I’m shivering inside the duvet on the mat. I can’t get warm in the storeroom tonight. Everywhere seems to breathe Arctic ice. What I wouldn’t give for some central heating. Maybe I need to buy one of those freestanding oiled-based radiators. Don’t get as snug as a bug here. This isn’t your real home. I know, I know, but still I’m here for the duration until I get the answers I need. I sit up and pull my rucksack over. Fish out another pair of woolly socks and put them on. Do the same with the thick Aran jumper Mum bought me. I snuggle under the duvet… and so does the cold. It’s eating its way into my bones.
Will I hear Michael’s mum upstairs tonight? The dog? Will their mournful melody seep through the ceiling and the walls again? I hope not, a restful sleep is what I need to start my journey to the truth tomorrow. My breathing relaxes, smooths out…
What was that? I sit up, breathing a waterfall of noisy air as I urgently look around like a bird sensing danger. The sound was definitely not the building’s natural rhythms. It wasn’t a dog or a woman weeping either. I softly flick off the duvet and stretch across, a female panther ready to spring into action.
Listen. There it is again. Scraping. Something heavy dragging across concrete. I know that sound. It’s so familiar… I do it every day. Someone is moving the grill that guards the courtyard. Guards my makeshift temporary home.
It hits me how vulnerable I am. No-one to hear the echo of my cries and screams.
‘No telling what type of accidents may be waiting to befall you in the dark.’ The remembered threat from the zombie concerning his sickening film slugs me full in the stomach.
I fumble as quietly as I can through my possessions until I find my penknife. Whoever’s there will soon discover I’m going to go down fighting. I can sense whoever’s on the other side of the wall hanging down, a bat in the night, judging when they should drop onto the cobbles below.
Again, I fine-tune my hearing to catch the sounds of the night. Listen. A soft thud. The intruder has landed. I push out the small blade of my knife. This is what crossing a line and refusing to go back feels like. Stronger. Determined. Bloody double terrified. I stand tall, centre where the room is at its fiercest. And wait. The invader doesn’t seem to care about me hearing them because their tread moves with a confidence, a steady fall. Getting closer to the door that separates us. Is that the in-out of their breathing I hear? Yeah, there it is, super faint like a collection of whispers travelling through the night.
Is this what shaking like a leaf feels like? Every part of me rocking to a beat I can’t control? The handle moves, a circular motion that has the power to hypnotise. It stops and I can’t help but take a step back. The door opens in its silence. A figure appears, drenched in black. The face no features at all. A demon. I’ve seen this demon in a doorway before.
Keats.
Keats, AKA A Boy Named Sue, pulls down her bandana like an outlaw who’s lucked in nabbing the loot and outridden the posse.
I gawk at her. ‘What are you doing here?’ More importantly, ‘How did you know I was here?’
She inches out of her own surrounding shade of black, closer to me. Pulls her sunglasses off and hooks one of its arms onto the upper pocket of her fatigue jacket.
‘You probably don’t realise that you do it, but you keep looking at the door in the basement which appears like a panel in the wall that leads here when you’re sitting at your desk.’ She delivers her explanation in a levelled-out tone, matter of fact, devoid of emotion. And maybe this is what I need, her logical upfront style of talking. None of that tedious dodging the issue, talking in circles. ‘So, I did a bit of snooping myself and it wasn’t hard to figure out who the gear in this room belongs to.’
I reset my calmness. ‘So, you’re here to tell me about a connection between my dad and Michael?’
Keats rolls her eyes with much drama. ‘I’m not here to admire the pipework, am I.’
The pipework. A huge grin travels up my face. Who but Keats would liken anything to pipework? A thrill fizzes through me. I’m not alone anymore. Keats flicks her hood back as she settles next to me on the duvet.
She crosses her legs like she’s ready to meditate. And begins. ‘Michael runs another series of businesses, so he’s a genuine businessman. Quite successful really. But I couldn’t find any connection between your father and Michael. There was nothing there.’
The disappointment is crushing. ‘There must be something—’
‘If there is, someone’s doing a brilliant job of hiding it.’ Keats tilts her head in a way I think means she’s got more to say. It’s hard for me to tell because her face remains new to me, so I’m still learning what the tics and turns of her expressions mean.
I prompt her. ‘Like you said before, you didn’t come here to discuss the pipework, so tell me.’
I hear Keats sigh beneath her breath. ‘The task you gave me meant I was going to inevitably bump into stuff about your family. I did find out lots of other interesting stuff about your father. Your mum’s medical records—’
‘Stop!’ It’s a screech wrenched out of me, forgetting where I am. ‘Who the hell gave you permission to stick your beak into my family? I never asked you to investigate my family. All I asked you to do was find out how Dad knows Michael.’ The fury’s the first heat I experience tonight. ‘How dare you.’
Keats remains unruffled, levelling me with such a frank glance I flinch. ‘I told you. That’s what happens when you go digging into the past; there are lots and lots of other skeletons waiting to tell their stories.’
It’s like she’s blown a hole in my chest. I try to control the involuntary clenching of my muscles below my ribs. ‘You’ve got the nerve of the devil.’
Keats shakes her head. ‘So, you don’t want to know what I found out? Maybe you’re scared to hear?‘
I scramble to my feet. ‘How would you like it if I poked my nose into your family’s private business?’
I begin pacing. Wrap my arms round my Aran jumper as if it’s Mum, and I’m hugging her don’t-ever-leave-me tight. There are things in my past I find hard to talk about – obviously – and Mum is one of them. Alongside Dad and Philip, she was the other bright star guiding my life. My mum was… I evict the joy of her from my fragile mind. It’s too painful.
‘You’re hurting,’ Keats says as if she’s impersonally tapped my profile into a computer and it’s spit out the correct answer.
‘No kidding,’ I grit back with maximum sarcasm. ‘Award her the Nobel Prize for being the world’s leading expert on observing emotions.’
There’s a lapse back into silence and I wonder if I’ve hurt her feelings. Over my shoulder, I peak at her face. A glimpse so she won’t catch me in the act. She’s worrying her lip with concentration.
Then she says, ‘You want to know about my family? I’ll tell you. My parents thought I was a screwball. The kid who would sit quietly and stare. And stare. They were so ashamed of me, so embarrassed, they didn’t let me go out to parties, play sports, all the stuff other kids did.’ I expect her to be raging, on her feet like me, shaking her fist at the rottenness of the world. But she’s not. I know because of the texture of her voice. It’s as soft and gentle as a feather floating between us.
‘My family is one of those who can’t stop yakking, talking from dawn to dust. So, you can imagine how the silent middle child who liked her own company, told people the truth, freaked them out. Everyone thought there was something wrong with me.’ Her throat bobs. ‘So when I was little, they dumped me in a state-run boarding school buried in the country for kooky kids with special needs—’
‘I’m so sorry—’
Her sudden smile cuts over my words. ‘It was the making of me.’ A dark cloud smothers the smile. ‘But when I got there, I thought I was defective. Washed up. A failure. One day I threw my computer to the floor where it smashed. This feeling – I can’t explain it – came over me like a spell to fix the computer. So I found out how to and it took me a long time, but I put it back together. That’s how I got into computers. Every time I put a part of that computer in the right place, pieces of broken me slotted back into their rightful place too. It’s okay to be hurt. Okay to be broken. It’s normal. Anyone who says different is peddling a lie.’
‘Are you on the spectrum?’ I ask as I resume sitting next to her.
‘And what spectrum is that? Being a human being? We’re all meant to be different. People have tried to stick labels on me, but I won’t have it. My parents wouldn’t allow me to be who I am. I’m normal. My normal.’
I’m blown away by her speech, her revelation of who she is. And suspect she doesn’t tell it very often, if at all. I don’t know whether to feel honoured or thank her. In the end I say nothing; her words speak for themselves.
Keats gets back down to business. ‘I get it, you just want the stuff about Michael and your dad.’ Her fingers fiddle with the arm of her sunglasses. ‘So, let’s be logical about this. Michael’s in the business world and so is your father. Maybe the link is one about business.’
I rewind back to that night when Dad came here. Was talking to Michael.
‘Open the door, Michael, or so help me, I’ll kick it in. And then I’ll kick you in.’
I shudder as the wash of Dad’s remembered violence drenches me. No, what was between Michael and Dad was much more personal than business dealings gone bad. And if it was about business, why did Dad mention my name? And that’s what I tell Keats. ‘Whatever was between them had something to do with me and Philip.’
Keats gets up, surprising me. My back teeth grind together in an act of possession as she approaches my altar to Philip. Yes, an altar. There are no flowers, no statues, no sticks wafting sweet incense or flickering candles, but that space on the floor beneath the photo is sacred ground. The special place where Philip is back in my life. I avoid using the word ‘worship’ because that’s not what I’m doing. I’m not, am I?
So I get up and join her. Keats regards Philip’s face for a long while. ‘Was he your boyfriend?’
I tell her the truth. ‘It was deeper than that. He was like the brother I never had. He was there at a time I needed him.’
Keats glances away and regards me instead. ‘I know you haven’t told me the whole story, but the best place to find the truth is to start at the beginning. So, Rachel, where does your “once upon a time” start?’
Should I tell her? I look up to Philip for guidance. Eyes still on his adorning face, I whisper, ‘We were both working summer holiday jobs. At the home of…‘ Deep breaths. Deep. ‘A man called Danny Hall. He’s dead. He died that summer.’
Keats joins her gaze to mine on the photo. ‘Tomorrow, let’s take a trip to the scene of the crime. Danny Hall’s house.’
Then Keats is gone like a bat beating its veined wings out into the night.