At the bottom of the stairs she laid a hand on the bannisters, looked up at the familiar carpet, the old one that had been here when she bought the house and which she had been meaning to replace ever since. Every worn patch, every strand of exposed canvas, was reassuringly familiar. She took another breath, then changed her mind. She hurried into her office, leaving the door in the hallway wide open so that she could see into the hall, and pulled her mobile from her pocket. She pressed the numbers that unlocked the keypad, but she fumbled it. She could not make her fingers go where she wanted. She tried again, muffed it again. She remembered Hike had an instant-dial number. Numero Uno, he said, when he had set it up for her five weeks earlier, just before he drove away.
She pressed the speed-dial key, then the ‘1’ on the keypad. The ringing tone sounded in her ear.
She moved the handset away briefly, to listen for sounds from upstairs. She went back to the door, peered out at the bottom of the stairs, the part of the wall where one of Hike’s old paintings still hung. The ringing tone continued.
How late was it? She glanced at her wristwatch: it was just after midnight. Hike was sometimes asleep by this time. She felt the back of the handset growing slippery, where she held it so anxiously. Then at last he answered.
‘Hullo?’ He sounded curt, muffled, annoyed at being woken.
She started to say, ‘Hike...’, but as she tried to speak the only noise she could make came out as a single gasping syllable. ‘Ha-a-a-a!’ That uncontrollable sound amazed and appalled her. She sucked in air, tried again. This time she managed a high-pitched squeak:
‘Hi-i-i-i!’ Silence at the other end. Humiliated by her own terror, she tried to control herself.
Finally, she got his name out, nearly an octave too high: ‘Hike?’
‘Yeah, it’s me. Is that you, Mel?’
‘Hi –!’ She swallowed, took another shuddering intake of breath, concentrated on the words she had to say. ‘Hike! Help me! Please?’
‘It’s the middle of the night. What’s up?’
‘Someone – there’s someone in the house! Here, when I came in. I found the door –’ Again she remembered what had happened at the start, just those few minutes earlier. That dread feeling when she found the door open in the night, the darkness within, the silence. She almost let go of the handset at the memory. She sat down, lowering her backside against the edge of her desk, but immediately stood up again. Trying to keep her voice low, but hearing the stress make it harsh, she added, ‘I think someone’s still here.’
‘Have you looked?’
‘Yes. No! I haven’t been upstairs. I’m too frightened. They might still be in the house!’
‘Is this what it takes to get you phone me?’
‘Hike, please...’
‘How long has it been? Five or six weeks?’ Melvina could not answer, cross-currents of Hike and the fear of an intruder flooding together. ‘Is there anything missing?’ he said.
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so.’ The cross-currents gave her thoughts sudden freedom. ‘Was it you, Hike? Have you been over here while I was out?’
He said nothing.
‘Maybe it was just local kids,’ he said after a moment. ‘Kicking the door in for fun.’
‘No... it’s been forced. A chisel, a hammer, something heavy.’
‘Are you asking me to drive over?’
Hike lived more than an hour away, by car. He had always said he disliked driving at night. She had kept him away all this time.
‘No, I’m OK,’ Melvina said. ‘I’ve just had a fright, that’s all. I don’t think there’s anyone still here. I’ll be all right.’
‘Look, Mel – I think I’ll drive over and see you anyway. You want me to pick up my stuff, and this might be an opportunity to do that.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I told you and you agreed, you bloody agreed, that you would send a friend to get the stuff. I want that room cleared out.’
‘I know. But you need me, otherwise you wouldn’t have called me in the middle of the night.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ll call the police. That’s what I ought to do.’
Suddenly the phone went dead at the other end. Hike had cut off the call.
She put down the phone, laid it on her desk next to her keyboard. A mistake! A mistake to call him... but there was no one else. The flashing LED on the answering machine radiated normality, and for a moment she reached over and rested her finger on the play button. Then she remembered what had happened to the house. Talking to Hike had changed nothing. Just delayed things, just as always.
In the hallway she returned to the front door, looked again at the broken lock. She tried pressing the door into its frame and discovered that if she let the hanging lock be pushed back she could hold the door closed long enough to shoot the bolt at the top. As soon as she had done this she felt safer.
She picked up the pile of books that had been on the doormat when she came in, and without examining them stacked them roughly on the end of the lowest bookshelf.
Looking anxiously ahead of her Melvina began to climb the stairs, pausing for a few seconds on each step. She was straining to hear any sound from above. The silence was absolute: no apparent movement, nothing being moved about, no footsteps. No one breathing.
The mobile handset suddenly rang, behind her in the study where she had put it down. She went rigid for a moment. Then, relieved, she ran down the four or five steps she had climbed and hurried back into her study.
‘Mel, did you call me because you wanted me to drive over tonight?’
‘No, I –’
No, I just wanted to be sure it wasn’t you, Hike, she added silently, looking over her shoulder at the light coming in from the hall.
‘I’m a bit more awake now,’ he said. ‘Have you noticed anything stolen? Has anything been moved? Is there any damage?’
‘It’s OK. I’ve searched the house. There’s no one here and nothing’s gone.’
‘Couldn’t you ask one of the neighbours if they saw anything?’
‘Hike, you know I’m alone here. The other houses are still empty.’
Some of them were used as summer lets and would start taking visitors in the next few days, but because of the recession most of the houses in this terrace were permanently vacant. Hike knew this, he knew the collapse in property values was why she had been able to afford the house on her intermittent earnings.
‘Where did you go today?’ he said suddenly.
‘What?’
‘You’ve been out of the house all day, and I’ve been trying to call you. Are you seeing someone?’
‘It’s none of your damned business! Is that all you’re thinking about? What I’ve been doing all day? Someone’s broken into my house and for all I know is still in here somewhere.’
‘I thought you said no one was there.’
‘I was still looking when you called again.’
‘Are seeing someone, Mel?’
She tried to think of some answer, but she was obsessed with thoughts of the house, the open door, that darkness and silence. She felt the paralysis of her throat again, the mysterious seizing up of breath and vocal chords, the dominance of fear, the dumbness it caused. She gasped involuntarily, then moved the phone away from her ear. No more Hike.
She pressed the main switch on the top of the handset, watched the logo spinning back into oblivion, then darkness.
There were fourteen messages waiting on the landline answering machine – most of them would be from Hike, just as they were every other day. She flicked it off. Her hands shook.