The House of Whispers

by Anna Kent

  ‘You said Abigail wasn’t pleased?’

  ‘She freaked out. She was really pissed off. We had “words” about it that night. I didn’t know if she was pissed off about me taking the number, or if it was more about it being my mother who’d given it to me. Sort of like it was her saying Abs wasn’t up to the job; or couldn’t do it on her own. She’s always in this power struggle with my mum. I’ve tried to tell her life would be so much easier if she just accepted that Mum means well and went along with things with a smile. But I guess it’s not in her nature. Anyway, the argument certainly wasn’t about her not wanting kids – I have no doubts about that.

  Thirteen

  I never remember the dream itself, just impressions, feelings, a sense of throat-clutching horror, and then the scene remains in my head afterwards.

  A pretty road snaking through a snatch of countryside. On the right, a low hedge and fields that roll as far as the eye can see, blanketing the ground in shades of brown, straw and green. There’s the odd patch of bright yellow, too, vivid in the sunshine; rape fields. The grass verge below the hedge is scattered with wildflowers, some I know the names of, some not: purples, blues, yellows and whites, tangled among the overgrown greens of the various grasses. Daisy, foxglove, cow parsley, forget-me-not. I’m happy that they’ve been allowed to grow. Tree branches hang over the road forming a canopy, shade from the dazzle of the sinking sun. To the left a high hedge flanks the road, taking the twists and turns of this section as if marking the way from this part of town to the next. Above the fields, birds wheel and cruise on the thermals, wings spread wide. The air’s thick with the happy chirruping of even more birds I can’t see; those hidden in the hedges and trees, nestled with their food, their eggs and their babies. The scent of summer hangs in the air; with it, the sense of possibility, of longing, and the potency of adventures still to come.

  But then the light goes flat and grey, as if the sun’s slipped behind a cloud, only it’s more than that and it’s terrifying. Even in the dream, I know something monstrous is coming and I know what it is, and it paralyzes me with terror.

  I wake up trapped in a silent scream, my heart pounding, my limbs pinned to the bed, a film of sweat icy on my skin. I know that, gathered in the hollow at my throat, will be a pool of sweat, deep enough to splash my fingertip. I wait, as I always do, for my heart to slow and my body to unfreeze itself; for reality to impinge once more on my consciousness. I breathe in through my nose, like I’ve learned; I hold the breath while I count to five, then exhale slowly. I repeat the calming breath, then I open my eyes and take in the familiar night-time shapes of the bedroom: the wardrobe; the dresser; Rohan’s T-shirt slung over the easy chair; his work shoes, twin rats, just visible on the floor; the white rectangle of the door; the slug of the door handle. Outside, the moon is bright, backlighting the curtains.

  ‘You’re in bed, at home,’ I say out loud, as I always do, though perhaps not that convincingly. ‘Everything’s fine.’ It’s a mantra, a routine, that means little to me anymore. When I can move again, I turn my head and see the dark bulk of Rohan, fast asleep. My terrors stopped waking him years ago.

  Fourteen

  I’d only just got back to sleep after the dream that night – or so it seemed – when Rohan woke me with a hand placed gently on my arm.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he breathed into my ear. ‘Someone’s here.’

  I froze, every fibre of my body straining to listen. Could I hear breathing? Feel the vibration of a soul? Mentally, I went through the doors and windows I’d locked last night. All of them. Not one left open downstairs – I knew it – not even a slit to let in the breeze. Could someone have climbed up the side of the house and let themselves in through an upstairs window?

  ‘In here,’ Rohan whispered. ‘I saw them. I’m going to check.’

  In one swift movement, he leaped up from the bed. ‘Who’s there?’ he yelled, flicking on his torch and flashing it into the corners of the room. The furniture loomed under the spotlight, discarded clothes making shadows on the walls and floor.

  ‘Mind your eyes,’ Rohan said, and snapped on the bedside lamp. He got up, pulled on a pair of shorts and walked out onto the landing then downstairs, clicking on lights as he went. I tracked his movements down and then back up.

  ‘Did you find anything?’ My skin was clammy. ‘A break-in?’

  ‘Nope. Nothing.’ He slid back into bed and ran his hands through his hair.

  ‘Nothing at all? Maybe it was Alfie. He’s heavy enough these days to make the floorboards creak.’

  ‘No.’ He flopped back onto the pillows. ‘It was more than that. A person. I’m sure of it. I saw her – them – whoever – by the window.’

  I curled my body around Rohan’s to chase away my goosebumps. ‘Are you sure? Are you sure it wasn’t a dream? You know you sometimes get those dreams where you wake up and it seems so real but you’re still dreaming?’

  Rohan inhaled deeply and let the breath out again. ‘I was dreaming… God, I can’t remember. There was a… uh! You know I can feel it but I can’t quite get it. There was a – I was – shit. It’s not coming. But maybe. There’s something. Maybe. Maybe it was a dream.’

  ‘You did have a few beers tonight.’

  Rohan sighed. ‘Yeah, maybe.’

  We fell asleep with our arms wrapped around each other, his breath hot on my hair.

  Despite the broken night, I woke pre-dawn with the desperate urge to paint. Early morning had always been my most creative time and, now I had this purpose, that was all that mattered: the paint, the canvas, and the impressions that swirled in my mind. My fingers were buzzing, desperate to hold my brushes. In my head I was starting to see how the first portrait needed to look; it was as if a three-dimensional image hung in my mind’s eye. I lay still, feeling the shapes and the ideas that were still as thin as gossamer; feeling inside myself the movements that my hand would make with the brush to get those images onto the canvas. It was impossible to nail down these feelings – to conceptualize them – at this point. I knew I simply had to let them absorb into my being. I had to trust the process.

  So, while the feeling was fresh – before any thoughts and practicalities, any discussions about what had happened in the night, could creep in and ruin it – I got up, threw a sweater over my nightshirt and went straight to my easel. I gently traced my finger over the tight fabric, picturing where on the canvas the head would fall, and the proportions and dimensions I might use. Closing my eyes, I inhaled deeply and examined the image in my mind, then I started to mark, very lightly, the key points. Without looking closely at what I’d done, I mixed some acrylics and began the first ghostly layer of the underpainting.

  It was going to be a child, I realized as I worked. A pretty little thing – bright and luminous. I’d play with light to give her the glow of youth. It was hard to make her stand still in my head: she was dancing, happy, carefree, with her whole life arching ahead of her in a glittering path of opportunity. It was the essence of this promise I wanted to capture in her face and in the light of her eyes. I narrowed my own eyes, trying to project the image in my head onto the canvas as I worked. I don’t know how much time passed but it was fully light outside by the time Rohan appeared at the top of the stairs, fastening his cufflinks.

  ‘Morning,’ he said, planting a noisy kiss on my cheek. ‘How are you?’

  ‘Good.’ I didn’t move my eyes from the canvas.

  ‘Good. By the way, I’ve been meaning to tell you: I think we need to get someone in to look at the oak. Did you hear it creaking in the wind last night? I don’t think it’s very healthy. I’m worried it might fall. Can you sort that out?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘Great. By the way, it’s quarter past. Isn’t it hospice day today? Tuesday, right?’

  Now I turned to look at Rohan with the hazy image of the girl still in my eyes, my brain slow to understand the meaning of what he’d said. At the same time, Rohan focused on the canvas.

/>   ‘Oh,’ he said. Then ‘oh’ again. He started to back out of the room. ‘I thought you were doing the dog. Stay here. Keep going. It’s fine, I’ll grab breakfast on the way. And I’ll tell the hospice you’re not coming, shall I?’

  His words snapped me out of my trance. I looked at my watch: 7.15. I was due at the hospice by 8.00.

  ‘Oh my God! No, I’m coming,’ I said, quickly cleaning my brushes.

  ‘They wouldn’t mind if you missed it, just once…’ Rohan said. ‘You’re so conscientious. Surely your…’ he pointed to the canvas with his eyebrows raised, ‘is more important?’

  ‘It’s a commitment,’ I said. ‘I can’t let them down. I need to go.’

  ‘But Abs…’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I know what I’m doing now,’ and I knew I was right. It was as if my subconscious had unblocked in a torrent of image and emotion. Suddenly I could feel the series spanning ahead of me; I could feel where it might take me.

  Rohan was out of the door when he turned back to me. ‘Oh, who is it, by the way? You said a portrait, but you didn’t say who.’

  I paused, trying to find my voice – but my pause was too long for him because he said, ‘Tell me later,’ and disappeared down the stairs.

  ‘No one,’ I said to the empty doorway. ‘No one you know.’

  Fifteen

  Given the strength of their love, and the belief they had in their future plans, Alex and Grace didn’t take long to implode. They limped through the first half of the first term, lurching from visit to visit – but how long can a long-distance relationship survive when you’re eighteen and living two hundred miles apart? I was surprised Alex went through the motions at all.

  Grace, however, was one of those girls who really made an effort. Despite being, from what she said, the academically smarter of the two, she reverted to being a Fifties housewife around him, planning their weekends in meticulous detail: what she’d wear, where they’d go, what they’d eat, how she’d entertain him. To begin with, she’d come back from her time with him fresh-faced and bouncy, but soon the visits started to thin out.

  ‘He’s doing a lot of sport,’ she said. ‘The matches are at the weekends. It’s fine. He’s always thinking of me.’ She tapped her phone and turned it to face me. ‘See? Miss you, Wish I was with you, How are you, gorge? – short for gorgeous, obv. That was just this morning. He sends messages all the time.’

  ‘Why don’t you go up there?’ I suggested. ‘You could watch one of the matches? Take some pom-poms for the touch line?’

  ‘Oh, I offered to go up, but he said there wasn’t much point as I won’t know anyone and it’s all very “teamie”. You know, all that male bonding after. He doesn’t want me to feel left out.’

  Soon, even the messages started to dwindle. As the term continued, Grace’s phone began to sit next to her as we lounged on my bed in the evenings, and the TV was silenced each time a message pinged.

  ‘It’s just you never seem to be around anymore.’ Hats off to her, Grace tried not to whine on the phone. ‘You tell me when’s a good time to call… oh… right. Well, till then.’

  She chucked her phone down. ‘His course is really full-on,’ she said. ‘It’s good he’s throwing himself into it.’

  ‘Medicine’s not such a walk in the park, either,’ I said, but she immersed us back in Glee and that was that until he failed to turn up for a weekend.

  She’d gone to Euston to meet the train he said he’d be on. I could picture her waiting at the barrier as the passengers streamed through, bobbing her head this way and that to see through the throng; straining to glimpse her beloved, who absolutely must have been in the last carriage because almost everyone was off and… oh, I could picture the moment she realized there were no more people coming. The moment she turned, confused, searching the concourse in case she’d somehow missed him. I could see her pulling her phone out of her bag and dialling his number, pressing it to her ear, her head tilted and her index finger blocking the noise of the station out of the other ear as she listened to the tinny ring.

  He didn’t pick up. Just sent a message saying sorry, he missed the train and he’d see her next week. I found all this out only later because, in a very out-of-character act – and without the massage oils, mini scented candles and VS undies she usually had on hand when she was visiting Alex – Grace actually jumped on the next train to Manchester.

  When she got back, she entered my room looking unusually fragile – hollow – as if the essence of her had been snuffed out. Her precious wedding folder was hugged to her chest.

  ‘It’s Alex.’ She barely got the words out before her face collapsed and she threw herself onto my bed, clutching the folder as if it were a life jacket in the middle of the ocean. I sat next to her and rubbed her back and passed her tissues while she sobbed and then, when she could finally speak, she started to explain, between hiccups, a story even I hadn’t seen coming.

  ‘He says I don’t have the head space for him anymore,’ she said, and her tone was scathing, despite the tears. ‘Apparently, I’m “too distracted” and he’s making all the effort coming to London but apparently my head’s not in it anymore.’

  Tears leaked again from under her eyelashes, and she swiped at them with the sleeve of her sweater. She was one of those rare people who could cry prettily. I tried to smile with a modicum of sympathy. I felt for her, of course I did, but at the end of the day, I could have told her he wasn’t going to go the course – even a blind man could see that – and some of us had greater burdens to carry than a failed relationship. But what she said next surprised me.

  ‘Apparently, all I care about these days is my new friends.’ She paused. ‘New friend.’ I stiffened, feeling the shape of blame looming over me; guilt already circling like a shark.

  ‘We had a row,’ Grace said. ‘It was ugly.’ She sniffled. ‘We never fight. We always discuss things. I can’t believe he was being so mean. I didn’t know what triggered it but then he brought up your name and I realized that’s what it was: he was jealous.’

  ‘Jealous?’

  ‘He said you’re monopolizing me and that I should hang out with other people. That it was unhealthy to be so close to one person.’ I opened my mouth to agree – I’d often thought the same – but she carried on. ‘He said I’m always in your room and hanging out with you and he thinks it’s unhealthy.’ She paused. ‘He said you’re weird.’

  ‘Weird?’

  ‘I know! He said you’re morose and a loner and it wouldn’t surprise him if you were depressed. I said, what would he know? And, surely, if you were depressed you needed a friend more than ever, but he started going on about it rubbing off onto me and how I had to be careful, and I should be out living it up with lots of friends not moping about with you. He said you were like a drain; a “joy-sucker”, Abs!’ Another gulp and sniff. ‘So I said I wasn’t going to choose my friends for him and it was up to me to do what I wanted to do while I was at uni, and if it bothered him so much, he didn’t have to be my boyfriend.’ Her face crumpled. ‘And he said, “Fine.”’

  I exhaled loudly. ‘Whoa.’

  ‘You should have seen the look on his face. I’ve never seen him look like that. All hard and flinty. I could see it was over. He made me choose – and I chose you. You need me more.’ She convulsed with another sob. ‘My God, two years together. All our plans ripped up. My future ruined!’ She squeezed the folder tighter. ‘He was my first love. The love of my life.’

  She stopped sobbing and her eyes met mine. Without words, and despite the fact that Alex was always going to dump her, the message was clear: it’s all your fault.

  Transcript of interview with Mr Rohan Allerton, husband of Abigail Allerton: 20 December 2019

  ‘You mentioned nightmares? Am I right in thinking Abigail has been having regular, or recurring, nightmares?’

  [Sighs] ‘Yes. She’s had them as long as I’ve known her but, despite her waking up every night, she won’t tell me
what they’re about, or what might be causing them. Trust me, I’ve tried.’

  ‘So what happens?’

  ‘Well, that’s it in a nutshell. One minute we’re both fast asleep, the next she’s sitting up with her hands out in front like she’s trying to stop something. Other times she’s still lying down but soaked in sweat and with her eyes wide open, but there’s usually a scream of some sort. I mean, yeah, it’s not easy to live with.’

  ‘Have you tried to tackle the subject with her in any way?’

  [Sighs] ‘I tried to get her to go for therapy, but she refused, so I tried asking her myself, you know, like a therapist might. I asked “open-ended” questions in a “non-confrontational” way, like when we were walking side by side. Things like, “Did you always have them? When did they start? What are they of? Did anything in particular trigger them?”

  ‘But she’s an expert in shutting me down. Trying to talk to her when she doesn’t want to talk is like playing that childhood trampoline game “crack the egg”. Do you remember that game? She puts up this protective shell over herself, and there’s nothing I can do to crack it open.’

  ‘I see. So the nightmares continued?’

  ‘Not for lack of trying on my part. I did everything I could think of to help her. I made her read before bed. I made milky drinks and herbal teas, massaged her back and ran warm baths for her. I bought a lavender pillow spray and I even got aromatherapy candles – which she moved to the bathroom. None of it seemed to have any effect. So I did what anyone who values their sanity would do: I learned to sleep with earplugs in; I like the foam ones that you roll up and squeeze into your ear. Boots often have them on three for the price of two. I get through a lot. They don’t block out everything, nor do they stop me becoming aware of her thrashing but, eventually, my body learned to wake briefly – to recognize that she was as all right as she could be – and to fall back asleep. I’ve always been a deep sleeper.’