5

Susanna rose early the next morning, just as the day’s light was beginning to creep across the roofs and treetops. If she’d slept then she certainly didn’t feel its benefit. At some point she had stirred in the middle of the night to hear something breathing heavily in the house. Whatever it was seemed to have earth lodged in its throat, its nose. The breathing was ragged, savage, animal. She’d sat up in bed and stared into the darkness, certain that something was squatting in the shadowy corner of the bedroom, watching her. She’d fumbled with the lamp and by the time its meagre light had reached the corner she was sure whatever it was had moved, either behind furniture or into the wardrobe. She left the lamp on.

By the time the rest of the neighbourhood was waking, Susanna had already called a couple of charity shops in Moseley to collect as many books as she could box up by the afternoon, and was now out in the backyard, having emptied the shed at the bottom of the garden. She had given the spot of disturbed ground a wide berth, finding it made her feel somehow uneasy. She was burning old broken furniture, leaves and fallen branches and paper and magazines that she’d gathered from the house. It was laborious stuff but she was glad to be doing something that emptied her mind. Beyond the garden she could hear the chatter and laughter from children being taken to school; cars hissing through the suburbs into the city; the crackle of the winter breeze chasing the leaves down the suddenly busy streets. She lost herself in the sounds as she fed the fire. She had returned to the house for the next bag for burning when she heard keys in the front door. It was such a familiar sound that she froze in the hallway, part of her expecting Dave to walk through the door, looking surprised to see his ex-wife in his house, destroying his possessions.

The woman who stepped through the door was Felicity Annenberg. The leather jacket, the red dress, the high heels, the pale, porcelain skin, the delicate features and the tousled red hair: she was pretty, so very, very pretty. She looked like an exotic butterfly trapped in the porch. Susanna could see quite clearly how Dave would have fallen hook, line and sinker for her. She disliked her immediately.

It took the interloper a moment to realise that she wasn’t entering an empty house, although when she glanced up and finally spotted Susanna, she didn’t look altogether disconcerted by the fact. Susanna cuffed the dust out of her eyes. She felt a bit scruffy, a bit dowdy. Had she ever been this pretty? She realised she was trying to dismiss the visual of Dave and Felicity in the back garden, fucking in the mud. “What do you think you’re doing here?” she said, aware that her voice was high and brittle, that she was slipping into the role of the intolerant ex-wife. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with that.

“Are you Susanna?” Felicity said. The smile was quick to mask the discomfort of the situation. She slipped the keys into her bag and then she was filling the hall with her perfume and elegance and an extended hand. “I’m Felicity.”

“Yes I know,” Susanna said. “Why do you have keys to my house?”

“Well there’s no need to be so…I don’t know…prickly, is there?” Felicity’s smile began to slip. “Dave and I reconnected in the past year. It felt like the dust had cleared.”

“Yes, I know,” Susanna said. “I’ve read his journal. You introduced him to cocaine and Christ knows what else. It’s what sent him mad. It’s probably what killed the stupid bastard.”

Felicity was trying hard not to look like she was studying the kitchen, the front room, the stairway. Susanna felt the same way. She had been constantly glancing behind her all morning. “I think we might have gotten off on the wrong foot,” Felicity said. She withdrew the keys and offered them to Susanna. “Look, take them. I won’t be coming back here again.”

Susanna took the keys and pocketed them. “What are you doing here?” she asked quietly.

There was a moment then that Susanna realised that Felicity was on the verge of tears. The silence widened. “It won’t leave me alone,” she said finally. “That thing. It won’t stop following me.”

Susanna studied her, lost for words. Then, she sighed and said, “I’ll put the kettle on.”