The House Swap(22)

I nod, making a vague noise of sympathy. The news that she has a boyfriend surprises me, despite her obvious attractions. She strikes me as compellingly self-contained, able to keep others at arm’s length and study them. She’s watching me, her pupils dark and liquid in the soft light. I have the feeling she knows what I’m thinking, and it unsettles me.

‘Sorry we don’t have much in,’ Francis announces, sweeping back into the room with a glass of wine, which he presents to Amber. ‘Cheers. Nice to meet you. Caroline told me about your chat in the café yesterday.’ His gaze hardens for a moment as he waits for Amber’s acknowledgement and, when it comes, his face relaxes instantly. He still hadn’t been sure, I realize with a jolt of sadness, that I was telling the truth about where I was the previous morning.

‘Yes. Sorry about that – it was a bit impromptu. You must think I’m stealing her away from you,’ Amber says. ‘And on your holiday, too.’

‘Not at all,’ says Francis smoothly, settling down opposite us.

Amber lifts her glass to her lips and swallows half its contents in an easy gulp, not seeming to notice she is doing so. ‘The thing is,’ she says, a confidential note creeping into her voice, ‘I’m just interested in people. A bit too interested, maybe. It’s got me into trouble sometimes.’ She glances across at me and smiles. ‘I never learn.’

Her face clouds but then she laughs, knocking back the rest of her wine and wiping her hand delicately across her mouth. Her red-painted fingernails sparkle in the lamplight.

Francis leaps on to the topic she has opened up, going off on a tangentially relevant monologue about social media and its impact on how open we all are with our lives, albeit at a safe distance. It’s a subject about which both he and Amber seem to have a lot to say, and I let them talk, the conversation washing over me. I’m thinking about the fact that she is sketching herself as an open book and yet whatever she says seems to have some kind of subtext shimmering beneath it that I can’t quite catch. I can’t read her, I realize, because I don’t really know her at all.

Slowly, I become aware that the interchange is winding down and that Francis is covertly looking at me, sending me a signal to intervene. ‘So,’ I say randomly, ‘is this house much like yours, Amber? They all look pretty similar from the outside.’ I cringe inwardly at my own inanity, but Amber seems surprisingly animated, taken by the question.

‘Actually,’ she says, getting to her feet and glancing out into the hallway, ‘it is pretty similar, in layout, anyway. Mine is a lot messier. But yes, the basic structure.’ She stops, as if pondering something. ‘I’m going to go to the bathroom, if that’s all right,’ she says abruptly. And before I can say another word, she has gone.

Francis and I sit in silence for a minute, listening to the sound of her footsteps retreating up the stairs, then the creak of floorboards above. The footsteps are sporadic and spaced out, as if she’s pacing the length of the first floor and back again.

‘She’s not going to the bathroom,’ I whisper. ‘Not straight there, anyway.’ I smile uncertainly, wanting this to be funny, but my limbs have automatically tensed, and I realize that I am holding my breath.

Francis is quiet, listening. For a few moments there is nothing then the creak of a door, softly pushed ajar and released. Before I know it, I’m starting to my feet, moving towards the foot of the stairs. I’ll go up there, see what she’s doing for myself. But somehow, when I reach the staircase and peer up – the smoothly polished wood, the darkness of the landing above – childish fear grips me and I can’t do it. There is something in the cool anonymity of this place that reminds me of the set of a horror film.

I hear the footsteps again, quicker and more decisive this time, heading for the top of the staircase, and I dive back into the lounge, where Francis is waiting. In another moment, Amber reappears in the doorway, smiling radiantly. Her handbag is back on her shoulder, her coat rebuttoned.

‘I’ll leave you two to it,’ she says. ‘Thanks so much. Caroline, we’ll see each other again, yes? Perhaps another coffee or something, before you go.’

‘Yes – of course,’ I say weakly. She has barely been in the house twenty minutes, and her departure is oddly abrupt, but it seems to have gained its own momentum and I find I’m following her obediently through the hallway and holding open the front door, waving her off into the night.

I close the front door and lean back against it, raising my eyebrows. Francis shrugs his shoulders and heads for the stairs. ‘People are strange,’ he says dismissively, but I can see he’s unsettled.

‘Some more than most.’ I think back over the past few minutes, and I can’t catch on to anything especially incriminating, just a gut feeling that Amber has not behaved as most people would have, that there’s something about her that feels off kilter.

I glance back at the table, still set with the Scrabble board. ‘We’re not going to finish the game?’ I call after Francis.

His voice drifts down to me from the landing. ‘Let’s give it a miss,’ he says. ‘Got better things to do …’

With an effort, I remember what we were doing before the doorbell rang. I fumble to recapture the desire I had felt. I can’t quite hold on to it, but I know from experience that it will come back if I let it, and I follow him up the stairs. By the time I get to the bedroom he’s already half undressed, lying on the bed and lazily undoing the buckle of his jeans. ‘Coming?’ he says.