NINETEEN

The sound of the key in the lock startled me. I had been expecting Odile, had put the TV on so she wouldn’t find me staring blankly into silence, but for a fraction of second, I believed it was Owen at the door.

‘Knock-knock!’ Odile cooed, with a foot already over the threshold, keys jangling in her fist. I got up to help her bring her things in.

I’m not sure how much stuff I expected Odile to bring with her, but it was certainly more than the two straw, reusable shopping bags that she showed up with.

‘Oh, I’ve got more!’ she said when she saw my face. ‘A couple more of these, anyhow. I don’t really like to be tied down, you know?’ And even though I had spent a great deal of my life acquiring objects I believed would enrich me, I did understand what she meant.

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ I said.

‘Not on my account,’ she said. ‘Anyway, I have wine!’ She pulled a bottle of red from one of the bags and plonked it down on the coffee table. I could see her fingerprints in the dust on the neck. I went to the kitchen for the corkscrew and glasses.

Odile dumped the bags in the spare room, her room, and swirled back into the living room. She was opening the bottle of wine and I was surprised to see that I was no longer holding the corkscrew or the glasses. She had this way of manipulating me that didn’t feel invasive or impolite; she would just see what I was trying to do, and then before I realised, she would be doing it for me. I had always been grossly aware of my own incompetence; I was always asking people to do things for me or seeking permission for things I could do myself. But with Odile, I didn’t need to be capable or pretend to be independent. Perhaps we all need more mother figures.

Odile looked around the flat and took big gulps of wine. She didn’t say she loved what I had done with the place or that it was a beautiful flat, she never minced her words like that. Instead she asked, ‘How long have you been here, on your own?’

‘Since New Year’s Day,’ I said. She nodded.

‘And how long was he here, before?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Two years maybe? Two and a half?’

‘It must be hard,’ she said.

I wondered again how much Maggie had told her about me, about Owen, about what was happening. It was obvious that I had been living in this flat with someone else – I had said as much when she came to view it – but she clearly knew more than that. I felt like she knew more than I had told Maggie, possibly more than I knew myself. It was nice to feel my responsibility shift over to her. I had moved straight from my parents to Owen and I had never needed to be responsible for anything other than my own past before. I felt I was, once again, being rescued.

All I said was, ‘Yeah, it is.’

Odile topped up my glass nearly every time I took a sip; the bottle disappeared quickly. I felt a little tipsy while at the same time feeling as if I had not drunk a drop. We didn’t talk a lot at first but there was something so comforting about her presence. I still felt awkward with silence, felt that I needed to please her. So, I asked her about her family. She was an only child, her parents, dead. I asked about friends. She had lots from the bookshop, from her yoga classes, from the spiritual church where she had met Maggie.

‘She’s tried to take me to that church,’ I told her. Odile smiled. I couldn’t tell if she expected me to say more, so I did, just to be safe. ‘It weirds me out,’ I said.

I had created a version of myself that dismissed anything vaguely spiritual as nonsense. But this was far from how I truly felt. I longed to find a deeper understanding, to find a way to make it all seem bearable, a grip on the world that would allow me to live as everyone else seemed to: with purpose. I had spent my teens hovering at the edges of organised religion; smoking in church graveyards, waiting for God to find me. But I wasn’t found. I don’t suppose anyone is. And although I longed for this feeling of something greater than me, I couldn’t go with Maggie to her spiritualist church where the language and the symbolism churned up the secret that I was so desperate to keep. So, I did what I always did when I felt uncomfortable and out of place: I dismissed the things that frightened me, made fun of them.

I looked through the bags when Odile had gone. One was full of fabric and smelled like incense. I pushed a few of what I assumed were dresses out of the way and pulled out a pair of navy-blue lacy knickers with sagging elastic and a bleach stain. I buried them back in the bag and started looking through the other one. I suppose I had expected that she would come laden with dreamcatchers and macramé and dozens of strings of beads, and although I wasn’t far off, there was something eerily specific about items she did bring: one red candle, a small bottle of patchouli oil, a black gemstone of some sort, a couple of pieces of chalk, a ball of string, a stack of ramekins. It was like she had come prepared to cast a specific spell and had brought only what she needed to do so. There was more in the bag, but I heard the key in the lock and managed to shove everything back and leap out of the room just as she appeared in the doorway. Her smile was knowledgeable. I had no doubt that she knew I had been spying.

‘I forgot I had this in the pannier,’ she said, swinging the carrier bag as she crossed the room. ‘Just some shower gel and things,’ she explained, and I knew that she meant it was not worth looking in that bag, that I could if I wanted to, but that I was not going to find any answers in there.

I didn’t look in the bag, or in any of her other bags again that night. I didn’t even step back inside the room, which I was starting to understand as hers. It had been a long time since I lived with a person whose barriers I thought deserved my respect. Owen and I had understood that everything we had belonged to both of us. I left the door to Odile’s room open. There was something comforting about her belongings being in the flat. No matter how creepy they were, they radiated warmth, as if there was another person there with me. It wasn’t like the flat just stopped being haunted, but it was starting to come to life.