The House Guest by Mark Edwards(15)

The kitchen was almost as bad. There were muddy footprints on the floor – presumably from when Ruth and Eden had come in from dancing in the garden – and the bins were overflowing. The sink was full of dishes. The food cupboards were open and looked like they’d been ransacked by sugar-crazed kids. To my horror, I saw that the freezer door had been left ajar and a tub of ice cream had melted and oozed out on to the floor beneath.

I was ashamed. This wasn’t our place and we had no right to treat it like this. What would Jack and Mona—

Oh Jesus. Assuming I hadn’t been asleep for more than twenty-four hours, today was Saturday. The Cunninghams were due home tomorrow.

I couldn’t think about that. Not yet. I finally found my phone, lying on the kitchen counter, and was stunned to see it was seven fifteen in the evening.

I’d been asleep all day.

My phone was nearly dead, so I plugged it into its charger and, after filling a glass with water, sat down on one of the kitchen stools.

Something had happened last night. Something I couldn’t remember. I held on to the breakfast bar and waited for it to hit me, in that way that embarrassing memories always do after a drunken night.

Nothing came. Just a chilling sense of disquiet.

I tried to peer back through the fog in my brain. I remembered sitting on the chair, the two women on the sofa. I remembered Eden telling us something. A story.

A spasm of nausea hit me and I doubled over, just managing to stop myself from throwing up.

Eden had told us something last night. A secret.

Something about a friend of hers . . . a girl who had died. Or disappeared? It was unclear. I remembered Eden getting upset. We had all hugged, hadn’t we? I had a vague recollection that my stomach had hurt.

And then nothing.

I had no memory of going upstairs or getting undressed. As I thought this, I saw that the clothes I’d been wearing the night before were in a bundle on the living room floor. So I’d gone upstairs naked?

Oh God, what had happened?

The sight of the mess made me remember Jack and Mona’s impending return again. I got up and checked the noticeboard, where details of their flight home were pinned up. They were scheduled to leave Albuquerque airport at midnight. The plane would land at 6 a.m., New York time. I figured it would take them another hour or two to get through JFK and back here. That gave us twelve hours to clean up.

With three of us, that would be fine.

It was seven thirty. Ruth would usually be home by now. Had she been planning to go out tonight with the cast? I couldn’t remember. Maybe Eden would know. Eden who, I assumed, was still sleeping off her hangover.

I got up, still a little wobbly, and went upstairs. I knocked lightly on Eden’s door. There was no response so I knocked harder.

‘Eden,’ I called through the door. ‘I’m coming in.’

The room was empty.





Chapter 9

Unlike mine, Eden’s room smelled fresh, no stink of sweat or second-hand alcohol. The bed was unmade.

Be rational, I thought. Eden and Ruth had gone out – Ruth to her rehearsal. And Eden could have gone anywhere. To the park. Shopping. Anywhere.

So why did I feel so uneasy?

I went back downstairs and picked up my phone. I tried to call Ruth.

It went straight to voicemail.

I should call Eden, I thought. But as I scrolled through my contacts, I realised I didn’t even have her number. We had never had the need to exchange them.

I took in the wreckage of my surroundings again, and my anxiety about the whereabouts of the two women was replaced by a more pressing, practical worry. I was going to have to clean this place up. That was urgent. If Jack and Mona got home and found it in this state . . .

I opened the cupboard under the sink. We were out of garbage bags and low on cleaning products. There was nothing to eat in the house either. I was going to have to go to the store.

It was muggy outside, the streets of Williamsburg full of young people heading out to have fun. I should have been one of them. Instead, I carried a basket around the insanely expensive grocery store, and bought all the supplies I would need to deal with the mess and keep myself going.

On the way back, I saw a pair of young blonde women turn the corner into the next street. Ruth and Eden! Thank God. I ran after them, the bags slowing me down, but I’d only taken a couple of steps around the corner when I realised it wasn’t them. And now my nerves were jangling.

Back at the house, I tried to phone Ruth again. Once more, she didn’t reply, so I tapped out a message. Just want to check you’re OK. How much did we drink last night?? I wrote. Can you call me as soon as you can?

I stared at my phone. The message had been delivered, but the status didn’t change to read. There were no dots to indicate a reply was forthcoming.

I checked the time. Somehow, two hours had passed since I’d first looked at my phone, and it was just after nine. Jack and Mona would be home in ten hours or less and I hadn’t done a thing to clean up yet. At least dealing with the mess would give me something to focus on while I waited for Ruth to appear or call me back.

I filled a bucket with hot water, emptied my shopping bags and made a start. I filled the garbage bags with leftover food and separated out the recycling to go outside.

While I cleaned, I tried to remember more details of what had happened, but there was nothing there but a hole. It frightened me; I had rarely been so drunk that I couldn’t remember any of the events of the previous night. I usually stopped drinking when I started to feel sick, an in-built safety mechanism that had served me well over the years. But last night had been different, even though I didn’t think I’d drunk that much. Had the tequila been extra-strong? I found one of the bottles and checked it. It seemed standard. And it wasn’t as if I’d drunk on an empty stomach either.