Final Cut(80)

I know it’ll be locked, but still I try the front door first. Sure enough, it’s solid; it barely rattles in the frame. I could smash the stained-glass window, I suppose, and reach in, but I’m not certain that would do any good, either. There must be another way.

I stand back to look at the house. Was that movement, at the window above? A thin blur, a flash of something? I look again. It’s definite this time, movement in the room beyond the window. I stare, half expecting her face to appear, but she’s retreated. All is still. Yet I feel Daisy up there, looking down at me. Her eyes are on me. What does she think? What an idiot, what a fool I am. She’s lured me here.

My heart clenches tight. I wish she would show herself. For a moment I want to shout out to her. Daisy, I’d say. What happened? What did I do to you? Why do you hate me? But I don’t. Her eyes burn into my flesh. I don’t want to let her know I’m scared, or how guilty I feel. I don’t want to feel the bite of her temper, her sarcasm, so I tip my head down and circle the house. The back door shifts but doesn’t give, and I check for other ways in. Behind the caravan there’s a sash window with frosted glass – a bathroom, I suppose, or a downstairs toilet – that appears rotten. I get my weight underneath it and try to force it open but, again, it won’t budge. The wood is more solid than it seems; it’s the paint that’s peeling, nothing more. I find a heavyish rock in the garden and tap the upper sash. The glass fissures with a sharp crack but doesn’t break. It sits stubbornly in the frame, but I try again. This time, it shatters, and after that it’s simple. I slide my hand gingerly through the gap, find the catch and release it. The lower sash slides with a little difficulty and I heave myself up on to the ledge. Then, with a bit of inelegant wriggling, I’m inside.

It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the dark, but already the stink tells me enough. I’m in an airless room; there’s the smell of damp, as if old washing has been hung out to dry, plus a faint, steady drip from a cistern somewhere beneath me. A toilet. I lower myself down to the floor and instinctively reach for the light switch in the corner of the room. It doesn’t work. There’s just an empty click, the room stays dark and, looking up, I can make out the empty, bulbless socket above my head. Shit, I whisper, and as if in response I hear a scurrying patter somewhere in the walls. Mice, I think. Or rats. I let my eyes close and try to grasp at a lungful of air. I try to tell myself I could turn round, go back. No one is making me do this.

But they are, I think, grabbing for the door handle in the dark. I have no choice. I never did. I see it now. Every road led here.

I use the torch on my phone, filming as I go. The lavatory door opens directly on to a hallway and my light flashes on a bannister, a staircase in heavy, dark wood, a table by the front door on which there’s a phone. Against the opposite wall a grandfather clock sits silent and still. Dust is everywhere; motes swim in the beam. To my left a door leads down into a kitchen, and to the right another to a living room in which I see a huge sofa, mismatched chairs and an old, boxy television. The room is enervating, and I close the door before continuing.

The next door along opens on to a large dining room – a table with five or six chairs and a sideboard against the far wall upon which there’s a pile of plates – also abandoned to the dust. The rest of the rooms downstairs are similarly desolate. A pile of fetid clothes in the laundry and unwashed plates in the kitchen betray evidence of life, but little else. A sadness hangs everywhere; it’s clear it’s a place designed for entertaining but in which only one person now cooks, and only for himself. As I turn back to go upstairs there’s a soft creak from directly above me. It’s nothing, I tell myself, just the house settling or the wind, but still I’m shaking as I begin to climb. Already I’m digging my nails into my palms, as if in preparation for what I know will come.

The sound comes again, louder now, even more like a movement within rather than the house itself.

‘Daisy?’ I say, but there’s no reply, and the silence that rushes in after my voice is heavier somehow, more constrictive. ‘Daisy?’ I say again when I’m halfway up. ‘Are you up here?’

There’s no answer, but as soon as my eyeline reaches the top step I can see that something’s happened here. The doors on this floor are flung open and, inside, the light from my torch illuminates piles of clothes, papers and books – an utter mess. I jog the rest of the way and go into the ransacked master bedroom. The drawers are upended, their contents tossed on to the floor and bed. Clothes, papers, jewellery, which surely can’t be David’s. The place is chaos; the contrast to the calm decrepitude downstairs is startling.

Someone has been here – Daisy, perhaps – scouring the place, turning it upside down. But looking for what?

Outside, the wind picks up. There’s a howl; it sounds like laughter and I drop my camera to my side. There’s something here, there must be. What have I missed?

I go over to the window and realise. I’ve been here before. I know the view: the sea, the moon hanging low over the water, ships in the distance, the rigs beyond them. The picture is the same, the thin line of the horizon cutting across the centre like a wire pulled tight. Imagination maps on to fact. There’s no join. When I look further down, I see the spot in which she stood, preparing to jump.

I hear a footstep, a creak on the stairs, followed by another. As if someone is creeping down.