Chapter 13 #2
Saint Helen’s swallows them up like it did my stopgaps, with barely a gulp.
Our big squashy couch, our solid blanket box, our bed that it took four people to manhandle into the house when we bought it—they look lost and spindly.
I can feel my chin start to wobble as I wave goodbye to the movers.
I’ve been telling myself that once the house is clothed in cushioned and woven things, soft things, it’ll feel like somewhere to curl up. What have I done?
“Come on, Pudding,” Chloe says, catching me at it. She hasn’t called me Pudding since I let my haircut from hell grow in, in the nineties.
“I don’t know why I thought this was the place for me,” I say. I keep a hold of my voice, just. But the effort turns it croaky.
“What? What’s wrong with it?” she says. “Empty? Yes. But I say ‘lean in.’ You need some wide open spaces to make up for your creepy ‘dead room.’ So leave the floors bare and put nests of fairy lights in the corners as uplighters. Paint the walls white and buy really big pictures. You could fan your curtain hems out over the floor like trains.”
“Trains?”
“On cloaks. On wedding dresses.”
“You’re not describing a home, Chlo,” I say. “That’s a photo shoot. I want to be cosy and safe.”
“Safe?” she says. “Of course you’re safe, you doughnut.
” But she’s not really listening, I don’t think.
She’s walking away from me, into the dining room, still so empty that her footsteps ring out, and then on into the butler’s pantry.
I listen for where she’s going next. I need to learn the house’s sounds if I’m ever going to sleep through the night without thinking someone’s broken in.
I think she’s in the kitchen, so I go round the other way to meet her.
“Love you too,” she’s saying into her phone when I get there.
I open my mouth to wind her up, but she hasn’t heard me and I decide to be kind.
I tiptoe back a few paces then reapproach, letting my bare feet slap on the tiles.
She still startles a bit as she slides her phone into her pocket, but I pretend not to notice.
Instead, I wrench at the tape on the nearest box to start unpacking.
On top of the pile of tea towels Kai and I collected over the years is one of the knitted dishcloths we got at a farmer’s market in Santa Barbara, one of the few items we could afford.
Kai used to tell the dishes they were honoured to be scoured with such an artisanal piece of craftsmanship.
I smile and go to hang it over the taps, plucking out the top tea towel—Christmas at Radio City—to put over the Aga rail on the way.
Then I look out of the window, and here comes David, sneaking round the house with one of the ugliest, fleshiest, most garish and misshapen bromeliads I have ever seen, complete with a red bow. I knock on the glass, and he jumps, then holds the plant up, grimacing. I go to let him in.
“Well, hello, m’lud,” says Chloe, getting a lot of syllables out of it. “It’s been a while.”
“Waste of time,” David says. “I’ve heard enough about you to know you’re not really flirting.” He kisses me on the cheek and says, “Are you good with houseplants?”
“I’m a ninja with houseplants.”
“Oh God, that’s a shame. You might be stuck with this for years then.”
“They grow outside in Hilo,” I say. “It’ll make me feel right at home.”
“How was your first night?” he asks me. Chloe is drifting away to give us privacy but I reach out and haul her back.
“Shit, thanks,” I say. “I had nightmares with all the usual stuff—searching for someone I can’t find, straining to hear things no one’s saying, struggling to get splinters out of my hands.
Only this time there were people in the house too.
So I’m going to change all the locks. Unless you tell me that’s mad.
It would be a bit of a shame to ditch the originals. ”
Chloe and David commune silently, then Chloe speaks. “It’s a bit paranoid, to be fair, Lindsay. And a huge shame to junk all the old locks. That’s my tuppenceworth.”
“Add bolts,” David says. “Same job and a hell of a lot cheaper. You could get antique ones from architectural salvage.”
“Or maybe I’ll feel better once I’ve filled the place,” I say. “Sorry, Chlo. I’m just not a minimalist.”
“And can you think of anywhere you could source any household junk at a reasonable price?” Chloe says.
I laugh. “It’s actually kind of weird it wasn’t John who cleared it,” I say. “What I’d really like is to find out who it was and buy it all back again. Put everything back where it belongs. You can’t fake a lived-in house.”
As a start, I take the poor dented biscuit tin and bang it hard on the edge of the nearest worktop to knock it straight again. The lid springs open, which seems like a good omen, and a shower of wrapped biscuits cascades to the floor. Penguins and KitKats.
“Lindsay?” says Chloe. “Are you okay? You’ve gone white.”
I am so far from okay I can’t even begin to describe it. There was someone in my house last night. They put a book by my bed. And my brother’s been lying to me. I know those are three very different things and one of them is ridiculous but I’ve had enough.
“I-I-I need to speak to John about something,” I say. “I won’t be long.”