The Landlord looks faintly pleased. He thinks he’s got me, she thinks. Thinks he’s sussed me out. He’d be twirling his moustaches, right now, if he had them. ‘Well,’ he says, his voice full of speculation, ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘It’s not your problem,’ she tells him, humbly. ‘I understand that. But it means that I… you know… I don’t really have anything by way of references, because I always lived at home, before I went away.’
‘What were you doing in Spain?’ he asks.
She tells the prepared story, the one that nobody ever wants to hear. ‘I got married. He owned a bar on the Costa del Sol. More fool me… Anyway, here I am now, no husband. Life, isn’t it?’
He eyes her, speculatively. The pound signs are lighting up behind his spectacles. ‘I daresay we can come to an arrangement,’ he says.
Who are you kidding? You’re a cash-in-hand landlord who rents his rooms out through cards in newsagents’ windows. I don’t suppose you’ve checked a reference in your life, as long as the money comes on time. Of course we can come to an arrangement.
‘Maybe if I gave you an extra month’s deposit?’ she offers, as though the idea has only just come to her. ‘I think I could probably manage that. I’ve got a bit put by. At least I managed to salvage that much, even if my dignity’s still in Torremolinos.’
He looks pleased, then wolfish. ‘You know it’s already first, last and damage, don’t you?’
‘I thought it would be,’ she says evenly, and looks at a greasy stain on the wall, at a level with her face. Someone – people – obviously feel their way up here in the dark, the flats of their hands against the wall to steady themselves. I bet none of those light bulbs works.
‘Well, maybe you’d like to see the studio,’ he says.
‘Studio’ is an exaggeration, but she had expected that from the fact that she’d found it advertised on a slightly grubby file card in a newsagent’s window rather than on a glossy photo stand in an estate agent’s. Northbourne is gentrifying fast, but City money has yet to drift this far south, and these Victorian streets still play host to a dwindling number of plasterboard walls and two-burner stoves and halls full of bicycles.
It’s a decent-sized room, at least. At the front of the house, it must have been the drawing room once. But it smells. It’s stale from sitting through a heatwave with the large sash window that overlooks the street firmly closed and her predecessor’s discarded clothes in a heap in the corner. But also, she notices, because there is a small pile of food on the countertop to her left. A bag of potatoes, blackened and liquefying, half an onion, a block of cheese, an open jar of blueish pickle and the stump end of a sliced loaf, barely recognisable beneath blankets of hairy mould. In the sink, a bowl and a mug have been left to soak in water that has taken on the scent of a sewer. There’s the drip, drip, drip of a tap.
The Landlord has the grace to look slightly abashed. ‘Like I say,’ he says, ‘I haven’t had the chance to get it cleaned up.’
Collette puts the Adidas bag down on the floor, relieved to be rid of it after another journey during which she kept hold of it constantly, fearfully, terrified to let it out of her sight. Without it, she’d be sunk, but she’s heartily sick of the sight of it.
‘Where’s the bathroom?’ she asks.
She’d known it was too much to hope that a ‘studio’ in this neck of the woods would have the luxury of an en-suite and she’s glad that she’s always had a strong stomach with a relatively insensitive gag reflex, because she’s tired of running. She tries to persuade herself that it’s not so bad. Once the window’s been open a while and all that stuff’s safely out for the bin man, and I’ve burned a couple of scented candles – it’s not for ever, after all. Just until you’ve done the right thing. God knows what’s in that fridge, though.
‘So the other people…’ she says. ‘Who else lives here at the moment?’
He gives her one of those goggling looks that suggests that the question is somehow impertinent. ‘If I’m going to be sharing a bathroom,’ she adds, ‘I wouldn’t mind knowing who I’ll be sharing it with?’
‘Oh, don’t worry about that,’ he says. ‘Nice quiet man, Gerard Bright. Recently divorced, I think. Music teacher. The others are harmless enough. No junkies or anything, if you’re worried about that. And it’s only Mr Bright you’ll be sharing with. The two upstairs have a bathroom between them, too.’
He shuffles over to the window, pushes back the half-closed polyester curtains and throws up the lower sash. She’s pleased to see that it moves easily, as though the groove in which it runs has received a recent application of lubricant. The increased light does little to improve the prospect before her, though. Every surface is covered with dust, and the unchanged bedclothes look grubby and worn.
‘I’ll get someone in to bag it all up,’ he says, and jangles his keys. ‘It shouldn’t take too long.’
Collette perches on the edge of the armchair – she doesn’t want to sit in it fully until she’s given it a proper inspection – and tucks the bag behind her feet. ‘It’s okay. I’ll take it and I’ll sort it out. It’s nothing a few bin liners and a vacuum cleaner won’t fix.’
The Landlord raises his eyebrows.
‘Oh, sorry,’ says Collette. ‘I didn’t think. Unless you… you know…’ she waves a hand over the abandoned junk, the tiny TV, the pile of George at Asda dresses, ‘… yourself…’
He looks so offended that she knows immediately that this was exactly what he had been planning, and that, now the option has been cut off, offence is his only option. She gazes at him innocently. ‘I mean, I… I guess some of it could go to a charity shop or something.’
The Landlord huffs and turns away. ‘I doubt it,’ he says.
‘So.’ The bag is burning a hole in her ankle. She wants some quiet, some space to get her head together, and get it hidden away. ‘How about it, then?’
She sees him startle. Fuck’s sake, he thinks I’m propositioning him! Just look at you, man. It’s astonishing how some men can believe they’re gods among men even when they’re standing next to a mirror. ‘The room?’ she adds, hastily. ‘Can I have it?’
He knows he’s got the upper hand. No one who had any options would be offering to move in on some stranger’s discarded knickers, their unwashed crockery. ‘Depends,’ he says.
No way, she thinks.
‘What with the no references, I’ll need a bigger deposit. You know. For security. I’m not a charity. I’m already out a month on this little…’ He gestures round the room, at the evidence of the hasty departure.
Collette blinks: once, twice. Waits.
‘And no cheques,’ he says. ‘I’ll need it in cash. Like the rent. I’ve done enough bouncing cheques to last me a lifetime.’
‘That’s okay,’ she says. ‘I guessed that would be the case. Is the extra month not enough, then?’
He stands there, pretends to consider the question. She should have held back, earlier. He’s got the measure of how few choices she has available. ‘Six weeks,’ he says, ‘on top of the normal deposit. And the rent’s in advance.’
‘So that’s…’ she says, thinking. She’s got two grand in her bra, counted out from the bag in her hotel room this morning. She didn’t think she could possibly need more, even in this market.
‘Twenty-one hundred,’ he says. ‘And you don’t move in until I’ve got it.’
She takes a deep breath. It’s okay, Collette, she tells herself. He’s not going to mug you. Not in his own house. But, Jesus, he’s making Paris look like a holiday camp.
‘I can give you two grand now. I’ll have to go to the cashpoint for the rest tomorrow.’
His tongue runs across his lips and he shifts on the spot. Cash clearly has a near-erotic effect on him. He narrows his eyes at her, and licks his lips again.