I remember that first taste. The way the flavor hits you, the way your mouth squirts with saliva in anticipation.
“It’s a piece of paper which tells you what you’ve bought. Sometimes it has the name of the shop printed at the top. You think you can find it for me? It’s from Idless Pharmacy. It’s probably shoved right near the bottom.”
Maria considers this in silence. I don’t know when Andrew will be home, but I can’t help but feel a surge of impatience that forces me to bite my knuckles to keep quiet. I can’t hurry her. I need her help.
“Quick pro go.” She says it quietly, and this time I don’t correct her.
“Quick pro go, Maria, that’s right. My receipt for your gum. Go on, then! Quick as you can!”
I wait. The air is cold and clammy, pressing against me like wet clothes sticking to my skin. The pale dawn glows like twilight. It makes me disoriented. The birds have been singing awhile now, so is it late morning? When did I last have something to eat? I’m nauseous with hunger. I can’t work out how long I’ve been down here altogether. Three days? Four? I feel like I’m floundering around in pitch-black water, unable to come up for air.
This all hangs on Maria finding me the receipt, and now I’m starting to doubt myself and this whole stupid plan. The uncertainty spreads like an inkblot, staining everything. I’m relying on too many things out of my control for this to work, it’s impossible. What if I threw the receipt into one of the bins in the precinct instead? What if I tore it up, shredded into pieces in the bottom of my bag? What if it is too small, too crumpled? God. I’m starting to sweat. That blackness, flourishing, multiplying. Doubt like germs on a petri dish. My hand is stroking my scar again, trailing a nail along the seams.
“Is this it?”
Her voice makes me jump. I stare at the door stupidly for a few seconds, blinking.
“Show me.”
She slides it under the door. The receipt is crumpled but not torn. Although Idless Pharmacy still looks the way it had in the nineties, the till receipt is much more modern, itemizing the things I’d bought and the time and date they were purchased. There’s even Suzie’s name there at the top. Good. A good start. I’m excited. I want to get started right away, but I hang back. There’s something I have to ask her before I go.
“Where does he go, Maria? When he leaves here?”
“He goes to work.”
Work. The word lands on me with weight, hard enough to leave an imprint. It knocks something into place, something that has been an itch at the back of my brain since I’d first seen Andrew standing there in his stained overalls, fingernails rimed with that clay-colored soil.Planting hydrangeas, he’d said. The blankets and pillowcases downstairs, the familiarity of them. Anti-ligature bedding, he’d called it, but I’d already known it, hadn’t I? That faintly itchy fabric, worn stiff by too many spells in the washing machine. The detergent used to wash them, floral and somehow clinical. Iknowit. Intimately, almost.They’re women like you, Andrew had told me, and now I know what he means by that I’m almost winded by the force of it.
“You won’t tell him, will you, Hazel? That I’ve been down here talking to you?”
“No,” I manage, trying not to sound as if I am being slowly strangled. “Of course not. All of this is our little secret.”
I listen to her footsteps as she moves away with her quick little feet. I’m so tense I’m crushing the receipt in my hands, and for this to work I need it to be legible, so I force myself to relax. Deep breaths. Focus.
Behind me, on those rickety wooden stairs that descend into shadow, I hear a sound like chattering teeth. With it comes an overpowering odor that seems to darken the air around me with filth. The dust motes stir as if agitated.
I do not know how much longer I can wait.
19
Cathy is standing with her hands in the sink, up to her wrists in hot, sudsy water. She hasn’t moved in almost thirty seconds. Her eyes are glassy, staring into space. She’s thinking about that black shape on the nanny cam and the way it had moved: convulsive and somehow insectile, low to the floor. Last night Cathy had managed to convince herself it was a trick of the light, something like headlights moving shadows across the wall.
That was no shadow, and you know it, the voice in her head intones, but Cathy ignores it. An optical illusion. A spider crawling over the lens. These are rational thoughts. Good, safe thoughts.
The doorbell ringing surprises her. Her head switches round, hands jumping to her chest in fright. She isn’t expecting anyone. Danny has gone skating in town and will probably be out for hours. Scout is at nursery until after lunch. It’s her day to clean and straighten the house out. Her one day off.
Frowning, Cathy dries her hands on the tea towel slung over her shoulder. The front door has an inset of frosted glass in it, and through it she can see the distorted outline of the waiting visitor like a dark smudge.
Like a creeping figure, hauled upright.
“Shut up.” Cathy mentally swats the voice away, edging her way down the hall. Her caution isn’t just because she is jumpy. It’s a survival tactic, forged in New York when bailiffs were knocking down her door and posting final demands through the letter box, stamped by the court. Even though Cathy is on top of her debts these days, paying them off at a drip-feed pace she can barely afford, there are still things that make her heart palpitate until it feels like she might faint. A phone call from a withheld number. An unexpected knock at the door. A formal-looking letter.
The doorbell chimes again and this time the stranger taps something against the frosted glass—a pen or a finger, Cathy isn’t sure which—but it’s enough to force her the last few steps to open the door, forcing a smile to her face as she does so.
“Mrs. Maddon?”
“Miss.” Relief sweeps through Cathy like clear running water. This man is not an official. He is wearing stained blue overalls and big work boots. He’s scruffy looking, with dark curls to his jaw and a rash of blue stubble as if he hasn’t shaved in days. “It’sMissMaddon. I’m not married.”
“Ah. I’ll get that corrected, then. Sorry.” He holds up the tablet in his hand, turning the screen toward her. “They’ve got you here as married. YouareCatherine, though, correct?”