Eleanor took a bin bag and threw in the little pile of Zoe’s belongings from Litchfield Road. She’d felt bad about not being in contact with Zoe after they left and hadn’t wanted to throw them away, but after today, it was clear she no longer needed them. It had touched Eleanor, seeing her looking so crisp, with her piled-up hair and the high-waisted jeans and blouse buttoned up to the collar – it didn’t really flatter her, but it made her look more confident. She was so obviously delighted by Joe. It made Eleanor curious and slightly envious. She hugged Zoe harder than she meant to when they said goodbye and said, ‘Good luck.’
For the rest of the day, she felt altered, dragged halfway back to that peculiar time in Litchfield Road. From here, she could only see it through a kind of screen. Her memories were gauzy and fractured. She had been unwell; the children had been so young. There were blank stretches: and she couldn’t remember what the carpets were like; she’d forgotten Richard had a study until he mentioned it the other day. She hadn’t been herself.
And yet some memories remained distinct: the salmon skin in the tea, the pebbles on the front step. The anguish in Mrs Ashworth’s expression; Isobel’s scream when the coffee spilt. The bird flying at Rebecca’s face.
Her public story about the house had merged naturally with Richard’s and they both became practised at telling it, until it almost felt true – there was a structural problem causing damp that made Eleanor ill, it would have cost too much to fix, they had no choice but to sell it. Such a shame, but they were both happy in their new home. Things worked out for the best in the end. Sometimes she wanted to know what Richard thought privately – whether he ever thought about the Ashworths or the upstairs room. She occasionally wondered if he thought he’d seen the bird too, but they never spoke about the house clearance. It was safer not to.
There were still moments, though less frequent now, when she thought they’d carried it with them, whatever it was, like an infection. When Rosie suddenly flew into a rage or Isobel’s burn flared up or she felt sick for no reason. She feared that it was part of them now, that it would lie dormant, following them to every house they ever lived in, and she would always be waiting for it to express itself.
But there was no doubt that things had got easier. She rarely felt ill; Rosie had grown out of her tantrums and night terrors, just as everyone said she would. Isobel was three and a half now, and she was a much more content child. She knew they were both growing away from her: they could do most things by themselves and needed Richard as much as they needed her. It made her feel sad sometimes, and impotent. But the freedom was glorious.
She’d finally bought herself a new bike and on the days Richard was at home and she didn’t have to drop off the children, she’d cycle to work, spinning through the streets, luxuriating in how light she felt. She didn’t tell Richard, but sometimes, when the mood took her, she chose a route that took her down Litchfield Road.
She had felt awful for selling it, for passing the house on to another family. She had told herself there was nothing else she could do and was relieved the couple who bought it were wealthy because they would not be stuck like she was – they could get out if they needed to. Before they put it on the market, she’d finally wallpapered the upstairs room, but she’d still been terrified that the mood of the house would catch, that the sale would not go through.
The couple worked on the house for nearly eighteen months. She wondered if they had found Emily’s writing under the wallpaper and what they had thought. Then the skip was gone and the window frames were newly painted and she could see wooden floorboards where the old carpets used to be. They planted a rosebush in the area outside Zoe’s old room. She saw them having breakfast together in the morning, at the end of the elegant dining table in the large, light kitchen looking out onto the garden. They seemed content and companionable; she hoped that she and Richard would be like that one day.
*
After a while, she stopped seeing them. The lights were always off when she went past. The rosebush was getting overgrown. She kept returning, just to see, sometimes taking the detour on the way home too. They were not there in the evenings either; the shutters they had put in were never shut, even when it got dark. The curtains in the upstairs room were always drawn. There was no ‘For Sale’ sign; she could find no record of it on property websites.
A few months after she and Richard had seen Zoe, she left for work a little earlier than usual. When she got to the house at Litchfield Road, she stopped and propped her bike against the front steps. She noticed a clump of post sticking out of the letterbox; the flowers of the rosebush were brown and curling. They had put an outside staircase in, leading down to the basement, and as she stepped down, she was curiously confident that she would not be caught. She made a frame with her hands and pressed her face against the glass of the basement window. The room was still, as it had been for some time now: the dining table a bare expanse of wood, chairs tucked neatly in. She saw the blank surface of the sink: no washing-up liquid, no sponge or bowl. She was satisfied. They were no longer living there.
She didn’t tell Richard. She could hear his voice already: they just changed their routine, flowers die, they went on a trip. She didn’t believe it. But the beautiful, unexpected thing was that it didn’t matter. She would not take that route again. She cycled away, released.