The House Swap(86)

I climb out of the car and slam the door, folding my arms tightly around my chest as I walk up to the building. I climb the three flights of stairs to our flat, listening to the sound of my footsteps in the silent hallway. I’m half expecting to find her standing there waiting for me, but the door is closed. I reach into my pocket for my keys and unlock the door, letting it swing gently open.

As soon as I step into the hallway I feel it – a sense of otherness, a presence that is intense and strange, and yet not quite a presence at all. The air is heavy and thick, as if suffused with invisible smoke.

The door to the lounge is ajar. I walk up to it, softening my footsteps. My lips form a question. Are you there? But I barely have the chance to begin before a flash of something through the crack in the door catches my eye – a flutter of green, whipped across the gap and then withdrawn – and the flat of my hand is pressing against the door and opening the room to me.

She’s hanging from the ceiling light, swaying slightly in the breeze that blows through the open balcony window. The scarf that I last saw illuminated by headlights, blown darkly back by the wind, is fastened tightly around her neck.

She’s about fifty years old and she has shoulder-length brown hair and slim limbs. She’s wearing a discreetly stylish shirt dress, pale blue, the same colour as her open eyes.

I stand there motionless for a minute, and then I sit down on the carpet close by and watch her. I watch for the slightest uncurl of her fingertips, a minute twitch of her eyelids to show me that it’s not quite over. There’s nothing. She’s left me her last message.

I say it then.

I’m so sorry.

The words are small and clear in the silence. It isn’t enough, but it still needs to be said. I stay there next to her for a while – looking at her face, the sad lines of her mouth – and I wonder who she once was. Before she became a mother without a child. In her place, I can’t say I wouldn’t have done everything that she has done. I have no idea what it might have driven me to.

I get to my feet and go and look out of the window, down to the car below. I think about calling Francis, calling my mother, calling the police. I know that, when I do, these moments of silence will snap and the calmness of this shock will dissolve. Everything will change. I don’t yet know how. All I can see ahead is mist and shadows, and I’m walking into the darkness and the strange freedom it offers – opening myself up to it, and giving myself to my future on trust.



Leaving Home


Caroline, September 2015


THE ESTATE AGENT arrives bang on twelve – a sharp suit and a slicked-back haircut, looking barely out of his teens – and hovering behind him, a young couple smiling shyly, the woman’s hand resting on her pregnant stomach.

‘Still all right to take a look round?’ He’s elbowing his way through the front door, throwing out an expansive hand to showcase the living room, as if he’s the one who owns the place.

‘Sure,’ I say. ‘If you want to know anything,’ I add, turning to the couple, ‘just ask me.’

I linger in the hallway, listening to the salesman’s patter: great south-facing light, original features, sound foundations. I’m not even sure how much he knows of what has happened here but, if he’s aware, he gives nothing away. A suicide doesn’t make for a great sales pitch, even one that has been wrapped up so neatly and smartly by the authorities; filed away and dismissed, with no need to probe further beneath the surface. Nothing to see here.

From where I’m standing, I can see the couple moving from room to room, and I’m watching the woman’s face and the emotions flickering across it: her eyes keen and thoughtful, narrowing as she takes in the space, as if she’s imagining it stripped of everything it contains and filled with her own things, moulded into somewhere new.

They finish up in the living room again, and the estate agent retreats to take a call on his mobile, barking instructions to some even more junior colleague. The couple are talking quietly to each other, gesticulating and sizing up, reading each other’s reactions. I watch the woman drift over towards the balcony window and stand beneath the ceiling light, and for a moment her expression blanks and she half shudders, as if someone is walking over her grave.

‘I think I’d paint this side of the room paler,’ she says. ‘Lighten it up a bit more.’ As she speaks, she glances over towards the doorway, seeing me in the hallway beyond, and her face flushes, caught criticizing. ‘It’s a lovely place,’ she says, louder, smiling tentatively at me.

‘Thanks.’ I take a few steps forward, hugging my arms around myself.

‘Are you staying local?’ the woman asks.

I half nod. ‘Renting around here in the short term,’ I say. ‘Just seeing how things go.’

‘I see,’ she says, though of course she doesn’t, not at all.

Outside, there’s the sound of scuffling; Eddie’s excited voice raised high and talking fast, his fists banging on the door. The key turns in the lock, and Francis comes in, letting Eddie run ahead of him to embrace me. I bend down and pull him against me, feeling the sturdy warmth of his body, his hair soft and sleek against my cheek.

The estate agent barrels back into the room, tucking his phone into his pocket. ‘Sorry about that,’ he says. ‘All done?’

The couple murmur their agreement and make their goodbyes, thanking us as they go. Francis turns to me, eyebrows raised. ‘What do you reckon?’ he asks. ‘Did they like it?’