‘Is that Sarah?’ I hear Martin’s voice, and a moment later he is rounding the corner, a drill in his hand.
I hastily swallow my disappointment. Maybe it’s for the best.
‘Whoa!’ says Martin. ‘Love the hair!’
I laugh.
‘Really?’ says Miriam, pretending to be annoyed. ‘I only have to say I want my ends trimmed and you launch a major protest, but when Sarah gets all her hair cut off, you love it?’
Martin chuckles. Then he remembers the drill in his hand.
‘Oh yeah,’ he says. ‘I dug this out for you. As promised.’
He holds it aloft for a moment, then deposits it by the front door so that I’ll remember to take it when I leave.
‘Great,’ I say. ‘Thanks.’
Martin is always keen to lend a hand when I need something done around the house, but I prefer to take care of things myself. I like banging nails into walls and drilling holes. You perform a simple action and get a clear, predictable outcome. You create order. You get things under control. I love order and control.
‘So?’ Martin says, grinning. ‘Have you got something to tell us?’
‘What do you mean?’ I ask.
‘Don’t they say that when a woman cuts her hair, there’s a man involved?’
‘Martin!’ Miriam exclaims in horror.
She knows I’ve been alone since Philip’s disappearance. She thinks I need protecting.
‘It’s all right,’ I say. ‘Martin’s never known when to mind his own business.’
He grins again. ‘How’s the training going?’ he asks.
‘Fine.’
I trained for my first marathon with Martin. Since then he’s stopped running because he has trouble with his knees, and I’ve progressed to triathlons.
‘You’re amazing,’ he says.
‘Oh, give it a rest.’
I glance at Miriam. Sometimes I worry that it might bother her, Martin showering me with attention the way he does—but she actually seems to like it. I think she feels sorry for me, even now, after all these years. In fact she probably told Martin to be especially nice to me back when we first met, and to offer his help with DIY jobs around the house.
‘Will you stay for dinner?’ Miriam asks.
‘No, I have guests of my own tonight,’ I say. ‘I can’t stay long.’
‘Ah yes, of course, the dinner party with your friends from work,’ Miriam replies.
I immediately begin to feel nervous. Miriam doesn’t notice.
From upstairs comes the sound of muffled laughter.
‘I’ll go and fetch Leo,’ says Martin, starting off up the stairs. He looks back at me, winks and is gone.
Miriam rolls her eyes as if she were annoyed, but really she loves Martin just the way he is. She knows where she is with him. He’s not an adventurer or a romantic or a seducer. He’s Martin the joker, Martin who likes manning the barbecue, Martin who still wears T-shirts of his favourite rock bands even though he’s pushing fifty, who loves to play with the kids, who’s fond of telling jokes and then laughs at them louder than anybody else, but without getting anyone’s back up, because he’s just so nice—because he’s Martin. Miriam sometimes complains that he never buys her flowers or springs romantic surprises on her. Privately, I always think, Not every man can be like Philip, but out loud I say, ‘What do you want with florist’s bouquets when you have a whole garden full of the most beautiful flowers?’
‘Hello, Mum,’ Leo calls from the top of the stairs. He runs down and gives me a hug, oblivious to the fact that I’ve had all my hair cut off.
Then he discovers the drill and abandons me again.
‘Cool,’ he breathes, holding it in front of him like a laser gun, taking aim at an imaginary enemy and firing. ‘Pew, pew! Pew, pew!’
‘All right then,’ I say, giving Miriam a kiss. ‘We’ll be on our way.’
‘Take care!’ she says.
I smile at her and wrest the drill from my son.
‘Bye, Martin!’ I call.
Martin’s head appears on the landing.
‘See you later, alligator,’ he calls after me.
I can’t see Miriam, but I know she’s rolling her eyes.
I feel light as I speed through town with Leo in the back seat, even though I didn’t manage to get anything off my chest. I probably couldn’t have done it anyway. Some things are just so hard to get out.
My dinner guests all turn up together: my colleagues Claudia and Mirko, and Claudia’s husband, Werner. It’s strange seeing them here. They look a little out of place—in fact they are out of place. They belong at school, not in my house. Mirko has come bearing flowers, Claudia and Werner have brought wine.
All three seem slightly ill at ease. I don’t know why. Is it the grand old house that makes them uncomfortable? Do they sense the presence of the ghosts of the past that live here with my son and me? Is it as strange for them as it is for me to see each other here, and not at school—as people rather than colleagues?
‘It’s lovely and cool in here,’ says Claudia. ‘The heat’s unbearable, isn’t it?’
The men agree, and we begin to chat. The ice is broken. They compliment me on my new haircut, which doesn’t seem to surprise any of them—unless they are hiding it very skilfully. I take the flowers and wine from my guests and thank them, noticing in passing that Mirko has decided on red roses, which I find strangely inappropriate, although I do not, of course, remark on it. I show everyone into the dining room, where I give them an aperitif. Then I excuse myself, going to put Mirko’s roses in water and check on dinner. Leo ate earlier in the evening and is playing in his room. All is well.
When I bring in the food, my guests are engaged in a lively debate about the most recent episode of Crime Scene. I realise how much the walls of the old house have longed to be filled with life. It’s been a while.
Over dinner, we talk about school—it’s hard not to—and eventually we end up discussing one of our colleagues, Katharina. ‘Her behaviour’s completely unacceptable,’ Claudia says. ‘The woman is constantly off sick, and when she does come in, she’s not prepared. For her, teaching biology means letting the children watch old David Attenborough documentaries on an endless loop.’
She gives a snort of disgust.
‘Why is she off so much?’ asks Werner, who has no idea who we’re talking about but seems happy to join in the conversation anyway.
‘Oh, last year she was off for a whole six months. Burnout, apparently,’ says Claudia.
‘You say that as if it didn’t exist,’ Mirko says.
Claudia shrugs.
‘Of course it exists. But seriously, I feel burnt out too—it doesn’t mean I sit at home on my backside. Or take Sarah. If anyone has it hard, she does! A single mother and then that terrible business with her husband. But Sarah makes it to work every day!’
Claudia looks at me for approval. I say nothing.
‘Don’t you agree?’ she persists. ‘Her behaviour’s outrageous.’
‘I’m not sure,’ I say. ‘I don’t think I know enough about Katharina’s situation to be able to judge.’
Claudia smiles.
It’s amazing. Since ‘that terrible business with my husband’, as Claudia puts it, no one argues with me anymore. No one tells me I’m wrong—I’m never questioned. As if I’d become a moral authority simply because I’ve suffered and managed to survive. Even argumentative people like Claudia let me say what I like. It sometimes drives me round the bend.
‘You’re just too good,’ says Claudia. ‘I don’t know how you do it.’
When I’ve cleared the table and return with the pudding, I find ‘Two Truths and a Lie’ in full swing, a game that’s very popular right now with the children at our school—and apparently with their teachers, too.
‘My turn,’ Claudia is saying. ‘Let’s see. Okay. Number one: I’ve been skydiving. Number two: I once had sex with a rock star after a concert. Number three: I have six toes o
n my left foot. One of those is a lie.’
‘The rock star’s a lie!’ I say.
‘No,’ Werner replies with a wry look. ‘The rock star’s true.’
Everyone laughs, and as Claudia slips off her shoe to show us the tiny sixth toe on her left foot, I realise how much I’m enjoying the evening.
‘That was pretty impressive,’ says Mirko, when we’ve all calmed down a bit. ‘But yeah, now it’s my turn.’
He thinks for a second, glancing in my direction.
‘Number one,’ he says, running his hand through his blond hair, ‘I speak fluent Japanese. Number two: When I was a teenager I rescued someone from a burning car. And number three: I’m in love. One of those is a lie.’
His gaze brushes my cheek. I avoid his eyes.
Werner and Claudia cheer. I open another bottle of wine.
‘Hmm,’ says Werner. ‘Say something in Japanese.’
‘What?’ Mirko asks.
‘Anything,’ says Werner.
Mirko spreads his arms in defeat.
‘Got me,’ he says.
‘You can’t go falling in love,’ Claudia tells him. ‘You’ll break the heart of every girl in the sixth form!’
I fill everyone’s glasses. Out of the corner of my eye I see Mirko looking at me with a smile.
‘Your turn, Sarah!’ says Claudia, but then I hear a little voice behind me.
‘Mum?’
It’s Leo, barefoot and in pyjamas.
‘What is it, darling?’ I ask, putting the wine down.
My son stares wide-eyed at the grown-ups at the table. Claudia and Werner both smile at him, but Mirko gets up and goes over to Leo. He bends down to him, gives him his hand and calls him the ‘man of the house’, which I find silly—until I see the smile on my son’s face.
‘Go on up. I’ll come and put you to bed in a second,’ I say and watch Leo pad off.
Then I turn to my guests to excuse myself, promising to be back down soon.
‘To be honest, Sarah, we need to head off soon anyway,’ says Claudia. ‘Werner has an early start tomorrow.’
‘Oh,’ I say, ‘okay.’
I glance at the clock. It’s only now that I realise how late it is. Time really has flown. So I must have had fun. The evening must have been a success.
‘It’s been wonderful,’ says Werner.
‘Yes, really wonderful,’ says Claudia. ‘You’ll have to come to our place next time. I’ll make my boeuf bourguignon.’
They get up and kiss me on the cheeks. Mirko gets up too. I lead the way to the front door, say goodbye to Claudia and her husband, thank them for coming, tell them how lovely it was to see them, realise as I say it that I mean it—and watch them disappear into the darkness.
‘Such a strong woman!’ I hear Werner say to Claudia, and I suppose he means me. I hate it when people say that. Strong woman. As if women usually weren’t. Strong, I mean.
I turn to Mirko. I thank him for the lovely evening and the flowers. Mirko looks me in the eye and gives me an awkward pat on the shoulder.
He was the only one who knew it was the first time in seven years I’d had guests in my house. You can tell Mirko that kind of thing.
We’re silent for a moment.
‘It was about time,’ he says and I nod.
Leo is waiting for me. He’s sitting in bed, his knees drawn up to his chin, the quilt pulled right up despite the warm night. Leo loves stories. It’s a deal we strike every evening—sleep in exchange for a story—but while I pretend to read to Leo for his sake, our nightly ritual is in fact my favourite part of the day. I need the fairytales just as much as my son does. After working our way through the Brothers Grimm last year, we’ve now started on Hans Christian Andersen. I don’t like him much—don’t like his strange, dark stories. They’re so different to the Grimms’ fairytales, where good and evil are so clearly delineated. I find the clarity and certainty of the Grimms’ tales comforting, and I’d be happy to read the story of the goose girl again, or even good old Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, but Leo is obsessed by Andersen’s ‘Snow Queen’ at the moment. At first I thought he was fascinated by the mysterious figure of the queen herself, but what really enthrals him is the enchanted mirror at the beginning of the story.
I sit down on the edge of the bed. Leo says nothing, just looks at me in that calm, unruffled way of his. Sometimes he’s so like his father it’s almost unbearable. I smooth a damp strand of hair from his face.
‘Aren’t you hot, darling? Would you like a lighter quilt?’
Leo shakes his head. I suppose he’s imagining he’s in the Snow Queen’s palace, all built of snow and ice, and needs his heavy quilt, even if it is the middle of summer.
‘What would you like me to read today?’ I ask, though I know the answer already.
‘The Snow Queen,’ says Leo.
‘Right.’
I open the book and begin. I know the words so well by now that I tell the story rather than reading it. I tell Leo how the devil once fashioned a mirror that made all the beautiful things reflected in it dwindle to almost nothing, while all the bad things reflected in it got worse and worse. Leo looks at me with wide eyes that grow wider still when I say the word devil.
‘But,’ I continue, ‘one day the mirror shattered, and the little splinters went flying and anyone who got one in his eye saw everything twisted, or only had eyes for twisted things. Some people even got a splinter from the enchanted mirror in their hearts, and those people’s hearts turned to lumps of ice.’
It moves me every time to see Leo instinctively clutch his heart at this point and blink like mad, as if he wants to make sure that his heart is not a lump of ice and there’s nothing wrong with his eyes.
‘Mum!’ he says.
I look at him.
‘How do you know if your heart’s turned to ice?’ he asks.
At first I don’t know what to say.
You don’t feel anything the way you used to, I think. Joy is no longer a frenzied whirl, more a faint smile. Anger is no longer boiling hot, but at most lukewarm. Colours fade to grey, and you no longer know what people mean when they talk of happiness.
I lay my hand on my son’s chest and feel his little heart beating, fast and alive. Tears well up, I don’t know why, but I blink them back before Leo can see them. He looks up at me intently, his earnest little face close to mine, waiting to see what I’ll say.
I force a smile. ‘Lumps of ice don’t throb.’
Leo nods, apparently convinced. Then he lays his hand on my chest. For a second I have the irrational fear that he won’t feel a heartbeat—that one of the splinters from the devil’s mirror has caught me unawares, and that I no longer have a heart in my chest—only a lump of ice as big as a fist. My son frowns, pressing his hand down a little more firmly, and then his face brightens. He says nothing—just withdraws his hand and sinks back onto his pillow, satisfied. I fight back the tears rising in my throat.
‘Keep reading, Mum,’ Leo says.
So I do as he asks, and we set off together through a cold and treacherous winter’s night, our hearts pounding.
The silence has returned to my big empty house. Leo has fallen asleep at last—I have breathed a careful kiss on his forehead, switched off the light, left his room and closed the door noiselessly behind me.
I am lying in bed when I hear it.
A strange, indefinable sound.
A…rumbling.
Someone is in the house.
I’m on my feet at once, groping for my jeans, which I’ve only just taken off, and for my mobile, until I remember that it’s on the dining-room table. The landline handset is in the charging dock, at the other end of the house. Damn.
I open the bedroom door cautiously and stop and listen. I stand there as if frozen, all my senses sharpened, but I hear nothing—only my breathing and the familiar creaking of the house. I’m exhausted. I close my eyes for a moment, take a deep breath—and hear it again: a rumbling sound. Now I’
m having trouble breathing. Only the wind, I tell myself, but I don’t believe it.
It probably isn’t wise and I don’t know why I do it, but I set off down the dimly lit passage towards the sound. Again I stop, uncertain which way to go, but this time I don’t have to wait long before I hear it again. My scalp contracts painfully. I’m scared. The sound is coming from the living room—there’s something there, just behind the door, only a few steps away. I hold my breath, rigid with fear, and suddenly all is quiet. I don’t know what to do, but I know I can’t just turn and walk away. I don’t know how I know, but I have to open the door—I have no choice.
Again there is a rumbling, horrible and indefinable. Whatever is on the other side of the door, it’s waiting for me. I grasp the doorhandle and push it all the way down. I know I mustn’t see what’s behind the door—that it will kill me to see what’s behind it—but I can’t stop myself. As I fling it open, the rumbling sound rolls over me like thunder. I hear myself scream—and at last I wake up.
For a moment I stare breathlessly into the darkness. Don’t think about the dream, I tell myself. Go back to sleep. But I can’t. I never can. I’m so much more susceptible to black thoughts at night. They creep up on me as I lie here. I think of solar eclipses—the first one, all those years ago, and today’s. I think of my son’s damp little hand pressing against my chest, trying to find my heart to make sure it hadn’t turned to ice. And I think of all those doors, and lurking behind them, all the dangers I can’t protect myself against—and certainly can’t protect Leo against. I think to myself that the world is a dangerous, dangerous place where I can’t survive alone.
It’s a long time since I dreamt of the rumbling noise behind the door, and I wonder what it was that triggered the nightmare again—especially now I think I know what’s on the other side. I toss and turn in bed, as if the dark thoughts can be scared off like ravens, with a sudden movement, but they are here to roost.
The Stranger Upstairs Page 2
