The Woman in Cabin 10(7)

I got up, stumbling, trancelike with exhaustion, and pushed my feet into my shoes, and my sleeves into my coat, over the top of my pajamas. Then I picked up my bag. If I couldn’t sleep, I’d walk. Somewhere. Anywhere. I’d try to exhaust myself into sleeping.

If sleep wouldn’t come to me, then I’d damn well hunt it down myself.





- CHAPTER 3 -

The streets at midnight weren’t empty, but they weren’t the same ones I trod every day on my way to work, either.

Between the sulfur-yellow pools of streetlight, they were gray and shadowed, and a cold wind blew discarded papers against my legs, leaves and rubbish gusting in the gutters. I should have felt afraid—a thirty-two-year-old woman, clearly wearing pajamas, wandering the streets in the small hours. But I felt safer out here than I did in my flat. Out here, someone would hear you cry.

I had no plan, no route beyond walking the streets until I was too tired to stand. Somewhere around Highbury and Islington I realized that it had begun to rain, that it must have started some time back because I was wet through. I stood in my soggy shoes, my exhausted punch-drunk brain trying to formulate a plan, and almost by themselves my feet began to walk again, not homewards, but south, towards Angel.

I didn’t realize where I was going until I was there. Until I was standing beneath the porch of his building, frowning dazedly at the bell panel, where his name was written in his own small, neat handwriting. LEWIS.

He wasn’t here. He was away in Ukraine, not due back until tomorrow. But I had his spare keys in my coat pocket, and I couldn’t face the walk back to my flat. You could get a cab, carped the small, snide voice in the back of my head. It’s not the walk you can’t face. Coward.

I shook my head, sending raindrops spattering across the stainless-steel bell panel, and I sorted through the bunch of keys until I found the one for the outside door and slipped inside, into the oppressive warmth of the communal hallway.

Up on the second floor, I let myself cautiously into the flat.

It was completely dark. All the doors were closed, and the entrance hall had no windows.

“Judah?” I called. I was certain he wasn’t home, but it wasn’t impossible that he’d let a mate crash there, and I didn’t want to give anyone a middle-of-the-night heart attack. I knew, all too well, what that felt like. “Jude, it’s just me, Lo.”

But there was no answer. The flat was silent—completely and utterly silent. I opened the door to the left of me, the door to the eat-in kitchen, and tiptoed inside. I didn’t switch on the light. I just peeled off my wet clothes—coat, pajamas, and all—and dumped them in the sink.

Then I walked, naked, through to the bedroom, where Judah’s wide double bed lay empty in a shaft of moonlight, the gray sheets tumbled as if he’d just that moment got up. I crawled on my hands and knees into the middle of the bed, feeling the lived-in softness of the sheets, and smelling the scent of him, of sweat and aftershave and just—him.

I shut my eyes.

One. Two. . . .

Sleep crashed over me, claiming me like a wave.


I woke to the sound of a woman screaming, and the feeling of someone on top of me, holding me down, someone grappling with my hands even as I fought.

A hand grabbed at my wrist, the grip far stronger than mine. Blind, mad with panic, I groped in the pitch black with my free hand, searching for something, anything, to use as a weapon, and my hand closed over the bedside lamp.

The man’s hand was over my mouth now, smothering me, the weight of him choking me, and with all my strength, I lifted up the heavy lamp and brought it crashing down.

There was a shout of pain, and through the fog of terror I heard a voice, the words slurred and broken.

“Lo, it’s me. It’s me for Christ’s sake, stop!”

What?

Oh God.

My hands were shaking so much that when I tried to find the light, all I did was knock something over.

From beside me I could hear Judah, gasping, alongside a bubbling sound that terrified me. Where the hell was the lamp? Then I realized—the lamp was gone. I’d smashed it into Judah’s face.

I stumbled out of bed, my legs shaking, and found the switch by the door, and the room was instantly flooded with the unforgivingly bright glare of a dozen halogen spots, each illuminating every detail of the horror show in front of me.

Judah was crouched on the bed, holding his face, with blood soaking his beard and his chest.

“Oh my God, Jude!” I scrambled across to him, my hands still trembling, and began to grab tissues from the box by the bed. He pressed them to his face. “Oh God, what happened? Who was screaming?”

“You!” he groaned. The paper was already sodden and red.

“What?” I was still flooded with adrenaline. I looked confusedly around the room for the woman and the attacker. “What do you mean?”

“I came home,” he said painfully, his Brooklyn accent blurred through the paper. “You started screaming, half-asleep. So I tried to wake you up and—this.”

“Oh, f*ck.” I put my hands to my mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

That screaming—it had been so real. Was it really just me?

He took his hands cautiously away from his mouth. There was something in the wad of scarlet paper, something small and white. It was only when I looked at his face that I realized—one of his teeth was missing.