Dee

‘You said you would help,’ Ted says.

‘What?’ It’s early on a Sunday morning, and Ted is on Dee’s doorstep. Her heart begins to pound, splashy and loud. In that moment she is convinced that he knows who she is and why she is here. Get a grip, Dee Dee, she tells herself. Nobody gets murdered on a grey Sunday morning. But they do, of course. She yawns to cover her fear, rubs the sleep from her eyes.

Ted shifts on his feet. His beard looks even thicker and redder than usual, skin whiter, eyes smaller and blearier. ‘You said if there was something I couldn’t do, uh, because of my arm, you would help out. Maybe you didn’t mean it.’

‘Sure,’ she says. ‘What’s up?’

‘It’s this jar,’ he says. ‘I can’t open it.’

‘Hand it over.’ Dee turns the lid hard, and it yields quickly. Inside the empty jar is a note. It reads, in neat block letters, let’s go out for drinks.

‘Cute,’ she says. She keeps her face still while her mind races.

‘I mean as friends,’ he says quickly. ‘Tonight?’

‘Uh,’ she says.

‘Only, I go away a lot.’

‘Oh,’ Dee says.

‘I might be spending more time at my weekend place, soon.’

‘A cabin?’ Dee says.

‘Kind of.’

‘Up by the lake, I suppose.’ Her heart is pounding. ‘That’s a lovely spot.’

‘No,’ he says. ‘You wouldn’t know it.’

‘Well, we’d better have that drink before you disappear.’

‘I’ll meet you at that bar off the 101,’ he says. ‘Seven p.m.?’

‘Sounds good,’ she says. ‘I’ll see you there.’

‘Cool,’ he says. ‘Great. Sayonara!’ He stumbles a little as he backs away from her, and almost falls, but he recovers just in time.

‘Well,’ she says as she comes into her living room. ‘I’ve got a date.’

The yellow-eyed cat lifts her head. She and Dee have a good understanding. Neither of them likes to be touched.

Dee says, ‘It has to be tonight, before he fixes the window.’ She wonders who she is trying to persuade. Get it done.

At 6.30 p.m., in the silvered near-dark, Dee is crouched in her living room by the shuttered window, watching Ted’s house. In this light everything has a velvet quality. The world looks mythical and interesting. She waits, legs cramping, as she hears the turning of three locks next door. The back door opens and closes. The locks turn again. Ted’s steps fade and she hears his truck start. She waits five minutes and then slides up the wall, muscles trembling. She goes quietly out of her back door and steps over the fence into Ted’s back yard. She is somewhat screened from the alley by the timothy and pampas grass that grows wild, here. But she had better hurry. She goes to Ted’s rear living-room window and takes the clawhammer from the pocket of her overalls. She pries the nails from the plywood that covers the window. They come out with little reluctant squeaks, but at last the sheet loosens and she pulls it free. The latch on this window has rusted through. She noticed it when she was in the house. He must have forgotten about it, after he boarded them up. She slides the sash upwards. Paint flakes scatter like snow or falling ash.

Let me in – let me in. But Dee is the ghost at the window now. She throws her leg over the sill. Inside, she is immediately filled with the sensation of being watched. She stands in the green living room, breathing the dust, and lets her eyes take in the dark. Ted’s house smells strongly of vegetable soup and old, used-up air. If sorrow had a scent, she thinks, this is what it would be like.

‘Here, kitty, kitty,’ she says softly. ‘Are you there, cat?’ Nothing stirs. She should take Ted’s cat with her when she goes, she thinks. This is no life for the poor thing. For a moment she catches the gleam of eyes, regarding her from the corner of the room, but it’s just streetlight reflecting off a dented silver box. It’s the only thing on the dusty mantel. There is a bare patch in the dust, as if a picture frame or something recently stood there.

She moves quickly; there isn’t a lot of time. Through the living room, kitchen. The freezer lies open, door propped against the wall. There is no basement that she can see. She lifts the rugs and looks underneath, treads the boards carefully, looking for a trap door.

She heads upstairs. The carpet stops at the landing, which is dusty boards. Dee turns to sidle past the large wardrobe, which looms large in the tiny hallway. It is locked, and she can’t see a key. No attic.

In the bedroom grocery bags line the walls. Clothing spills out of them. There’s a closet containing one broken coat hanger, no clothes. It looks like Ted has just moved in, except that the mess has an air of timeless assurance. It has always been and will always be.

The bed is unmade, blankets still holding the moment when they were kicked away. There is a handful of pennies scattered across the sheets. When Dee comes closer she sees that it’s not pennies, but dark drops of something. She makes herself smell it. Old iron. Blood.

The bathroom is as she remembers, sparsely furnished, a cracked sliver of soap, an electric shaver, various medications in amber drugstore tubes. The blank patch over the basin where the mirror used to be. She should have taken pictures, she thinks, but she didn’t bring her phone or a camera. She tries to remember as much as she can. Her pulse is thundering.

There is a second bedroom containing an office chair and a desk. The couch has pink blankets on it and drawings of unicorns on the wall, of varying proficiency. The cupboards here are locked, too, with three-number combination padlocks. Dee bends to examine them. She touches the dial on one, gently.

A board sighs downstairs, and a hand clenches round Dee’s heart. Something scutters by in the walls and she screams. It comes out as a gasp. The mouse feet scurry on. Actually, they sound bigger than a mouse. Maybe a rat. She leans against the wall, thinking as best as her thundering pulse will let her. How long will Ted wait in the bar, alone? She imagines him coming home, standing in the dark, watching her. She thinks of his blank eyes, his strong wrists. She should go.

She picks her way downstairs on tiptoe, every moment expecting to hear keys in the lock. Her breath is catching in little hiccups. She feels like she might faint, but also giddy with the strangeness of it all. Dee catches the barest glimpse of a dark slender shape, watching her from the corner of the living room and her heart stops for a moment.

‘Here, kitty, kitty,’ she whispers, to break the thick silence of the room. ‘Have you seen a little girl?’ But there’s nothing in the corner but shadow and dust. Either the cat has slunk away or it was never there. Dee makes her way to the window, giving a little hoarse cry as the ugly, burry blue rug slips under her feet. She climbs out, swearing as she knocks her head against the frame, and pulls the sash down with relief, closing the house up behind her. The night air seems sweet and soft, the darkening sky is wonderful.

She raises the plywood with shaking hands. The old nails are bent, rusted and useless. Dee removes them gently. She nails the plywood back in place using the nails from her pocket. They are silver and sharp, fresh from the hardware store. The sound makes her think of coffins and she shakes herself. There is no time to lose focus. She must be precise hammering the new nails into the old holes. She must be quick, and finish while no one is passing to hear the blows or see her stumbling out of the creeper in the coming night.

When she gets back to her house she finds that she is shaking all over, like she has a fever. And in fact she does feel cold. She lights the wood burner and crouches by it, seized by cramps and chills. She used to think she was sick, when this came on. But she has come to know her body’s ways of expelling distress.

Lulu is not in the house. Dee realises now that she had been thinking of her sister as very close. Had been imagining her breathing nearby. She has been reduced to wishing her sister a prisoner there. It seems so unfair, to have been driven to that. Feeling slices at her throat. She tries to order her mind. If Lulu is not there, she is somewhere else.

‘The weekend place,’ Dee whispers. That is the answer, it must be.

She clasps her hands before her mouth and whispers into them, watching the heat rise red behind the glass, the building flame.

I’m coming, she promises.