‘Oh, just go to your hotel,’ he snaps. ‘Whatever. Who cares what you do, anyway?’
‘I’m sure the council will care.’
‘You seem to think the council has magical powers,’ he says. ‘It’s a local council, not the United Bloody Federation of Planets.’
‘Don’t you dare swear at me! If you want to go on the bad landlord register -’
‘There’s no such thing,’ he snaps, and hangs up.
He takes his specs off and polishes them with the hem of his T-shirt. Bloody Vesta Collins. I’m forty-six years old and she’s still talking to me like she did when I was twelve. Busybodying about, telling me what to do and forgetting whose house it is.
I wish she’d bloody die, he thinks. She’s old enough, for God’s sake. She’s been retired and hanging about the place all day for bloody ever. Never been anywhere, never done anything, just sat there in my basement wagging her finger. There’s no use for her. Bloody old woman and her sensible shoes and antimacassars. Why can’t she just take the eight grand and bugger off? Nobody wants her. It’s not like she’s got any reason for staying round here. No family, no kids, no job. Nothing. It’s just pure selfishness.
He hauls himself off the couch and groans as he does so. His weight is really getting to him, these days. He hasn’t been near a doctor or a set of scales in years. The last time he did, he had passed the twenty stone mark and he knows that nothing has come off since. His arches fell years ago, and his knees seem to bend and unbend more slowly with each passing month. I’ll be on a stick soon, he thinks, and I’ll still be subsidising that old bag to go on her holidays in Ilfracombe. Says she doesn’t have the money for a plumber, but she’s never short of cash for a wash-and-set on a Wednesday, is she?
The old bitch has given him indigestion. He stomps through to the bathroom and swigs a tablespoon of Gaviscon straight from the bottle, waits for the advertised cooling that never comes, takes another swig and lets out a burp. Right, he thinks. I suppose I’d better call Dyno-Rod. I don’t want her calling the council on me.
He goes to the computer to look up the number, Vesta nagging at the back of his mind. She doesn’t seem to be able to take a hint, he thinks. I’ve given her enough, over the last couple of years. The cockroaches and the leaking bathtub upstairs, the burglary, the Weedol in the herbery… that rat was a stroke of genius. Why on earth does she stay? I wouldn’t. I’d’ve been gone months ago. She’s stubborn, just bloody stubborn. Looks like I’m going to have to step up my game before I end up having to lay out a grand on a new boiler for the old bitch.
I wish she’d just bloody die and get out of my hair, he thinks again as he picks up the phone to dial, then his finger stills over the keypad. The water heater, he thinks. Bloody ancient. The Corgi man said as much the last time he was in for servicing. Said it wasn’t far off failing its MOT completely.
Maybe, he thinks, I can help it on its way.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Vesta doesn’t go to a hotel. She can’t bear to not know what’s happening to her home, can’t leave Cher, can’t face the thought of not having her things around her. It’s a miserable evening spent moving as many of her belongings as aren’t soiled to the front room and proofing the door with blankets against the stench. But still the smell elbows its way through. In the toilet, the lavatory overflows with its backed-up load and the floor is an inch deep in filth. Even the bath has regurgitated, and lies half full with stagnant sludge. No point in trying to clear it up. While the drains are still blocked, any attempts to deal with the results will be rendered pointless the moment someone upstairs forgets themselves and flushes their cistern. It would be like cleaning the Augean stables. Literally.
She eats with Cher: feeds her Heinz tomato soup and a soft white bread roll, spoon by spoon, crumb by crumb, letting her suck her way to nutriment through swollen lips, then comes down to her stinky basement and crawls, exhausted, into the makeshift bed she’s made on the settee. She leaves the front window open, to try to get some clean air into the room, and falls, despite the unfamiliar sounds out in the street, into an uncomfortable doze some time before midnight.
She dreams that she’s up in Cher’s room and they have barricaded the door with the bed. Someone is trying to get in. The door handle rattles in its socket and fingernails scratch, scratch, scratch at the panels. And they can hear breathing. Breathing, breathing, breathing.
And then, in the dark, something tells her that the sounds are real.
Wakefulness runs through her like cold water. She’s lying on her back, knees drawn up under her blanket, scanning the night with her fading ears. She looks around, wildly, can’t place where she is for a moment before she remembers what has happened.
It’s all right, she thinks, and settles back against the cushion. Just a sound in the street and a silly dream, someone passing by. You’re not used to it, you’ve been sleeping in the same bedroom for so long you’re bound to -
A sound from the back of the flat. Unmistakable. The sound of her back door opening.
No. No, no, no. It’s just your mind. Just -
A floorboard creaks in the kitchen. Someone is coming in.
Vesta’s body defaults into foetal position on the cushions. She pulls the blanket uselessly over her face, as though it will protect her. Oh, no. Oh, no, no. What do I do? I can’t get out. He’s in there between the outside and me. I’m old and stiff. If I try to run up the stairs, he’ll catch me while I’m still trying to get the door unlocked…
Slowly, slowly, she works her way off the couch and creeps to the door. Maybe, at least, I can hold it shut. If he comes this way I’ll sit against it, push with all my weight, and maybe he won’t be able to…
She presses an ear against the door, holds her breath. She’s wearing nothing but a nightie, her dressing gown still hanging on the back of the bedroom door, her clothes lost in the darkness. Maybe if I turn the light on, make a noise? Maybe he’ll go away, if he knows I’m here?
And maybe he’ll come looking for me.
He’s in the kitchen, but the lights are off. She’s emptied the lower cupboards, piled pans and serving dishes and cake tins on the surfaces in case the flood should worsen. It’s crowded and chaotic in there, hard to navigate, especially in the dark. She hears some extremity of him catch something, hears it fall to the floor with a metallic clatter that seems to go on for ever and ever.
Silence. Oh, God, he’s listening.
Vesta freezes. Holds her breath, hears the pulse race in her ears. Shut up, shut up. I can’t hear anything. I don’t know where he is.
In the house, nothing moves. She doesn’t even know if Collette is in, but there’s no sound from upstairs. From the window a slight draught of air suggests that it’s late. There’s no one to hear me, she thinks. No one’s awake. Oh, God, why did I put those bars on the window? I thought they would keep people out. I never thought that they would keep me in.
The intruder moves again, more boldly. He must have decided that no one has heard him. He thinks no one’s going to come. Just like that time before. No one came then. Why would they now?
He’s moving away, towards the back of the house.
What’s he doing? There’s only the bathroom back there. There’s nothing there.
And once he’s found that out, he’ll come this way.
Suddenly, as the first wave of panic dies back, she feels a surge of defiance. Hold on, she thinks. This is my home. It’s the same man who broke in before. Come back for more. Come back to get more stuff off the little old lady. From my house.