'Good.' Susan softened for a moment. 'I'll come and kiss you goodnight.' She held the clothes up and wrinkled her nose. 'These had better go in the wash too.'
Susan went.
Isabel lay there on her own in the hot water, trying to relax. But there was a knot in her stomach and her whole body was rigid, shying away from the cast-iron touch of the bath. She heard her mother going back down the stairs. The door of the utility room opened. Isabel turned her head slightly and for the first time caught sight of herself in the mirror. And this time she did scream.
And scream.
In the bath, everything was ordinary, just as her mother had left her. Clear water. Her flesh a little pink in the heat. Steam. But in the mirror, in the reflection…
The bathroom was a slaughterhouse. The liquid in the bath was crimson and Isabel was up to her neck in it. As her hand — her reflected hand — recoiled out of the water, the red liquid clung to it, dripping down heavily, splattering against the side of the bath and clinging there too. Isabel tried to lever herself out of the bath but slipped and fell, the water rising over her chin. It touched her lips and she screamed again, certain she would be sucked into it and die. She tore her eyes away from the mirror. Now it was just water. In the mirror…
Blood.
She was covered in it, swimming in it. And there was somebody else in the room. Not in the room. In the reflection of the room. A man, tall, in his forties, dressed in some sort of suit, grey face, moustache, small, beady eyes.
'Go away!' Isabel yelled. 'Go away! Go away!'
When her mother found her, curled up on the floor in a huge puddle of water, naked and trembling, she didn't try to explain. She didn't even speak. She allowed herself to be half-carried into bed and hid herself, like a small child, under the duvet.
For the first time, Susan Harding was more worried than annoyed. That night, she sat down with Jeremy and the two of them were closer than they had been for a long time as they talked about their daughter, her behaviour, the need perhaps for some sort of therapy. But they didn't talk about the bath — and why should they? When Susan had burst into the bathroom she had seen nothing wrong with the water, nothing wrong with the mirror, nothing wrong with the bath. No, they both agreed. There was something wrong with Isabel. It had nothing to do with the bath.
The antique shop stood at the corner of Swiffe Lane and the Fulham Road, a few minutes' walk from the tube station. It was somehow exactly as Isabel had imagined it. From the front it looked like the grand house that might have belonged to a rich family perhaps a hundred years ago: tall imposing doors, shuttered windows, white stone columns and great chunks of statuary scattered between it and the street. But over the years the house had declined, the plaster-work falling away, weeds sprouting between the brickwork. The windows were dark with the dust of city life and car exhaust fumes.
Inside, the rooms were small and dark — each one filled with too much furniture. Isabel and Belinda passed through a room with fourteen fireplaces, another with half a dozen dinner tables and a crowd of empty chairs. If they hadn't known all these objects were for sale they could have imagined that the place was still occupied by a rich madman. It was still more of a house than a shop. When the two girls spoke to each other, they did so in whispers.
They eventually found a sales assistant in a courtyard at the back of the house. This was a large, open area, filled with baths and basins', more statues, stone fountains, wrought-iron gates and trellis-work — all surrounded by a series of concrete arches that made them feel that they could have been in Rome or Venice rather than a shabby corner of West London. The sales assistant was a young man with a squint and a broken nose. He was carrying a gargoyle. Isabel wasn't sure which of the two was uglier.
'A Victorian bath?' he muttered in response to Isabel's inquiry. 'I don't think I can help you. We sell a lot of old baths.'
'It's big and white,' Isabel said. 'With little legs and gold taps…'
The sales assistant set the gargoyle down. It clunked heavily against a paving stone. 'Don't you have the receipt?' he asked.
'No'.
'Well,… what did you say your parents' name was?'
'Harding. Jeremy and Susan Harding.'
'Doesn't ring a bell
'They argue a lot. They probably argued about the price.'
A slow smile spread across the sales assistant's face. Because of the way his face twisted, the smile was oddly menacing. 'Yeah. I do remember,' he said. 'It was delivered somewhere in North London.'
'Muswell Hill,' Isabel said.
'That's right.' The smile cut its way over his cheekbone. 'I do remember. They got the Marlin bath.'
'What's the Marlin bath?' Belinda asked. She didn't like the sound of it already.
The sales assistant chuckled to himself. He pulled out a packet of ten cigarettes and lit one. It seemed a long time before he spoke again. 'Jacob Marlin. It was his bath. I don't suppose you've ever heard of him.'
'No,' Isabel said, wishing he'd get to the point.
'He was famous in his time.' The sales assistant blew silvery grey smoke into the air. 'Before they hanged him.'
'Why did they hang him?' Isabel asked.
'For murder. He was one of those… what do you call them… Victorian axe murderers. Oh yes…' The sales assistant was grinning from ear to ear now, enjoying himself. 'He used to take young ladies home with him — a bit like Jack the Ripper. Know what I mean? Marlin would do away with them…'
'You mean kill them?' Belinda whispered.
'That's exactly what I mean. He'd kill them and then chop them up with an axe. In the bath.' The sales assistant sucked at his cigarette. 'I'm not saying he did it in that bath, mind. But it came out of his house. That's why it was so cheap. I dare say it would have been cheaper still if your mum and dad had known…'
Isabel turned and walked out of the antique shop. Belinda followed her. Suddenly the place seemed horrible and menacing, as if every object on display might have some dreadful story attached. Only in the street, surrounded by the noise and colour of the traffic did they stop and speak.
'It's horrible!' Belinda gasped. 'He cut people up in the bath and you…' She couldn't finish the sentence. The thought was too ghastly.
'I wish I hadn't come.' Isabel was close to tears. 'I wish they'd never bought the rotten thing.'
'If you tell them…'
'They won't listen to me. They never listen to me.'
'So what are you going to do?' Belinda asked.
Isabel thought for a moment. People pushed past on the pavement. Market vendors shouted out their wares. A pair of policemen stopped briefly to examine some apples. It was a different world to the one she had left behind her in the antique shop. 'I'm going to destroy it,' she said at last. 'It's the only way. I'm going to break it up. And my parents can do whatever they like…'
She chose a monkey-wrench from her father's toolbox. It was big and she could use it both to smash and to unscrew. Neither of her parents were at home. They thought she was over at Belinda's. That was good. By the time they got back it would all be over.
There was something very comforting about the tool she had chosen, the coldness of the steel against her palm, the way it weighed so heavily in her hand, almost willing her to swing it. Slowly she climbed the stairs, already imagining what she had to do. Would the monkey-wrench be strong enough to crack the bath? Or would she only disfigure it so badly that her parents would have to get rid of it? It didn't matter either way. She was doing the right thing. That was all she cared.
The bathroom door was open. She was sure it had been shut when she had glanced upstairs only minutes before. But that didn't matter either. Swinging the monkey-wrench, she went into the bathroom.