Back in her flat, still spooked by the man at the pool, Marie rummages through the kitchen drawers until she finds what she needs. A multi-head screwdriver, where all the different shapes and sizes are slotted into the lid, a chisel – that she couldn’t remember ever having had a use for – and a miniature hammer she’d got as a present with one of those huge bars of toffee that you have to smash up. Who’d given her that? Anne probably. No doubt one of those gimmicky things she’d bought for the shop that didn’t sell.
She has slight reservations about what she’s about to do – after all, it is technically vandalism – and isn’t it an actual offence to take someone else’s mail? Anyway, it’s the middle of the day, and most people in her block have regular nine-to-five jobs, so no one is going to be in to see her. Plus, she’ll make sure she fixes it back up again so they won’t even notice that anything has happened.
Armed with her small arsenal of tools, she puts the front door on the latch and walks out into the hall. There are twenty flats in the block. Ten on the ground floor, ten above. Due to a numbering system that makes no sense whatsoever, Flat 9 is directly above her. She remembers thinking at the time of the fire that she was lucky that there’d been no damage to her own place. Apart from the stench, of course. No one had managed to escape that. If you went upstairs, it was even worse. The fire brigade had hosed the place down and sealed it off – apparently it was safe – but no one was likely to venture inside it. The locks had been changed, after the fire brigade had broken down the door. The man who’d been renting it wasn’t in, thankfully. He’d gone out to buy bread, forgetting that he’d already switched on the pan to heat the oil for his chips. He’d bumped into someone down the street, and they’d both watched as the siren went off at the fire station and the firemen – all part-time and busy doing other jobs at the time – turned up and disappeared full pelt up his road. That was when it dawned on him. By the time he got home, the whole building had been evacuated, and he got more than a bit of abuse when he appeared around the corner with his sliced white loaf. After they all realised he wasn’t dead, of course.
Marie was out at the time. Meeting a man in Edinburgh after a series of chats on an online dating website. He was at least ten years older than his profile suggested and looked like the type of person you try to avoid at the bus stop. She remembers it clearly, as it was her first and last attempt at online dating. What was the point?
She starts off with the screwdriver, using a wide, flat head. She pushes it into the keyhole, wiggles it about. Nothing. Why do these things look so much easier when you see them on TV? A thought pings. ‘Oh you idiot, Marie,’ she mutters. She leaves the tools on the floor and goes back into her flat to get her keys. Her mailbox key is on the keyring, along with the front-door key and a small photograph of her and Anne on a rollercoaster in Blackpool. She glances at the photo and smiles. Such a long time ago now. Not long after she’d moved to Banktoun. A school trip to Manchester where she and Anne had sneaked off on the train to the Pleasure Beach. They’d got in no end of trouble for it, but it had cemented them as friends right from the start. Marie had thought about Graeme that day, remembering when they used to go to the shows together and he’d always win her one of those mad-haired plastic trolls – what were they called again? Gonks. That was it. Marie had bitten back tears for most of the trip: no matter what Anne said or did, he was always at the back of her mind. Even in the tiny keyring photograph, she could see her red-rimmed eyes and forced smile. Anne had said to her on the train back to Manchester: ‘If you ever need to talk about anything, you can talk to me. I hope we’re going to be good friends.’ Marie smiled at the memory, Anne’s solemn face, candyfloss stuck to her cheek. Her breath all cheap cider and chewing gum.
Marie pushes her own mailbox key into the lock for Flat 9, assuming that, if not exactly the same, the keys are bound to be similar. Why had she never thought about this before? She wiggles the key and it seems to turn a fraction, and then stops. Of course it does. That would be too easy.
After a few more pokes and wiggles with various screwdriver heads, Marie has to admit defeat. She drops the screwdriver onto the floor and picks up the hammer and chisel. Still trying to remember what it was she’d ever bought a chisel for, she carefully wedges the tip of the tool into the gap next to the lock, angling it slightly to the right. Then, holding it tightly with her left hand, she whacks the handle of the chisel once, sharply and neatly, with the toffee hammer.
The door of the mailbox shudders slightly. The sound reverberates around the walls, making her wince. She does it again – this time hitting slightly harder with the hammer, pushing deeper with the chisel.
The door springs open.
Marie drops the tools onto the floor in surprise. There’s an echoing clang as the metal hammer lands on the chisel and bounces against the lower level of mailboxes that line the wall. Marie holds her breath for a moment, expecting one of the other residents to open a door and come out, ask her what the hell she’s doing. But there’s no sound, thankfully. As she’d hoped, no one is in. Either that or no one cares.
There’s a pile of mail in the open mailbox. She lifts it out and starts to sift through it. Junk, mostly. Why am I doing this out here? she wonders. She glances around one more time, then bends down to pick up her discarded tools. The hammer has left a small dent in the door of Flat 1’s mailbox. She hopes they won’t notice. Clutching the pile of mail and the tools against her chest, she pushes the door of Flat 9’s mailbox closed.
It springs open again.
‘Shit.’
Thinking through her options, she goes back into her flat again, dumps the pile of mail and the tools on the kitchen table. She rummages in the kitchen drawer again. Pulls out a jar of paperclips, a pile of elastic bands. Smoke-alarm battery – the square ones that her dad used to make her and Graeme stick on the end of their tongues. She pauses. Feels her heart beating in her chest.
Where are you, Graeme?
Eventually, she finds it. A ball of Blu-Tack, stuck to the back of the drawer. It’s dried up, pieces of fluff sticking to it. She rolls it about in her hands, warming it up, trying to make it pliable again. She pulls little pieces off, rolling them into individual small balls. It’s a basic idea, but hopefully it’ll work. Will it be strong enough to hold, though? She decides it’ll do until she has time to fix the lock properly.
She wanders back out into the hall, and as she starts to stick the small balls of Blu-Tack along the edge of the mailbox door an odd sensation comes over her. Something prickles down her back. Someone is here. Near her. She imagines she can hear them breathing.
Did you hear me breathing, Marie?
She pushes the memory away.
‘Hello? Is someone there? I’m just sorting out some mail . . .’ She lets her sentence trail off.
No reply. Paranoid, she thinks. That’s what happens when you start doing things you’re not supposed to be doing.
She sticks the rest of the balls inside the door then pushes it shut, holding it tight, hoping that the stickiness will find some purchase. She takes her hand away and steps back. The door moves slightly, finding its natural position. It holds fast. She watches it for a moment, listening for the sound of unsticking . . . waiting for the door to spring back open again. But it seems to be OK – for now, at least. She’ll ask Anne if she can send Ian round to help her fix it. She’ll have to tell them she broke it. But she won’t tell them why. She won’t tell anyone.
As she turns back towards her flat, she hears a noise. Something is being scraped or dragged across the floor above her. Someone moving furniture. Someone in the flat upstairs. Flat 9. But no one lives there.
Do they?
She walks back into her flat, double locks it. Puts the chain on. She never puts the chain on. She walks through to the kitchen and jumps with fright. Cadbury is on the table, licking up crumbs. The cat looks up at her and gives her one of its looks. The pile of mail has been scattered across the table and onto the floor.
‘Get off the table, missy,’ she says, shooing the cat. It jumps down and runs off into the living room. She scoops up the mail. She stops. She doesn’t want to look. There’s another faint sound of scraping from upstairs. She goes through the pile, slowly, one by one . . . pizza leaflets, people’s names she doesn’t recognise, junk from Virgin and Sky. Then a letter. That handwriting. Another one.
Marie drops the pile of letters onto the table. Her whole body shakes. There are at least ten letters in there addressed to her, that same looping scrawl. Marie feels the remnants of last night’s rum ready to make a reappearance. She throws up into the kitchen sink.