Into the Darkest Corner (3 page)
When I saw him for the second time, the memory had gone completely and I spent several moments looking at him. Good-looking, sensual mouth, definitely looked familiar—someone I’d kissed in a bar?
“You don’t remember,” he said, disappointment clear in his voice. “You had a red dress on. I was on the door at the River.”
“Oh, of course! Sorry,” I said, shaking my head as though that would waggle some sense into it. “I just . . . didn’t recognize you without that suit.” This gave me a reason to look him up and down appraisingly. He was dressed in shorts, sneakers, and a black tank top—perfect for the gym, but very different from the last time I’d seen him.
“No, well, not really much good for running in, that one.”
“I guess not.”
Suddenly aware that I was still staring at his thighs, I realized I must look appalling, having just finished an hour’s session in the gym—hair tied back, bits of it sticking to my flushed cheeks, sweaty top. Lovely.
“Well, it’s good to see you again,” he said, running his eyes from my chest down to my toes and back up again in a fraction of a second.
I wasn’t sure whether he was being cheeky or a little bit out of line. But then he finished it with a slightly lopsided grin that wasn’t lewd at all, just very sexy.
“Yes, and you. I’m—going to get a shower.”
“Sure. I’ll see you soon,” and with that, he turned and ran up the stairs to the gym, taking them two at a time.
As I showered, I found myself wishing I’d met him when I had been heading for the gym too, instead of just coming out. Then we could have had a proper conversation, and I wouldn’t have been looking like such a train wreck. For a few moments I contemplated hanging around in the coffee shop, waiting for him to finish his workout—would that look too easy? Too desperate?
Well, what can I say? It had been a while. The last few men I liked had been one-night stands; sometimes I was verging on being too drunk to recall the details. Nothing wrong with it, of course, I was just enjoying myself while I could. Had enough of relationships for the time being, enjoying being single, all of that bullshit. Maybe it was time to start calming down a little. Maybe it was time to start thinking of the future.
As I dried myself off, the locker room empty, a sudden thought occurred to me—I can’t have looked that bad, or he wouldn’t have recognized me. The last time he’d seen me, I had been dressed in a scarlet satin dress, my hair loose over my shoulders. Today I was dressed in sweaty gym gear, with no makeup and with my hair tied back—quite different. And yet he’d recognized me the instant I looked up—I saw it in his eyes.
And he’d said, “Hello again.”
I hadn’t been back to the River since, although I’d been out several times each week. Last weekend I was visiting friends in Scotland, an exhausting weekend with very little sleep—but that hadn’t stopped me going out for drinks after work. On Friday we ended up in the Roadhouse, a new bar that had opened in the Market Square. It was heaving with people thanks to their opening weekend drinks promotions, and Sylvia and Claire had both run off with guys within the first half hour of arriving. For a while, I’d danced and drunk, drunk and danced, happy on my own, seeing people I know and chatting with them, shouting into people’s ears to be heard above the noise. There were some pretty tasty men in there, but there weren’t many single ones. The ones who were left were men I knew, either because I’d been out with them before, or they’d been out with one or other of my friends.
Now I was already looking forward to next weekend. Friday night I was planning to go out with Claire, Louise and her sister Emma, and then after that the weekend was mine. Smiling to myself, I sauntered back to the car, thinking that maybe we could find our way to the River.
By leaving work late I miss the worst of the crush on the Tube. When I first moved here I made the mistake of fighting my way through the rush hour, and every day the panic got worse. There were too many faces to scan, too many bodies pressing in from all sides. There were too many hiding places, and not enough room for me to run. So I leave work late, which makes up for me getting in late. I keep moving, up and down stairs, along the platform, until the last possible moment and the doors are just closing, before I jump on the train. That way I know for sure who I’m traveling with.
Tonight I took a while to decide which way to go home. Every day I take different routes on the Tube, getting off a stop later or a stop earlier, walking a mile or so, then onto a bus, or back onto the Tube.
Usually I walk the last mile, taking different streets. It’s been two years since I moved here from Lancaster, and already I know the London Transport system as well as a native. It takes a long time and it wears me out, but it’s not as though I have to rush home. And it’s safer.
Once I got off the bus at Steward Gardens my walk home was punctuated by fireworks, the smell of them sour in the cold, damp air. I walked across High Street, skirting the edge of the park. Doubled back down Lorimer Road. Through the alleyway—I hate the alleyway, but at least it’s well lit—and back behind the garages. I checked over the wall—the light was on in my dining room, the curtains half-closed. I counted the sixteen panes, eight on each door, which showed up as yellow rectangles, with neat edges where the curtains fell straight down on either side. No extra bits of light showed through. No one had touched the curtains while I’d been away from the flat. I repeated this over and over again as I kept on walking. The flat is safe, nobody has been in there.
At the end of the alleyway, a sharp turn left and I was nearly home—Talbot Street. I resisted the urge to walk to the end of the street at least once before turning back; tonight I managed to get inside at the first attempt. I looked back while turning the key, which had been held ready in my hand since I got off the bus. The front door locked behind me. I felt around the edges of the door, checking it was flush against the doorframe, careful not to miss any bump that might indicate that the door wasn’t properly shut. I checked it six times, counting each time: one, two, three, four, five, six. I turned the doorknob, six times.
Right on cue, Mrs. Mackenzie opened the door of the downstairs flat, Flat 1.
“Coo-ee, Cathy! How are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks,” I said, giving her my best smile. “You?”
She nodded and regarded me, her head to one side, for a moment as she usually does and then went back inside. I could hear her television turned up to full volume the way it always is. The evening news. She does this every evening. She’s never once asked me what I’m doing.
I went back to the checking, wondering if she does it on purpose, to interrupt me, knowing I’ll have to start again from scratch. I’m all right as long as I don’t get stuck. Sometimes I do. So—the doorframe, the doorknob—do it properly, Cathy. Don’t fuck it up or we’ll be here all goddamn night.
At last I finished checking the front door. Then up the stairs. Checked to the top of the staircase. Listened to the stillness in the house, the noise of a siren a few streets away, the television on in the flat downstairs. More fireworks, going off a long way away. A scream from somewhere out in the street made me catch my breath, but then soon after a man’s voice, a female laughing, reproachful.
I unlocked my front door, looked behind me at the staircase again, then took one step inside, closed the door, locked it. Bolt at the bottom, chain in the middle, deadlock at the top. Listened at the door. Nothing at all from the other side. Looked through the peephole. Nobody there; just the stairs, the landing, the light overhead. I ran my fingers around the doorframe, turned the door handle six times one way, six times the other way. One, two, three, four, five, six. The bolts held the door shut. I turned the Yale lock six times. I slid each bolt six times and back again, each time turning the doorknob six times. When I’d done all that, I could start on the rest of the flat.
The first thing I did was to check all the windows, and close the curtains, going around the flat in the same order. First the front window onto the street. All the locks secure. I ran my fingers around the window frame. Then I could close the curtains tight against the darkness outside. From the street, nobody can see me unless I stand close up against the glass. I checked the edges of the curtains in case I could see part of the window. Then I moved over to the balcony, the double doors. In the summer I look out over the yard, checking the perimeter wall, but at this time of year there was only darkness outside. I checked the deadbolts on the balcony doors, felt all the way around the edge, turned the handle six times. The lock held true, the handle rattled loosely. Then I closed the heavy lined curtains against the blackness.
The kitchen—the windows in here don’t open, but I checked them anyway. The blind came down. I stood in front of the drawer for several minutes, picturing what the contents looked like. When I pulled it open, I looked at the tray—the forks on the left, the knives in the middle, the spoons on the right. I closed the drawer, then I opened it again to make sure. Knives definitely in the middle, forks on the left, spoons on the right. How did I know? Maybe I did something wrong. I opened the drawer again, to check. This time it was all right.
Then the bathroom—the window is high up and frosted, and again this one doesn’t open, but I stood on the toilet lid and checked the edges nevertheless, ensuring it was closed tightly, then I pulled down the blinds. Through to my bedroom. Big windows in here that looked out onto the backyard, but the curtains were closed already as I left them before work this morning. The room was in darkness. I plucked up my courage and opened the curtains, checking the wide windows. I had extra locks installed in these windows when I moved in, and I checked each one, turning and re-turning the keys six times so that I knew they were secure. Then I closed the curtains, pulling them right across on each side so that there wasn’t a fragment of dark window showing. Then I turned on the light beside the bed. For a moment I sat on the edge of the bed, breathing deeply, trying to calm the rising panic. At 7:30 p.m. there was a show I wanted to watch. The bedside clock said that the time was 7:27 p.m. I wanted to go and watch television. But the panic was still there, despite reasoning with myself, despite telling myself that I’d done it all, I’d checked everything, there was nothing to worry about, the flat was secure, I was safe, I was home safe for another day.
My heart was still pounding.
With a sigh, I got up from my bed and crossed to the front door, to start it all over again.
This cannot continue. It’s been more than three years. It has to stop, it
has
to stop.
This time I went through the whole process of checking the door twelve times before I moved on to the front window.
In the end, it wasn’t at the River; it was back at the gym.
Friday night had been a bit pathetic, really. Too many nights out on the trot with no time to recover. It was all catching up with me and I felt tired, irrationally miserable and not at all inclined to go hunting for sexy doormen. We had three drinks in the Pitcher and Piano, a further two in the Queen’s Head, and by that time I’d had enough. Sylvia looked at me as though I was joking when I said I was heading for home. Saturday I spent recovering, watching movies on the sofa.
On Sunday morning I woke up at ten, feeling refreshed for the first time in weeks. Outside the sun was shining, the air crisp and still, a great day to go for a run. I’d do that, then go and shop for some healthy food, have an early night.
A few steps on the icy sidewalk put an end to that idea. Instead, I bundled some clean clothes into my bag and drove the five miles to the gym.
This time, I recognized him before he saw me. He was standing by the swimming pool, adjusting a pair of goggles. Not bothering to worry about whether he could see through the glass window to where I stood ogling him, I watched him slide into the water and kick off the wall into an easy, gliding front crawl. The water barely moved as he slipped through it. I watched him do two laps, hypnotized by his rhythm, until someone almost fell over my gym bag and broke the spell.
In the locker room, I stowed the bag in a locker and pulled out my iPod, strapping it to my arm. As I headed for the gym, I caught sight of myself in one of the mirrors. My cheeks were flushed, and the look in my eyes made me stop short. My God, I thought, unable to wipe the stupid grin off my face, he really is fucking sexy.
After work this evening something out of the ordinary happened.
Out-of-the-ordinary things are never good for me. Sometimes, if I’m having a good day, I can look back on them and smile, but at the time it’s never good. The day the pipes burst and the plumber had to come into my flat caused the biggest panic attack I’ve had.
I still don’t know how I survived that one.
I’m wondering about this evening, because at the moment I’m okay. I’m half expecting a panic attack to hit me later on, just when I’m least prepared for it, but at the moment everything is okay and I feel all right.
I had just finished eating, and there was a knock at the door.
I froze, my whole body tense. I don’t think I even breathed. My door buzzer hadn’t sounded, so it was either someone in the house, or the door had been left unlocked again. Whatever—even if my life depended on it, my body wasn’t going to let me move an inch. I felt tears sliding down my cheeks.
Another knock, slightly louder. Nobody has ever knocked on my flat door before.
I had a clear view to the door from where I was sitting on the sofa, stared at it and at the peephole. The light from the hallway, which normally shone through like a little beacon, was blocked by whoever was on the other side and all I could see was a round dot of darkness. I stared with such fierce concentration, it was almost as though I could make out the bulky shape of him through the solid wood, and I held my breath until my head pounded and my fingers started to tingle.
Then I heard footsteps retreating, going up the stairs, not down, and the sound of the door to the top-floor flat opening and closing.
So, it was him. The man upstairs.
I’d seen him come and go a few times, from the living room window. Once he was coming in just as I was about to leave the flat for work. I noticed that the front door was firmly shut, which made me feel a bit better, although I still had to check it, of course. The bike hadn’t appeared in the hallway, and I hadn’t seen him in the yard, so maybe he was parking his car outside after all.
He seemed to come and go at irregular hours. Mrs. Mackenzie was reassuringly predictable since she didn’t go out at all, at least not as far as I’d noticed. She’d appear in the doorway of Flat 1 most evenings when I came home, say hello and go back inside. I heard the sounds of her television coming up through the floorboards. Other people might find that difficult, but not me. I liked it.
And now, upstairs, Mr. Unpredictable.
I wondered what on earth he wanted. It was nearly nine—not a very good time for a social call. Maybe he needed help?
After a while, my breathing calm, back to normal, I wondered if I should go upstairs and knock on
his
door. I found myself having the conversation in my head:
Oh, hello. Did you knock? I was in the shower . . .
No, that wouldn’t do it—how would I have known it was him?
Again, I heard my mantra coming unwanted into my mind:
This isn’t normal. This isn’t how normal people think.
Fuck off, world—what the hell is normal anyway?
