The Girl Below (20 page)

After Pippa had hung up, an even more extreme boredom took hold than the one that had driven me into her room in the first place, and for the second time that week, I climbed onto the vast futon and fell asleep. When I woke up, some hours later, the sky was a murky gray that left me unsure as to whether it was twilight or just an overcast English afternoon. The house had no pulse, nothing stirred, but sitting on the bedside table in my sight line were Ari’s keys, which I’d deposited there after dropping Pippa and Ari off at the airport. Besides the car key, the chain held half a dozen keys, and as I lay there staring at them, I had an idea.

The ladder to the roof screeched as I pulled it down, and when I lost my grip and it crashed to the floor, I jumped out of my skin. On the way upstairs I’d turned on as many lights as I could, but up near the padlock it was dark, and I fumbled with the keys and dropped them. Inwardly, I was ashamed of myself for being so nosy, but not so much that I was prepared to turn back. On my third attempt the padlock yielded, and I was faced with a stiff bolt that gave way only after I’d figured out how to pull it from exactly the right angle. But once it gave, the hatch swung open easily and landed on a soft asphalt cushion.

Up on the roof, the night was clear, with a weak moon hanging on the horizon. I wondered how another entire day had slipped away without my participating in it. Drawn to the shaft of light coming from the hatch, insects ricocheted off my head as I looked around at the neglected roof terrace. What must once have been a thriving garden was now a cemetery of dead stalks and broken clay pots.

In one corner of the roof stood a wooden structure no bigger than a sentry box. It had one tiny window and a peeling black door that rattled but didn’t open when I tried the handle. None of the keys on Ari’s chain fit the lock, and I searched unsuccessfully under pots and on the door ledge for something to open it with. But when I tried the window, it creaked open and I was able to reach in and unbolt the door. This counted as breaking in, I supposed, but there was no question of giving up now, not after overcoming so many obstacles to get here.

Inside, Ari’s lair was tidier than I expected. The compact space was furnished with a coffee table and an easy chair, with the rest given over to the worship of music. An entire wall held built-in shelves, and these were crammed with vinyl records, their spines creating a library of sorts. On a low table sat an old-fashioned turntable and amplifier, and a pair of ungainly headphones. The brown plastic case of the turntable was so lovingly maintained that it showed my reflection, and its chrome dials were polished to a high shine. On the coffee table, a chipped Bakelite ashtray sat empty but caked in soot, recently used.

The easy chair was accommodating, and I sank into its soft cushions and flicked through the nearest row of records, all preserved inside plastic covers. Once or twice a rogue
Playboy
or
Penthouse
tumbled out, but they were the same vintage as the records, more coy and amusing than pornographic. Ari’s filing system had an order, but it took me a while to gauge its logic. Albums were grouped together by artist, but not alphabetically. Rather, they seemed to be filed by decade, with the 1950s and ’60s closest to arm’s reach. Ari was in his early forties; the records were too old to belong to his youth, but they were clearly his favorites, as he had collected multiple copies of the same album. There was a lot of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, hardly any Beatles, but what looked like more than one set of the complete works of the Rolling Stones. I counted eleven copies of the same album, a strange-looking thing with what appeared to be a hamburger or a wedding cake on the cover. I took one of the records out of its sleeve. The vinyl felt heavy, satisfying, and I remembered how when I was a child Dad had told me off once or twice for messing with his records. I thought I’d played with them in secret, but my hand had been too small to span from the edge to the hole in the middle without leaving telltale finger marks.

Once the record was in place on the turntable, I lowered the needle gently and it skated over the dusty surface, looking for a song. I plugged in the giant headphones and a tinny guitar riff leaked out into them. The first song was familiar, off a movie sound track, but I didn’t recognize the mournful one that came after it. Before long, I was leaning back in the chair with my eyes closed, oblivious to everything except the sounds that flowed through my ears and acted on my bloodstream like a narcotic. By the end of side one, I felt tipsy, as if I’d arrived at the sweet spot of a really wild party. My foot had been tapping of its own accord for some time, and no doubt other body parts too, when I became aware that I wasn’t alone in the shed. Someone was standing behind me.

I pulled off the headphones and spun round to see Caleb standing in the doorway, arms folded, all smirk.

“Don’t stop your funky moves,” he said, mocking me.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“A while.” He paused just long enough for me to blush. “I’ve never been in here before—only looked through the window. It’s kind of cool.”

I felt I ought not to tell him I had broken in. “The door was open.”

“I bet it wasn’t,” he said, grinning. “Dad’s really psycho about this place. He won’t let anyone in because he thinks we’ll scratch one of his precious records. For ages, I thought he was up here surfing porn but when I told Mum, she laughed and said he didn’t even know how to switch on a computer. But I still thought that’s what he was doing—lots of my friends’ dads do it and they’re techno retards. Anyway, Mum was right, but Dad still won’t let me in the door.”

Caleb had never been so talkative, or so friendly, and the sudden change in him put me on edge. “We should go downstairs,” I said, lifting the needle off the record.

“What were you listening to?”

“The Rolling Stones.”

“Dad’s always trying to get me to listen to them. He says they’re the best band on the planet, but when you see them on TV, they’re like a bunch of granddads in try-hard clothes.” He reached past me and grabbed the record cover, sending out a wave of such strong heat that I moved away from him. He didn’t notice, had already thrown the Stones to one side and was pulling records off the shelf three at a time, oblivious to his dad’s filing system.

“What about this?” he said, holding up an album with two topless women in see-through knickers on the front.

“Don’t you think we should go?”

He chucked the record on the turntable and unplugged the headphones, filling the shed with a raucous late seventies disco riff.

“All right!” he hollered. “These chicks are awesome.”

“I don’t think that’s the band on the cover,” I said. “I think they’re just models.”

Caleb hadn’t heard me. He was hunting through cupboards and looking behind things, but some miracle had prevented him from rooting out the seventies bush porn. “I’m sure Dad’s got a fridge in here, somewhere,” he said. “He’s not allowed to drink, but I’ve seen him sneaking up here with dodgy brown paper bags.” He swung back one of the shelves to reveal a tiny, ingenious fridge stocked with beer, from which he took out two cold bottles of ale, then pulled a key ring with an attached bottle opener from his pocket.

“Do your parents know you drink?” I said when he handed me a bottle.

“Doubt it. Mum’s too busy having fits about what Dad drinks, and he’s too busy hiding from her that he’s an old soak. Mostly I stick to spirits—vodka and stuff—but beer’s okay if you haven’t had much to eat.”

“You drink vodka?”

He nodded. I didn’t know why I was surprised. I had too at his age. We’d bought cans of Coke and tipped them half out then filled the rest up with vodka so we could drink on the tube without getting caught. One time I had polished off the remains of the vodka bottle straight and had spewed all the way home on the night bus. “Do you still have to get girls to buy your booze?”

“Girls?” he said, as if they were an alien species. “Why would you do that?”

“Because girls look older.”

“Nah, the guys I hang out with are older than me, so they buy all our shit.”

“And they give it to you for free?”

“No, they make us pay.” Caleb was on to his second beer, having guzzled the first in little more than a gulp, and his face had begun to bloom. “That chili sauce went everywhere this morning,” he said, miming an explosion.

“I’m glad you think it was funny.”

“It was, rather.” He flicked open another beer and handed it to me. “Sorry about buggering off. I couldn’t be arsed cleaning up, but I was going to later on.”

“Sure you were.” I took a sip of the beer and wondered how we were going to replace all the missing bottles. Caleb had turned up the volume on the stereo and suddenly took hold of my wrist.

“Let’s pretend we’re at a party,” he said, pulling me to my feet. “And we’re not the only ones dancing.”

He spun me around in a clumsy twirl and I tried to follow his lead but my knees tensed up.

“Don’t be such a square,” he barked. “I saw you dancing before, so I know you like it.” But something about his youthful swagger, his proximity, made me lose my nerve even more, and Caleb gave up and dropped my hand. For a moment or two, I did an old-person’s shuffle, while he bounced around in a wild pogo, ricocheting off the record shelves and walls until he stumbled and landed heavily on the turntable case. The lid made a hideous cracking sound and the needle scorched across the record before skidding clean off.

Into the sudden, deafening silence, he said, “Fuck me!”

I stared at the turntable, where a fault line wended its way from one side of the case to the other. We could replace the beer, but this was different. I felt the giddy spirit of the evening desert me. “We really should call it a night,” I said, starting to tidy up, but Caleb was selecting another record from the shelf.

“Bob fucking Dylan,” he said. “Awesome!” He was beginning to slur his words, and I wondered if he’d already had a few drinks before he came up here. It would explain why he’d been so friendly.

“Come on, let’s go,” I said. “Before we destroy anything else.” I had it in mind to come back up the next day to assess the damage—without Caleb.

“Wait, wait, wait,” he said, before, with exaggerated, inebriated care, he launched the needle across the record. But nothing happened. The turntable wouldn’t revolve. He tried to push it round with his hand, and a sick, whining sound escaped from the speakers.

“Holy shit, it’s really broken,” he said, cracking up. “Dad’s going to fucking kill you!”

“Kill
me
?” I said. “You’re the one who broke it.”

“Yes, but I’m not the one who busted in here—am I?” He shot me a challenging look and held it for a moment or two, letting me sweat. Then he cracked up laughing. “Relax, I’ll take one for the team,” he said. “I’m already in deep shit with Dad, so a bit more won’t make any difference.”

We stood sipping our beers for a moment, but it was deadly quiet, airless and hot, the space too cramped to be alone in with Caleb.

“We really should go downstairs,” I said, and as much as was possible began to put things back the way I’d found them. Caleb gulped the rest of his beer and took another out of the fridge, stowing it in his back pocket. The weight of it made his trousers droop below the hem of his T-shirt, and escaping from the top of his waistband was a curly sort of down. “One for the road?” he said, offering me the last beer.

“No thanks.”

With the lights off, the crack in the turntable case wasn’t so noticeable, but on the way down the ladder the incident worried me for reasons other than who would take the blame. Granted, I had broken into Ari’s shed on my own, and the music had loosened me up, but in the short space of time Caleb had been there I had basically lost my head.

On the landing outside my bedroom, Caleb turned to me. “Maybe you should sleep in Mum and Dad’s room.”

“Do you think they’d mind?”

“They won’t even know.” He glanced in my room. “What did you see in there that freaked you out so much?”

“I didn’t really
see
anything. It was more of a presence.”

He laughed. “You’ve been sleeping on the bathroom floor because of a
presence
?”

Said like that, it sounded ridiculous. “I guess so.”

“If it’s only a presence, then it’s all in your head. So tell it to go away.”

“It’s not that simple,” I said.

“Yes it is.” He gave me a friendly punch on the shoulder. “Don’t be such a wimp.”

Caleb was right; it was beyond silly to be frightened of a cupboard. That first night in Pippa and Ari’s room, I slept dreamless and undisturbed, putting it down to my newfound determination to be more courageous.

When I woke the next morning, Caleb had gone out, leaving a note on the dining table to say he was at a friend’s house. Midmorning, a temping agency called to get me in for a typing test the following week—the first appointment in my diary for almost a month. For the rest of the day, I did washing and housework, interspersed with long periods of staring out the window or into space. The only time I left the house was to walk to the supermarket at half past five, when it was jammed with after-work shoppers filling their baskets with pre-prepared meals and wine. Using Pippa’s money, I splurged on indulgent groceries, the kind I hadn’t bought for months, but by the time I’d carried it all home and put the food away, I couldn’t be bothered making anything more gourmet than a ham and mustard sandwich. While I was eating it, Caleb sent a text saying “Hi how R Stones,” so I sent one back that said, “Are you home for dinner?” but got no reply. Later, when I tried to call his mobile, it went straight to voice mail. He had told me he never checked messages, so I didn’t leave one.

At midnight, I woke on the couch with a stiff neck, an infomercial for body bronzer blaring at me from the TV. No messages from Caleb, but outside, Friday-night revelry had taken over the street. The bass from a nightclub almost a hundred meters away, under the flyover, was making the windows vibrate. There had been a time when staying home on a Friday night would have made me anxious and depressed, but now it was the idea of going out and jostling in a bar with strangers that seemed perverse. I thought of the night with Wouter and the spliff and how out of practice I’d been, how my body had no longer been able to tolerate what I’d once put it through all the time.