The House Guest - Mark Edwards Page 0,18

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.

It didn’t make sense. And Ruth and Eden, who I was sure had drunk more than me and who were smaller and lighter, had apparently been less affected than me.

I scrubbed at the sofa and fought back the urge to be sick. With every passing minute, my sense of dread and anxiety increased. Something had happened last night, after Eden had told her story. Something that hovered at the edge of memory, like a presence behind a door. I thought about my clothes, piled up here on the living room floor. The women’s absence. The state I’d been in when I woke up. I was no longer sure if I’d really crawled naked into the bathtub or if I’d dreamt it.

I tried to concentrate on the task at hand, but I kept getting up and going over to the front window, looking out. A group of teenagers were gathered outside the frozen yoghurt place opposite. A heavily muscled man walked a tiny dog. Life went on as normal. There was no sign of the man with the grey beard.

And the minutes