Chapter 13
Sadie can’t sleep.
She sits up and flicks the light on, blinking, looking around the room.
It still feels strange and alien, but the rest of their stuff should be arriving today, so hopefully she can make it feel a bit more ‘her’.
She’s stacked the few books she brought on shelves.
She plans to take down the weird abstract picture on the wall.
She guesses that the whirling shades of purple and mauve are supposed to be soothing. But they just make her feel dizzy.
On her bedside table, she’s put two photos in frames.
One is her gran – taken not long before she died, smiling widely in a café.
The other one is of Sadie, her mum and dad.
Sadie is just a baby in the picture, and Dad looks scarily young and gangly with long, curly hair almost to his shoulders. Far out, man.
They’re on a beach (Wales, she imagines). Her mum is laughing, dark hair blowing slightly in her face. She looks fun and carefree. Hard to line up with the woman who had mental health problems and walked out on her family, never to be seen or heard from again.
But then, Sadie was so young when she left.
She barely remembers her mum. And like Dad told her once (after more than a few beers): ‘You can never really know people, sweetheart. We all hide stuff. Everyone has a place inside that no one else can visit. Not even the people we love – especially not the people we love.’
Sadie swallows down the lump in her throat.
This isn’t helping. She’ll go and pour some milk, then maybe read for a bit.
She stands, but instead of walking straight to the door she finds herself padding across the room to the window.
She pulls the blind up and stares out. The street is dark and silent.
Cutesy, gaslight-style streetlights glow warmly at regular intervals along the road, but there’s no one around.
Unsurprisingly. No other signs of life, except …
there’s a light on in an upstairs window of the house opposite.
Home and Spry. The house Ellis told her was empty, a ghost house.
It doesn’t look like a lamp or a ceiling light.
It’s bobbing around, more like a flashlight.
Sadie watches, wondering if it could be an intruder.
She doesn’t really buy the whole ‘crime free’ stuff here.
There will always be people who want what someone else has got and won’t have any qualms about taking it, especially if they think they won’t get caught.
Maybe she should get her dad. He’s probably awake. Last night was obviously a fluke. Dad is a bad, bad sleeper. Always has been. She would often wake in the early hours and come down to get a glass of water and find him sitting at the kitchen table, marking essays.
Worse were the times when she came down to find him clutching a coffee cup but reeking of alcohol.
He thinks she was too young to remember.
That she never realized it wasn’t coffee in the cup.
But she knew. She grew to recognize and hate that smell; to tense every time she heard the clink of ice in a glass or hiss of a can opening.
Not that her dad was ever abusive or violent.
If anything, alcohol just made him sad and emotional.
But she hated that too. Felt embarrassed at how pathetic he looked, pale and red-eyed, driving them to school in last night’s clothes, mainlining chewing gum and mints.
That hasn’t happened for a long while. Sadie doesn’t know what prompted the turn-around.
She just knows that the number of six-packs and bottles in the house slowly decreased.
Dad would still have nights where he drank.
But just a couple of beers. Three or four at the most. But Sadie remained wary.
She guessed she always would. She loves her dad.
So fucking much. She doesn’t want to see him slip back down that path of self-destruction.
She pads out on to the landing. Straight away, she can see that there’s a light on in the living room. She walks downstairs.
‘Dad?’
She takes a few more steps forward. Her heart is thudding, she realizes. Then she spots Dad. He’s sprawled on the couch, phone in his hand, head back against the cushions, mouth slightly open, eyes closed. Passed out. Disappointment stirs in her stomach.
She marches over to the refrigerator and pulls it open. There’s one beer left in the six-pack. The second pack remains unopened. O-kay. So, he sank a few beers, but nothing crazy.
She wanders back to his prone figure and shakes his shoulder. ‘Dad?’
He makes a faint murmuring noise, but doesn’t stir. It’s a little odd. Dad is usually such a light sleeper, if he sleeps at all. But maybe he’s just exhausted. It’s been a pretty insane couple of days.
She looks around. There’s a throw chucked over the back of one armchair. She grabs it and lays it gently over her dad. Then she kisses him on the forehead. ‘Night.’
She pours a glass of milk and heads back up to her room. She crosses to the window and stares out again. The light is still bobbing around. Then suddenly it stops and flares out of the window, pointing directly at her.
Sadie raises a hand to shield her eyes. Shit.
Just as suddenly, the light flicks off. The house is dark again.
But someone is there, and they know that she is here.
She yanks down the blind and steps away from the window.
Behind her, something hums and rattles on the bedside table.
She jumps. Fuck. It’s her phone. She stuck it on silent before bed, but now it’s vibrating with a call.
Who the hell could be calling at this hour? Probably just a junk call. She picks the phone up and glances at the number.
Unknown caller.
She should just leave it. Go to bed. Try to sleep. But her finger hovers over the green icon. Impulsively, she presses answer.
‘Hello?’
The hum of static, the faint sound of breathing and then a distorted voice whispers:
‘You shouldn’t be awake.’