Eleanor wasn’t surprised when things started to move. Feeling ill made everything gauzy, and they were tiny things, easy to explain away. She’d find a door wide open when she thought she’d shut it. The cutlery in the wrong compartments; her house keys in the fridge. She thought that she’d left a plaster on the side of the bath when they went away for the weekend – she hated doing things like that, even though she knew that no one would see it: it made her feel out of control and slovenly, and it worried at her more than was rational as they drove away for the weekend. When she got back, it wasn’t there. She knew her handbag was on the sofa – she could see herself dropping it there when she came in – but when she turned round, there was an empty space. She gaped at it, worried she’d left the front door open and someone had come and grabbed it while her back was turned. But the front door was shut. She ran upstairs and saw her bag on her bed and could only stare at it, uncomprehending. She could have put it there – of course she could – but her memory was blank.
She told herself it was the illness making her slow and confused. Sometimes she’d even catch herself in a daze: pouring fresh milk down the sink, about to scrape food remains into an open drawer. But that wasn’t what it felt like. It felt like the house was active. She didn’t expect things to stay as they were when she left them – a house with five people in it did not stay still. She expected crumbs on the bread board, depressions on the sofa. But this was something else.
Everything was out of place. A spoon in the oven. A pair of nail scissors in the bread bin. Feeling her way through the cloudy water of the washing-up bowl, Eleanor’s fingers touched something familiar and wrong. She fished out her glasses, dripping, covered in soap and grease. Three days later, she looked down at the cup of tea she’d made, and saw something solid and glistening floating towards the top. She dredged it out with a fork, half knowing: it was the salmon skin from their plates, thick, silver, gorgeous, hideous.
*
Every so often, she’d find the pebbles there on the front step; she couldn’t discern a pattern to it, but just when she thought it might have stopped, they were there again, a perfect line in size order. Once or twice, she stood at the window, to see if she could catch someone putting them out, but she didn’t have time to watch for very long and on the days she was looking out for them, they never appeared. She carried on, as the year started winding to an end, patiently moving her things back to the right place, getting rid of the pebbles, managing her time in the house, trying to detach when Rosie sank her teeth into her arm again.
One Sunday, she was making a cake, when she opened one of the bottom kitchen cabinets where they kept the mixing bowls and found a saucepan. She held it in her hands, certain, so certain, that she had taken it out of the dishwasher that morning and put it back in its correct place, the cupboard above the sink. Still, she asked, ‘Richard, did you put this here?’
He looked up from his computer. She could see rows of tiny bathroom taps on his screen. ‘What?’
‘This saucepan. Did you put it in the bottom cupboard?’
‘I haven’t touched it.’
‘I don’t understand how it got there then. I would never have put this there. It isn’t the place.’
‘Zoe must have done it.’
‘Mummy!’ Rosie pulled at the hem of her jumper. ‘Not that! The bowl!’
‘Just one second, sweetheart. Zoe doesn’t use our pans, Richard. She has her own cupboard. And she doesn’t cook – she makes salads and things.’
‘Maybe she cooked last night.’
Rosie started pummelling Eleanor’s thighs. ‘Mummy, come on!’
‘Mummy’s just talking, darling, let Mummy finish talking. Zoe was out last night, we heard her come in, remember?’
‘Maybe she cooked when she got back. Or this morning when we were out.’
‘I just don’t think it’s very likely!’ Rosie was hitting her leg harder and it was starting to hurt. Eleanor knew she had to act soon to avoid another tantrum. She could feel the corners of her eyes getting hot and full.
Richard got up and stood next to her. He touched her shoulder gently; she jerked away. ‘Eleanor, I don’t understand. What’s the matter? Come on, Rosie, calm down – we will in a minute, sweetheart. You just put it in the wrong place, Eleanor. It’s a mistake. It’s OK.’
‘I just don’t think I did!’ She was trying so hard not to cry.
‘Mummy!’
‘OK, fine!’ she said, and got the bowl out of the cupboard and banged it on the worktop, and then felt guilty. Richard was looking at her and she knew he was on the verge of speaking, but he changed his mind and went back to his computer. She got the sugar and flour out of the cupboard, carefully, not trusting herself to get even this right, and tried to stop her hands shaking.
What else could she do? They had bought the house just over three months ago. It was supposed to be their ‘forever home’. ‘You’ll have to carry us out in a box,’ Richard told the conveyancer cheerfully. They had no savings left; they couldn’t even afford a removal van. It was where they lived now: they’d wallpapered themselves in and shut the gate. But it was rejecting her, like an unwelcome transplant. And she had no idea why.
*
She went to bed early that night and just as she was starting to drop off to sleep, there was a shriek from the children’s room. It was a sound like nothing she’d ever heard before. She leapt up and rushed in. Rosie was sitting upright in bed, shaking and crying uncontrollably. Eleanor reached out to her and Rosie recoiled. She didn’t seem to recognize her. She had an unfathomable expression of pure terror; she looked straight past Eleanor, staring at something which seemed to horrify her. Eleanor looked round instinctively but the wall behind her was blank. Every time she reached out, Rosie got even more wild and tried to push her arm away.
‘What the hell’s going on?’
Eleanor was only half aware of Richard behind her. ‘I don’t know! She won’t let me anywhere near her!’
Isobel had woken up and was crying now too. Eleanor picked her up and rocked her, pleading with Rosie – ‘it’s OK, you’re OK, you’re all right, calm down’ – but she was having no effect on either of them. Rosie was behaving as if she wasn’t in the room, her eyes fixed on the thing she could see by the door. It was hideous to watch. Eleanor handed Isobel to Richard and tried again to reach out to Rosie – ‘Please, Rosie, you’re safe, I promise you!’ – but she pushed her away again, hard this time. Her agitation seemed to increase. Eleanor didn’t know how much more she could bear, but she had no idea how to stop it.
Rosie’s screams started to taper out, turning into small moans. She was breathing heavily and making little whimpering sounds. Then she lay back down and slept.
‘Jesus, what was that? Was she having a nightmare?’ Richard asked, handing back Isobel.
‘I don’t know,’ Eleanor said, rocking Isobel in her arms. Isobel’s crying began to fade and the ability to comfort her effectively felt blissful. She put Isobel back down in her cot with relief, knowing it would be hours before she would sleep herself.
Instead, she sat in bed with her laptop, headache drumming in her skull, consulting the internet. Eleanor discovered that night terrors, like biting, were common. She had again done the wrong thing: trying to intervene had probably frightened Rosie more. She should have stayed calm and waited till it was over. She didn’t understand how on earth that would be possible. It was normal, a phase, she’d grow out of it. But what if she doesn’t? she thought. She put her laptop on the bedside table and curled up on her side. The worst thought came later, after she’d been lying awake for some hours, her head throbbing. What if Rosie really could see something after all?