by Adam Croft
This isn’t the way it was supposed to happen. Not like this. It has to be done the right way.
Don’t get me wrong. I admire your courage. You’re finally stepping up to the mark. But you’re not thinking for yourself. You’re still beholden to that pathetic little weasel you used to call your boyfriend. That was all his idea, wasn’t it? That’s why you were in his car. The silver Hyundai Getz. FD06 TRG. I’d know it a mile off.
You see, I know a lot more than you think I do, Alice. I knew all about you before you even set eyes on me. Before I even spoke to you. Because that’s how this works. That’s how this has to work. You do understand that, don’t you?
You’ve come so far. But that was stupid. She wouldn’t have done that.
She knew how to play her hand. And she wouldn’t have gone running to her ex-boyfriend for help. That is not the sign of a strong, independent woman, Alice. That is a sign of regression. You’ve gone backwards, slipped back to what you were before.
I’m disappointed in you.
I’m disappointed in myself.
I thought we could do better than this. I thought we were really heading in the right direction. You were following all the right moves, doing all the right things. All the things I’d predicted you’d do.
It’s easy to predict what someone will do when you’ve studied them as closely as I’ve studied you. As closely as I’ve studied your behaviour, your patterns. And there’s a hell of a lot of fucking patterns there, Alice. A lot of patterns. You’re one big pattern. A creature of habit.
Deep down, anyway.
But I know there’s something still deeper than that. Something that resonates. That’s what’s driving you, Alice. But only when you’re in control. Only when you’re making the decisions. Only when you’re thinking clearly.
You haven’t left me with many choices now.
I need to ask you a question. Is this the way you want to play the game? Because if it is, we can certainly play it that way. Absolutely fine with me. No problemo. You just carry on. But bear in mind I’ll be playing the same game as you regardless. And you don’t want to see me playing that particular game. I prefer it my way, and I think you will too.
I’m watching. I’m watching closely, waiting to see what your next move is. How you react. How you respond. Because that will steer this whole sorry saga. That’ll show the direction we move in, where we go, what happens. It will define the endgame.
The choice is yours. You’re the one in control, Alice. You have to be the one in control. That’s the whole point of all this. She was always in control. She always knew what was the right thing to do. She never wavered. And she never relied on other people to get it done for her.
I know you can do this. I know you can kick out on your own. You have to. You have to prove me right and prove yourself right. I need to know her spirit lives on.
Because if I’m wrong — if her spirit isn’t within you — I’m going to be very disappointed, Alice.
And you won’t like me when I’m disappointed.
52
Kieran parks his car up outside my house and we just sit there. Minutes pass, but neither of us says anything. Both of us knows what the other is thinking, because that’s what we’re thinking too.
‘What are you going to do?’ he asks me.
‘I’m going to go inside and get absolutely shitfaced,’ I reply. And the weird thing is, it’s not that I want to drink to forget, or drink to de-stress. It’s because I no longer give a fuck. I want to down a bottle of wine and enjoy it. Because I deserve to. Because whatever comes next is not going to be enjoyable, so I might as well make the most of it.
‘Are you sure that’s wise?’
I shrug. ‘Probably not, but when did wisdom ever do me any good?’
‘When did drink ever do you any good,’ he says, more as a statement than a question. He pauses for a moment. ‘Do you want me to join you?’
Any other time, that would be an easy question to answer. But the truth is both yes and no. Yes, I’d love a drinking buddy. Especially one who knows what I’m going through right now. But I don’t think it would be a good idea to have Kieran in the house when we’ll both be drinking. That didn’t work out too well last time.
‘I tell you what,’ I say. ‘Why don’t we go out? Got to be more fun than sitting at home on my own drinking. We can grab a bite to eat first, too.’
He seems to consider this for a moment. I can tell what’s going through his mind. At least this way he’ll be able to keep an eye on me, make sure I don’t drink too much, ensure that I’m safe.
‘Yeah, alright,’ he says. ‘I’ll run back and get changed. Pick you up in an hour?’
‘Nope,’ I reply, as I get out of the car. ‘You’re not driving. You’re going to enjoy yourself too. I’ll meet you in town.’
I close the car door before he can protest, and head into my house.
Almost immediately, I feel less safe. I’m glad I’ll be going out again in an hour. It sounds utterly bizarre that I should feel safer walking the streets than I do in my own home, but at least there’s safety in numbers. Here, alone, I’m vulnerable. And he’s been in here at least twice before.
The thought gives me the creeps, but with the new locks on the doors I feel safer. Still not safe, though.
I wonder what it will take to make me feel completely safe again.
And the scary thing is, I think I know the answer.
53
We opt for a pub dinner. Cheap and cheerful, with the added advantage that it won’t look or feel like a date. Just two friends, out getting some food.
Afterwards, we head on to a couple of town-centre bars. I try to steer Kieran away from Zizi’s, but we pay a flying visit to Bar Chico.
The alcohol makes me feel more comfortable. It gives me confidence. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an aggressive or loud drunk. I’m not someone who gets bolshy or arrogant after a couple of drinks. It’s just not my style. But I worry less about stuff. Things wash over me. I’m happier, more confident.
The drinks start to flow, and before I know it we’re doing shots. At the start of the night I was secretly half-tempted to take it easy, but that’s out of the question now. The more I drink, the less I care. And the less I care, the happier I am.
Eventually, the bars start to thin out as people head home, and the time bells start to ring. Kieran walks me home, like the gentleman he is. I make a point of telling him I’m not going to sleep with him and I’m not even going to invite him in. I try to make it sound jokey and friendly, but I don’t think he takes it that way. It’s fine. He’ll have forgotten I said it by the morning.
Like the gentleman he is, Kieran leaves me at the end of my front path and staggers off back down the road.
My head’s swimming. I sit on the floor in my hallway, enjoying the cooler air at this lower level. The walls seem to be moving, and my wallpaper has an odd watery effect going on. I don’t feel sick, but I can feel my heart racing. That’ll be the shots. It’s making me anxious. I know it’s body feeding mind, but when did logic and common sense ever matter?
I pull myself up to my feet and walk through to the living room, with the intention of flopping out on the sofa. No, that’d be a bad idea. Then I’d fall asleep and wake up here in a few hours with a stiff neck and a raging headache. I need to stay awake, and for that I need to stay standing.
So I stand in the middle of my living room, thinking that I should probably go and down a couple of pints of water. But that would involve moving. Standing here is nice. I like it. I can get water after. I just need to stay awake. If I go to sleep now, I’ll have one hell of a hangover in the morning.
As I stand in the middle of the room, my gaze is drawn back to the space on the mantelpiece where that photo frame stood. It’s almost like a magnetic attraction. I can’t avoid it. It’s the elephant in the room.
Even though there’s nothing there, the space still taunts me. Just knowing that he was there, that he ha
d his grubby mitts on it. Before I can realise what I’m doing, I pick up the other two photo frames and hurl them at the wall. The wood cracks and splinters, and one of the frames breaks into two right-angled pieces. The glass smashes, and sharp fragments fall to the floor. The wallpaper is dented. I don’t give a fuck.
It felt good.
The first thing I notice is the blood pumping in my ears as I bend down and tip the wooden coffee table over. Magazines and books fly through the air, sounding like a flock of birds taking off. The sofas follow, and everything ends up in a heap in the middle of the room.
I don’t know why. But it works. It’s a release of tension.
I don’t give a fuck about how I’m going to sort it all out. It’s a means to an end.
I stroll into the kitchen, walking in a straight line for the first time in a few hours, pull out the cutlery drawer and tip the whole lot out onto the floor. The knives and forks clatter onto the lino with a terrible din, a few of them bouncing and hitting my feet and legs. I don’t care.
After a few seconds, I start to calm down a little. I look down at my feet, and I notice that a piece of cutlery — possibly a knife — has nicked the inside front of my leg, just above the ankle. There’s a tiny rivulet of blood making its way slowly down towards my foot.
I snort loudly, grab a bottle of water from the cupboard and head upstairs to bed.
54
The thin shaft of light hits me right between the eyes, and I curse myself for not closing my curtains properly before going to bed last night. That’s the least of my worries, though. Within a split second I pick up the vile taste in my mouth. It’s a taste that tells me the previous evening was heavily driven by alcohol, as if the pounding headache wasn’t a giveaway in itself.
Why do I do this? Why? I didn’t need to drink. I could have just pulled myself together, got my head in the right place and enjoyed a nice quiet evening in front of the telly. Why did I feel the need to go out and get absolutely shitfaced?
I try to think back. I went out with Kieran. We got some food, hit a few bars, then I...
The anger rises up inside me again, almost like a Pavlovian reaction. Just remembering what I did when I got home last night allows all those feelings and emotions to resurface. But they’re very quickly replaced by regret and the knowledge that I’m going to have to tidy it all up.
The house needed cleaning anyway. I’ve been letting things like that slip a bit recently. But I hadn’t expected to be upending furniture and emptying out cutlery drawers when I got home last night. My head pounds as I remember the racket the knives and forks made as they clanged together and fell in a heap on the floor. Why did I do that? What was I hoping to achieve? I guess I was releasing tension, making myself feel better. But what have I become when the only way I can deal with stress is to destroy things? Then again, aren’t we all guilty of that?
I roll over and look at my alarm clock. 9.36am. That’s one hell of a lie-in. I probably didn’t get to bed until about 1.30, though, so it’s about right. Eight hours usually does me fine. But today I reckon I could quite easily stay in bed for the rest of the day. I’ve got a house to tidy, though, and I feel as though I need to punish myself by getting up and doing it now. I don’t know if it’s healthy for me to be guilt-tripping myself, but there we go.
Getting out of bed is a mission. I tell myself I’ll go downstairs, tidy up the mess I made last night, then go back to bed. The rest can wait. Having a house that’s a bit untidy is one thing, but if someone calls round and finds my furniture in a heap in the middle of the living room and my cutlery all over the kitchen floor, I’m going to have some explaining to do.
I pick last night’s dress off the floor and put that on. It doesn’t matter. I’ll put it in the wash when I come back up.
It smells faintly of sambuca, as if I spilt some down it at some point last night. There’s another smell too, which I can’t quite define. Something musty, almost smoky.
I yawn, pick up the bottle of water from my bedside table and slug half of it back without stopping for breath. Then I set off on my long, torturous walk downstairs.
I decide I’m probably best off starting with the living room. But when I get in there, something isn’t quite right.
I stand for a moment, my brain not making any sense of what I’m seeing. My sofas are exactly where they should be, at right-angles to each other, in the corner of the room, with the standard lamp and drinks table between them. The coffee table is in the middle of the room, magazines and books stacked neatly on top of it.
I rush through into the kitchen, expecting to see the cutlery all over the floor, but there’s nothing. I fling the drawer open, and there it all is, neatly placed in the right compartments, as if nothing ever happened.
But I know something happened. I did it.
I go back into the living room and look at the mantelpiece. The picture frames are gone, but the dent is still there in the wallpaper where one hit the wall. I walk over and crouch down, looking in the pile of the carpet for any fragments of glass. I can’t find any.
I push myself back onto my feet and head back into the kitchen, where I open the pedal bin. The photo frames are in there, a couple of large shards of glass nestled on top of them. This is exactly where I would have put them too, if I had tidied up. But did I? I don’t remember doing it. No, I’m sure I didn’t. I just grabbed a bottle of water and went upstairs.
I look down at my feet. I remember something catching the inside of my leg when the cutlery clattered to the floor. It drew blood.
Yes. It’s still there. I didn’t just dream the whole thing.
I follow my train of thought from that moment onwards. At that point, the living room was a tip and there was cutlery all over the kitchen floor. I can see that vividly. And then... Then I took a bottle of water from the cupboard — I can see myself doing it — and I went upstairs. The next time I came back downstairs was just now. I know it was.
So what the fuck has happened?
55
I rush over to the front door and pull the handle down. The door opens. It was unlocked.
Did I lock it last night? I must have done. I always do. I’m so security conscious at the moment. But then again, I’d had a lot to drink. Can I guarantee that I locked the door? To be perfectly honest, I can’t guarantee anything. My memory has patches in it, as it tends to when I’ve drunk this much. I must have locked it. I’m obsessive about it. And I’ve been even more careful recently.
I rush back up the stairs and grab my phone from the bedside table. I fumble to unlock it, then call Kieran.
He seems to take an age to answer. I can only assume he’s not feeling brilliant this morning either. Eventually, though, he does answer.
‘Hey. What’s up?’ he says.
‘Nothing. Listen, did you come in the house with me last night?’ I know he didn’t — at least I think I do — but I need to check anyway.
‘No, I waited at the end of the path. Why?’
‘But did you see me go inside and lock the door?’
He hesitates for a moment as he thinks. ‘Uh, I saw you go in, but I don’t know if you locked it or not. How would I know from the outside?’
He’s got a point. All I can do is rely on my own memory to be correct.
‘How long did you wait after I went in?’ I ask.
‘Wait? I didn’t. Why would I stand out in the cold looking at your closed door? Once you were in, I went home.’
‘Did you see anyone around? Anyone walking down the street, sitting in a parked car, anything?’
‘No, why?’
He answers a little too quickly for my liking.
‘Are you sure?’
‘I think I would’ve remembered, Alice. The streets weren’t exactly thronging at that time of night. What’s this all about? Has something happened?’
I swallow hard and try to think about how to word this. In the end, I avoid it completely.
‘No, nothing. I heard so
me noises outside after you went and wondered what it was. Just scared me a bit, you know, with everything that’s been going on recently. And after a couple of drinks my brain does some weird things, so I wanted to check everything was okay.’
Kieran’s silent for a couple of moments. ‘So why did you ask about the front door?’
Shit. ‘Hmmm?’
‘The front door. You asked me if I saw you lock it.’
‘Oh. Yeah. I just wanted to check. Because I’d had a couple of drinks, and, y’know...’
‘Did someone get in?’
‘No. Why?’
‘So why does it matter whether you locked it or not?’
I really don’t know what to say. I’ve dug myself into a hole and I can’t get out. ‘I dunno. Just wanted to check, make sure I wasn’t going mad. But it’s fine. Really. You got any plans for today?’
I desperately want to get off the phone and disappear. I don’t know where, but I need to go. At the same time, though, I can’t just leave this conversation like this. I need to make it normal again.
‘Getting rid of this bloody hangover, mainly. But you’ve got me worried now. What’s this about the door?’
I sigh. ‘I came downstairs this morning and it was unlocked. Don’t worry about it. I’d had a few drinks and my mind’s been in some weird places recently, so I probably just forgot to lock it. Honestly, don’t worry.
‘Right,’ he says. He doesn’t sound convinced, but has clearly noticed that I want to change the subject. ‘You got much planned today then?’
‘Nothing much,’ I say, trying to sound as normal as possible. ‘Got a bit of housework to do. Then I’ll probably go back to bed, to be honest. I doubt I feel much better than you.’
He laughs, and I tell him I’ll speak to him later.
As soon as I’m off the phone, I start pacing the living room. I can’t escape the truth: I no longer feel safe here. Not only that, but I can’t feel safe here. Even with the new locks, all evidence points to the fact that he’s still finding a way in, or I can’t trust myself to lock my own doors at night. I don’t know which prospect is scarier. But right now I can’t entertain either of them. He’s been here. Last night. I know he has. There’s no way in hell I’d be able to tidy up the kitchen and living room from the state it was in and not know about it. Not when I remember making the mess so vividly.
