The Apartment (17 page)

By the time I get home, it's late afternoon. Steph's bathing Hayden when I come in, so after putting my stuff away in the pantry, I stand in the doorway and greet them. Without turning around, Steph mutters, “Hi.” I don't really expect a response from Hayden, since she's playing with her fish. I catch sight of myself in the cabinet mirror: my face is badly sunburned. Lifting my fingers to my hot cheeks, I notice the markings on them. I look down, turn my hands over, inspecting them: several parallel scratch marks on the backs of my hands, some of them scabbed over, dried smears of blood. Dark dirt under my fingernails.

I go to the basin and rinse my hands, the soap stinging into the cuts, the brown water eventually running clear.

“How was it?” Steph says.

“Fine,” I say. “Quite good, actually. I was surprised. I think it will be—”

“Where were you this afternoon?”

“I took the whole day off.” I tamp my hands on the darkest towel on the rail.

“I know. But where were you?”

“I just drove around a bit. I haven't been out that side for ages.”

“You weren't with Carla, were you?”

I sigh. Defensive answer or simple answer? “No.”

She fills a jug with water and leans Hayden back over her arm, gently gathering her dark curls and smoothing them back as she spills the water over them. She's so good at that; Hayden doesn't squeal—she lies back and sighs. I'm mesmerized as Steph massages the baby shampoo into the hair, rubbing and wringing and rinsing. She winds a small towel around Hayden's head and lifts her out.

“No, Mumma!” Hayden shouts. “Wanna fish!”

“Time to jump out, monkey. Get you dry and you can play a bit before supper.”

Hayden carries on whining but Steph's firm and has her dry in a minute.

“Let me clean up here,” I say.

“Thanks,” Steph replies. She wraps Hayden in her
Frozen
bathrobe and carries her to the bedroom, and I feel ashamed of myself. If going to therapy and cleaning up after them will take this feeling away, will make her love me again, I'll do it. Santé's wrong—I'm not denying myself; I'm holding on to the last good things in my life.

I pull the plug and gather the toys and put them in the bucket at the corner of the tub. I pick out the soap and turn on the hand shower to rinse the tub. The water's draining slowly, blocked by Hayden's hair in the drain hole. I pick it out and it comes away in a satisfying mat; it shines with a blue gleam, full of life. I can't bring myself to throw it away so I squeeze the water out and take it with me.

Less than an hour after I'd thrown it in the trash, I caught Mark dragging Zoë's duvet cover along the upstairs corridor. (He must have snuck out of the house and dug it out of the can when I returned to Hayden's room.) That's when I gave him the ultimatum: “Get professional help or Hayden and I are leaving.” I didn't raise my voice; there was no blazing row. He simply looked down at his stinking train of fabric as if seeing it for the first time, nodded, and promised to make an appointment the next day. I didn't accompany him to the sessions, but I know for sure that he made good on his promise, as the bills from his therapist—Santé somebody (I forget her surname)—still arrive at the house. Apparently our medical aid didn't cover the whole cost of Mark's treatment. I ignore the bills, and I'll ignore the lawyers' letters that will inevitably follow. Santé somebody can take me to court. She was supposed to help Mark, and she failed. Maybe we all did.

Mark may have agreed to get help, but days after we returned from Paris, I still couldn't shift the disconcerting feeling that someone had been digging around in our stuff. I had no proof that Carla had been snuffling through my belongings, but the subtle displacement of objects seemed to be designed to make me question myself—I couldn't help but believe it was malicious. Every day I'd discover a new little oddity: the pocket of a jacket I hadn't worn for months twisted inside out; a lipstick I rarely used worn down to a stub. Each time I came across something that wasn't quite right, I'd work to convince myself that it was all in my mind, but I wasn't sleeping well, and exhaustion fed the anxiety and paranoia.

The night after Mark returned home late from his first visit to the therapist, the alarm went off at three a.m. I was lying in bed with Hayden when it shrilled, jolting me awake when for once I'd managed to snatch a few minutes of sleep, sending my book, which had been lying on my chest, skittering to the floor. This time, Hayden didn't scream. She merely sat up and blearily complained about the noise. I fought to keep calm for her sake. “It's fine, baby. I'll make it stop.”

I ran to the door. “Mark!” I hissed down the dark corridor, ears straining for alien footsteps or voices. He didn't come. He didn't answer. “Mark!” Horrible scenes flashed through my mind:
they've broken in again and they've got him. They're torturing him, breaking his fingers, burning his skin on the iron, smothering him with a pillow.
And somehow worse than this, the thought that he was hiding, that he'd locked himself safely in the bathroom and was leaving me and Hayden to deal with it alone.

Hayden's voice snapped me into action. “It hurts my head, Mumma.”

“It's fine, baby. It will stop soon, you'll see.”

I couldn't let them get in. I couldn't let them get us. But what could I do? There was no lock on the door. I tried to move the chest of drawers toward the door, but I could only skew it away from the wall at an angle, my back muscles popping. As it jolted away from the wall, in the dim light cast by Hayden's night lamp, I spotted a dark object lying next to the baseboard behind it: an unfamiliar hairbrush, blond hair matted in its tines. Hearing footsteps, I gathered Hayden into my arms, still unsure of the best action to take. The door burst open, but it was Mark—just Mark. He hadn't left us after all. He looked calm and unruffled; he'd even taken the time to dress in jeans and a sweatshirt.

He flicked on the main light, making us blink. “You guys okay?”

“I was calling for you, Mark. I was worried—I thought…I didn't know…”

“I've been checking the house. All secure.”

“You're sure?”

“Positive. Been trying to kill the alarm, but the code isn't working.”

I shifted Hayden's weight on my hip. She was getting way too heavy to carry. Mark reached out for her. “Here, let Daddy carry you.” After a moment's hesitation, I handed her to him. I should have been relieved at this show of concern for his daughter, but instead I felt uneasy.

“Can you see if you can turn it off?” he said to me.

“Yeah, but shouldn't we call the cops just in case?”

“I checked the house, Steph. Why waste their time?”

A vicious inner voice piped in that if I had a job—if I hadn't chosen to stay at home with Hayden—then maybe we'd be able to afford the five hundred rand a month to hook the alarm up to a security company. And it could just be a glitch, couldn't it? “Apparently it went off a lot while we were away.”

“Who says?”

“One of the neighbors—a student—told me.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“I meant to. You've been distracted lately, Mark.”
Not to mention borderline insane.

“Noisy, Daddy!” Hayden cried.

“Can you try and switch it off, Steph?” he said again.

I ran down to fiddle with the alarm. It died the second I touched the control pad. I didn't rearm it, rationalizing that even if someone did break in, it was useless. Instead I scurried through the house, double-checking the windows and doors, jumping at every sound.

When I returned to Hayden's room, Mark was moving the chest of drawers back into place. The hairbrush behind it had gone out of my mind. Hayden was tucked into bed, and her eyelids were drooping.

Mark smiled at me. “Well done. I'll get someone to come and look at it tomorrow. Probably just a loose wire.”

He turned off the main light. His elongated shadow drifted across Hayden's duvet—an eerie Nosferatu shape. I shivered. Hayden was now breathing steadily.

“She's out, Steph. Come on. Come to bed.”

I couldn't bear the thought of leaving Hayden alone in the room. Or maybe I couldn't bear the thought of being alone in bed with Mark. “No. I'm going to stay in here with Hayden.”

“Why don't we bring her in with us?”

I stared at him. He'd been against letting her sleep in our bed from the start. We'd never discussed why, but I'd assumed it was a habit that Zoë had got into and it was the kind of clingy behavior he was reluctant to encourage in Hayden. “Seems a shame to move her now.”

“Okay. Sleep well.” He kissed me chastely on the cheek and left the room. I crawled into bed with Hayden, convinced that sleep wouldn't come, but it crept up on me almost immediately.

Hayden woke me up by stroking my hair. Bright sunlight filtered through the crack in the curtains. “Mumma! Mumma, get up. Mumma. Look.” She was pointing under the bed.

“What?”

“Look, silly! Look at the funny lady.”

“What funny lady?”

“Look!”

I swung my legs off the bed and got groggily down on my hands and knees. All that was under there was one of Hayden's socks and the Mermaid Barbie. I dragged it out and handed it to her. “This funny lady?”

Hayden put her hand on her hip in a perfect imitation of my mom when she's exasperated at Dad. “No, Mumma!” She clucked her tongue and took Mermaid Barbie from me.

“Where's Daddy?” And what time was it? When I tracked down my cell phone—I'd left it on the nightstand in Hayden's room but stupidly hadn't thought to use it last night—I saw it was almost nine. Hayden was usually up at six. Jesus. Had she been unsupervised for three hours? I carried her downstairs and saw with relief that Mark had left a note on the kitchen table, saying that he'd tried to wake me earlier but couldn't rouse me and had left only when he heard I was awake. Why didn't he call out to me? He must have crept out of the house; I didn't hear the creak of the front door or the jangle of the gate slamming shut.

“Did Daddy make you breakfast, Hayden?”

She nodded. “Yucky cereal.”

“Did you eat it?”

“No, Mumma. I want eggs with faces.”

“
Please
can I have eggs with faces.”

“Please, Mumma,” she said, sweetly.

I made Hayden a boiled egg, drawing a smiling face on the shell as I always did, and cut a piece of toast into narrow slices for her to dip into the yolk. I didn't feel like eating; I wasn't sure if I could even stomach coffee that morning.

“Spoony, Mumma!” Hayden said.

“Please,” I snapped back.

“Please, Mumma.”

I opened the drawer, looking for one of the special novelty spoons she liked, but most of them were in the dishwasher, which I'd forgotten to turn on last night. I dug through the knives and forks, metal rasping against metal, until I found one, although it was covered in a fine patina of black mold. I dropped the spoon straight into the trash, then yanked out the drawer and heaved it onto the counter. The plastic tray was spotless, as was the rest of the cutlery. It didn't make any sense. Maybe Mark or I had accidentally put a dirty spoon into the drawer without noticing.

Hayden called for a spoon again, so I distractedly grabbed one from the dishwasher, rinsed it, and plonked it in front of her. Then I went through the rest of the kitchen. Nothing else appeared to have been touched, but it didn't
feel
right. Paranoia nibbled: maybe it was all an elaborate ruse, like in one of my crime books, engineered to drive me mad. To split up Mark and me.

Maybe I was the one who needed a psychiatrist. No. That was bullshit. I wasn't crazy.

“Mumma! Look!” Hayden grinned at me and chucked a piece of buttery toast on the tiles.

“Don't do that, Hayden.”

She did it again.

“Hayden. I'm warning you.”

She giggled, and then, making sure I was watching her, picked up the last piece and dropped it. She wasn't doing it to irritate me; she was simply playing a game, but I wasn't thinking at that moment. Rage surged, and I grabbed her bowl and flung it into the sink, where it shattered, screaming, “I
said,
fucking
no
!” I had never raised my voice to Hayden before, and for a second we both stared at each other in mutual shock.

Then Hayden gasped and burst into tears. I picked her out of her tight seat and cuddled her to me. “Sorry, Mumma,” she stuttered between sobs.

“No. Mumma's sorry, baby.”

Then we were both crying. The scene is etched in my mind, as clearly as if it's a still from a movie. Me holding Hayden in my arms in the center of the kitchen, both of us howling, the tiles littered with squished eggy toast.

“Don't cry, Mumma.” Hayden leaned back and stroked my face. “I will let you play with Princess Elsa.”

When we'd both calmed down, I dressed Hayden and then let her play with the iPad while I cleaned up the mess and the broken bowl, fighting the guilt that kept surging up. Not showing any signs of being affected by my appalling behavior, she continued to shout, “Mumma! Look!” whenever she managed to get to the next level of the game she was playing. Another jab of guilt: I'd been using the iPad and its store of addictive kids' games as a babysitter since we'd returned from Paris.

When the mess was cleaned up, I was hit with the urge to confess what I'd done. I called Mark, but his phone was off. I thought about calling my mother, then changed my mind. I mourned the fact that they were my only two real choices when it came down to it. I scrambled in my handbag for an emergency Urbanol, but the packet was empty. I was supposed to take them for only two weeks: the meds were a short-term solution for the anxiety I'd felt after the home invasion. If I needed more—and I was fairly sure I did—that would mean another trip to the doctor, an expense that probably wouldn't be covered by Mark's medical aid. I'd have to go without. And considering how Zoë had died and his current fragile state of mind, I could hardly tell Mark I was in the market for tranquilizers. Instead I practiced the breathing exercises the police counselor had taught me until the anxiety stopped frothing in my gut.

Getting out of the house might help. Perhaps I should do what I'd thought of doing the other day and head off to the beach. Afterward, Hayden and I could kill time shopping for groceries. She loved going to Pick n Pay and being wheeled around in the shopping cart. But since she was absorbed in her game, I decided to wait until she got bored before I suggested an outing, and checked my emails instead. There was nothing from the literary agent, but I didn't allow myself to indulge in a spiral of doubt about that. I clicked onto Facebook and scrolled through the random boastful updates about other people's lives, relieved that I hadn't posted a message letting everyone know about our plans for the Paris trip.

I was about to log off when a message from the Petits zinged into my Gmail in-box:

We are sorry for the trouble about the woman who it seemed was dead there in the apartment courtyard. And we are sorry that we could not arrive at your house there in Africa. Can you tell us, did you have any other experiences during your time in the apartment or now? It would be good if you would leave a good review for the other guest who might like to stay there.

Wishing you good cheer.

I barked out a laugh, startling Hayden. Leave a review? Leave a fucking
good review
? Desperate to share this nugget, I tried Mark's phone once more. This time it went straight to voice mail. I forwarded the email to him, then sent him a text message urging him to check his email.

Hayden was thankfully entranced by the iPad once more, so I amused myself by making up a review for the Petits' place:

Not only did the Petits—if that is even their real name—not show up to our house or let us know that they had changed their arrangements, but their apartment was a fucking mausoleum and nothing like they described it on the site. Think the Overlook Hotel but with less charm and more creepiness. The building was empty except for a mad squatter, who invited herself to our apartment and then threw herself out of the window. It's an awesome spot for anyone who likes being traumatized and enjoys the ambiance of creepy empty concrete buildings that stink of old food and shit.