Page 38 of We Live Here Now
“I was so glad you were going to be okay. I couldn’t tell you. I couldn’t. I was so afraid you’d leave me. Or the shock would make you sick again. I love you so much. I was so scared. I didn’t want to loseus, Emily.”
I can’t help but half laugh, shocked and heartbroken at everything I’ve heard. “Us?” I finally say. “Oh, Freddie. I’m not sure there can be anusafter this.”
48
Freddie
We talk until late, a second bottle of wine opened as I beg forgiveness and we both cry. I hold on to her tightly when she lets me, as if I’m drowning and she’s keeping me afloat, and she veers between anger and heartache, but I can tell she’s starting to relent. There’s nothing Emily likes better than having the moral higher ground, and she’s not going to let that go quickly. She can talk about how she misread me when we met, but that goes both ways. I thought she was the most forgiving person I’d ever known, but she’s not. She stores it all up like weapons while acting like Mother Teresa. She’d lose her shit completely if she knew that I’d been gambling a couple of weeks before the holiday. That in fact it started again that first night out from work.
Do we still love each other? Are we a habit? Is it a tired mixture of both? She’s not the only one who wonders, and she still hasn’t told me why she was so weird before her accident. Maybe I’m not the only one who had a secret.
She hasn’t mentioned divorce yet. Our marriage still has a chance. There can still be an us. When we finally head up to bed, sometime around two, I go to the spare bedroom. She doesn’t tell me to come back but instead says, “Maybe it’s for the best. Just until I get my head around all this.”
Her eyes slip away from me like she’s a coy victim, and when I feel that bloody draft coiling once again around my ankles as we say good night, I feel the first hint of annoyance at her. I close the spare bedroom door, shivering, and stand by the radiator for a few moments. It’s still hot, the thermostat only turned down momentsbefore, but the warmth is swallowed up by the icy breeze cutting through the gaps in the windows and the old floorboards.
The bed creaks, complaining about having company, and under the thin duvet I suddenly feel like a child again, sleeping over at my grandmother’s house, in the cold loft room that she converted for her grandchildren but never bothered to make feel lived-in. A room that was happy being left to itself. I have that same feeling here, where the shadows are different from those I’m used to, and the heavy blue walls could be night itself crowding round me.
It’s cold as night in here too, the draft wheedling through the mattress under me, and I pull the duvet tighter. I want to go and turn the heating back on but I daren’t with Emily now knowing how much debt we have. As if a few quid keeping the house warm is going to make any difference.
Downstairs, I was distraught at the thought of her leaving me, at the possible end of our marriage, consumed by how much Ineedher, but now that I’m up here and alone, I’m getting more and more irritated at being painted as such a terrible human being. There were so manyHow could you lie to me like thats andYou should have been honest with mes, as if she’d never done anything wrong in her life. Sheknowsgambling is an addiction. A disease. She knows it isn’t easy to stop. Why couldn’t she see that I only kept going because I was afraid of losing her? It was love. I thought she was dying and I began self-destructing. I didn’t lie to her anyway; I just didn’t tell the truth. I wasprotectingher. She doesn’t know how hard it was for me during those months. She wasn’t even awake. But still, I’m the big disappointment.
The curtain flutters, like the rustle of a panicking bird’s wings, sending shadows and shards of moonlight in a kaleidoscope pattern across the room, more evidence of the breeze Emily insists doesn’t exist, and I sink deeper beneath the covers. It’s almost a joy to have a whole bed to myself again. It took ages to get used to sleeping alone while she was in hospital, but then, quietly and guiltily, I began to love it. It’s been odd having to share the space again. That’s what Emily doesn’t get. Her accident and coma have been hard for me too. I’ve been the one on the outside.
I’m drifting into an emotionally exhausted and wine-drowned sleep when a creaking tread on floorboards drags me out of my doze. I listen blearily. The creak comes again. And then again. Footsteps. Is that the stairs? I have a moment of panic that maybe the people I still owe money to—the sort who don’t send polite letters in the post and who I’ve told Emily I’m clear of when in fact there’s ten grand outstanding—have come down to Devon to break my kneecaps, but realize it must be Emily. What is she doing up at this time?
I half sit up and frown. Has she been upstairs? It definitely sounds like she’s coming down from upstairs. The steps are even and surprisingly heavy. I’ve gotten used to Emily’s feet being out of time as she limps, dragging her bad leg carefully behind her, but this doesn’t sound like that. There’s a pause and then the footsteps come closer.Too heavy for Emily, I think as my heart starts to race. Could it be a burglar? The space between treads feels almost too long as they get louder and closer.Unnatural.
The curtains tremble once more, and I peer through the shards of moonlight to stare at the closed door. The footsteps are getting closer. It has to be Emily. It has to. No burglar would make so much noise, surely?
Finally, the feet come to a stop outside my room, and the last step is so impossibly heavy I’m sure it makes the bed tremble. I wait, my breath held, the air around me cold from the draft but my skin burning with an irrational fear, but there’s only silence. The pause goes on for so long that I’m starting to question whether I heard anything at all or if it was just a hangover dream, when suddenly the round handle starts to turn. I stare in horror as it twists slowly one way and then back again before falling still. The door doesn’t open. No one comes in. But I can feel in every fiber of my being that there is a presence on the other side watching me through the wood. I let out a small moan and the noise adds to my fear as my mouth dries and my palms clench. I’m sure I’m going to have a heart attack, this burst of terror the final straw after months of stress and debt.
I don’t know how long I sit there staring at the door, but eventually I get pins and needles and I prop the pillow so that I can lie down and still watch it, but the handle doesn’t turn again and there are no more footsteps. Eventually, my eyes drift shut and I’m half-convinced after so much silence that it was all my imagination. Or Emily. It must have been Emily. Maybe she was going to come in. To make up properly. Get us back to us.
I remember how strange the footsteps sounded. Maybe she won’t even remember she was up. Maybe she’s going mad. All those things she’s imagining. What she did with those books. I sink deeper into sleep as cool air settles on my face. My last thought is a gossamer thread of sticky webbing in my subconscious.
Maybe it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if she did go mad. It might help me.
Maybe, in fact, I’d quite like it.
Us
49
Emily
The hubbub downstairs fades as I grip the banister and climb the steep flight of stairs to the third floor, breathing shallow in case the awful smell comes back, but there’s nothing other than warm dust. I’ve waited until the party’s fully started and the guests are mingling, Freddie in full host mode, before going up to finally finish my search of the house. There is safety in numbers, and Cat is still getting ready in their room on the middle floor, so it’s now or never. If I don’t find anything, then I can put this madness out of my head and focus on the very real predicament Freddie and I are in and what I’m going to do about it.
The landing is quiet, and despite my heart beating faster than normal, I’m pleased I’m not panicking or filled with dread. I’m a grown-up. I can do this. The double bedroom just has a bed in it and Iso and Mark’s overnight stuff and no built-in cupboards, but I do a circuit of it, scanning the walls and floor, but there are no spaces where something could be hidden. The same goes for the bathroom, and after checking the storage cupboards, I’m left with only the primary suite to check.
My palm sweats slightly as I grip the handle, but I take a deep breath and push the door open. I brace myself, expecting the awful onslaught of horrific dread I felt last time, but there’s nothing, just quiet, no strangeness at all, and when I flick on the light switch, it’s just a large, empty, beautiful room, the glorious feature window at the other end. It is innocuous. Normal. I look down at the floorboards and there’s no sign of the scratching I’d been so sure I heard.
I’d still happily turn and rush down the stairs, but I’ve comethis far, so I wedge the door open and hesitantly go farther inside. I’m half expecting the door to suddenly slam shut and trap me in here forever, so I hurry across to the bathroom and quickly search it before going to the dressing area on the other side. The longer I’m up here, far away from everyone else, the tenser I get. The sudden normality is unsettling me as if it’s a mirage.
The quicker I move, searching the drawers and cupboard spaces, the closer my panic comes to the surface. And then I hear it. The creak of floorboards in the bedroom. Footsteps coming closer. Eyes wide, I press myself back against the cupboard, sure that I’m going to have a heart attack—you will die here—my breath coming in gasps, and then I hear—
“Emily?”
Relief floods through me and I let out a mildly hysterical half laugh. Joe. It’s Joe. That’s all. I come out of the walk-in closet, my face red.
