She mounts the stairs, her hand pressed against the plywood wall that divides them from the Landlord’s cubbyhole. The window is lovely. From the outside it looks dull and dark, but from in here she can see a lovely pattern of flowers in greens and blues and reds. What a waste, she thinks. If I had this window, I’d have glass shelves all the way up, with glass ornaments on them to catch the light. He’s just got a couple of coats on hooks on the wall, and a row of boring-looking books on the windowsill.
It doesn’t smell too good, either. The cheesy, mushroomy smell that’s been getting stronger through the house as the drought went on seems to be concentrated here, and mingles with a heavy honk of chemical flowers. Bloody hell, thinks Cher. Open a window, maybe? She stops halfway up and calls out again, but no one comes.
Bloody cat, she thinks. I should just leave him to choke to death in that pong. He’ll come back when he’s ready. But she doesn’t want to leave him. Not with things so bad between them. He might never come back, if I don’t apologise properly, and I’ll just die if he doesn’t come back. I’ve got some sardines in tomato sauce down in my room. If I can get him back there, he’ll be back up snogging me with fish-breath in no time. She goes on up to the top and pushes open the door.
Sloped ceilings, and a smell so strong it brings her close to retching. She’s surprised how much space there is in here under the eaves. It would be a nice flat, if it didn’t look so unloved: manky old taupe three-piece, a battered row of kitchen units in green and brown, like her own, plastic all over the carpet as though he doesn’t want to dirty it. The cushions on either end of the three-seat settee have brown stains on them. Fake tan, she thinks. How weird. What looks like thigh marks, and the imprint of a bony bum. Like what Adrienne Maloof kept leaving all over people’s couches in The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. I wonder if it really comes out with baby wipes? It doesn’t look like it would to me. It looks pretty deeply sunk in, like whoever was wearing it sat there for a long, long time.
The music is coming from an old-fashioned record player on the kitchen countertop. One of those box things you find in junk shops, orange and grey, with a tall spindle so you can stack singles on top of each other. She’s never seen one working before, and understands now why the music doesn’t travel: there are no speakers, just tinny falsetto voices issuing from the front of the player itself.
The track finishes and is replaced by the hiss and crackle of old vinyl. Now, she can hear the sound of water running in the bathroom. Oh, God, how embarrassing. He’s taking a shower. I’d better get that damn cat and scoot, before he comes out. Bet he won’t want to catch me looking at his cardboard air freshener collection. It’s bloody freaky. I know there’s a pong in here, but he’s got hundreds.
She tips her head to look at them as the first notes of ‘How Deep Is Your Love’ crackle out, covering her presence again. He’s made something of a decorative point of them. They dangle from the roof beam, fixed in with drawing pins through their strings, wafting out mixed smells of pine and rose, freesia and sea breeze that cloy together like syrup, catching at the back of the throat and burning the inside of the nostrils. Cher can feel her chest and neck start to prickle, the first signs of an allergic reaction. She gets like that on buses sometimes, especially when it’s wet, when someone sits down next to her in damp cloth that’s been washed in that built-in-perfume washing powder. How can he not notice? she wonders. Surely he doesn’t think it’s a good smell?
And then she sees Psycho. He’s hopped up on to a table on the far side of the room and sits among a strange collection of knick-knacks, lashing his tail at her and pretending to be a statue. She gives him a blink, and his green eyes briefly blink back. He raises a paw to his mouth, licks it with a dainty pink tongue and swipes it over his ear. Oh, thank God, he’s forgiven me. Better get him down from there before he smashes something, though.
She goes over and whispers to him, and he looks up and gives her a smile. He sits between a pair of sunglasses – Chanel or Chanel knock-off, by the look of the brassy circles on the open arms – and a pendant on a chain, one of those enamelled Chinese fish with the multiple joints, turquoise and red. It’s a strange collection of things. A bunch of keys on a chain topped with a small ceramic shoe, a tiny leather-bound Bible, a ballpoint pen, clumsily encased in putty that’s been inset with shiny beads before it dried: the sort of project a child would do for Mother’s Day. A mug tree from whose arms hangs a collection of bracelets.