The Dead Room

Chapter 16

He didn’t so much as hint at it, but that night I don’t slip my nightie over my head as soon as I shed my clothes.

Instead, I rub lotion onto my knees and elbows and inspect the rest of me.

I need a waxing and either a pedicure or a long soak in a bath and a good go with a pumice stone.

Right now, he would have to be pretty drunk.

Although, of course, I haven’t seen any of him except the bottoms of his legs when he’s had long shorts on, his forearms when he’s rolled his sleeves up, and a vee at his neck where his shirt lies open.

His grey hair might be premature, I suppose.

He might be lean and smooth. Or maybe he’s fifty and things are beginning to droop.

I kind of hope so; that would be so much less intimidating.

I was twenty-six the last time someone new saw what I’m looking at under the bathroom light right now.

In bed, I pick up my plain brown book but I don’t so much as open it.

Even without the jacket, I can’t face a story about a woman younger than me, married to the love of her life, with a wise old lady waiting in the wings to help her out of all her troubles.

I put it back on the bedside table and pick up my phone to look at listings instead.

I’ve got my house and I’m never moving again but I need the escapism.

Who doesn’t love casting a critical eye over a house they can’t afford and deciding the kitchen isn’t up to snuff?

But it’s palled, since the last time. Nowhere is as amazing as where I am and too many of the big old houses have got stairlifts and walk-in baths, showing how their owners fought back against the inevitable.

I add “recently sold” to my search filter and try again, but still there’s none of the charm I’m used to finding.

I close the app and settle down to sleep.

“Nice save,” I whisper to myself, proud that I stopped scrolling as soon as I realised I wasn’t enjoying it. Nice save.

Weird that Saint Helen’s wasn’t there in the recently sold, I think, turning onto my side, and Chloe seemed to suggest that the sale was unusual, back when she was organising a viewing.

And it really did feel like a massive bargain.

But David vetted everything . . . David .

. . If he is fifty, he might not want to contemplate more children.

And he could be. The way he spoke to me, comforting and assured, it was like our family doctor calming me down before jags.

I hunch over onto my side. It wasn’t just David though.

There was Farmer George the estate agent too.

Estate agents aren’t dodgy. I’ve seen them on the property shows, respectability shining out of their eyes and trustworthiness oozing out of every pore.

Only he was dodgy, wasn’t he? He was sketchy as hell from the first moment I clapped eyes on him. The first moment, according to him, that is. I’m still sure I’d seen him before. Although I was in such a cloud of misery then that everything’s hazy.

And, again, the proof of it all being above board is the fact that I’m here. Of course I bought the house. Yes, Peggy moved out suddenly, but the house was for sale and I bought it and here I am. Safe at home. I just need to stop my brain from spiralling.

I’d give anything for a cup of Shelley’s sleepy tea right now. When I get a doctor, I’ll ask for a prescription. We used to joke about Kai’s big tub of drugs. If I had kept some, would I take something now, just to stop all this swirling in my head and go to sleep?

But I do sleep—I must—because I spring awake again in the small hours at the sound of a banging door.

This time, the footsteps I hear aren’t ghostly and drifting.

They aren’t Bunny’s shuffles or Chloe’s tip-tap heels either.

These feet wallop along so hard that the house shakes.

I jump out of bed, heart hammering, looking round for a weapon in case he comes up the stairs.

Of course he’ll come upstairs. He’s not a burglar—they’re stealthy.

This, right here, tonight, in my house, is a—

I won’t finish that thought. Instead, I tug at the lamp, to arm myself, but the stupid British three-pin plug stops me dead and means I only wrench my wrists and stretch the cord.

An American lamp would be in my hands like a baseball bat by now.

What else is there? I pick up my water glass and my book—paperback or not—and crouch behind the door, like a cat ready to spring.

After counting ten shaky breaths, I slowly realise that the steps are disappearing towards the back of the house on the ground floor.

I chuck the book, set the glass down and lunge for my phone.

“I’m looking at him right now,” I say to the police dispatcher, minutes later, as she tries to convince me I was dreaming, or it was a fox in the bins, maybe kids in the street.

“He’s running through my garden.” She interrupts.

“Yeah, but he was inside. I heard him come in. That’s what woke me. And he’s no kid. He looks like a . . .”

He looks like an ogre is what he looks like, pounding down the length of the garden towards the back hedge with his shirt tail flapping and his big boots leaving deep dents in my grass, even as dry as it’s been.

Ogre? No, of course not. That’s only because I’ve been asleep and probably dreaming.

He’s just a big, solid man. That’s bad enough, but I’m talking to the cops. I’m safe.

I go downstairs, still on the phone, ready to say that my front lock is burst and my kitchen door is hanging open. But the front doors are locked tight, the glass one and the wood one too. I scurry through the kitchen to the back lobby. This door is locked from the inside.

“Lindsay?” the dispatcher says. “Are you still there?”

“He shut the doors after himself,” I say. “Or wait—no, he went out a different way. Hang on.”

“Intruders don’t generally—” she says before I click her off speaker.

She’s right, but I don’t want to hear it.

The garden-room doors are shut too but he slipped up here.

The key that should be in the lock is lying on the floor, as if he pushed it through from the outside.

In fact, I know he did, because he made another mistake.

As he bent down, he put one of his big ogre hands against the glass to steady himself and he has left a perfect print, showing clearly with the moonlight behind it.

“There’s a handprint,” I say. “There’s a clear print of his palm and all five fingers.”

“Inside?” says the dispatcher, doubtfully.

“Well, no, because he was outside and he pushed the key under the door after he locked up.”

There’s a long pause. “Are you alone in the house?” she asks me, as if the next question might be whether she can talk to my minder.

“Yes,” I say. “And this isn’t the first time this has happened. I only just moved in and I don’t know who all’s got keys, see? But someone was inside the first night too.”

“You just moved in?”

“My husband died recently and I’ve moved here all on my own.”

My ploy fails. “Stressful time,” she says.

I could scream. Apart from anything else, reminding myself that I really am alone has started me shaking. It shows in my voice as I try to persuade her.

“I didn’t imagine it,” I say. “A man in a checked shirt and big boots got into my house, ran through it and left the back way. The last one that was in here left something by my bed. You might be able to get fingerprints off it.”

“What did he leave?”

“A book.” It sounds stupid. There’s no way I’m going to tell her it was the book I was reading.

“Did you get a picture of him? Either the one tonight or before?”

I know she thinks I’m high on something or a fantasist, so I tell her I’ll get a picture of the handprint and any footprints too and that I’ll be in tomorrow morning to make an official report of the incident, bringing the .

. . bedside item with me. I wish I sounded less feeble.

I wish she sounded less bored. I ring off.

The flash dazzles when I try to take a photo of the glass but it’s too dark to get anything at all without it.

Lights on or off, inside or out, it’s all hopeless.

And the grass has sprung back already. I can’t pick out his route through the garden no matter how I squint and stoop.

I trail to the far end and check the hedge and the wall there.

There are some broken branches, the sharp, soapy smell of bruised privet leaves rising above the rich stink of the blossom.

I had forgotten that summer smells like floral cheese in Scotland when the privet hedges are blooming.

There are a couple of scrapes on the top of the wall.

But even I have to admit that they could have been caused by anything, anytime.

I turn and pad back over the grass in my bare feet, feeling the dry blades squeak and snap under my weight.

I lock up tight and take the key out. Then I sit in the echoing garden room just about exactly where I fell asleep that first day with Peggy March.

Who will I call? John? Chloe? David? Who do you call when the police don’t believe you?

I tell myself I’ll make them sorry in the morning, then I go to the kitchen, get a sandwich bag and head back to my bedroom. My book is lying open, face down on the floor where I threw it. I put the bag over my hand as if I’m picking up dog shit and flip the pages to close it.

Then I stop. I’m looking at the first page of the first chapter and something’s wrong.

The first sentence is about two people called George and Kathy Lutz and a place called Ocean Avenue.

It should be about Gwenda Reed arriving at Plymouth docks.

I turn back until I’m at the title page.

The book slips out of my hand and smacks to the floor again.

I was reading Sleeping Murder. That book lying on the bare boards of my bedroom is The Amityville Horror.

I have never owned this book. Kai didn’t own this book.

We were too young for the splash when it came out, far too young to watch the film when it hit the big screen.

So I know for sure, I didn’t pack this book.

I didn’t unpack it. And I’ve only put a brown paper cover on one book since I left school.

There is no way this is some innocent mix-up.

No, I think to myself, so strangely calm that I’m almost floating, this is . . .

But I can’t finish the thought, because the only thing this could be is something I will not let into my mind.

At first, Kai’s hallucinations were . . .

not funny, exactly . . . but interesting, like clues to be solved, like dreams to be unpicked over breakfast the next morning.

And I know what he would have said about this one.

“It was there in your brain, babe. You set up your dead room today and remember we once listened to a sample of it? Worst. Narrator. Evuh! So you’re having a back-to-work anxiety hallucination. That’s my girl.”

I leave it where it lies. Then I go back round the house again and double-check every window latch, every lock. I lock all the doors and take all the keys with me. When I go back to bed, I fall asleep with a heap of keys on my bedside table and my phone clutched in my hand.

I dream of faceless strangers, and warrens of abandoned furniture that I’m racing through, filled with rage and terror.

I dream of the splinters again and whispers too this time and Kai, of course, always Kai, out of sight and fading.

I dream of Dr. Cho, in Hilo, asking if I’m sleeping and telling me I need to take care of myself if I want to take care of David.

“Kai,” I tell her. But she’s gone. She’s a tarot reader now.

“Morth binned on the sun,” she tells me.

“Those aren’t tarot cards,” I say. “They’re not big enough.

” There’s another doctor here now and I don’t know who they are.

“It’s only a story,” I say. “No,” says the new doctor, “it’s true.

” Then Kai is right there, like I’ve found him.

“I don’t think you got it yet, babe,” he says. “Sorry.” And I start awake, shaking.

It was years ago. It was before the pandemic. It was just a regular casting for a popular self-help book coming to audio for the first time.

“Huh,” Kai said, looking at my marked-up excerpt. “PTSD?”

“And its more complex cousin, C-PTSD,” I said.

“Nice,” he said, but I knew what he meant: Those crisp sounds all in a row like little soldiers would be a joy to speak, an anchor in every sentence, bright and clean, like a garnish on a meal, or a touch of snare on top of a melody.

I was so cocky, years into my happy marriage, thousands of miles away, wrapped in my stories, everything else safely locked in a caravan back in the old country.

I didn’t have a clue.

It was a wonderful book, kind and wise and startling to someone like me who knew none of it.

She wrote about kidnaps and car crashes, about combat veterans and battered wives, about first responders and refugees.

And children, of course. Because a book about trauma and terror and darkness that didn’t cover adult survivors .

. . would be like trying to do Jaws without the shark.

I recorded my excerpt, spitting out those bright sounds, slowing on the medical stuff, lightening on the case studies.

Then I just kept reading. I read until my file was full and I read on.

I read until my voice was a croak and then a whisper and then I was mouthing the words and the only sound was the click of my throat when I swallowed.

Afterwards, when I was lying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, watching the fan revolve, Kai went looking for me in the dead room and found my abandoned station. He must have listened to a minute or two. Of course he did. I would have. We had no secrets.

He came and sat on the edge of the bed, putting his warm hand on my clammy skin where my sweat had cooled in the blades of the fan.

“I don’t think you got it yet, babe,” he said with a rueful twist of a smile. He didn’t enjoy having to be that honest with me. “Sorry.”

No secrets.

Kai filed it under: My wife doesn’t have the right voice for self-help.

And I did too.