Chapter 10
As I lay in the bath, I allowed myself another moment of pride. Hot steaming water, courtesy of my hands.
I hadn’t brought any bubble bath with me, so I could see my whole body under the surface, bloated by the hot water.
I tried not to think about my body most of the time, or even about being in a body.
I’d often thought I would have preferred not to have one at all if I’d had the choice.
To be able to just exist, floating about the world, quietly observing, never being perceived.
But this was now a body that could chop wood and build fires.
A capable body. A strong body.
A sore body.
With a splash, I pulled up my foot and inspected the puncture wound.
It had long since sealed itself. Now there was just a dark brown mark, a perfect circle, where the hole had been.
The thick skin around the edge had turned white and puffy in the water.
I pulled at the wound slightly to check nothing had got underneath.
The little hole of puffy white skin elongated and pinched together under the strain, like a tiny sulking mouth. It didn’t look infected, thank God.
I’d have to check the basement again. I didn’t want loose splinters or nails lying about.
Something about the discovery of the door made me feel even more uneasy about not knowing what had pricked me.
I wanted to find it, not just to pick it up and throw it away, but to be sure it was a nail or a splinter and not something else.
I listened to the quiet of the house. I hadn’t heard anything from 1a since I’d got back.
Even while I made dinner, thankful for the pasta and sauces I’d picked up on my way, I’d heard nothing.
No cooking sounds of her own. No muffled footsteps like the day before.
Not a peep. I started to wonder if maybe last night had been a one-off.
I hoped so. It was probably a happy accident I hadn’t mentioned the noise when I’d spoken to— I still didn’t know her name.
I sank further into the bath, letting the water creep over my lips.
She seemed quiet, my neighbour. A shut-in, perhaps.
I wondered what the inside of 1a was like.
Maybe it was a hoarder’s paradise: newspapers stacked to the ceiling, takeaway boxes piled up around the sink, collected bits and bobs lining a narrow walkway through the house.
Or maybe she was fastidiously neat: furniture placed precisely throughout with not a speck of dust to be spied, sofas and chairs at right angles to each other, doily at the exact centre of each side table, pictures in a level line on the walls, bed made and properly tucked in and everything.
I sat up and vigorously rubbed a bar of soap in my hands, trying to work up a tight enough foam to wash myself with.
I imagined her soaps neatly paraded across the back of the sink, probably still in their paper packaging.
I rubbed the soap foam under my armpits and listened again. Nothing.
I caught my face reflected in the taps, warped and elongated beyond recognition. My shadow shattered to pieces across the ripples on the water’s surface. I came to from my daydreaming and found the bath had grown noticeably cold around me. My fingertips had wrinkled to hard ridges.
There I go again, I thought. Always losing myself.
I rinsed off the soap and got out.