Coming home was always a disappointment for Kenneth Plumley.
As a kid, he’d envied some of the tight, nuclear families he saw on television. There was something wholesome about them, unlike the shadowy chaos of his own upbringing. The houses – especially in American series – were always grand and beautiful, and when the father came through the door, there were wisecracks and laughter and hugs. And even when friction arose, it was always overcome by the end of each episode. By and large, those families slept well, ate well and lived well.
He’d wanted that. Sometimes the only thing that kept him going was the thought that, once he escaped childhood, he might be compensated by a loving wife and offspring of his own, and then he could restore the balance that seemed so tilted against him.
It hadn’t worked out like that.
He turned the van onto the weed-infested driveway and took it around the back of the house. He killed the engine and lights but stayed put for a few minutes, staring dolefully at his life’s accomplishments.
He’d be forty in a couple of months. Forty. Halfway through his life if he was lucky. In truth, probably dead or in prison well before then. And this was all he had to show for it.
He hated this house. Didn’t matter, because Polina loved it, and he went where she led. It was on a country lane, a couple of 16hundred yards from its nearest neighbour. She’d said she wanted peace and quiet, even though she was always playing tacky pop music at maximum volume. It would make a great project, she’d said – echoing the estate agency speak for a property that was falling apart and hadn’t enjoyed a lick of appreciation in decades.
The neglect hadn’t dragged the house comfortably into his price bracket, though. Every penny he’d saved had gone into the deposit, and almost every penny he earned now went towards the mortgage. Pretty much anything left over was destined for the joint account – joint in the sense that he had been assigned the role of putting the money in while Polina assumed responsibility for taking it out again.
They’d had big plans for this house. Plans that had never materialised because of lack of funds and lack of willingness on Kenneth’s part. Now it looked worse than ever. Paint blistered and peeled away like diseased flesh. Guttering was dammed with vegetation. Roof slates needed only the slightest encouragement from the wind to launch themselves like toboggans down the slopes. Doors and windows had sloughed away their protective layers and turned to sponges.
He could fix many of these things. In his job he had to be good with his hands. But he knew it would be purely cosmetic – like putting lipstick on a pig, as the saying goes. It wouldn’t repair his life. The house looked like he felt.
He’d read a newspaper article about something called Seasonal Affective Disorder, and now firmly believed he was a sufferer. It was the middle of November, and the world seemed to be closing down. It was filled with darkness and dampness and oppression. Over the next few weeks, many would attempt to combat it with garish symbols of Christmas, but Kenneth felt that no amount of fairy lights could disguise the dreariness. If he had the option, he would hibernate until the spring.17
Sighing, he climbed out of the shabby van and crunched across gravel to the rear door of the house. Heat mushroomed out as he opened the door. Polina liked to have the central heating at full blast at all times so that she could wander around in a T-shirt and skimpy shorts instead of dressing in warmer clothes like most cash-strapped people would.
The house seemed deserted at first. In the kitchen, Barclay the Alsatian heaved himself off his pet bed and waddled over, his claws clicking on the tiled floor like a slow tap-dance. He was old and he was fat and his creaky back legs looked ready to collapse under the strain, but he still knew how to demonstrate his loyalty and affection. The only one in this house who did.
‘Hey, boy. You all alone? Where is everyone?’
On cue, he heard footsteps coming hurriedly down the stairs. When Polina joined him, her face was flushed and he could tell there was no bra beneath her vest top. He wondered if she’d even bothered with knickers.
Foolishly, he had believed the stories, because he had wanted to believe them. He had needed to know that, after all his failures in that department, he had finally found someone who desired him and wanted to be with him for ever.
She had jumped out at him from the internet images. He had grown suspicious of most of the women on there, many who seemed to be impossibly good-looking; he could see only pound signs in their eyes. But Polina had a homely appearance, a girl-next-door appeal. Attractive enough without being out of reach, and eight years his junior, she had made him feel like the luckiest man alive to be selected as the target of her affections.
He looked at her now. Pallid and dumpy. Puckered thighs and hips that tested the elasticity of her flowery shorts almost to breaking point. A line of dark fuzz above her upper lip, and eyebrows that had been allowed to sprout like dandelion heads.18
But she was all he had. And he clung to the gossamer hope that one day she might show some appreciation for what he had done for her. All he had to do was continue to be nice, to demonstrate his devotion. One day she would recognise his efforts and reward him for it.
‘Kenneth! You’re home! My movie superstar!’
The Russian accent was still strong. The one undisguisable pointer to her place of birth.
She flung her arms wide as she spoke, but Kenneth knew it was for dramatic effect. He had made that mistake before, zooming in for an embrace only to find her shrivel up and dodge his clutches.
‘It was just the television. My fifteen seconds of fame.’
‘Fame, yes. You are famous now. A hero.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t say that. I was just doing my duty.’
‘Don’t be modest. Some people, they would have said nothing.’ She made the gesture of zipping up her mouth and throwing away the key. Kenneth thought it looked ridiculous.
He thought about what she’d said. About what others would have done. It was true: he could have said nothing at all and hoped they would never have delved any further. But that would have carried its own risks. At least this way, they were on a completely different scent, however fictitious.
More footsteps on the stairs, like a building rumble of thunder, and then Michael was in the kitchen, sidling up behind Polina as though she was his wife. He was shorter and slighter than Kenneth, but undeniably much more handsome – something to which Polina would happily testify. Kenneth gave a hard stare at the shirt tail that Michael had failed to tuck in, but received only a knowing smile in return.
He remembered Michael’s arrival at the house vividly. He had come home late from work one evening, only to find him lounging on an armchair and stuffing his face with a Victoria sponge.19
‘What the hell—?’ he had begun, but then the visitor had jumped out of the chair, proffering a hand.
‘Hello, Mr Plumley. I’m Michael Danvers. Pleased to meet you.’
‘Michael …’
‘Danvers. As in Rebecca.’
‘Rebecca?’
‘The book. By Daphne du Maurier. I’m your new lodger.’
Kenneth didn’t know what he was babbling on about. ‘My what? What are you—?’
By that time, Polina had breezed in from the kitchen, bearing a tray of tea. ‘He is our lodger, Kenneth. I told you.’
‘No, you didn’t. I don’t know anything about this.’
‘You do. We discussed this.’ She put the tray down, then escorted him to the hallway, out of earshot of the cake-snaffling intruder. In a low voice she said, ‘We decided it would be excellent way to make extra money.’
‘No. You said it was a good idea. I didn’t agree. And now we’ve got …’
‘Michael.’
‘Yes. Him. Where did you find him?’
‘He answered advertisement.’
‘What advertisement?’
‘The one I put online. I have seen three people, and he is definitely the best.’
‘Three … You’ve interviewed three people?’
‘Yes. Two were very weird, but this one, I think he is suitable.’
‘No, Polina. He’s not suitable. He is very unsuitable. Get him out of here.’
It had been a futile argument, because Polina always got her way. The man who had introduced himself as Michael Danvers was duly installed as their lodger.
At first it seemed to work, and Kenneth became more accepting. 20He and Michael would talk late into the night over a drink, or they would play a game or two of chess.
But then it all turned sour. Over time, Michael assumed part ownership of everything in the home, including Polina herself. Kenneth felt himself pushed further and further into the background, to become a servant, a lackey, an object of ridicule.
And he had sat back and allowed it. Because he was a coward, and always had been.
‘When are you going in the jungle?’ Michael now asked.
Kenneth glared at him. ‘What? What are you talking about?’
‘You know. Celebrity Get Me the Fuck Out of Here, or whatever it’s called.’
Kenneth shook his head in despair. ‘I’m not a celebrity. I just got on the telly for a few seconds.’
‘That’s more than most of us get.’ He turned to Polina. ‘Don’t you think we should have a red carpet leading up to the front door now? Invite the paparazzi along?’
Polina giggled and then snorted loudly. She had a tendency to make that disgusting noise when she laughed too hard. Kenneth was oddly grateful that her outbursts of amusement were reserved for when she was in the presence of others.
‘I like being married to a famous man,’ she answered. ‘It gets me very excited.’
‘Oh yes?’ Michael said. ‘Did you hear that, Kenneth? Could be your lucky night.’
More giggling and snorting. Kenneth turned away from them and began to fill the kettle. No point in waiting for either of those two to offer him a cup of tea. He noticed that the sink was still full of dirty dishes. What the hell did they do all day?
No, he thought. Scratch that. I don’t want to know.
‘I’ll have a brew if you’re making one,’ Michael said. ‘So go on, then. Tell us what happened.’21
Kenneth switched the kettle on and took two mugs down from the shelf. ‘It’s exactly what I said. No more than that.’
Michael wasn’t about to let it slip away so easily. ‘Don’t play it down. You may have just saved that girl’s life.’
Kenneth detected the sarcasm, and his anger flared like a match. He wanted to tell the pair of them to leave him alone, to stop probing. He hadn’t saved anyone’s life.
‘Only if they find them. And only if I was right.’
‘What do you mean? You’re not sure? You said—’
‘I said I thought it was her. It looked like her to me.’
Polina and Michael exchanged doubtful glances.
‘So was it her or wasn’t it?’
‘I think so. It was some distance away.’
‘And these blokes … Two of them, right?’
‘I think so. I definitely saw the driver, but it looked like there was another guy in the back seat, next to the girl.’
He tossed teabags into the cups, then spooned in the sugar. He put an extra helping in his own, just for the hell of it.
‘And the one you saw, he was an Arab?’
‘He looked Middle Eastern to me. Not necessarily an Arab.’
‘You think they were terrorists? ISIS? Why would terrorists—?’
‘No, I don’t think they were terrorists. I didn’t say anything about them being—’
He stopped when he saw the twitch of amusement on Michael’s lips. The bastard was taking the piss again.
Kenneth turned away, focused on the kettle. Willed the crappy thing to boil so he could just have a damn cup of tea.
He wondered again whether he’d done the right thing. Had he gone over the top? Middle Eastern types in a black sedan? Really? Had that level of detail been completely necessary?
‘Well, I still think he is hero,’ Polina said.
Kenneth drew a deep breath, then looked at her over his 22shoulder. ‘Thank you. I told them what I saw, that’s all. Anyone else would do the same.’
‘Yes. And you know what else you should do?’
‘What?’
‘You should phone up the terrorists and you should tell them that you have special set of skills, and that unless they release the girl, you will find them and you will kill them.’
The kettle was bubbling hard, shaking on its base. Kenneth concentrated on the noise and tried to allow it to drown out the uproarious laughter behind him. He couldn’t look at them, couldn’t share the proof that they had managed to cut him.
Why do I let them do this to me? he wondered. Why do I always let them win?
The kettle clicked off. He poured steaming water into the mugs. A drop splashed onto his thumb, and he let the pain sit there.
A hand reached from behind him and placed a milk bottle next to the mugs. As the hand withdrew, he wanted to clasp it and kiss it and whisper to her that he would do better if she would let him.
Instead, he finished making the tea. He passed a mug to Michael, resisting the urge to throw it in his face.
‘We decided something,’ Polina said. ‘When we saw you on TV, we thought we should do something special to celebrate.’
He pictured them, next to each other in the bed probably, staring in disbelief at his wide face on their screen and then belittling his performance, just as they always did.
‘Oh, yes? What do you suggest?’
‘We thought a meal. A nice meal. Something different.’
He sniffed the air and found nothing, listened for the hum of the fan oven and found nothing.
‘Out, you mean? A restaurant?’
Polina shifted her weight to her other foot. ‘We thought maybe takeaway. Chinese. You like Chinese.’23
Michael pulled something from his pocket and thrust it towards Kenneth. ‘There you go, mate. We’ve written everything down there that we want. Get yourself something nice.’
Kenneth looked down at the list on the scrap of paper. Beneath that was a single ten-pound note. It was nowhere near enough.
‘We’d go ourselves,’ Michael added, ‘only we’ve both been drinking, see. Which reminds me, we’re getting a bit low on booze, so if you could just pop into the off-licence as well. Maybe get some bubbly, seeing as how we’re celebrating.’
Kenneth nodded, then put down his mug and moved towards the door.
‘No rush,’ Michael said. ‘You can finish your tea first.’
‘That’s okay. I’ll go now, before I get too relaxed.’
The tittering began as soon as he reached the hallway. They hadn’t even waited for him to leave the house.
In the van, he turned the ignition key and the engine coughed into life. He didn’t drive away immediately but sat still behind the wheel, thinking about the way his life had gone and what he should have done to steer it along a different path.
There was anger there, yes, but it was overpowered by the bitter regret of not channelling that anger in productive ways. Everything he did seemed destructive now, to him and to others, and yet he seemed unable to prevent it. He wanted to be more assertive, more self-assured, but those qualities felt beyond reach. How would he ever climb out of the ditch into which he had willingly rolled?
The questions and the self-recrimination built up in his mind until it seemed his skull would explode with the tornado of activity.
‘All right, stop it now,’ he told himself. ‘Take deep breaths. Count to ten. Relax.’
He closed his eyes, leaned back into the headrest. ‘That’s it. Be calm.’
And then: ‘Simon says relax.’