The House Mate

by Nina Manning

  43

  Now

  I tried to slow my breathing the way I was taught but my mind was awash with thoughts, questions I couldn’t answer, pieces of a puzzle I was rapidly trying to slot into place. Was this Mrs Clean or was this lucybest65? Who was the crazed man downstairs scaring the life out of this girl and why did she look like she was about to keel over? Most importantly, I needed to make a plan. I was stuck under a table in a house where several hundred kilos of cocaine was sat in a pristine fridge in a gleaming clean kitchen.

  He was coming up the stairs and I was hiding under a table with no way out.

  I needed to control my breathing. I thought back to my cognitive-behavioural-therapy classes and began to think outside of myself to distract from the fear and panic. The ‘5-4-3-2-1’ technique. Right, let’s do this. Okay, five things I can see: A chair leg; a table leg; a length of brown-and-orange tablecloth, matted and greasy at the corner; a dent in the wooden floor, where something heavy had been dropped; a small handmade wooden bear the size of my hand, wearing a hessian jacket. I looked at this object the longest. Clearly a child’s toy, but in a house with no children.

  Four things I can touch. Stay calm, stay calm. The hard floor beneath my knees, sweat on my forehead, a sticky patch next to my knee where someone dropped some jam or something similar, a cut on my right leg that I must have got when I fell down the steps and ripped my jeans.

  Three things I can hear: a clock ticking, a fan oven cooling… footsteps. I hear footsteps. He’s coming closer. He will be here any moment.

  Two things I smell: the putrid stench of vomit mixed with a cleaning product.

  One thing I can taste: There is blood in my mouth. I can taste blood.

  44

  Now

  I heard the door crash open and a man’s voice. The same man from downstairs?

  ‘Oh my God, what the fuck? It’s disgusting in here. What the hell are you doing?’

  I heard the girl let out a small wail as though she had been grabbed. From beneath the tablecloth I could just about see a pair of black boots, and the bottom of a pair of blue jeans.

  ‘Clean the fuck up. You’re a disgrace.’

  And he turned to walk away. Then he stopped and walked back over to the window.

  ‘I thought I told you to keep these curtains closed at all times? Are you mad, woman? We had a deal. I don’t think you are sticking to your side of the bargain, are you?’

  ‘You haven’t stuck to your side of the bargain for nearly six months,’ came her voice, weak and hollow.

  ‘Don’t backchat me, woman.’ His loud voice was accompanied by a sharp slap that reverberated around the room. The girl let out a wail and I heard the door slam.

  I counted to ten and then slowly I began to shuffle my way out from between the boxes, and I pulled myself to standing. The girl was slouched on the sofa, her hand across her face. I knew I was on borrowed time now.

  ‘What’s going on?’ I finally found the strength to speak, but I whispered the words. She shook her head.

  ‘You need to go, I don’t know who you are or why you’re here, but it’s not safe. Please go.’

  ‘I can help you,’ I said. ‘I just need to charge my phone. Do you have somewhere I can charge my phone? Or if you give me your phone, I can call someone to help us.’

  ‘You don’t understand, do you?’ She let out a pathetic laugh. ‘If it was that easy, I would have done that a long time ago.’ She sounded as though she was speaking with a lisp and when I looked a little closer, I could see she was missing a tooth.

  ‘Is that?’ I pointed to her face. ‘Did he do that?’

  She touched her lip. ‘Yesterday.’

  I looked urgently around the room and walked over to the window to see if I could find a way out, even though I knew from looking at the window from the rooftop cinema, it was just a window with a sheer drop underneath. I pushed my hands through my hair.

  ‘Help me help us. What can I do? Where is your phone?’

  ‘I don’t have a bloody phone. He takes it. I’m only allowed to use it for work. It stays downstairs. I only have a tablet.’

  ‘When you say work, do you mean… Instagram? Are you…?’

  But she couldn’t answer me because the door swung open again and a man came storming into the room with his head bent.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’ll close the bloody curtains, so I’ll have to—’ He stopped just before me. ‘What the fuck is this? Who are you?’ I looked into the face of a man with a shaved head, tight white T-shirt and bronzed, strong arms.

  ‘I said’ – he took another step closer to me – ‘Who. The. Fuck. Are. You?’ He spat his words at me. Sweat glistened on his scalp.

  ‘I, I, I’m here to help. Your wife – she’s ill.’

  He looked over at the girl with pure disgust. ‘She isn’t my wife.’ Then he looked at me again. His eyes narrowed and he rubbed his teeth across his bottom lip. ‘And you shouldn’t be here.’

  I lunged forward to make a dive past him, but he grabbed hold of me and pulled me into him so I was locked in his arms.

  ‘But maybe it’s my lucky day.’ He whispered into my cheek. I could smell body odour and a strong stench of alcohol on his breath. His stubble was scratching against my skin. He was whispering something in my ear, words that made my body itch. I tried to hustle my way out of his vice-like grip, but he only seemed to tighten his arms around me further. He began to drag me out of the room, backwards and out onto the landing. I kicked out with both legs and lashed out with my hand towards his face. He kicked a door to his right with his foot so it opened and he continued to drag me into a tatty bathroom. He pushed the door shut with his foot and flicked my leg with his so I was floored. He stood over me, his eyes cascaded down my body, greedily taking me in.

  I closed my eyes tightly, as though I could will myself away somewhere else. The idea of the ‘5-4-3-2-1’ technique flew through my head, but there was too much stimuli coming at me at once.

  I could smell and feel a damp bath towel, the sound of the whirring extractor fan, and strangely I began to consider its lack of functionality as my nostrils were overpowered by the stench of mould. I could feel every beat of my heart pound heavy through my chest and it only increased in speed as I heard the sound of a belt buckle hurriedly being removed. I squeezed my eyes shut tighter and planned my attack. I had a matter of seconds, so I lifted my leg and thrust it forward.

  I felt it make contact with him, and I heard him stumble backwards against the door. I opened my eyes to see him righting himself to a half-stand, a crazed and angry look in his eye, but I was already pulling myself up ready to fight him. Only the next moment, I heard a loud crash, and the door burst open, sending him flying towards me. He fell to his knees, his face inches from mine, just as two armed police burst through, grabbed him and dragged him out of the door. I heard his shouts and protests from where I lay as he was hauled down the stairs. Then the doorway was full again, this time with a man I recognised. There was nowhere for me to run to any more.

  ‘Hello, Meghan.’

  I sat and leant against the bath and let out a loud sigh.

  ‘Hello, Detective,’ I said.

  45

  Now

  The room felt too small as he came further in wearing bulky, black body armour. His clothes rustled as he knelt down to my level. His walkie-talkie on his chest crackled and a woman’s voice came through it. He twiddled a knob until her voice became almost silent.

  ‘I have been trying to get through to you for a long time. Why have you been running from me?’ He touched my arm. ‘Are you okay? Did he hurt you?’

  I looked at his black baseball cap, the one he always wore during any sort of raid.

  ‘Lee, don’t,’ I said.

  ‘Meghan, you’re still my wife.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t understand why you’re here. I don’t understand any of this.’ I gestured to the room.

  Lee let out a sigh and mov
ed himself into a seating position.

  Another policeman appeared in the door wearing black body armour and a cap. ‘Sarge, we’re taking the girl in.’

  Lee nodded and as the policeman stepped back, I saw the girl being helped past towards the stairs, her matted hair falling across her sickly pale skin. Under her arm she carried a ragdoll cat. Mrs Clean, lucybest65? Who was she? I still didn’t know.

  Lee turned to me. I looked at his day-old stubble, knowing he could never stay clean-shaven for too long. It had probably been a long shift for him already, and I doubted he had slept in the last twenty-four hours. I remembered all the nights sleeping alone, the meals for one, never knowing when he could be home from work. I looked at the lines etched on his face; the ones that only I could read because they held the narrative to our lives. Years of laughter and joy, but also so much sadness that mirrored my own.

  I thought back over the last sixteen years. He had always been in control in some way or another. It had started with the age. He was eight years older than me. I had watched my father walk out on me at fifteen and five years later Lee walked into my life, a confident man, heading towards his thirties and rapidly making his way up in the police force. By the time he had made superintendent, he had already paid off our mortgage with some help from his parents, and I was pregnant with our first son, Jack.

  But there had come a day when I could no longer look at him and see the eyes of Toby, the child we had both lost, looking back at me. And that was when I had begun to run.

  I made it to Norfolk, where I lived with nuns for a year. It was only meant to be a short stay, a week or so, to right my mind, help me heal. But when the week came to an end, I felt I didn’t want to leave. There was work for me in the garden, weeding and planting, which paid for my lodgings. I worked and sat and slept. That was all. No TV, no phones, no internet. No distractions. I didn’t deserve anything else. I had been used to spending most of my time in a room six feet by eight feet. In the nunnery, I felt protected. I felt that things seemed to make a bit more sense. I developed habits that kept me sane, behaviours that kept me safe. Every time I remembered the events that had taken Toby away from us, I became more aware of my surroundings and patterns evolved, behaviours I would play out so nothing like that would ever happen again. I was protected by the four walls of my room. Locks were checked and rechecked, coins were aligned and my bed was kept immaculately clean. One of the visiting priests, who I had become fond of sitting with from time to time when he was around , would occasionally catch me out before turning a door handle or a latch. ‘Don’t do it.’ His words would echo softly around the concrete walls. ‘I won’t.’ I would call back. But I did anyway, and I could almost feel the warmth of his smile as he walked away.

  A year passed and the nuns told me it was my time to move on.

  Money appeared in my account from the sale of the house that Lee could no longer bear to live in with only one son, and the ghost of another.

  So I signed up for a textile course and moved to London. But as soon as I was back amongst the chaos of life, the old feelings began to rear. It was going to take some time to adjust, I reassured myself.

  I didn’t contact Lee to tell him I had moved on again. I knew he would expect me to see Jack. But I still wasn’t ready to face either of them. But there was only so long I could stay hidden from a superintendent of the Met’s organised crime unit.

  ‘We’ve been watching this organisation for months, and today was the day we hit the joint.’ Lee rubbed his stubble, a sign he was tired. ‘I’ve been tracking your phone for a while now. But you knew that. And today, when I looked, you’re at the same address. So if anyone is confused, it’s me?’

  ‘I’ve been following this girl on Instagram, Mrs Clean. She had a troll who I worked out lived at this address. I worked it out because I saw a picture she had taken from the attic window of the rooftop cinema opposite. It became like a compulsion, I got carried away. I didn’t mean to come this far.’ I felt relief pour out of me like a balloon deflating. Exhaustion was taking over.

  Lee smirked, that smile that had knocked me off my feet all those years ago. But the last few years I had stopped noticing. Instead, all I had seen was his anger. His frustration at what I had done.

  ‘Doing a bit of your own detective work, I see. I taught you well.’ Lee looked at me longingly.

  Our past sat between us like a heavy rock; we would never be able to shift it. It had been over a year since I had laid eyes on him. But I had felt him all around me. Sometimes only in my imagination as the horrors of the tragedy haunted me. But other times I was sure I had seen him. I was sure I had felt him.

  ‘I need you to know, it was wasn’t your fault. It was an accident. I was so mad with you, with us, at the beginning, that was just raw grief. My world was shattered too, Meg. I know it wasn’t your fault. I need you to know that now. You can stop running from me.’

  My shoulders shuddered as the tears spilt down my cheeks. Lee’s hand reached for mine, and this time I took it and squeezed it hard.

  I thought back to the days when I could barely look at him and vice versa. On the odd occasion he would try to touch me with care, I recoiled as though his skin was poison. Then I thought back to the fights, the screaming. The blame. The days and nights he spent away when I would be left with Jack, who was verging on becoming a teenager who needed his dad around, but all he had was a half-version of the mother he had once known.

  We were a couple grieving the loss of a small child who didn’t deserve to die that day. Nothing would build us back together again. Our relationship ended the day Toby died. I would carry the burden forever. But to look at Lee every day, to see the blame in his eyes, was too much to live with.

  Lee was speaking again. I wiped the tears and snot from my face with my sleeve, an act I had berated my children for over and over again.

  ‘I went all out to make sure a proper investigation happened. The landscape was crumbling – they shouldn’t have been letting people walk along that cliff. I mean, you can’t walk there now. It makes me angry that we lost our son. It’s been three years, Meghan. I’m sorry I hurt you. I’m sorry I was so angry at times. I’ve had therapy.’

  ‘I changed my name,’ I said through a sniff.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘It’s my job to know this stuff. But don’t think I’m about to start calling you Regina any time soon. You’ll always be my Megs, even if it’s not legally your name any more.’

  I tried to smile at his efforts and I winced. The adrenaline had worn off and in its place a searing pain in my ribs and arms was slicing me in two.

  ‘We need to get you to the hospital. Can you walk?’ Lee started to stand.

  I nodded.

  ‘Right, come on then.’ Once on his feet he held out his hand. As he pulled me up, I automatically found my way into his arms and for the first time in years, I stayed there, not moving. No longer wanting to run.

  46

  25th April 2016

  We had been waiting for months for the weather to turn. November through to April seemed as though it had rained non-stop. Outside of pre-school days I had been constructing more and more elaborate indoor activities, from Lego towers to dens with different rooms and sections to obscure obstacle courses. The rain had been relentless – I was becoming convinced it would never stop – but we hunkered down, found ways to distract ourselves. We were safe and warm and dry. Then one day the clouds parted, the rain stopped and the birdsong had never sounded so sweet. We flung open the doors and let in the light and fresh air. I hung washing on the line and watched the sheets dancing in the breeze. Then a small hand was in mine, tugging at me, urging me to come outside. We took it one step further; a picnic was packed and we filled the car with our basket of goodies, a picnic rug and a beach ball, buckets and spades. The air was cool, but the sun was warm, and once we had parked up, our little family skipped towards the beach. Steam was well and truly let off and I watched my two boys running up and down the
dunes and making sand angels. Then the elaborate construction of a sandcastle began. I stepped back and allowed the moment to continue without me, and I laid out the picnic rug and began to put out the treats we had brought. A Spanish omelette I had made yesterday, a jar of gherkins as they were a current favourite, little tuna-and-sweetcorn sandwiches, a punnet of strawberries flown in from Turkey or Greece so not as sweet as the British summer strawberries I would have to wait another month for.

  The sandcastle was built and hungry mouths arrived, waiting to be fed. We grazed on our mini feast, watching the gulls flock overhead, swooping down into the water and collecting their catch, then flying away with it. Afterwards, I packed up the picnic, shook the crumbs off the rug and watched the gulls flock to the debris. I looked upwards towards the cliff and suggested a walk. Strong hands were on mine, taking the picnic basket from my hands, then a bristly kiss founds its way to my lips. Heat and salt air muddled my senses. We walked back to the car to deposit the rug and picnic basket, then my hands were free again, but only for a second before I felt tiny hands, sticky from strawberries, on my mine. I looked down at the messy locks and the blue long-sleeve T-shirt with the huge rainbow, one of his favourites. We marched up the hill, a firm family of four, arms swinging, singing songs that had been recited time and time again at pre-school and were now making their way into the home as his confidence grew enough to belt them out. I began to tire and I slowed down, a firm hand was on my back, helping me on the rough terrain. I looked at the view, and I noticed how the cliff face grew into a path cluttered with thistles and purple heather. I veered off course and was dutifully followed. The view from this angle was better than where we had come from. You could see where the bay scooped round, where we had been playing just before. From here you got the full view, the sky, the sea, the sand. It was breathtaking. It felt like a new discovery, a place I imagined we would return to often as a family.