Chapter 9 The Problem Is Coming from Inside
The Problem Is Coming from Inside
An emergency locksmith arrives within the hour. Another benefit of living in the city: there’s always someone willing to show up fast, if the price is right.
He looks at the back door and tilts his head. “So, what exactly seems to be the issue with it?” he asks, waggling the perfectly functioning handle. The door is brand-new.
I blow out a breath. I’m unlikely to ever meet this short, wispy-haired Welsh man, in his garment-dyed navy overalls, ever again. Who cares if he thinks I’m a nutcase?
“Right, well,” I dig in with confidence, “I moved in three days ago and the last two mornings I’ve woken up to find the back door wide open.”
He opens his mouth to comment but I know where he’s going.
“Yes, the door is definitely locked at night when I go to bed; I triple-check it. Then it’s wide open the next morning.”
He frowns, like I’ve essentially told him I believe in the afterlife.
“And before you ask,” I interject as he opens his mouth to speak, “no one else lives here—it’s just me, no kids, no husband, no boyfriend, no flatmates. No one. Just me.”
His frown deepens, he tuts, draws in a breath, the logic of my words impossible to him. I feel him consider the possibility I am pointing him toward an explanation of ghosts, which I unequivocally am not.
He suddenly brightens. “You’ve got pets, though, right?” he says. I look behind me; clearly, he’s noticed Blue’s food bowl. Blue himself has been out since shortly after I discovered the open door, cat camera safe on, and recording, somewhere out there.
“I have a cat, yes,” I respond, making sure to keep judgment from my voice. “But he, as far as I am aware, is incapable of unlocking doors, or using keys in any capacity.”
“Well, he could be jumping up, you know, and nudging it somehow with his…”
I just need a new lock. “Paws? Yeah, yeah, you’re right, could be that. But I’d just feel safer with a new lock and key. I don’t know who had keys before I moved in or anything.”
He suddenly seems to recall that he won’t be paid anything unless he does something. He, too, gives up protesting.
“Yep, okay. Right you are. I’ll pop a new barrel in and you’ll have a new lock and set of keys in the hour.
Though I got to say,” he starts in again, “if someone’s been opening the door, they’ve been opening it from the inside of the house.
” He points to the external side of the door.
There is no keyhole there; the door only has a key and lock inside.
“So if someone’s been opening it, they’ve been going out, not coming in. ”
A little shudder runs through me. “So you think there might be someone else inside my house, other than me, going out every night?” I ask.
It rushes in, then: true-crime documentaries, people living silently in the rafters or between crawl spaces in the owners’ houses.
I promise myself I’ll search every inch of the house once he is gone.
And I need to make sure the windows by the scaffolding are always shut and locked, even if it means I boil in this summer heat.
The locksmith looks mortified, unaware till now that this could have been in any way what he was suggesting. He works the logic back through his head and then he lets out a helpless, gallows-humor laugh. “God, let’s hope not, ey? If you put it like that.”
A cost agreed upon, I leave him to it, heading upstairs to my emails.
I grab my laptop, making sure the software for the cat camera app is completely downloaded, its new icon visible in the bar. The footage from Blue’s collar from yesterday is already up on the cloud, a little red notification dot in the corner of the icon.
I pack up my laptop and headphones, tell the locksmith I’ll be back before his hour’s up, and head out to a coffee shop.
Outside, the day is warm and blistering bright, summer in full tilt. The streets are quiet; a cool breeze ruffles the leaves high in the trees and whips my dress against my legs as I walk.
I see no one until, several streets away from my own, my eye is drawn to someone leaving his house. It’s the first person I’ve seen since leaving the house, not so strange given it is work hours. The school drop-offs are long over, and the crowded commutes home are still hours away.
I check the street name. They all look so similar around here; the Victorians built uniform villa squares when the empire was at its height and every man was king of his castle.
Then I watch as the man, farther along, secures his front door, top and bottom locks, and proceeds to deposit a heavy-looking black bag into a bin before heading out of his low gate.
I realize that I know him.