‘Stella, love, are you all right?’ Jackie has a glass of water. She presses it into my trembling hands.
‘There’s something in there. In the pantry. I heard it moving around.’
‘An animal?’
‘Too big. Oh God, it was horrible. Can’t you smell it?’
She sniffs and glances over my shoulder as Marco comes into the kitchen in his old T-shirt and boxers, rubbing his arms.
‘It’s cold in here. What’s going on?’
‘Stella thinks there’s someone in there.’ She points at the closed door.
I stare at Marco with big, round eyes. ‘I heard it breathing.’
They exchange another of those looks.
‘I did!’
‘Okay, honey, we believe you. You want me to check?’
‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’
Marco approaches the door and presses his palms against it. I am holding my breath, expecting at any moment to see the handles start to move, the door shaking in the frame. When nothing happens Marco pushes the latch, and it swings inwards, revealing that thick darkness.
‘Careful!’ I call out. I am remembering the way the smell had bloomed from in there. Marco steps inside and for a moment it is silent. When he reappears he looks puzzled, wiping his hands on his T-shirt.
‘It’s damp, and cold. But it’s empty, kitten. Come and see.’
At first I don’t move, but then I feel Jackie’s palm in the small of my back urging me forward. I step up to the door and look inside, careful not to cross the threshold. The smell has disappeared, the darkness a grainy grey instead of the smothering black I’d seen. There is nothing in there.
Marco takes my arms and says, ‘Maybe you were dreaming.’
His eyes drift over my shoulder towards the sitting room. I have left the computer on.
‘Stella?’ he is saying, moving away from me, looking at the screen. ‘Stella, what have you been doing? It’s the middle of the night.’
Horrified, I slowly turn, wondering how I will explain the photograph of him and Doctor Wilson which Alice has sent me, how I can make it look like anything other than a betrayal. But it is just the screensaver, the starfield as though you are flying through space. Marco crosses the room and stands before it, his hands on his hips. If he presses just one button he will see the emails from Alice and the photo of him and Doctor Wilson as teenagers. I swallow, my throat very dry.
‘Marco,’ I say, and he turns, his two fingers poised over the keypad. ‘Can we just – let’s go to bed, yeah?’
I am willing him to not move, to not hit the keyboard. I have to try very hard to keep the pleading note out of my voice. There is so much gravity to Marco, I can’t stop looking at him. He draws you in, like a black hole. And what was it they said about black holes? Not even light escapes.
‘I wonder, Stella—’
He looks at me, head tilted as though listening to a faraway sound. What the hell is this? is what he’d say as the photo appeared, him as a boy. What have you been doing?
‘Please.’ I hold my hands out to him. His face is concealed in the shadows, my man. My good man. Then he moves his hand and very slowly, without taking his eyes from mine, closes the lid of the laptop.
Chapter 26
The damp has come back. It appears the same day Marco and Jackie leave to go back to London. Some of the black spots are migrating, appearing around the window frames. They speckle the skirting boards and the grouting about the bathtub, stain the corner of the bedroom in a shape like a horned beast, a Minotaur. I press my hands to it and they come away chalky with plaster.
The miserable weather of the last few days has given way to a mellow morning of butter-coloured sunshine. On the kitchen table in the fruit bowl there is a satsuma slowly turning green with putrid, sunken flesh. No food in the fridge. I have to go to town.
As I cross the beach car park I see Frankie. Immediately I remember the sting of our argument, as intimate as a secret kiss. He waves and I lift my hand in response but do not smile. Halfway up the hill I hear him calling to me and I turn to see him barefoot in a wetsuit.
‘Can I give you a lift anywhere?’
‘It’s fine. It’s a nice day. I’ll walk.’
‘Stella, listen. I owe you an apology for being a drunk asshole. I shouldn’t have said the things I did. It was nice to be your friend.’
We look at each other and I can see him itching to smile. I swallow. I need the company, God knows. I miss having a friend too.
‘Sure, okay. A lift would be nice. Thank you.’
At his van he peels the wetsuit away from his damp skin and I can’t help but look at him. He isn’t as out of shape as I’d suspected. I am so familiar with the lean and hungry body of Marco, with his personal trainer and high-protein diet, crunches and pull-ups, that I can’t help but look at Frankie with his rounded stomach, the line of hair bisecting it a curved black feather. His arms are roped with muscles and his chest broad. I notice another tattoo on his pectoral muscle and when he sees me looking he touches it briefly with his fingers. A series of three fat black lines stacked atop one another. The simplicity appeals to me and I tell him so. Frankie nods.
‘I like it too. I forget what it means now but at the time you can be sure that there was some deep philosophical junk I’d attached to it. At that age everything is heartbreaking. One thing I’ll teach my kids is that you grow out of it. You always grow out of it. Love? You grow out of it. Grief? You grow out of it. Heartbreak? Scandal? Your first pair of shoes? You grow out of it, baby.’
‘Do you want kids?’
Frankie shrugs, pulling a towel around his middle and removing his shorts, sitting down on the floor of the van. Uncomfortably aware of the thin towel concealing his nakedness, I turn away from him, very deliberately.
‘I don’t know. Depends what mood you catch me in. Some days I’ll tell you that it’s a cruel world and overpopulated and other times I’ll tell you that I can’t imagine not being a father. I thought I would know by now, but I’m still waiting to see. Do you?’
‘Want children?’ I shake my head. ‘No. I’ll never be rich enough or free enough or well-travelled enough. That perfect time doesn’t exist, at least not for me.’
‘Not for you right now,’ he corrects me. ‘You and Marco are still young, and he makes good money. Your position could be a lot worse.’
I blink. I hadn’t even been thinking about Marco. I turn to face Frankie but he isn’t looking at me, he is standing and buttoning his jeans.
‘Anyway,’ he continues, throwing his towel into the back of the van. ‘Let’s get going.’
We drive in silence, Blue panting noisily in the back. The light casts long shadows across the curve of the valley, through the atrophied trees, branches swept eastward by the winds. Here and there granite boulders thrust up through the ground like the exposed bones of the old land, and buzzards and gulls float on warm updrafts. Finally, we turn into the lane which leads to Chy an Mor. I am thinking of the way the contents of the cupboard had been piled on the floor, the way the voice had spoken to me from the darkness. I think of Heidi saying that the chemicals released when you fall in love are close cousins to those responsible for mental illness.