and in it were two footprints, the outline pale brown against the dark wooden boards. No welcoming click of Maudie’s claws. Her absence set up a dull tolling of disquiet. I closed the front door and laid down the wet plastic bag on top of the small pile that had collected there. It was warmer inside than out, the house full of trapped air, and it smelt different. The meaty sweetness that had begun to turn my stomach had something sharper in it, too: basil or citronella. I took a step and felt the walls rustle, brace in alarm, or warning. A flurry of rain rattled against the sitting-room window. The nozzle of one of the vacuum cleaners resting next to a mirror slid sideways.
I should charge my phone. Ring Ailsa. Or I could knock next door. I was thinking all this, but I didn’t do any of those things. I took another step towards the staircase. I could tell, couldn’t I? I could sense her presence. The anticipation, the anxiety, the conviction I’d held all morning had reached its apotheosis. I knew her so well. How could I have ever thought she wouldn’t?
I looked up to the first floor. I craned my head, trying to see round the bend of the bannisters but I could only see the bathroom door and it was closed. And then I heard a sound; not an accidental sound – not an object slipping or sliding, or blown, not a rattle. This sound was purposeful, and human: the deliberate clunk of a cupboard being closed.
My chest tightened; I found it harder to fill my lungs, and I used the bannister rail to help myself up, the dirty wood rough beneath my palms. The row of books on the top stair had been disturbed, one of the A–Zs I’d found in Oxfam kicked sideways, lying open at a map of Southall, and I could see as I approached that the blanket that ran along the bottom of Faith’s door had been rolled aside. The door was ajar, revealing a triangle of artificial light – surprising, I thought, even in my agitation, that the bulb still worked. Small, studied sounds came from in there: a shuffle, a rustle, a click.
I stood and waited. The ferns on the landing wallpaper were hands gesticulating, faces gurning in warning.
From my own bedroom on the next half-landing came the sound of water, the soft thud as each drop landed on the newspaper under the bucket.
I was about to write that my heart was in my mouth, but that is such a silly phrase. It would mean blood and liquid, pulsing life. My mouth was arid, empty, completely dry. I tried to swallow and I couldn’t. My throat had seized up. The tightness was back in my chest; my hands gripped either side of my ribcage. I’d left the bag with the inhaler by the front door. I thought about going down to get it, but I knew if I did, I might leave the house, and I might never come back.
I put my hand against the panel and pushed.
It had been such a long time since I’d been in that room. It smelt of wet wood and apples and sweat and old perfume. The terrible smell, the one that got into your nostrils and set up home there, had long gone, though the Glade air fresheners were still strategically placed. Dust lay on every surface, as thick as underlay across the top of the chest of drawers, the desk, the surface of the pictures. Water had crept in through the broken window; seeped into the walls, peeling the wallpaper back, brown spreading to black below the cornice. One of the curtains had fallen away, the other hung in disintegrated loops from its hooks. Along the mantelpiece were nubs of an eerie yellow mould structure, which were the ends of the scented candles I’d lit. There were a lot of dead flies, too, but I didn’t like to look at those.
A long thin mirror leant against the wall by the bed. It was an early skip find: it had plaster stuck to the back of it in swirly patterns. I used to sit on the floor next to it, watching Faith do her hair. I could see my reflection in it now; so pale it was as if death was coming into the room. Except death was already in the room.
She was sitting on the single bed, between me and the