I slept for a while, or passed out, or something. The ring of the telephone woke me. I scrabbled my way out of a tangle of bedclothes – the duvet had clamped itself stickily around me – and reached for the phone, on autopilot. I had the receiver to my ear before I remembered why I shouldn’t.
There was the same crackle and hiss of static. My head was clearing of the sleep-fog – I’d almost got myself together enough to put the phone down. Then, sighing from the receiver, came Jessica’s voice, insinuating, mocking; Maudie, Maudie...
I gasped and slammed the phone down. I felt as if the trail of her whisper had seeped into the room; I could almost see it, a thin, dark wisp of smoke curling and writhing around the room. The phone rang again, bringing a thin little shriek of fright to my lips. I grabbed up the receiver. “What do you want?”
Silence again. Then a little, soft laugh. “What do you think?”
Her voice had changed. It was harder, colder, little chips of ice in my ear. For the first time I could hear South London in her voice, a guttural undercurrent.
I took a deep breath. “Jessica, I’m so sorry. I never meant to hurt you–”
“You bitch, Maudie,” she said, almost conversationally, cutting across me. “Don’t give me that. How could you do that to me? Do you know how long I’ve waited for my parents?”
“I’m sorry,” I said again, nearly crying.
“It’s too late now for sorry.”
“What do you mean?” I asked. I could feel myself shrinking, pulling back within myself.
There was a moment’s silence. Then she spoke through what sounded like clenched teeth. “I want you to suffer. I want you to suffer like I’ve suffered.”
“But why?” I was almost incoherent, my voice shaking.
“You know why. You’re guilty. It’s your fault.”
She sounded like a different person. Where was the girl I'd laughed with, hugged, sat and drank with? She sounded as if she were reciting something, a speech she'd learned not particularly well. Perhaps something she'd been telling herself for years.
"You don't mean that," I said eventually.
"Don't tell me what I mean and don't mean," she said. "You don't know me. You don't have any idea what it feels like."
"I don't, but-"
"You met me, again and again, and you never told me. I bet you were laughing at me all that time!"
"No." For a moment I couldn't say anything else.
Jessica pressed on. "It's your fault, Maudie. Your fault this happened. You know it is. You know it is."
“Leave me alone.” Even to my own ears, I sounded ten years old.
She laughed again, and I felt a clutch inside me, as if a giant, cold hand had grabbed my insides. “I’ll never leave you alone. You think I’m going to leave you, now that I’ve found you? Now that I’ve got you?”
The phone went down with a sharp crack.
What was wrong with me? Was there something about me – some poisonous, glowing halo – which other people could see, to which I was oblivious? What was it about me that marked me out for things such as this? I put my hands up to my eyes, screwing my face up. I tried to think of Matt, as something to calm me, but somehow that just made things worse. I crawled back to the bedroom and under the bedclothes. Perhaps it would be best if I never got up again. With that dark thought to sustain me, I lay there, hearing Jessica’s parting words ricochet around my head, until all about me was a mass of jeering malevolence.
Matt came back later that evening. As I heard the scrape of his key in the lock of the front door, I wondered vaguely where he’d been. I'd managed to get out of bed and was sat on the sofa, wrapped around with the duvet. The heating was on full blast but I was still cold. I'd drunk two bottles of wine and the empty bottles were still on the coffee table. I didn't care if he saw them. I was beyond caring.
Matt stood in the doorway, looking at me. I tried to smile but my face didn't seem to be working properly. He stood looking, for at least three minutes, until I began to feel like something under a microscope, not a bug, nothing so substantial.
"Are you ill?" he said eventually.
I turned my head to him in enquiry. I winced as I did it - my neck felt stiff. “Yes,” I said. It was easier than telling the truth.
“You must be,” he said. “You forgot, didn’t you?”
“Forgot what?” I said. My tongue felt too big for my mouth and it was hard to form the words.
He was hanging onto the door frame so hard his knuckles were white. “Our celebration,” he said. “I’ve been calling you and texting you. Why didn’t you pick up? Have you even checked your phone?”
I blinked slowly. “No,” I said.
He breathed in through his nose. Slowly he let go of the doorframe and straightened up. “It doesn’t matter anyway,” he said. “I didn’t get the job.”
“What?” I said. “You’ve got a job. What job?”
“The promotion, Maudie,” he said, in a thin voice. “The permanent role. They didn’t offer it to me. Cutbacks, they said. No more money for permanent lecturers. That’s what they said.”
I processed this. “Oh dear,” Part of me wanted to get up and go and give him a hug but I couldn’t seem to make myself move.
“Is that all you’ve got to say?” said Matt.
Under the duvet, I dug my fingernails into my leg. I needed the flash of pain to clarify things.
“I’m sorry, Matt,” I said. “What a shame. But it’s not like you need to work, really, do you? Why not give it up for a while? We don’t need the money.” I tried to laugh but my throat was too dry and it came out as a croak. “Be a man of leisure for a change.”
He said nothing for a moment. Then he wheeled about and moved away from the doorway. A second later, I heard the study door slam.
I turned my face back into the sofa, hiding my face from the light. Behind my eyelids, I could see a half-open door, with darkness behind it.
Chapter Thirty
The calls began again the next day. Luckily, Matt was in the shower when the phone rang the first time. I picked up the receiver and dropped it back immediately. Three seconds later, it rang again and I did the same thing. Quickly I bent down and yanked out the plug. There. Silenced. I quickly walked to the bedroom and did the same thing to the phone kept there.
For a moment, I felt safe. The doors were bolted and she couldn't get me through the phone. I sat on the edge of the bed, twisting my hands together. At some point, I'd have to leave the flat. Would she be there? Would she follow me?
Matt came into the room while I was still sat on the bed. He was naked except for a towel around his waist. He plucked a shirt from the wardrobe and threw it on the bed next to me. It was as if I wasn’t there. For a moment, I thought of asking him if he was angry with me and then dismissed it almost instantly.
Matt reached for the telephone by the side of the bed. I watched in horror as he brought the receiver to his ear and frowned. He pressed the button on the cradle a few times and tutted.
I had to speak up. “I pulled out the plug,” I said, in a faint voice.
He looked at me as if he’d just remembered I was in the room. “You pulled out the plug? Why, for God’s sake?”
“It was – the calls that kept coming...” I trailed away limply as I saw him shake his head.
“For God’s sake, Maudie,” he said. “What’s wrong with you?”