The House Mate

by Nina Manning

  Underneath, there were the usual fifty thousand or so likes and a string of comments. As usual I went straight in to sift through to the negative comments, but more specifically I wanted to see what lucybest65 had to say on it. And there it was.

  Are you telling me this woman is buying all this stuff herself? She has clearly been gifted it – at least have the courtesy to tell us that.

  A few people had replied to her; a couple agreeing, only to egg her on, several others just to tell her off. Questions about lucybest65 tumbled through my mind and I was interested to know what she had been up to since the last banal photo she had uploaded.

  I clicked on lucybest65’s profile and I was taken through to her grid which boasted a handful of photos. There was a new image, so I clicked on it. She had taken a photo of a window, all I could see of her body were her feet, which were up on a stool. A large window was in front of her and through the open blind, on the opposite building’s rooftop, was a large cinema screen. There were about fifty or so seats full with people all facing the screen. I zoomed in on the photo and saw it was a screening of The Greatest Showman.

  Sat in my lounge and I have the best seat in the house.

  Although the photo was grainy and a little out of focus, she seemed to have captured a moment in time that many would be envious of. She had only a handful of followers, and no one ever commented on her posts. I felt an urge to comment, to say something about being set up in the most perfect location to watch a film for free. But more than that, I was suddenly intrigued. I wanted to know more.

  I was being given access to a window into someone’s life – in this case, literally her window. I spotted a few familiar items in the background of this photo, things I had seen in her previous images: a blue vase on a small table, a small Dalmatian dog ornament and occasionally what looked like a cat’s litter tray in the corner of the room. This was certainly her home, if not somewhere she resided frequently. It occurred to me that if I knew where all the rooftop cinemas were in London – and there surely couldn’t be that many – there was a chance I could know where lucybest65 lived. And that notion created a tingle of excitement that rippled through my body.

  By the end of the college day, consciousness had become an aching weight and had consumed me. I was already thinking about my bedtime routine, but I knew I had to get on with utilising the time and space to finish my piece for the exhibition. There had also been a suggestion from Will that he might be able to sidle down the hallway and drop me off home.

  Since the first night when the cleaner had locked the door, I had begun setting up on the bench closest to the door, my work spread out across the entire bench. I believed that if something happened once, there was a good chance of it happening again.

  I had moved on to the next phase of my project and was now working with more fabrics. I quickly became absorbed in the cutting and sewing, and I was pleased to see the coat taking a more solid shape. So far the flamboyance that I had planned out in my head and on the sketch pad wasn’t quite right, but it was starting to feel like a proper project and so I allowed myself a flutter of excitement at the prospect of completing the first creative thing in many years. This was a milestone, something I should feel proud of, but anxiety had a cheeky way of never quite letting you stay in that happy place for too long.

  The room by now was losing quite a lot of light. It was nearly ten and the sky was almost black outside, and I had only one small lamp on the bench and all the blinds were drawn tight.

  I stood up and went over to the corner to hit the main lights when the whole room plunged into a murky darkness. The lamp on the desk went out and the corridor outside went dark. I grasped around me for something to help me gain my bearings. I could just about see the bench a few metres in front of me, but there was no other light feeding through, which must have meant that the lights around the campus must have gone out as well.

  I took a few steps forward until my stomach hit the bench. I tried to push away the panic that had begun to constrict my throat, but before I knew it, I could feel a tight grip around my wrist. I began twisting from it, trying to escape, to pull myself free.

  ‘Let me go,’ I said into the blackness. I started to grope around on the desk in front of me for my phone, but my hands just collided with one another. The panic was dialled up a notch as my thoughts began to spiral out of control. I dropped to my knees and tried to focus on just breathing in and then out for a longer breath, but the darkness had consumed any rational thought.

  But amongst the chaos of my mind, I could hear footsteps; they were coming closer and closer until they stopped just outside the room.

  Then I heard someone calling for Regi, but it was getting lost amongst the noise in my head.

  There was a surge of light. The brightness was overbearing. I blinked at my surroundings from my safe place under the bench. I hadn’t realised I had found my way there. I turned around on my knees and saw two figures illuminated in the doorway by brighter lights in the corridor.

  ‘Regi,’ came the voice again, soft and feminine. I began to crawl out from under the bench at the same time as the figure came towards me. I rubbed my wrist where I could feel the lingering sensation of someone’s firm touch. I looked to the bench where my phone was sat next to my scrapbook, exactly where I had left it. I stood up, then turned and saw who had come into the room.

  ‘Sophia?’ I was confused. From behind her emerged Steve. ‘Guys?’ I couldn’t understand why they were both here. ‘Is everything okay?’

  Sophia rubbed her face with her hands and sank into a stool opposite.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ she squeaked through her fingers.

  Steve stepped forward and stood in front of me with his hands in his pockets.

  ‘It’s not, not okay. It’s, it’s a bit messed up,’ he said awkwardly.

  I looked between them both, trying to bring my breathing back to normal.

  ‘Did you… was there a power cut?’

  ‘The lights went out for a second just then,’ Sophia said, and then she pulled her hands away from her face and looked at me. ‘Are you okay, Regi?’

  I sucked in a big breath and blew it out. ‘Absolutely fine. I couldn’t find my phone when the lights went out. Just a bit disorientated. And tired.’ I shrugged off her concerns.

  ‘We wanted to tell you about us,’ Sophia said.

  ‘It’s okay.’ I waved my hand. ‘I know.’

  A small wail escaped from Sophia.

  ‘Oh, you do?’ Steve went rigid.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, still slightly breathless. ‘I wanted to say something to you both, well to you, Sophia, but I didn’t know how.’ I thought about the pregnancy test. I would wait until they mentioned that.

  ‘Okay, well.’ Steve’s shoulders relaxed. ‘We wanted to come and say to you, here, tonight, away from the house and prying ears, we wanted you to know that we have every intention of telling Karen. You see, the thing is, Regi…’ Steve shifted his feet and looked around, perhaps for something of comfort to lean on.

  ‘The thing is, we are in love.’ Sophia looked at me, her eyes wide. Waiting for me to respond.

  She said it so dramatically that I wasn’t sure I had understood her correctly. I had presumed it was a one-off, a mistake.

  Steve smiled. ‘That’s right and I’m going to finish things with Karen properly and we’re going to move into Sophia’s parents’ house. You see, Sophia is pregnant.’ Steve paused and I realised he was waiting for a response.

  ‘Oh, oh wow, pregnant,’ I said, looking at Sophia. She nodded and smiled. I didn’t feel it was the right time to recall my nocturnal adventures of rooting around in a wheelie bin at two in the morning and discovering a pregnancy test.

  ‘So we’ll stay there until she has had the baby, and then we will save up to buy our own house,’ Steve continued. ‘I’m going back into the army at some point – there’s an opportunity for us to move to Dorset to some barracks there, so we have a few choices.’ Steve l
ooked at Sophia with a warm smile and she looked back at him, with an expression on her face I had never seen before and I realised it was admiration. It wasn’t like any look I had seen exchanged between Steve and Karen. I watched them both for a second, then Sophia turned to me.

  ‘We wanted you to know, Regi, to be the first to know. We respect you a lot, and I know you and Steve never really hit it off—’

  ‘No, it wasn’t that,’ I tried to defend myself.

  ‘It’s fine, Regi, you don’t need to pretend. I wasn’t happy with Karen, so I wasn’t really projecting my best self. I had wanted to talk to you about it for such a long time, because you’re older and wiser. I thought you might understand, but every time I went to say something, I lost my nerve. I would go out of my way to try to catch you on your own sometimes, so I’m sorry if I creeped you out. I’m sorry. I don’t really know how to be myself around anyone, really. Except Soph. All those extra days I was there, at the house, well, we became close very quickly. I was confused. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.’

  I thought about how I had treated Steve, how his presence had unnerved me. I had felt that tension and uneasiness about him, but it had triggered other thoughts in me.

  ‘Well, I’m really very happy for you guys. It’s wonderful news.’ I moved closer to Sophia and squeezed her arm.

  ‘Hey, what’s this? Did I miss a party?’ Will appeared in the doorway. ‘I heard there was power cut this end. Is everyone okay?’

  ‘We’re fine,’ I said quickly. Will stood for a moment and then launched into the room, his hand outstretched towards Steve. ‘Hi, I’m Will, I’m a lecturer here and also a friend of Regi’s.’

  Sophia looked over at me and gave me a small smile whilst Steve and Will shook hands and exchanged pleasantries.

  ‘Hi, I’m Sophia, I’m Regi’s house mate,’ Sophia said as Will moved from Steve to her and shook her hand as well.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Will looked at me.

  ‘I’m good.’

  ‘Great, then I think it’s time for a drink at the pub. Anyone?’

  Steve and Sophia said their goodbyes – Steve was going to drop Sophia off at home, and, apparently, they would be telling Karen at the weekend. I decided I would have to make myself scarce when that happened, but for now, I decided to take Will up on his offer of a drink.

  It was busier than the last time we had visited the pub but I found I could relax a little easier and found us some seats whilst Will bought the drinks with some cash I had assertively stuffed in his hand after he tried to wave it away.

  He arrived at the table with a round tray with two bottles of cider and two glasses. He sat down opposite me and pushed a bottle and a glass my way. I poured the cider out and took a long drink.

  Will began asking me about the Sophia and Steve saga. I had briefly mentioned it on the way over to the pub and now in the comfort of the tub chairs with the buzz of the alcohol creeping into my system, I felt ready to share a few anecdotes from my time in the house: from my discovery of the pregnancy kit to the way Steve had made me feel uncomfortable. Will laughed long and loudly at my description of myself wading through the bin at 2 a.m., and he told me it was perfectly understandable that I would feel a little insecure with a guy who you didn’t really know that well coming and going from the house all the time. The conversation was steered back to his family again and his sisters. He was going to visit one of them at the end of the summer term and was looking forward to the break.

  ‘Any siblings, Regi?’ he asked casually, and sipped his cider.

  I shook my head. ‘No. Only child.’ I felt a ripple of apprehension that he would quiz me further. Will looked at me over his glass, waited a beat for me to continue. When I didn’t he put his glass down and said, ‘There’s a pool table round the back there, fancy a game?’

  After Will beat me three games to one, we walked out of the pub and back to the uni car park. The night air was a cool contrast to the warm pub and was refreshing against my bare arms. There was a cosy feeling between us as we strolled; one I had forgotten could exist between two people.

  ‘You want my coat?’ Will offered.

  ‘No, it feels nice on my skin,’ I said, gazing up at the starry sky. I felt Will’s eyes on me, but when I looked at him he looked away.

  Will drove me home and pulled up outside the house, turning off the engine.

  ‘Don’t want to alarm your house mates,’ he said.

  I looked at him and we held each other’s stare for enough time for us both to realise how charged the atmosphere was and then look away. We both went to speak at the same time and then we laughed coyly. But there had been something in that look that both of us had felt; an energy had built around us, magnetising us towards one another. I opened the car door and brought us away from it, making whatever had been building fizzle and evaporate. I hated myself the second I did it, knowing I had pushed away feelings that were natural.

  Once I was inside and in my bedroom, I began my night-time routine with brushing my teeth. I was a few seconds in when I realised I had forgotten to start counting to thirty-four. My mind had been replaying a conversation between me and Will where I must have said something funny, which made Will look at me with endearment. When I got into bed, my thoughts were buzzing. But not in the usual way. The fear and panic I had felt in the art room were now replaced with a happiness that I hadn’t felt for such a long time. It made me get right back out of bed again and fling open the window as wide as it would go.

  28

  Now

  I arrived at Joe’s house on Tuesday morning, where he ran his practice from a three-room extension round the back. Marion, his receptionist, smiled warmly at me when I arrived and offered to take my coat and make me some tea. I accepted a chamomile and a few minutes later Joe was ready to see me.

  He greeted me as warmly as he could without breaching patient/counselling boundaries, with a grand smile, taking my tea and placing it on the coffee table next to a chair. Then he gestured to where I should sit and when I sank into the seat, it was as though no time had passed at all since our last meeting.

  At one point, when the pain was so raw and breathing was so laborious, I had wondered whether I would always be in therapy. I had checked myself into A&E so many times with chest pains and heart problems that I knew the staff by their first names. Of course, there was never anything wrong with me – not that they could see from looking at an X-ray anyway. Joe had said there was always the possibility that I would find myself back here and that I was always welcome.

  ‘I thought I was just getting on with stuff,’ I began.

  Joe pulled his usual nonchalant face. He never liked to butt in when I began talking; this was something I had noticed from the beginning. At first I thought he was a total charlatan, and that he was expecting me to just monologue for an hour and take my money, but after a few sessions I began to see the pattern; he would slowly talk more as the session went on, always allowing time for me to formulate the words and sentences at my own pace.

  ‘As I said on the phone, I’ve started to feel different. A whole mix of emotions. And I have been busy. I have certain behaviours now, do you remember, we discussed them via Skype last year? – I know I shouldn’t – but they help massively.’

  Joe nodded and smiled.

  ‘I mean, they don’t affect my life or anything.’ Joe nodded, and I knew I sounded as though I was trying so hard to justify them. I knew it was what all OCD sufferers said, how every compulsive behaviour bore no infliction on their life. But I honestly didn’t see how a few minutes of repetitive action made any difference to mine or anyone else’s life.

  ‘But just recently, there have been a few occasions where I just forgot to do them.’ I carried on, ‘I wondered if that was normal for a start. Then there’s the anxiety. It comes and goes, and when it’s not there, I’m scared it will return. And, of course, these feelings that are surfacing, I’m feeling them all from anger to frustration to, sometimes,
happiness.’ I cleared my throat and stretched my legs out. ‘Sometimes, recently, I have been feeling these pangs of…’ I could barely say it. ‘Maternal instinct. I hear my neighbour’s child crying a lot. I was really concerned at one point, and I’m ashamed to say I called social services and now my neighbour hates me. It turns out it’s all okay according to social services, but I’m still concerned.’ I gave a small smile and looked around the room. ‘Hardly serious psychotic behaviour, I know, but I just wanted to know if, well, like I have always said to you, if I’m… if I’m going to be okay?’

  Joe took a long breath in, as if preparing himself to speak. But he didn’t. He just waited. Because he knew I had more to say.

  ‘And I see him, you know, all the time. He comes at me, and he grabs my arm, and he tells me I can’t run away. I don’t know if I’m delusional, but I know I don’t want to keep seeing him.’

  ‘I take it when you say “him”, you’re referring to your husband?’

  I sucked in a breath and looked at my finger that once held a wedding ring.

  Joe looked at me and waited.

  I swallowed and blew out the breath.

  Joe gently stroked his chin with his thumb and forefinger. ‘Let’s just focus on the child next door for a moment. You said you were worried about him.’

  I gave a firm nod and my stomach lurched as I waited for his next statement.

  ‘We know from experience this isn’t the first time this has happened.’

  I looked down at my hands as the past sessions in this room came flooding back.

  ‘You do know what I am talking about?’

  I nodded again.

  ‘You’ve allowed yourself to become emotionally involved with children who all bore some resemblance to—’