Chapter 26
I returned to the overgrown, gravel path leading up to the Sgàthan Sìth cottages and tramped up the hill to my house. I put my key in the door—my door this time, very much my door with its new lock and strange scratches down the front—and returned to the darkness within.
I stood alone in the living room. My living room.
Though it didn’t feel like much living was done here.
There was no warmth. Not even literally at that moment, as the fire in the boiler had died.
There was nothing that said ‘home’. Just layers of shadows and not much else.
Oh, and a rug that didn’t fit it. I turned on the light.
The bare bulb illuminated the wooden floor in blue light.
Not the golden hues I remembered growing up, when everything was coloured in terracotta and sunshine yellows.
There was a cold greyness to it all, like how I imagined skin looked after the heart stops pumping.
Pallid. They say the kitchen is the heart of the home.
Does that still count when your kitchen isn’t much more than a fridge, a hob and a few cupboards?
I guessed not. This place was heartless.
Bloodless. Nothing to bleed. Everything I’d wanted. It should be perfect.
Down in the basement I set the boiler going with more wood, then I headed back up to the kitchen to make dinner.
As I heated up some beans on the stove, I turned my head to the wall I shared with next door.
I wondered again what the inside of 1a looked like.
My earlier idea of neat doilies or dusty newspaper piles was replaced by a warm fireplace, tartan cushions, a nice rug.
One that’s the right size for her living room, of course.
She’d have a handknit blanket across the couch.
The sofa would be second-hand, but expertly chosen.
Warm wood legs and plush velvet cover. Upcycled, perhaps.
A carved, wooden room divider would lazily separate the space between the kitchen and the living room.
Her kitchen would have more than a fridge, a hob and a cupboard.
There’d be a tidy range cooker. Copper pans hanging from the ceiling.
A kitchen island. Lord knows how she managed to fit a kitchen island into such a tiny room, but she’d manage it.
Herbs growing on the windowsill. A suncatcher hanging from the ironwork latch. No white PVC for her.
I ate the beans at the hob, dipping slices of sandwich bread into the saucepan to soak up the sauce.
Next door, she would dine, back through in the lounge, on a beautiful round table.
Wood again, of course, on a single polished pedestal.
Just like the one I’ve always wanted. With a chess board.
No, a handblown vase, ribbons of coloured glass, holding pink peonies and only pink peonies.
Shelves up the side of the fireplace would hold a few books, some boardgames, perhaps a wooden box of trinkets, or scented candles or wax melts.
The wax melter, or whatever it’s called, would be on the tiled fireplace, lit and smelling wonderful.
Not that garish cookie scent or fake washed linen smell, but something gently perfumed.
Baltic amber in winter. Jasmine in spring.
Maybe something retro like sunflower in the summer.
There’d be pictures on the walls. Photos.
Candid photos. Of all her friends and family.
In tasteful frames with that white card thingy that went around the border to make them look classy.
She’d probably need to change the photos out regularly, to make room for new ones.
She would stare and tut and rest her chin on her palm and puzzle out how she could possibly fit more on the wall.
I thought of the old man and Dolly the Sheep.
And Dolly’s donor. Did Dolly’s donor even have a name?
I imagined her seeing herself in that cloned ewe, feeling envious of the attention, the care, the food Dolly got.
This younger and more special sheep that looked just like her.
Maybe she wondered what Dolly was doing that she didn’t.
Maybe she was secretly glad when Dolly died.
I shuddered and broke out of my imaginings. Goose pimples ran along the topography of my arms.
The sky outside had darkened to a hazy, inky blue, like fountain pen ink had bled into the white air.
Bed, I scolded myself, now.
Obedient, I turned off the lights and went upstairs. I brushed my teeth, mechanically and quick.
I put my phone on to charge, then stripped unceremoniously and put myself to bed.
I pulled my dressing gown bedsheet up to my neck, rolled onto my side and tucked up my knees. After a moment, I wrapped an arm around my shoulder, and rubbed my own back until I was too sleepy to feel embarrassed by my need for it.
I woke in darkness to the sound of 1a’s front door opening and a jangling of keys.
My eyes blinked open at the sound. My neighbour let the door fall shut behind her and the whole house shook with the slam. I bolted upright.
What the hell?
Had the front door always been that loud?
Oh God, she’d probably heard me come and go like that.
I sat there quietly listening. At least she hadn’t tried to open my door by mistake, har har. At least this meant she was definitely fine. I flopped back down onto my bed, but relief still didn’t meet me there.
She was fine. Demonstrably fine. Then why was I still so—?
Clump clump clump.
I could hear every footstep she made in that house!
It was even worse than the first night. I mentally followed her from the living room to the kitchen as if she were walking around my own home.
It was uncanny. Maybe that’s what had triggered my vision of her in the basement.
Maybe it was just like the other night. I’d just heard her and my mind had filled in the rest.
Cupboard doors creaked open and clapped shut.
What on earth was she looking for? I rolled onto my side and wrapped my hoodie-turned-pillow over my head and squeezed my ears between my elbows.
It was no use. I could still feel the vibration of the cupboards opening and closing through the floor and through the mattress and into my ears. I rolled onto my back.
Just calm down, I thought to myself, you’re making it worse by letting it get to you.
I tried to remember what that therapist had suggested.
The one the police made me see after the incident.
I’d gone to one session, just to try it, then noped out soon afterwards.
There was a breathing exercise she’d suggested.
In through the nose for four. Hold for four.
Out through the mouth for four. I tried that for a few cycles, counting out the numbers with my fingertips as I breathed.
In, two, three, four. Hold, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four.
Or was it for five?
I couldn’t remember.
It was four or five.
There was also something about naming things I could see or feel or hear.
Well, I could hear plenty just now. It sounded like my neighbour was sorting through her recycling.
Bottles and cans clanked and rang through the walls.
I thought about moving my mattress into the bathroom.
Perhaps I should have gone back for that second therapy session after all.
No, I definitely should have gone back. I wondered if the therapist had reported my absence.
No one had come looking for me, so I assumed I was fine.
But that’s the problem with assuming. You’re never quite sure if you’re really off the hook or if the line has just got slack enough to make you feel like you’d got away. You can never relax. You’ll always be looking over your shoulder, waiting for the line to pull taut.
Music started from next door.
I glared at the wall in the dark as some beat I did not recognise reverberated through the plaster. I scrabbled about for my phone, yanking it from its cable, then squinted in its glare. It was gone midnight! What the hell was she doing playing something like that so loud so late?
I lay back and tried to think about what to do.
Back in Edinburgh this kind of thing was a bimonthly occurrence as someone in the red brick tenement opposite my flat share brought the party home from their latest rager.
I’d be woken by the unce-unce-unce echoing off the brickwork and across carparks until someone yelled for them to ‘shut the fuck up’ or just called the police.
I thought I’d escaped it out here in the countryside.
The worst part was always the powerlessness of it.
The many times I’d tried to talk myself into heading across the street to the flat making the noise, to ask them to turn it down.
I knew what would happen, was convinced of what would happen.
I could already see the shiny, happy faces laughing me out of the flat.
Leave us to have our fun. Not everyone is as wasted and joyless and heartless as you are.
Or maybe they’d get angry at me. They’d be that kind of person, sharper and harder than I was, confident in their bodies and what those bodies could do, especially to small, soft bodies like mine.
Perhaps it would just be asking for trouble, a long grudge, a stream of abuse, rubbish through my letter box, dog shit on my front doorstep, because I couldn’t be chill. Couldn’t live and let live.
So, instead, I would just lie awake and silently steam, fantasising about bricks through windows, lit bottles of vodka following shortly after, speakers melting in a fire.
I’d dream of myself, larger and stronger, wielding a hammer and knocking on their door all nonchalant.
At first, they’d scowl at me, ask me what I wanted, then they would notice the hammer and their faces would drop.
In a hushed voice I’d say something cool or chummy-sounding but most definitely a threat.
I’d soothe myself with images of their faces—faces I’d never seen—full of fear.
Fear of me. ‘Certainly,’ they’d say. ‘Of course. Sorry to have bothered you!’ They’d tiptoe to their flats, they’d step out of my way on the street, and they’d certainly never play their stupid, awful music late at night ever again.
The sounds of a crowd of people came through the wall.
She must have invited half the town over!
They filled the lower floor and—from the sounds of it—spilled upstairs.
I imagined the group that had surrounded her at The Curtyard, cheering her on, now continuing the party despite me trying to sleep next door.
I saw Fergus’s face in my mind, with that dismissive scowl, now lit up, welcoming, friendly.
I saw Rowan, dancing in the kitchen. No, he wouldn’t have gone.
Not without asking to invite me, too, right?
I remembered the face he’d made back at the store when we talked about my job, when he asked about taking the costume off.
And then I thought of how I had left my neighbour behind yesterday evening, how when she had come grinning at me I’d hidden in my seat in an attempt to shrug her off.
I couldn’t really blame Rowan for doing the same to me now.
Someone drunkenly fell into the wall above my head. A shower of old plaster fell onto my face and into my eyes. I sat up and swore. My eyes stung. The thundering tone in my ears reached its crescendo and all hope of control was lost.
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s fucking it!”
I threw off the dressing gown, pulled the bedroom door open so hard I ripped the latch out of the wood. I marched down the stairs and pulled open my front door.
“Shut the fuck up!” I screamed up at the house.
The dark and empty house.
I wiped my eyes with the back of my hand.
The throbbing rush of blood calmed away suddenly at the sight of the quiet windows above me.
No revellers in the living room. No dance music pounding into the night.
Not a light. Not a sound. Just the house, stood as quiet and as still as the hill beneath it.
The loudest, most disruptive thing was me.
I shivered. Then I slunk back inside my half of the house and went back to my bed.
But despite the calm and the quiet outside, I couldn’t sleep a wink.