The Apartment (15 page)

I shake off the ghost and rummage under the sink for the dustpan, and as I come back out and pass the stairs, there's a light on up there. I could swear the house was totally dark when I came home. I creep upstairs, wincing as the wood squeaks. The light is coming from Hayden's room.

Just walk away,
part of me is yelling.
Leave it alone,
that part shouts, spooling images across my mind. God, cowardice is so tempting. But there are two possibilities—someone is up there, or someone isn't. It's that simple. More likely, there's nobody there, but if there are masked bogeymen in my daughter's bedroom, I can't let them stay there and threaten my family, not again. Before I think anymore, I twist the doorknob and push into the bedroom.

My heart lurches as I scan the room and check behind the door. There's nobody there—but…

There's Zoë's Princess Ariel doll lying on Hayden's nightstand, hair roughly docked down to the spotted rubber scalp. It should be safely sealed away at the bottom of the pantry, taped up with all of Zoë's other toys. The princess stares up at me with injured, accusing eyes.

She's right. I killed her.

I was so tired. Odette had been in the hospital the night before and was due to take a taxi home that morning, but the doctors wanted to keep her in for another few hours and I'd made the mistake of taking an equally tired Zoë to do the grocery shopping. She'd been acting up—withdrawn and sullen and then suddenly shrieking in faked laughter about some joke she wasn't sharing. I started to get ratty with her and it ended in a meltdown in the car. I'd let her into the house, and after I'd hauled the groceries inside, I saw that she'd settled down to a game on the living room carpet. I knew none of this was her fault, and I was overwhelmed with pride in how she was coping and at the same time appalled that my seven-year-old daughter would even have to cope with something so crappy and that there was nothing I could really do about it. I gave her a box of Smarties and a bowl of chips—a Saturday treat—and we cuddled on the couch to watch
Toy Story.
She started to jiggle her leg and I snapped at her and she started to cry, so I apologized and went to find a bottle of Odette's tranquilizers, which she took on particularly bad days. I didn't want to take out my exhaustion on Zoë. I didn't think the pills were so strong as I curled back up on the couch, feeling better.

In my dream I was swimming with Odette and Zoë. We were in a pool at the seaside, at an apartment in Knysna we'd rented the year before. Zoë was lining up pebbles on the first step of the pool, Odette looking down at her. I was at the far end of the pool but I couldn't see them well because the wind was blowing leaves and dust between us, stinging my eyes. The leaves turned to crows, then to a huge black storm cloud, and I was trying to call out to them and warn them to come inside, but they couldn't hear me. There was no sound at all. The wind was silent. Then instantly the dust dropped and the sky was blue again and I zoomed in to Odette's face, smiling down blankly at Zoë as she contentedly lined up her stones, her hair dropping out in skeins, her body withering away as I watched. I tried to swim toward them, but I couldn't move. Now there was a sound of a cat beside me, puking up hairballs, and somehow it was stopping me from approaching my family. Whenever I pushed with my arm—
hack, hack, choke
—the gasping sound held me back. My kicking ankles collared with a
hack, hack, gasp.

Odette dropped her keys when she saw me, cradling Zoë's body, her face blue, vomit frothing her lips, the bottle of bright, Smartie-colored pills empty now, killing my daughter as I failed her.

I pumped and pushed at her corpse, wanting to reverse time, wanting to take all the poison she'd swallowed and have it for myself. I wanted to die instead of her. I was still pumping, but it was way too late when Odette raised me and shoved me away.

Now I hurry back downstairs to the pantry and check Zoë's boxes. There's no reason they should have been touched, but space—seven years of meaningless things I've used to block them away—has been cleared away, and Zoë's life and all her favorite bristle-haired princesses are spilling from the worn cardboard.

It makes sense to me immediately. I can't shove her away, out of sight. We are the ghosts in this house—Steph, Hayden, and me. Zoë wants her home back.

I know what she wants me to do. I open Hayden's closet and scratch under the piles of bedding and old clothes until I reach the sealed plastic zip-bag and drag it out. I strip Hayden's bed and work the duvet into Zoë's cover, the orange and gray chevrons she'd chosen just a few months before because she was getting too old for the Powerpuff Girls. Lilac fitted sheet and salmon pillowcases. It's only when I finally bundle Hayden's bedding together, ready to dump it in the hall, that I notice Steph's watching me from the doorway.

We caught a shuttle home from the airport, and at first, the house appeared to be exactly as we'd left it. The only immediate sign of disarray was a scattering of stamens from the arrangement of stargazer lilies I'd placed on the hall table for the Petits, but otherwise the place still smelled pleasantly of furniture wax. As Mark disengaged the alarm, I waited for the anxiety that had taken root after the home invasion to flood in. It didn't. Nor was I relieved to be back in Cape Town, although the clear sky and midday heat should have cheered me after the gray pall and freezing temperatures of the past week.

It was just a house after all, nothing but bricks and mortar. Familiar and far more comfortable than the Petits' hellhole, but not loved. At least not by me.

Mark sloped off to the kitchen to make coffee, leaving me to drag the suitcases up to the bedroom. I was desperate to shower, wash my hair, and brush my teeth, and I didn't notice anything was awry until I'd dried off and started rummaging in my drawer for clean underwear. My usually carefully matched socks were separated and jumbled up with my bras. I'd almost convinced myself that I must have scrambled them up during the chaos of packing for the trip, when my eye strayed to the bookshelf next to the bureau. My Tana French and Ann Cleeves novels—the books not deemed worthy enough to be on display on the shelves downstairs—were now positioned in a horizontal pile. I was certain I hadn't done that. And the dressing table itself looked like it had shifted a couple of inches—there were fresh scratches on the wooden floor around it.

Panic surged. The cops had told us that thieves often return to the scene of the crime to steal the goods replaced by insurance payouts. But no. They couldn't have got in. We'd have known about it. Nothing else was missing. The only explanation was that Carla had been through my stuff. She was the only one with a key. How
dare
she? At the very least she could have been less blatant about it. Something made me pull the duvet back. A single blond hair lay curled on the white sheet on my side of the bed. I gingerly plucked it off the fabric, dropped it into the toilet, and washed my hands. Did it belong to one of Carla's boy toys? Had she fucked one of her disposable boyfriends in our bed? There were no other signs that someone had slept in it—the sheets were uncreased and still smelled of fabric softener—but I ripped them off the mattress anyway and hurled them into the laundry basket.

Next, I checked Hayden's room. The door was shut—exactly as I'd left it—and I didn't get the sense that anyone had been in there. Her little army of soft toys were still lined up on the window ledge, and her clothes were neatly folded in the drawers. I sat on the bed and waited for the internal turmoil to recede.

When I came downstairs, Mark was sitting at the kitchen table, sorting through the junk mail, the iPad in front of him.

He glanced at me distractedly. “You feeling better after your shower?”

“Not really, no.”

“What's up?”

“Carla's been snooping through our stuff. Through my stuff, I mean.” I couldn't keep the resentment out of my voice.

“Eh?”

“She's been poking through my underwear drawer.”

“You think Carla's been through your
underwear
? Why would she do that?”

“How would I know? And it's not just that. She's been messing with my books as well. They're not as I left them.”

“What exactly are you accusing her of, Steph? Are you sure about this?”

“All I'm saying is can you ask her if she touched or moved anything in the house while we were away? I mean, it's not exactly kosher, is it?”

He shook his head. “Right. So, let's see. She agreed to meet the Petits for us and hung around for hours when they were a no-show. Then she made inquiries about them for us—which as far as I'm concerned was going above and beyond. And
then
when we were in dire straits she booked us a hotel—”

“For the wrong date.”

“It was an honest mistake, Steph. We owe her big-time, and all you can do is accuse her of going through your stuff? So what if she read a couple of your books? What's wrong with you?”

With me? With fucking
me
?
I bit the retort back. “I didn't mean anything by it, Mark. I'm grateful to Carla; I really am.” Lies, of course. If it weren't for her, we wouldn't have gone to Paris in the first place.

“Are you sure you didn't just misplace your stuff? You were really stressed just before we left.”

I'm sure.
“Maybe…maybe it was just my imagination. Sorry. You don't need this right now.”

Mollified, he sighed and patted my arm—the sort of gesture someone would make to a friend, not a wife or a lover. “And I'm sorry if I snapped at you. Listen, you mind if I catch up on work?”

He turned his attention back to the iPad. I made myself a cup of green tea and took it back upstairs to Hayden's room, the only place in the house where I truly felt at ease. I took comfort from the eggshell-blue walls I'd painted by myself, the chest of drawers with the bumblebee handles that I'd bought for a song from the online classifieds, and the Disney princesses nightlight a cousin had sent me from the UK.

It was the only room in the house that the invaders hadn't sullied.

When I first moved in with Mark, I'd planned to revamp the whole house and eradicate the ghost of Odette. Her personality was evident everywhere, from the retro fridge to the stripped-pine table and chairs, and even to the goddamned understated wash on the walls. I spent hours scrolling through décor websites, but time slipped away and when Mark left the university we didn't have enough spare cash to do much more than replace the essentials Odette had whisked away when she moved out. Zoë's room was a different proposition. It seems strange to me now that I didn't venture inside it until I was nearly five months pregnant and time began to run out. I knew Odette had taken most of Zoë's clothes and toys with her when she moved to the UK, but poking around inside it still seemed like an intrusion. I suspected Mark went in there sometimes, and the door was always shut—our version of Bluebeard's chamber. When I eventually got up the nerve to peer inside it, I was shocked to see how naked it was. There were no rugs on the floor, no curtains at the window. The duvet was still on the bed, rolled neatly at its foot, but the pillow was gone. Tentatively, I opened the wardrobe. It was empty except for a pile of duvet covers folded on a dusty shelf and a single pink anorak hanging forlornly from a wooden hanger.

I'd planned to sensitively broach the subject of redecorating it. But in the end I'd blurted it out one night after Mark had drunk a few glasses of red wine and seemed to be in good spirits.

It was our first real fight.

But now the room was Hayden's—and mine.

Again I considered just getting in the car and driving down to Montagu to fetch her. At the very least, I should call my folks and let them know we were home already. But I was exhausted, and why worry them? I decided to send them an email saying that I'd see them the next day, as we'd planned. Let them have one last day with their granddaughter. Then it hit me that I hadn't bought Hayden a present. I thought back to that mortifying scene in the kids' shop in Paris—I'd meant to buy her something, of course, and the urge to put this right was suddenly overwhelming.

Calling out to Mark that I was heading to the shops, I grabbed the car keys and fled.

The mall was deliciously cool after the summer heat, but everything was too bright and busy. There were too many people, too many shops; I felt self-conscious and clumsy, and colors smudged in front of my eyes. I tromped up and down the supermarket aisles, randomly throwing goods into my basket and desperately trying to remember what the hell we needed: milk, eggs, bread, bacon, yogurt, and cereal for Hayden, as well as something for supper. I ran out of energy when I reached the toy aisle, and it took me twenty minutes to choose what to get her from the display of mass-produced junk. In the end I picked out a Barbie mermaid doll, exactly the sort of sparkly girlie gift I'd vowed never to give her. Reeling from low blood sugar, at the checkout counter I added a Coke and a family-size bar of Dairy Milk chocolate. I consumed both sitting in the stifling car in the parking lot, my T-shirt sticking to my back, then hid the evidence under the passenger seat.

Mark was in the living room when I returned, staring blankly at a rugby match, although he never usually watched it. The sugar rush was making me feel trippy, and my skin was sticky with drying perspiration. I'd have to shower again. “You want something to eat, Mark? I bought eggs and bacon.”

“Not hungry.”

“But you haven't eaten since the plane.”

Nor had he showered, but I didn't mention that. In fact, he was still wearing the same clothes he'd worn for the last two days. I didn't want to think about his cat-blood-soiled coat—I'd give it away to the next homeless man who rang the gate buzzer. “I'm really fine. Thanks, though, Steph.”

“Shall I run you a bath?”

He dragged his eyes away from the screen and yawned. “I can do it. Listen, I think I'm going to crash. You mind?”

“But it's so early.”
And you stink like a fucking dead cat.

“I know. I can stay up with you if you want.”

“It's okay. Could you check the doors and windows before you go up? And set the alarm?”

I hovered while he did so, then sat in the kitchen and brooded. Bloody Carla. I wanted to take the scissors and slash a hole in her coat. Pour paraffin on it. Set it alight.

I didn't sleep that night. I streamed a film about a bunch of sex addicts with serious problems that were all magically resolved in the last ten minutes, and then sat through a grim murder mystery series set in New Zealand, keeping half an ear attuned to the house's creaks and groans. I knew they were just the sounds of an old building exhaling after a hot day, but every one of them set me on edge. I eventually fell asleep as the golden dawn light crept in, and I was woken what felt like five minutes later by Mark waving my cell phone in my face. “Text from your parents. They've just got off the N2. They're minutes away.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost one thirty.”

“Seriously?” Sunlight shafted through the burglar bars, stinging my eyes. My neck throbbed from falling asleep at an awkward angle. “Why didn't you wake me?”
Why didn't you bloody well come and find me last night?

“I didn't want to disturb you.”

At least he'd shaved and looked well rested and clean. My mouth was gummy and foul. “I need to brush my teeth. Let them in and tell them I'll just be a second.” I jumped up, energized at the thought of having Hayden home.

“No.”

“Wait—
what
?”

“No. Look, Steph. I don't want to see them. I'll stay in the bedroom. I'm not in the mood for your father's judgment this morning.”

“Hayden's coming back. Don't you want to see her?”

“Of course I do. But I can see her when your folks have gone. Please, Steph. I'm serious—I just can't take them right now.”

“Where must I say you are?”

“Tell them I have jet lag.”

There was no time to argue, as seconds later the gate buzzed. When I opened the door, Hayden squealed and ran into my arms and I buried my face in her hair, breathed in the scent of baby shampoo, and tried not to cry. I told my parents that Mark was still sleeping and ushered them into the kitchen. I made them tea while Hayden unwrapped the appalling doll I'd bought for her—she loved it, of course—and introduced it to the far superior Princess Elsa toy Mom had given her.

She didn't ask where Daddy was.

While my dad prowled through the ground floor, double-checking the burglar bars and griping about the cheapness of the alarm Mark had bought, I lied to Mom about our Paris trip—rhapsodizing about the scenery, the apartment, and the food—and promised to email her the photos as soon as I'd downloaded them (another lie: there were no photos of that god-awful trip, although we should have thought to take some of the Petits' shitty apartment to send to the house swap site). They couldn't stay long: they had a couple arriving at the B and B that evening. I hugged them and thanked them and tried not to get irritated at my mom for making a song and a dance about leaving—I knew she was trying to get a tearful reaction out of Hayden—and went onto the stoop to see them out.

Mark was coming down the stairs when we went back into the house.

“Look!” I trilled to Hayden. “Here's Daddy. Give him a kiss.”

She allowed him to hug her, then wriggled free and toddled back to Barbie and Princess Elsa.

“She looks happy,” Mark said.

“She had a great time.”

“That's good.” His eyes slid away from mine. “Look, Steph, you mind if I pop out for a bit?”

“Where to?”

“To see Carla. That okay? Better get the spare keys from her.”

“But I thought we'd do something with Hayden today. She's only just got back home.”

“I won't be long. I'll make it up to you, I promise.”

He was looking almost like himself; did I really want to start a fight? And if he didn't go and meet Carla, there was always a chance she'd come here. I couldn't cope with that. “Fine.”

“Really?”

“Sure. Go. But don't be long.”

I don't know what sparked it off, but minutes after Mark left, I started to feel twitchy, and the old anxiety began to build. I sat Hayden in front of the TV, then set the alarm. I paced through the house—double-checking that both doors were shut and bolted. The heat was getting oppressive, but I couldn't bear the thought of opening a window.

I was considering having a stiff drink when the alarm whooped. The shock of it was so unexpected and sudden that it took me several seconds to process what was happening.