The Unquiet House Read online

  She couldn’t push from her mind the image of a lone figure sitting hunched on the seat, despairing and desolate – but still, it was a beautiful place and she was lucky to be living next to it. There was surely no need to ever feel desolate in a place as lovely and comforting as this.

  CHAPTER TEN

  When Emma opened the door to the cupboard she could smell the stale scent of tobacco, stronger than ever. She covered her hand with the bin bag before using it to lift the hanger, feeling the weight of the suit. She had half-expected it to be gone again when she came back, but no, it was still there. She found herself wondering once more if Charlie had been playing some trick – or even if he’d made a mistake; perhaps he’d thought she’d wanted to keep it after all, and had hung it in here earlier in the day. But neither explanation felt likely. She wrinkled her nose as the scent of unwashed skin reached her. She stuffed the clothing down into the bag and twisted the top around, trying to shut that smell inside, but it was no good; it was in the air now too.

  She headed downstairs and rather than just leaving the bag in a corner, she went out through the kitchen and thrust it straight into the wheelie-bin, pressing it down between the other sour-smelling rubbish.

  Then she gathered her cleaning things from the kitchen and went back upstairs. Her footsteps sounded loud now that she was alone, echoing through the house and into all the empty spaces.

  She would clear out the cupboard properly, clean it and make it hers. She’d hang a second rail below the first on which to place her clothes. It wouldn’t take long. First she rummaged through some boxes, extricated her radio and tuned it to a morning show. The music was bright and cheerful and a little too loud – she’d need it that way, to hear it in the cupboard – and she went inside and began to replace the musty smell with that of bleach. She scrubbed dark spots from the shelves, revealing faded white paint. It started to look better at once. And then she stopped. She could hear another sound beneath the strains of the music: steady thuds, like the echo of footsteps. She listened. The tune segued into the DJ’s patter. In the spaces between the words there was nothing; only the house, breathing around her.

  When she went back to work she could see her own breath, rising in a white mist, although she didn’t feel cold. Then there came a soft thud. After a moment came a second, so faint she wasn’t sure she’d heard it, and a loud skitter that made her heart leap. Something scraped against the wall just outside and the cupboard door slammed closed behind her.

  Emma whirled, clutching the cloth tightly against her chest, her eyes staring, and she didn’t breathe. The beating of her heart was almost painful. Inside the cupboard it was almost pitch-dark, with only a faint glow coming from around the doorframe. Every fibre of her being was intent on listening. She took a breath that caught in her throat, chilling her lungs. She put out a hand and touched the door but she didn’t try to open it. She only waited as the music tailed off then a voice rang out, loudly, making her jump once more. It was only the DJ, only the radio. There was nothing else, no other sound, though it felt as if she should be able to hear something else. She turned and saw only a dark space behind her. She forced a deep breath. Something must have fallen in the room outside, or one of the boxes had overbalanced, that was all. She didn’t need to be afraid. Mire House was her home.

  Footsteps, she thought. It had sounded like footsteps, at least until that awful clatter.

  She put her hand to the door handle and pushed. It didn’t move.

  Emma frowned. She tried again, harder, and felt the mechanism give, but it wouldn’t press. She pushed outwards instead, and the door rattled in its frame, but it did not open.

  She took a deep breath. Don’t be ridiculous. Don’t be fanciful.

  She must be trying to open it the wrong way. It was an old house and things didn’t necessarily work the way she was used to. She tried to move the handle again, upwards this time, then down, and then any way at all. It still didn’t move and she strained harder, gripping it with both hands, then banging into the door with her shoulder. She stopped, found herself opening her mouth to call out, then closed it again. Someone had come into the house and come up the stairs and heard her in here and they were here now, holding the handle from the other side. It must be Charlie, playing another joke. She’d left the front door unlocked, and the back. That had been stupid. Why on earth had she done that? Especially after what she thought she’d seen in the night.

  She let go of the handle and stepped back. Her hand was shaking. She bent and looked at the strip of light under the door, then, quietly, she knelt and pushed her face as close to the floor as she could.

  She thought she could see something partially blocking the light, but she couldn’t get low enough to see it properly. She stood again, knocking her head against the shelf and bit her lip. She didn’t want to cry out – she wasn’t sure who might hear her. She grabbed the handle again, quickly, as if to take someone by surprise, and jerked on it, but it still didn’t move.

  She stepped back, breathing hard. Who the hell would do this? Some joke this was, sneaking up on someone in their own house – a woman, on her own – and scaring her.

  ‘Who’s there?’ Her voice was sharp, although she’d meant for it to be louder. ‘Who is it?’

  As she listened the music changed to some seventies thing: Marc Bolan singing T. Rex’s ‘Metal Guru’.

  She banged on the door, hard, the blows wrenching her shoulder, but she didn’t care, and when the door didn’t open she did it again, harder. Then tears came, fucking tears, but she blinked them back. Charlie, she thought. She didn’t know why, only that his name was there: someone she could go to for help, or someone who would play tricks, put a dirty old suit back in her room as if to say, there: that’s the real owner, come home again. She didn’t know which Charlie he was.

  She grabbed the handle and wrenched hard on it, bruising her palm, and this time it came free. She gasped in spite of herself and pushed, and something outside rattled against the base of the door. The door gave a little further and then it stopped. She hammered on it this time, hard, blam-blam-blam!

  There was no sound from the other side, only the radio going on and on, though the tone of the music seemed to have changed.

  ‘Let me out.’ Emma’s voice didn’t waver: good. She didn’t want to betray her fear, didn’t want to give them the satisfaction. Who was it, anyway? What the hell gave them the right? She gave the door a kick for good measure and again it rattled but it did not open.

  ‘Shit.’

  Emma could feel her hand resting against the wood. It was still shaking. Her knees felt shaky too; she wanted to sit down. She looked behind her, into the dark, as if she would find some answer there, but it did not come. She looked back at the door. It no longer felt as if anyone was there. It didn’t feel as if anyone was going to help. The house was empty and it was hers, only hers. And her parents couldn’t come to her, full of concern at the noise she’d made. There was no one here she knew, no neighbour or friend to look in on her. She couldn’t shout through the ceiling to bring Jackie and Liam. There was only the church with its quiet graveyard and no one there – and anyway, even if she could shout loud enough, she’d put on the radio – the radio, for God’s sake – just as if she’d wanted to drown out her own calls for help.

  She remembered the dreams she’d had before she’d come to Mire House, the ones in which she simply disappeared, with no one to miss her or look for her, and she curled her hands into fists. There must be someone she could contact. She reached for her back pocket and found it empty. Where had she put her mobile phone? She peered around but it was still dark, so she ran her hands across each shelf, finding only cold dampness where she’d already cleaned and dry dust where she hadn’t. Then something cool and smooth brushed against her wrist.

  She grabbed for it, whatever it was, but she didn’t recognise the shape. It didn’t feel right: it was almost silken against her skin but it was too slender and she couldn’t t
hink what it was. Then she leaned closer and smelled it, and now she knew. She swept her arm across the shelf and it clattered into the corner, sending up a stronger waft of that rich, dried scent, the tobacco scent, and she cried out, a despairing wail that made her suddenly think of the bench in the churchyard.

  My God, she thought, my God …

  No. Emma, pull yourself together.

  She breathed in deeply, leaned towards the door and said, ‘Tell me who’s there.’ She forced herself to speak steadily. ‘This isn’t funny. Open the door, now.’

  Nothing happened; no one replied. She rattled the handle, then frowned and lowered herself to her knees again. She pressed her face into the musty-smelling carpet, trying to see under the door, and then she did see, in her mind’s eye: the boxes she’d stacked against the wall, the paint roller leaning against the skirting, the new clothes rail. She squeezed her eyes closed. She knew exactly what had happened.

  There was no one there, had never been anyone there. She’d heard the sound of the radio and that was all because she had done this to herself. It was just her and her own stupidity, and now she was stuck and she had to think.

  She sat with her back to the door, running her hand across her face. She’d propped the rail against the wall and now it had fallen across the door. It must have jammed behind the boxes. She tried to replay the sounds she’d heard: the scrape and slide of something against the plaster, the duller thud as it came to rest.

  And the door handle? She tried to picture the rail somehow catching under it and preventing it from turning, but she couldn’t. She remembered that feeling, the way she’d sensed somebody standing there, gripping it from the other side, and she tossed her head, trying to dislodge the thought. Now she really was being fanciful. No one was there; this was a problem of her own making, only that, and she was the one who would have to get out of it.

  She’d simply have to push harder, hard enough to move the door and the rail and the pile of boxes that was keeping them in place.

  She knew it was useless before she even tried.

  She’d been so enthusiastic when she’d carried everything up the stairs. The books had been the worst. The boxes had grown heavier in her arms as the day wore on, until she’d been stopping to rest each one on the stairs partway up. Now they were stacked outside, all in a pile, and they were heavy …

  No. It had to be possible. They couldn’t be that heavy, could they?

  She reached above her head and held the handle down and pushed backwards with her whole body, trying to brace her legs against the floor. Her feet slid over the worn carpet, but whatever was on the outside of the door didn’t slide, didn’t even move. She screwed up her face, but stopped herself. She wasn’t going to cry. It wouldn’t help. She knew that from before; she’d allowed herself to cry at the funeral and then made herself stop and she knew she couldn’t allow herself to start again, because then she wouldn’t stop, there’d only be the pit and blackness and despair …

  My God, my God …

  The DJ was talking again, some burble that no longer sounded like language. It didn’t make sense any more, nothing did. There was only this narrow room and no way out of it, no way back. She hid her face in her arms, as she had when she was a little girl afraid of the dark.

  She shook her head, trying to shake loose the negative thoughts, and pushed against the door once more, as hard as she could, but it was no use. She’d given it all she had and it still hadn’t moved an inch. She curled her hand into a fist and hit the wood, hard, a resounding blow. What the hell was she going to do? No one was going to come – no one even knew she was here. Even Charlie had gone. She was due at work tomorrow; she had to get out of here before then – she had to sleep before then, in her own bed, or she’d be useless. They’d be angry with her.

  She took a couple of steps back, then paced forward; moved back, then forward. She thought suddenly that maybe she wouldn’t make it into work at all. She might still be stuck in here, not even able to call them. No: surely that wouldn’t happen? At least, if it did, she would be missed. They’d come looking for her, wouldn’t they?

  At the address she’d given them when she took the job: the address in Leeds.

  She made a choking sound, but fought it back. It was bad enough she’d got herself stuck in here; she wasn’t going to sound pathetic too. That would mean she’d given up. It would mean she’d failed.

  She had to find something to use as a lever, something to force her way out. She looked around, though she could see nothing. She reached out, touched a cloth she’d left on the shelf, a useless lumpen thing. And there was the bottle of bleach, and a bowl of dirty water. There was nothing else …

  That wasn’t true: there was something else. She couldn’t see where the pipe had fallen but she knew it was there. She lowered herself to the floor yet again, and had to force herself to put out her hand, to run it over that grimy carpet. When she touched the wood, smoothed by someone else’s hand, she caught her breath.

  She bent and tried to slip the stem of the pipe under the door. She wasn’t really sure how it would help, but anyway the mouthpiece – the thing he’d held between his lips, slid under his tongue – jammed against the floor. She cupped the bowl in her palm, feeling the old grain close against her skin. The stem wouldn’t fit into the narrow gap. She forced it anyway, and after a moment, she felt the pipe give. It twisted in her hand, almost as if it were a living thing, and then it cracked. She pulled her hand away. The pipe had splintered; it was useless. Useless. The shards were sharp. She flung it back into the corner and it banged against the wall and she heard something spatter dryly across the carpet. Then she smelled it, deep and rich in her throat. She had a sudden image of the man she’d seen, looking for his pipe as well as his suit, throwing open the door and finding her instead.

  But no one did open the door. No one came.

  She realised she was thirsty and she thought at once of that bowl of greying water on the shelf, the scum floating in it, the bubbles of bleach. She imagined being stuck in here so long she was desperate enough to sip the caustic liquid and she bit back a laugh.

  My God.

  Her head was beginning to ache. She put a hand to her forehead and realised it was throbbing in time to the music. The DJ was playing something older still now, softer and somehow mocking, and she thought, I’ll turn that damned thing down, and she screwed up her face as Buddy Holly began to sing ‘It Doesn’t Matter Anymore’. She sat there, focusing on nothing, thinking of nothing, resolutely forcing herself not to cry.

  *

  It was the tone of the music that roused her, a subtle change she hadn’t even noticed at first. She wasn’t sure what had been playing before but now the tone was crackly and distant, as if she was listening to an old scratched record, not the constant prattle of the radio DJ and a stream of modern pop songs. She didn’t recognise this. It was Big Band music, a jaunty, endless tune. She wasn’t sure there were any words, but then a wavering voice began to sing, the voice cut-glass, the sound fragile, almost as if at any moment it might break.

  She let her head tilt back. The light under the door, low as it was, was fading. The music didn’t fade, though; it swelled around her, and it was right, somehow, for the way the house felt. It was old. She imagined those notes moving through the empty corridors, reaching the drawing room downstairs where people had once danced, taking each other in their arms and spinning, spinning, across the floor.

  She opened her eyes onto the tight black space within the cupboard and closed them again. She was hungry; dull pains in her stomach were echoing the ones in her head. No one had come: of course, no one had come. Emma was alone: that was the way it was, the way it would stay, for ever and ever, amen.

  Her throat hurt. She thought of the bowl. Thirsty.

  No: someone must come. Someone would surely come.

  After a while she curled up on the floor. It was cold there, and hard. She had no idea what time it was. She closed her eyes and t
ried to sleep. It wouldn’t hurt any more if she could only sleep.

  *

  Emma lifted her head and listened to the sound of footsteps outside the door. Someone was walking about the room. The music was still playing, but the sound was distant, as if it were coming from a long way away. It could be the middle of the night, but she had no way of telling. It went around and around and the footsteps moved with it. Now she imagined two people, and in her mind they were dancing. She opened her mouth to speak, but somehow she didn’t make a sound; she didn’t want to – she didn’t want to see who was out there, didn’t want them to see her.

  The sound cut off suddenly, music and footsteps and all, and there was only her own rasping breath. Her throat was dry. The feeling was coming back into her limbs, pins and needles where her arm had been trapped beneath her, soreness in her hip from lying on the floor, pain in her hand where she’d banged it against the door. Her head was the worst, the ache dull and heavy; she couldn’t think. Silence was thick in the air and all around her, pressing in close.

  There had never been any sound, never been anyone there. She must have been dreaming.

  After a moment she lowered her head again and she slept.

  *

  Eventually, the light came back. In the distance she could hear a dull beep-beep-beep and she realised that her mobile phone was ringing somewhere.