d never seen him ashamed before, but that changed when he talked about alcohol.

  ‘If I hadn’t come and seen you today, were you just going to ignore me until I got the message?’

  He looked at his hands and shrugged. ‘Honestly... I’m not proud of it. I might have done. I’d have... Christ, I’d have ignored you right now and run away if I could. Is that sad? That’s fucking sad. What a prick.’

  ‘At least you’re upfront about that.’

  ‘Being a prick?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I went to take a packet of cigarettes out of my bag and hesitated. ‘Am I even allowed to smoke in here now?’

  ‘No, she, er... doesn’t like it.’

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘Smoke out of the window.’

  ‘Jesus... Pussy-whipped.’ I put the packet away again, keeping the laptop in the corner or my eye, and sniffed. ‘Fuck, I’m not going to lie... This sucks.’

  ‘We’re friends, aren’t we?’

  ‘Are we?’ I saw the chance for an escalation and took it, my eyes welling up. ‘Are we really gonna be friends, Noel? Caroline’s just gonna let us hang out and, what, go... fucking bowling or something? Carry on going to art galleries and shit like nothing happened and you’re not married and... not even allowed to smoke in your own fucking flat?’

  I dropped my bag and cigarettes contemptuously by my feet, put my head in my hands and started crying.

  ‘Seven... Shit.’ He got up and stood over me, flapping, not sure whether to touch me. ‘Please, come on, stop crying. You shouldn’t cry over me anyway—’

  ‘You’re not going to fire me, are you?’ I looked up at him with tear-streaked eyes, smudged mascara, and his expression was one of sheer terror. ‘Am I going to be able to carry on working?’

  ‘Yes! God, yes, Seven, I’m not going to fire you. Come on.’ He put his hands on my shoulders and I continued to sob for a while.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, thinking that I should be awarded a fucking Oscar. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s got into me... I just... I really care about you, you know.’

  For a moment the crying almost became laughter, but I pulled it together. I could only imagine I had dragged Noel into his worst living nightmare.

  ‘Can I...?’ he ventured, giving my shoulders a squeeze. ‘Shall I make you some tea or... coffee?’

  Fucking yes.

  I nodded, shielding my eyes.

  ‘Yeah, I’d really like that.’ I clutched his hand for go
od measure. ‘I’d really like that.’

  He never fucking remembered that I didn’t drink coffee.

  With a barely audible sigh of relief, Noel left me and crossed the living room into his kitchen, shutting the door behind him. I could see him leaning against the side and taking some deep breaths, psyching himself up for the return, making the coffee as slowly as possible.

  Doing my best to block out the horrific reality of the danger I was in, I slid the laptop towards me, found my way on to his day-by-day planner that was open next to his emails, and scrolled through it for any names.

  The name ‘Issa’ came up a couple of times over the last fortnight. I clicked on one of his emails and saw nothing but a date and time. No place.

  I paused, trying to hear anything over the sound of the kettle boiling that might warn me if Noel was coming back in.

  Nothing.

  I started scrolling again but everything else in his email history seemed innocuous. I wiped my eyes and searched his inbox again for the name Issa. This time I opened a couple of emails between Noel and Ronnie, discussing a drop-off. Issa was copied in. Full name Issa Taggart.

  I noticed his most recent email was from Caroline and paused, a lump in my throat.

  A cupboard opened and shut in the kitchen and I jumped, snapping back from the laptop.

  The top of Noel’s head appeared, tentatively, around the half-open door.

  ‘Sorry, I don’t remember how you take it?’

  I almost couldn’t speak, my heart pounding and jaw locked. ‘Um... white. Sugar.’

  He nodded and disappeared again, not even glancing at the laptop. The kettle had boiled, so I had a few minutes. I knew it was an idiotic thing to do, only more likely to get me caught, but I clicked on the email from Caroline anyway.

  ‘Heeeey, going to be late home. Hitting gym with the girls. I’m so proud of you for everything you said this morning! You can do it. :) I love you I love you I love you! xxxx’.

  Fuck, it was horrible.

  I read it again, when I shouldn’t even have let myself read it the first time.

  As in if in a trance I went to his Sent Messages to find a reply.

  ‘I mean it. I love you I love you I love you. N xx’.

  He’d never written like that to me. It was as if I was reading correspondence from another human being entirely.