Into the Darkest Corner (29 page)
I had another panic attack today.
It wasn’t nearly as bad as the others I’ve had, and I don’t think any panic attack is ever going to be as bad as the one I had on Christmas Eve when I first spoke to Sam Hollands, but, just when I was starting to think that the medication was kicking in and I was getting better as far as the anxiety was concerned, something happened to upset the balance.
I stayed on the bus all the way to Park Grove, just around the corner from the flat. I took my regular detour through the back alleyway and spent a moment looking up at my curtains, checking each square of glass in the balcony doors to make sure the curtains were hanging properly. I looked at the gate, hanging off its hinges. There was no doubt that some animal was using this as a route: the grass was trodden into a pathway, with tufts of some grayish fur caught on the rough wood. The gate didn’t look as though it had been disturbed. If someone had been on my balcony, they must have come over the wall. I looked up at it. It was well over six feet, solidly built, with no easy way over.
I was thinking about Mrs. Mackenzie again, and what she’d said to me about seeing something outside. Maybe she’d meant something outside had made her jump, and that had caused her to fall.
I had a good look over the gate at the ground-floor windows, at her patio doors. They all looked fine to me. The flat downstairs was in darkness, just as we’d left it.
Stuart was already home, upstairs preparing dinner. I was going to get changed from my work clothes and bring some clean clothes for tomorrow.
Checking felt like a chore tonight, especially because Stuart was upstairs and every minute I spent down here fiddling with my doors and windows was a minute wasted.
I got all the way to the bedroom before the checking went wrong. It took me a moment to notice, even.
The curtains were open.
Initially the shock was like a bucket of icy water. I felt my heart start to thump in my chest, so loud I could hear it behind the roaring of blood in my ears. I couldn’t breathe for a moment, and then I was breathing fast and hard. I got as far as feeling the head swim before I kicked in with the focus—breathe deeply. Slow it down. In—hold it—and out.
I’m good at this now. And the rationalizing. Nobody has been here. You are safe. Nobody has been here—you just left the curtains open last time you were here. And breathe. Breathe deeply.
It was getting to be daylight in the mornings when I got up. I opened the curtains in Stuart’s bedroom this morning, letting the light flood in. Last time I’d been in my flat was—when? Monday evening? It had been still broad daylight when I’d left the flat, when I’d gone upstairs to get the dinner on before he got in from work. What about when I’d been standing outside in the alleyway, looking up at the windows, just a few minutes ago. Had they been open then? I tried to picture it, but I couldn’t say for sure—I was looking at the balcony, and then at Mrs. Mackenzie’s flat. I couldn’t even remember looking at the bedroom window. Surely I would have noticed if I’d left them open—wouldn’t I?
I’d left them open. Nobody had been in here, I’d just left them open. It was the only possible explanation.
I could just about have accepted this, that it had been light, so I wouldn’t have closed the curtains, except for the fact that all the other curtains in the flat—other than the balcony curtains, which were open exactly the right amount—were closed.
Maybe I hadn’t even been in my bedroom on Monday evening? Had I checked the flat properly on Monday? Or had I been in such a rush that I’d missed the bedroom out altogether and left the curtains open from the previous time I’d been in here? I tried to fish out the memory of Monday, what I’d done, but it blurred into last Wednesday and the Monday before.
I kept up the breathing until I started to feel as if I could move. I got to the curtains and stood for a moment looking out at the yard, seeing if anything was different; daffodils were growing haphazardly out of the borders, the grass overgrown. There was no sign of anything being different or out of order. Nothing to worry about.
I checked the window, feeling all around it. Nothing wrong there either. I closed the curtains and got changed, telling myself all the while that I was a fool, I was stupid. My jeans were on my bed, folded exactly as I’d left them. I slipped them on, finding a clean T-shirt. From the wardrobe I got a clean blouse for tomorrow, a long skirt and the navy blue heels that went with it, folded them into a neat pile with the shoes balanced on top.
I put the clothes into a shopping bag and put it by the front door before I started going around the flat again, checking everything was secure. This time I did it properly. Left the curtains closed, all the curtains closed except for the dining room, the room I could see from the back alleyway. I left these open exactly halfway, letting the fabric fall back in the precise way that I knew I would recognize.
I was actually feeling okay as I headed up the stairs to Stuart’s flat. I was feeling okay as we had dinner, telling him about how I’d nearly freaked out and lost it in my bedroom just because I’d forgotten that I’d left the curtains open this week. We laughed about it and I was fine about that; I was fine all the way until we were snuggled up on the sofa in Stuart’s living room, watching a comedy and laughing until the tears rolled down my cheeks.
I was fine right up until the moment I shoved my hands into my jeans pocket, searching for a tissue, and instead pulled out a button, a tiny button covered in red satin, a scrap of red satin fabric behind it, screwed up tightly as though someone had twisted and twisted it around until it had finally torn off.
And I wasn’t fine at all after that.
At four o’clock this afternoon, I will be free
.
My eyes opened this morning and Lee was fast asleep beside me, his eyelashes fanned out across his cheek like a bird’s wing. He looked beautiful, peaceful, as though he wasn’t capable of hurting anybody.
It was ridiculously early, but I wasn’t tired anymore—my head was buzzing with nervous energy. I felt as if I was about to go on stage at the Royal Albert Hall, or pull off a mind-blowingly cunning jewel heist. I’d planned today in excruciating detail, with contingency plans in case anything went wrong. In case he was suspicious; in case something unexpected happened.
Before bed last night I’d told him I was going in to work early today; that I had a meeting this afternoon and I was going to need to go in to prepare for it. He hadn’t even looked concerned, not looked doubting—in fact I think he’d been barely listening. So far, so good.
A quarter to six. I got up, as quietly as I could, desperate not to wake him. I went into the bathroom to dress, my navy blue suit, shoes with just a bit of a heel, the same clothes I’d worn last week. I wanted to eat something for breakfast, but my stomach was churning so much I thought I might actually be sick.
I was going to be sick.
I made it to the downstairs bathroom just in time, watery vomit coming out of my mouth. God, I must be more nervous than I’d thought. I rinsed my mouth in cold water, my hands trembling a little.
My routine, carefully considered to be identical to a normal work day, even though Lee was still fast asleep upstairs. I pinned my hair back in a neat bun. I put on makeup, drank a glass of water, rinsed it out and put it on the dish rack. After a moment’s thought, I rinsed out a clean cereal bowl and spoon and put that on the dish rack, too.
I collected my bag and my keys, and quietly shut the front door behind me. It was nearly half-past six.
“That’s it, that’s better—come on. Deep breath. Another. Slower.”
“I can’t—it’s bad, this—”
“It’s fine. I’m here, everything’s all right, Cathy.”
The little scrap of red was lying in the middle of the rug like an open wound. I couldn’t look at it. In the background the television was laughing at my hysteria. I guess it must have looked quite funny to an outsider.
When I was almost calm again he took me with him to the kitchen and made me sit at the kitchen table while he made tea.
“What happened?” he said. He was always so unflappable, so composed.
“It’s that. It was in my pocket.”
Stuart looked across to the rug. “What is it?”
I shook my head, side to side, until I started to feel dizzy. “It’s—just a button. It’s not that. It’s how did it get into my pocket? I didn’t put it in there. It shouldn’t be in there. It means that he’s been in the flat. He got in and put it in my pocket.”
“Hey. Come on, deep breaths again. You’re over this, don’t let it get to you again. Here’s your tea, come on, have a bit.”
I had some gulps, burned my throat, felt sick. My hands were shaking. “You don’t understand.”
He sat opposite me with his tea, and waited. Always with the unending fucking patience, it got on my nerves. It reminded me of the fucking nurses in that crazy fucked-up excuse for a hospital.
“Can we just leave it? Please? I’m fine now.”
He didn’t speak.
I drank my tea. Despite myself, I was starting to calm down. I still couldn’t look at it, couldn’t think about it, what it meant. In the end, I managed a whisper. “Please could you get rid of it?”
“I’ll need to leave you on your own for a minute.”
“Yes. Don’t go far.”
“I’ll put it in the trash outside. All right?”
He got up from the table. I put my hands over my face, blocking it out. I kept my eyes screwed shut until I heard the door to the flat shut behind him—he knew better than to leave it open these days—and his footsteps on the stairs. I wanted to scream. I wanted to scream and not stop, but I held it in, counted to ten, told myself that it was gone, it was gone forever, maybe it had never been there in the first place, maybe I’d imagined it.
He came back a few minutes later and sat back down at the kitchen table. I drank my tea and gave him a smile that I hoped was reassuring. “See?” I said. “Nothing to worry about. Just your crazy girlfriend flipping again for no reason.”
He just kept up that steady eye contact. “I’d like it if you could tell me,” he said. “I think it’ll help.”
I didn’t answer, wondering if I could say no, and if I did whether he would be satisfied with that or whether he would go on and on and on . . .
“This is part of my past. I want to get rid of it, forget about it,” I said.
“It’s part of your past that’s clearly having a significant impact on your present.”
“You think I put it in there myself?”
“I didn’t say that.”
I bit my lip. My tea was only half-drunk, otherwise I would probably have gotten up and walked out. In any case, I wanted to go downstairs and start checking, try to work out how the hell he got in.
“Look,” he said at last, “I’m not trying to get inside your head. I just want to know how I can help. Can you try and forget what job I do and just tell me? I’m not your therapist, Cathy. I’m just the poor bastard who’s in love with you.”
I found myself smiling in spite of it all. “I’m sorry. I’ve kept all this in for so long, it’s hard to just let it all out, you know?”
“I know.”
I got up and went to sit on his lap, folding myself into him and tucking my head under his chin. He put his arms around me and held me.
“I had this red dress. It was what I was wearing when I met him. He got a bit obsessive about it.”
I had a momentary picture of the dress when I’d bought it, how perfectly it fit, how I’d had to buy shoes to match. I’d loved it, at first. I’d wanted to wear it all the time.
“And this button reminds you of the ones on that dress?”
“Yes—no, it’s more than that. It is from the dress, I’m sure it is—oh, I don’t know!” I had been racking my memory desperately, trying to picture the dress, the exact size of the buttons, whether the backs were metal or plastic. I veered from absolute certainty that it was, back to doubt. Of course, now the button was outside in the trash I couldn’t check. There was one thing that was beyond question, though. “It’s the sort of thing he’d do, Stuart. It’s exactly the sort of twisted game he used to play. He put that—thing—in my pocket to let me know he’s come back for me.”
Stuart’s fingers were stroking the skin on my forearm, but I could feel tension in him, in the way he was holding me. I was waiting for him to say it.
It’s just a button. It doesn’t mean anything
.
“You could have picked it up somewhere,” he said gently.
“No,” I said. “I don’t just pick things up. Do you? Do you just go around randomly picking up other people’s crap? No? I don’t either.”
“Maybe it got mixed up in your wash,” he said, “at the Laundromat. It’s tiny. It could have been left in the washing machine by whoever used it last. It was all twisted, wasn’t it? Perhaps it got caught in the machine or something. Isn’t that a possibility?”
“Whose side are you on?”
I got up, suddenly suffocated by his arms around me. I crossed the room and changed my mind and came back again, pacing, trying to stop the panic and the anger and the sheer, dreadful hopelessness of it all.
“I didn’t realize there were sides.”
“Shut up and stop being such an idiot!” I shouted.
He shut up. I’d crossed a line and instantly felt awful. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean that.”
“You should call the police,” he said at last.
“What for? They won’t believe me,” I said miserably.
“They might.”
“You don’t believe me; why should they?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you. I think you’re severely traumatized by what happened, you’re afraid now and that’s making you ignore the fact that there are potentially rational explanations for how it came to be in your pocket.”
“That’s just the point, Stuart. It was
in my pocket
. It wasn’t just tangled up in the wash, it was in my fucking pocket. It didn’t just fall in there of its own accord, and I didn’t put it there, he did. Don’t you get it? He used to do things like this. He’d break into my house when I wasn’t there, leave me messages, move things around. Things you wouldn’t necessarily notice. It’s why I started the checking.”
“He’d break into your house?”
“He was—kind of an expert in it. I never worked out how he managed to get in. He could break into just about any house without you knowing how.”
“Jesus. You mean he was a burglar?”
“No. He wasn’t a burglar. He was a police officer.”