No One Gets Out Alive (11 page)

As if her voice in the street had provoked a reaction from the scarce evidence of the living about her, a black BMW slowed to a halt. The window slid down. From inside, a young man grinned at
her. In the passenger seat, another man leaned forward to crowd the driver. There was someone in the back seat, though she couldn’t see their face.

‘Get in, luv,’ the driver said. ‘Get in.’

Stephanie didn’t react beyond staring at what she interpreted as an insolent grin on the driver’s face.

‘Got a phone number, yeah?’ the passenger in the front seat added.

When she came to an understanding of the communal intent of the car’s passengers, she took a step away from the car.

‘Slag,’ the passenger said.

‘Fuck off, twat!’ she shouted at the open window and hurried away in the direction of the house.

The car pulled away to the heavy thump of interior music she hoped had been started to cover the embarrassment of the car’s occupants. She’d often used the same response in Stoke, to
some effect in the same situation, as she walked to and from college.

Her unappealing contact with the outside world was only just beginning. ‘You’s got a room then?’ The voice came out of the front yard neighbouring the unruly privet hedge of
number 82. A portly man in a dark waterproof grinned at her from behind the front wall of another untidy house. In one hand he held a black plastic bag that he was about to place inside a rubber
dustbin.

‘Er, yes.’

Inside the cavernous hood of his coat, the man’s pink face was shiny with rain; the broad bifocal lenses of his glasses were speckled with droplets of moisture and disguised eyes she
sensed more than saw.

‘Nice to see the place up and running.’ His Brummy accent was thick. ‘The son still around then? You with him?’

‘Sorry, what? No. I’ve just moved in—’

‘Not seen him for a bit. He’s been ill. Better now then? Fought so.’ The neighbour seemed happier to do the talking, or the telling. He rolled his eyes knowingly. ‘I
wondered when he’d get his act togever. You the first then?’

What did he mean, the first new tenant? ‘Er . . .’ But then Stephanie realized she did not want to give the man the impression that she was the only girl in the house. And she
wasn’t, was she? ‘No. There’s others. And another two are coming. Moving in.’ She felt flustered and didn’t like his overfamiliar smile that could also have been a
smirk, one she was unable to meet with anything but wariness. ‘My boyfriend—’

‘Good to hear it. His dad been gone a while. Him carrying on the family tradition, eh?’ The man seemed to find this comment about Knacker extremely funny and guffawed to himself for
longer than was necessary; he didn’t seem to be aware that Stephanie wasn’t encouraging his mirth. ‘Might pop round, eh, and see you all some night soon. Bin quiet round here,
like, since his dad died.’

She had no answer, or anything to contribute to the mystifying conversation and its intrusive tone, and began to wonder if the man was crazy. ‘Gotta get on.’

‘Ta-ra! Might I say I’m very impressed, like, if this keeps up.’

Stephanie didn’t look back. She hurried on, still shaky from the confrontation with the youths and now confused by the neighbour.

As she closed the front door of number 82 she made a wish that all strangers would leave her alone forever. But of her encounters so far this evening, all in less than one hundred yards of the
house, she quickly understood that another engagement with a stranger awaited, and this would be the oddest and most sinister contact yet.

The tall figure at the end of the hallway, a man she had never seen before, did not move his head as she came into the house more hastily than usual.

The man continued to stare intently at the solitary door at the foot of the ground floor corridor, situated on the right hand side. His long neck reached out of the scruffy brown puffer jacket,
his forehead placed close to the ivory paintwork. He seemed to be listening with his eyes closed, while also issuing the weird suggestion of reverence, or prayer, his gangly body remaining
perfectly still.

Stephanie picked up the post from the floor. It was stacked inside a red rubber band. Though none of the mail could possibly have been for her, she just felt a need to do something other than
stand uncomfortably still.

She turned the light on. ‘Hi,’ she said to get the man’s attention, though she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted it.

The man did not speak or move. What light seeped through the hallway revealed short red hair, pale skin and a freakish height. His thin neck was distinguished by a pointed Adam’s apple,
the skin of his jaw coated in shaving rash and a fuzz of coppery stubble. From his long feet, clad in dirty white trainers, to his gingery head, he must have been six foot seven or more.

As the period of time in which he ignored her lengthened and became acutely uncomfortable to endure, Stephanie’s thoughts filled with reminders of the voice in the bathroom, her invisible
neighbour, her first room, and the mysterious male footsteps that walked this floor each morning, and possibly bolted up the stairs to the Russian girl’s room on the second floor. And for a
painful moment, she genuinely wondered whether the man was real, or another one of
them
: heard and even seen, but who didn’t seem entirely
here.

What is here?

The man turned his entire body to face Stephanie so quickly that she flinched and dropped the post. At the sight of her, his bony face didn’t soften its expression of pitiless distaste.
This was an unkind face with unsmiling blue eyes; a face still vaguely boyish but toughened to an inflexibility, or limited range of expression, by hard times. A
street
face.

Stephanie cleared her throat. She retrieved the post from where she’d dropped it, then stared at the man without smiling.

His gaze did not waver, and remained severe, as if her presence in the hall was a great inconvenience.

She felt too light on her feet, ungainly, muted, horribly chastened. But by what? She’d only come home from work to the building where she rented a room. Who the hell was
he
to
make her feel awkward and tense? Stephanie glared at the man before walking quickly to the staircase. He watched her without speaking.

As she climbed the stairs he laughed in a deep, forced way that almost became verbal: a ‘Ho, ho, ho’ accompanied by a mocking grin she didn’t look at for long. When he cut off
the contrived laugh, he settled for staring at her until she passed from sight.

There had been nothing amorous in the intensity of his attention, but something that seemed far worse. When Stephanie reached her room she was grinding her teeth and clenching her fists, one of
them around a stack of post that wasn’t for her. ‘Shit.’ She wasn’t taking the post back down there, where
he
was.
But at least he’s real.
There was
no other comfort to draw from the encounter.

Stephanie waited in her room for over an hour but Ryan didn’t call. Eventually she phoned him.

‘Thanks for calling,’ she said when he picked up.

‘Steph, you OK?’

She remained silent for a few seconds. The sound of his voice brought a lump to her throat. ‘Not really.’

‘What’s going on? Your message worried me.’

But not that much.

She looked at the door; beyond her room the house was having one of its quiet periods. ‘I’m in a bind. A real bind here. Look . . . I’m sorry, how are things with
you?’

‘All right. You know, still doing the night shifts. Contract, but it’s still work . . .’ He said other things but she found herself unable to pay attention; she was too engaged
with trying to work out how to explain her situation to him. He finished what he had been saying with, ‘You? Workwise?’

‘Bits and pieces. Shit mostly. Nothing changed there.’

‘So what’s this mistake?’

‘This house. This . . . place that I’m staying in . . .’ She kept her narrative to details about Knacker being ‘unstable’, and things of that nature: the deposit he
would not return, her parlous financial state, the missing bank card, and her need to move out fast. And though some of Ryan’s old protectiveness towards her reappeared, she was disappointed
that he didn’t immediately offer money; at one time he would have done so, confident that she was good for a loan, that she was not dishonest and hated dishonesty. With the little bit of
money her dad left her, she had also helped him by covering the deposit and a few months’ rent on their first place together. Had he forgotten? She’d never asked him for anything else,
besides to let her go, and repeatedly during the last three months of their time together.

He must suspect that if she was calling him she had no one else to turn to. But if she wasn’t mistaken Ryan’s voice was different now: quieter, less tight with emotion, as it had
been whenever they’d spoken closer to the time of their split. She also intuited a wariness because she had made contact with him.
How things change.
‘You’re seeing
someone?’ she blurted.

He went quiet for at least three seconds. ‘Yeah.’

It hurt, but only as a residual instinctive jealousy, as an infuriating sense of proprietorship over someone you didn’t want to be with anymore. Though she’d never stopped loving
Ryan, she didn’t want him back. Not long ago, she’d even prayed he would meet someone else. All the same, she couldn’t prevent her ego getting mixed up in his romantic affairs,
particularly now she needed his help.

‘Steph, can you blame me? I mean, you broke up with me.’

‘I’m fine. Totally fine with it. I thought you might be anyway.’

‘You?’ he said, and his voice tensed as he entertained
that
thought.

‘Few one night stands and a gangbang but nothing serious.’ He knew this was not true, but Stephanie sensed a bristling from his side of the phone. ‘I’m joking.
There’s been no one. It’s not something I even think about.’ At least that was the truth. ‘Hardly a priority in my current situation.’

‘Good,’ he said too quickly to have thought out his response.

‘But I need to get out of here and you’ve already answered my question. I’m sorry I bothered you.’

‘Don’t be like that.’

‘I’m not being like anything. I only thought . . . wondered if I could crash at yours until I can save a deposit on a room. But that would be complicated.’

‘Steph, you know I would help you out. No question. But things are tight here.’

She hadn’t asked him for money.

‘We’re saving too,’ he added.

‘Don’t tell me you live together? You’ve only just met her.’ She wished she could take it back and hated herself for wanting to hurt him. In her mind she’d built
Ryan into a guaranteed escape route – albeit an unwise one fraught with emotional attrition. But she now had one less safety net; the call confirmed it and the idea made her feel limp. Thank
God she hadn’t fled to him after her first night at the house, loaded down with bags. It would have been awful.
But worse than this?

‘Sometimes you just know,’ he said, his tone subdued by a combination of sullenness and passive antagonism she remembered only too well.

This was going nowhere. ‘Sure. Look, I better get off. I need the credit on my phone to look for rooms.’ Her voice was starting to break, which would only get worse the longer she
stayed on the line.

No, wait, don’t go. I’ll call you back.
He used to say things like that all the time, but they were way past all that now. Instead, he said, ‘Try Joanie. Or Philippa.
Bekka.’ And that really sobered her.

‘They’re in Stoke. I’m not going back there.’
I’m never going back near her: near Val.

For Ryan to even suggest she return to her home town was another example of him no longer truly thinking about her. Or even worse, no longer caring about her much. They were truly moving on and
forgetting each other.

‘You’ll be all right,’ he said, and sounded relieved the conversation was closing. ‘You’re a clever girl, Steph. Don’t need me to tell you that. Something
will turn up.’

‘That’s what I’m worried about. In my fucking room.’

‘What? This bastard landlord trying it on with you?’

‘No.’
Not yet.
‘Look, I wouldn’t have called if I wasn’t desperate.’

‘Cheers.’

‘I didn’t mean it like that. But . . . No one would believe me. This house.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘It’s not right. It’s all wrong. There’s
people . . . girls who keep talking and crying, but I don’t know if they are there. I can’t find them.’

‘What?’

Stephanie began to cry. She sniffed. ‘Things are going on here.’

‘What things?’

‘I don’t know. Someone was in my room, Ryan. My room!’

‘What? Where is this place?’

‘Edgehill Road. I can’t stay here.’

‘What number?’

‘Eighty-two. Can you help, please?’

‘But who was in your room? I don’t understand.’

‘They weren’t there when I switched the light on. In the bathroom . . . another one . . . a voice. Everything is wrong.’

‘What? Are you saying—’

The credit on her phone ran out with a bleep and it took all of her scant composure to resist throwing the handset against the wall.

She bit down on a stream of curses before they left her mouth – obscenities that would have made her feel even more desperate – just as someone announced themselves with three
playful raps on the door.

It was Knacker. ‘Awright, darlin’.’ He was holding a bottle of wine and two glasses. ‘Didn’t like the fought of you being on your own down here on
Friday night. Fought you might like to celebrate moving in, like. House warming.’

Had he been listening outside her door? The thought of Knacker knowing Ryan was no longer an alternative for accommodation chilled her. ‘No. Not a good time. But
thanks.’

Reeking of aftershave, Knacker stepped into the room without invitation, his body moving at her and around her at the same time. He came so close she pulled back as if from a blow.

‘Don’t be like that. I can see from a mile away that you been crying again. Somefing upset ya?’ He raised the wine glasses. ‘Nuffin’ funny, like. No offence,
sister, but you ain’t my type and I don’t mix business wiv pleasure. It’s not like I’m short a that kind a fing anyway.’ He spoke as though he were rejecting a
proposition from her. ‘Just offering a bit a hospitality, like.’