Thieving Fear

It was the near end of the terrace that formed the right side of Empire Street. Clothes of all colours drooped on lines in front gardens as small as the sandstone houses. Hugh's had no clothesline, just an abundance of weeds bordering the cramped mossy path and raising their ragged heads from its cracks. Charlotte was hauling the unhinged gate aside when a plump woman in a sari stepped out of the next house. 'How is Mr Lucas?' she said. 'Have you seen him?'

'Not yet. We're going soon.'

'Where are you going, please?'

'To the hospital.'

'Please forgive me. I did not know this. Could you say that Mrs Devi was asking about him?'

'I will,' Charlotte said and wished she didn't have to add 'If he knows we're there.'

Mrs Devi lifted stubby hands beside her face as though to shape her mouth rounder. 'What has happened to him?'

'He was in some kind of accident on his way here.'

'He was run over? I forever tell the children –'

'No, in his van.'

Mrs Devi looked as confused as Charlotte had begun to grow. 'He is a driver? Where does he keep it?'

'Sorry,' Charlotte said and would rather not have gone on. 'Who are we talking about?'

'Mr Lucas,' Mrs Devi said, vigorously waggling her fingers at Hugh's house. 'Are you not familiar with him?'

'He's my cousin. Are you trying to tell me something's wrong with him?'

'He has not been to work for nearly three days now.'

'You get time off even if you work for Frugo. I expect he'll have taken some because of our cousin, the one who's in hospital, that's to say his brother.'

'He has not been out at all.'

Charlotte peered at Hugh's house, but the faded scaly front door remained shut, and her voice hadn't brought him to any of the windows, which were slated with reflections of clouds. She tried to conceal her unease as she said 'I'll let him know you were asking.'

'If he ever needs his neighbour he knows where I am,' Mrs Devi said and withdrew into her house.

Charlotte felt watched but could see no observer. As she advanced up the path she had the impression that the house wasn't growing as it should. Of course this was an illusion, but she could almost have imagined that the house was shrinking to shut her in, like a cottage in an unpleasant fairy tale. She spent some energy in fending off the idea as she thumbed the grimy plastic bellpush.

The electronic tolling sounded blurred by dust or age. When it brought no response, Charlotte rang again and levered the knocker up and down above the equally rusty letterbox. The reluctant clanking was followed by a protracted rattle and a thud. Though it sounded like the springing of a trap, it was the sash of an upstairs window. Hugh leaned out, only to stare both ways along the street. 'I'm here,' Charlotte called.

As his eyes met hers she saw they looked hollow and sleepless, presumably from worrying about his brother. 'Are you coming to let me in?' she eventually had to ask.

She was waiting for his footsteps on the stairs when he reappeared at the window. 'Can you?' he said.

He jerked a fist over the sill, so violently that he might have been trying to punch someone invisible in the face. By the time Charlotte grasped his intention he'd dropped the key beside the path. As she retrieved it she smelled earth, but she wasn't taking that as any kind of omen. She twisted the key in the stiff lock and pushed the door wide.

The interior smelled stale, too nearly airless. At the end of a narrow hall halved by stairs and watched over by copies of Rory's family portraits, she saw and heard a tap release a dull flat drip into a metal sink. As she closed the front door the hall with its drab brownish wallpaper took on more gloom. She was expecting Hugh to appear at the top of the stairs by the time she reached them, but she couldn't even hear him moving. 'Are you all right?' she called.

'I'm still here.'

The tap emitted another drip, and she wondered how long he'd left it that way. She made for the kitchen, past a room where a dusty television squatted near a bookcase rather less than full of Cougar books and shabbier volumes. A gentle turn sufficed to quell the drips, and she was returning to the hall when she faltered. It couldn't really have narrowed. Perhaps that was an effect of the gathering darkness, which seemed capable of transforming the space beneath the stairs into a den. Of course nobody was crouching there, and so she oughtn't to have sounded nervous as she called 'Aren't you ever coming down?'

'You come up first.'

If his tone had betrayed any enjoyment, Hugh might almost have been proposing a game. Charlotte hurried past the earthy shadows under the stairs and grabbed the banister. At the top she was faced with a rudimentary landing beneath a low roof. A faint glistening trail wandered back and forth over the faded brown carpet, starting in the room from which she heard the spring-like trickle of a presumably unstoppable flush. The track, reminiscent of a snail's but surely too large, also led in and out of the front bedroom. She couldn't help hesitating before she pushed the door open and ventured into the room.

Hugh was standing with his back to her beyond the single bed and facing the window. The end of the plain pale quilt near the foot of the bed was grubby with marks, from which she deduced that he'd been lying down with his shoes on. As she stepped forwards she kicked an object on the floor – a plastic cap that belonged to the can of shaving foam in Hugh's hand. She had trouble believing she'd identified the source of the trail that led from the bathroom to him. 'What on earth have you been doing?' she said. 'Why have you made such a mess?'

'It's my house.'

'Nobody's saying it isn't,' Charlotte told him, though there was little in the shabby room to demonstrate his ownership – just some discarded clothes on a chair. 'People are worried about you, that's all. Mrs Devi was saying you haven't been to work for days. You'll have taken them off because of Rory, won't you?'

'Who?'

Charlotte's attempt to laugh only shook her voice. 'Rory. Your brother.'

'I know who my brother is. I asked who else you said.'

'Mrs Devi. The lady from next door.'

'First I've heard she's called that. I didn't know you'd be checking up on me.'

'How long are we going to talk like this? Can't you look at me?'

He only shrugged – left shoulder, then the right, and again as if trying to establish which was which. Oughtn't she to go to him? She'd taken a step, watching her feet to avoid the trail on the carpet, before she realised he was moving, so tentatively that she could almost have concluded he was having to remember how to turn. His wary gaze found hers at last, only to fall to the can in his hand. Much of his face reddened as he lurched to grab the cap beside his feet and jam it onto the container, which he dropped on the bed. Having waited for an explanation or even for him to look at her again, Charlotte said 'All right, I won't ask.'

'Don't.'

That hadn't worked the way she'd hoped it would. As his gaze sought her face he held out a hand. She could almost have thought he was pleading mutely to be led from the room until she realised he must want his key back. When she planted it in his hand his fingers twitched as if they were eager to close around more than the key. The room was threatening to feel as small and dark as the inside of her skull. 'Aren't you going to offer me a drink?' she said.

His face grew yet more mottled. 'I'd have to go out.'

'You've nothing to drink in the house?'

'Not the kind you're after. Are you feeling bad?'

'No,' she said and more truthfully 'I'm feeling thirsty. We're talking tea here, Hugh.'