Chapter 20
NOW
She was in the kitchen when she heard it.
Arriving home to an empty house had been a novelty, and she’d just been revelling in the idea of reading in bed, a comparatively early night. Sleep that her thirty-four-year-old body needed even if her twenty-year-old persona might not.
It had been odd opening the door onto the dark hallway, snapping on the light to drive the shadows to the corners of the room.
Then walking to the kitchen and doing the same.
The slatted kitchen blind had been left open, and she was aware of the darkness outside, broken by the noise of passing traffic, but somehow deep and eerie in a way it had never felt before.
She’d been about to pop on the kettle and make herself a cup of tea to take upstairs when she heard it. Just a couple of notes at first, enough to make her stop and listen, prick her ears, but not enough for her to be sure exactly what it had been or where it had come from.
It was nothing, she told herself. Just some teenager passing by playing music on her phone, or a notification on her mobile from a little-used app.
Then it happened again; single notes plucked on an acoustic guitar, falling together to form an almost haunting melody. Coming from somewhere close by, above her.
Bella was quite a fan of folk guitar. She’d enjoyed listening to performances in her local pub back in the UK, and always stopped to linger when a busker with talent was playing acoustically.
What she wasn’t a fan of was haunting, human sounds coming from upstairs in an empty house.
Her heart began to race. She didn’t believe in ghosts, didn’t think burglars tended to break into people’s houses then entertain them with guitars. But there was no good explanation for why the music was softly being played in one of the upper rooms.
She switched off the kettle before it began its pre-boil rattle and crept to the hallway, feeling her whole body tingle on high alert. The music was definitely coming from upstairs.
Any thoughts of it being simply a radio left on dissipated when the playing stopped for a moment – the player coughed – then resumed.
It couldn’t be Henri – even if he were unexpectedly back from the bar, she knew he couldn’t play anything.
His father had apparently paid for lessons on several different instruments during his childhood.
He’d regaled them the other evening about a particularly frustrated saxophone teacher who’d ended up grabbing his instrument and whacking it against the wall on finding out his would-be prodigy had failed to practise for the eighth week in a row.
Odette had said something about playing a little piano. But not a guitar.
Whoever it was had no business being in the house.
Bella began to climb the stairs quietly, thinking how she’d often watched main characters in crime dramas carry out similar investigations and thought how unrealistic it was.
In that situation, she would leave the house!
Call the police! The only thing missing was the sinister music that would usually accompany this kind of move.
But curiosity overruled anything more sensible.
And for some reason, she couldn’t imagine someone playing a guitar could have evil intent.
Besides, she wouldn’t know what to say if she called the police anyway.
Someone was playing a guitar upstairs and she didn’t know who it was? It sounded ridiculous.
She grabbed hold of a large book as she passed the hall table, just to have something to throw if necessary, and held it slightly in front of herself as if it were a loaded gun that would protect her from anything and anyone.
The cover was faded, but she could make out the name ‘Proust’. She hoped it wasn’t valuable.
Reaching the landing, she cocked her head slightly to one side, trying to hear the music again. To her horror, she realised it was coming from her room.
Somehow, the annoyance she felt at her personal space being invaded made her more angry than afraid.
She found herself stepping towards her door.
The light hadn’t been switched on, but she could see the outline of the gap between the door and its frame due to the street lights outside, perhaps even a little moonlight too.
There was a scent in the air that took her back to her school days, when she’d gathered with fellow rebels behind the bike sheds before they were old enough to realise that rebelling by giving yourself lung cancer wasn’t the best form of subterfuge.
Whoever it was, was smoking – smoking! – in her room. Taking a breath and relying on something she’d read once about the power of surprise, she switched on the light and flung the door wide open and screeched: ‘Que fais-tu dans ma chambre?’ What are you doing in my room?
She’d half expected the intruder to leap up, push past her and vanish into the night.
Instead, as she stood, brandishing à La Recherche Du Temps Perdu above her head, the adrenaline drained from her body, and she became aware of herself.
Confronting an intruder, armed only with a book, in a dark, empty house in a strange city. What was she doing?
A man was sitting on her bed – on her bed!
– with a guitar resting on his knee, his fingers at the strings.
His face was rugged and stubbled, his eyes ringed with dark circles.
And as he looked up at her, his expression seemed to register a mixture of confusion, annoyance and amusement.
She noticed that it wasn’t a cigarette she’d smelled after all, but some kind of incense stick in a jar.
Which was far less cancer-inducing but no less of an imposition.
‘Je ne—’ he began. ‘Je ne—’ He gave a deep sigh and his shoulders slumped. ‘Shoot. Sorry, sweetheart, my French has deserted me. Do you speak English?’ He spoke with a drawling American accent, slurring his words slightly, clearly more than a little worse for wear.
‘Yes!’ she said, lowering the book slightly. ‘I am English.’
‘Oh good. In which case,’ he paused and fixed his bright blue eyes on her, ‘who the fuck are you?’
‘Who the fuck am I? Who the fuck are you?!’
The ridiculousness of the situation didn’t escape her.
She was in her own home, her own room, and this stranger was sitting on her bed, playing the guitar, drinking whisky or some other spirit whose smell filled the air and asking her who she was.
It was like some sort of far-fetched and less child-friendly retelling of Goldilocks.
Only if she had been a bear, this guy would have been in real trouble.
All she’d wanted tonight was a nice, strong cup of tea in bed. Not a tall, rugged stranger, an unwelcome dose of burnt perfume and Simon and Garfunkel’s greatest hits.
It was ridiculous. It was all too ridiculous.
In fact, perhaps it wasn’t happening at all?
Perhaps she was having a stroke. What were you meant to do in these circumstances?
Check if your face has fallen – she remembered that from a TV advert a few years back.
She tested her smile, it seemed to be working.
Could she touch her fingers to her nose?
Worried, she moved her hand sharply and forgetting she was holding a book, hit herself in the face with the Proust.
It hurt and she let out a cry that sounded similar to the noise their family dog had made when it had injured its paw.
‘Shit, are you OK?’ The man put down his guitar and went to stand closer, peering at her face. ‘Looks like it’s bleeding.’
She dropped the book and put her hands to her face briefly, then withdrew them. He was right; her nose had started to bleed.
The man stepped farther forward, and she stepped back. ‘Don’t,’ she said, holding up her bloodied hands.
‘Sorry.’ He held both his hands up in a gesture of surrender. ‘Seriously, I’m not going to hurt you.’ Then added, ‘Seems to me you’re more of a danger to yourself than anyone else.’ He picked up the box of tissues from the nightstand and held it out. ‘Here.’
She grabbed one instinctively.
‘Maybe take two, you know, in case you decide to hit yourself in the face again.’ He grinned.
Was he laughing at her? Laughing? ‘Can you just leave before I call the police?’ she managed from behind the crumpled tissue she was now holding to her nose.
‘You’re drunk. You’ve wandered into the wrong house.
You don’t seem like a burglar. And anyway, I haven’t got anything of value – unless you’re into overpriced high heels and to be honest, you’re welcome to them because they are a total mistake and I shouldn’t have wasted my money on them.
But otherwise, there’s nothing… so can you just— Please. Go.’
The man looked confused. ‘This is number 12, right?’
‘Yes.’
He nodded. ‘Thought so. I think it’s you who are in the wrong place. Are you feeling OK? Your face looked kind of weird a minute ago. Like twitchy.’
‘Of course I’m twitchy! There’s a strange man in my room. And anyway, I was testing my movement in case I was having a stroke,’ she said, her voice haughty with self-righteousness.
Unless… She couldn’t have gone through the wrong front door?
These houses probably looked similar inside, but still…
She glanced around her room to reassure herself that she wasn’t under the influence of the cocktails Claudine had paid for (had they been stronger than she’d thought?) and wasn’t wandering into strangers’ houses herself.
But then, there was her mirror. Her hairbrush. Her jacket on the back of the chair. And she’d used her key to get in.
All she had wanted was to have a decent rest. Now she had a nosebleed and a drunken intruder. She almost felt like weeping. Then, ‘Your incense!’ she cried out suddenly, noticing the jar on her nightstand had tipped over, spilling its stinking, smoking contents onto the wood.
‘Holy moly!’
Turning and seeing the wooden surface of the nightstand smoking, the intruder grabbed the offending item, scattering burnt embers onto the carpet, the bed.
One of the sparks hit the duvet and began to smoulder.
He quickly grabbed a glass of water she’d half drunk last night and doused the threatening flame.
Then turned again to her. Clocking her look of horror, he made a face. ‘Whoopsie.’
This really was the limit.
‘Whoopsie? WHOOPSIE? You’ve burned my bed, soaked it, ruined my nightstand, made a burn mark on the carpet. My room stinks. You’re drunk. You’re in my house. And all you can say is “whoopsie”?’
Still, the stranger looked amused rather than rattled. Perhaps it was a male privilege thing. He clearly wasn’t in any peril from her. All she’d done so far was hit herself in the face.
‘It seemed like quite a good word under the circumstances. I could have gone for “dangnabbit”, I suppose.’ He grinned. ‘Or “Holy cow”!’
And now he was joking. How was this situation funny in any way?
The unfairness of it hit her and tears of self-pity welled in her eyes. ‘All I wanted,’ she managed to sniff, ‘was a cup of tea. A cup of fucking tea.’
‘Tea?’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘You’re crying over a cup of tea? You British.’
Exhaustion washed over her. ‘Look,’ she said, removing the tissue from her face, realising the bleeding had stopped. ‘Can you just go. Please?’
‘I—’
But then, to her relief, there was the sound of a door being opened, laughter. Henri’s voice, unmistakable, at the end of an anecdote that Odette had clearly thought was hilarious.
‘Henri!’ she called out, feeling weak with relief. ‘Help! There’s an intruder! I need help!’
‘I’m coming! J’arrive!’
There was a thunderous noise as her would-be knight in shining armour rushed up the stairs and burst into her room. ‘Bella?’ he said, noticing her bruised face. His eyes went to the stranger. ‘Oh,’ he said.
‘Can you tell him to get out of the house? I think he’s a tramp or something,’ she said, as quietly as she could. ‘He seems OK. I don’t think he’s dangerous. Just— Well, smelly and a bit worse for wear. I don’t know how he got in.’
Henri looked at her. ‘I—’
But before he could finish his sentence, the man began to speak.
‘Henri, I don’t know how you know this chick, but could you help her or something.
I think she’s— Maybe she’s going through something.
Unless she’s moved in with you. A girlfriend?
Which honestly you should have told me about but… ’ he trailed off.
‘Brad, this is her room.’
‘What?’
‘Yes. She is a lodger here. You must know this, surely?’
Brad’s brow furrowed. Then, as if a switch had been flicked, it lit up, smoothed out. ‘Oh yeah! The English girl.’
‘Yes,’ Henri nodded. ‘The English girl.’
Brad’s face contorted as if reliving the events of the last twenty minutes. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Shoot.’
‘Shoot’ indeed.
‘So, I think you’ll have to take the attic this time?’ Henri said, grimacing.
‘Jesus. What an idiot.’ The man rubbed a hand through his hair, looked at the debris scattered on the bed, the wet patch, the burnt nightstand. ‘Sorry. I guess you’re… what, Isabella?’
‘Bella,’ she said weakly. ‘And you are…?’
‘I’m Brad,’ he said, sticking his hand out towards her. ‘Your landlord.’