He hauls himself off the couch and groans as he does so. His weight is really getting to him, these days. He hasn’t been near a doctor or a set of scales in years. The last time he did, he had passed the twenty stone mark and he knows that nothing has come off since. His arches fell years ago, and his knees seem to bend and unbend more slowly with each passing month. I’ll be on a stick soon, he thinks, and I’ll still be subsidising that old bag to go on her holidays in Ilfracombe. Says she doesn’t have the money for a plumber, but she’s never short of cash for a wash-and-set on a Wednesday, is she?
The old bitch has given him indigestion. He stomps through to the bathroom and swigs a tablespoon of Gaviscon straight from the bottle, waits for the advertised cooling that never comes, takes another swig and lets out a burp. Right, he thinks. I suppose I’d better call Dyno-Rod. I don’t want her calling the council on me.
He goes to the computer to look up the number, Vesta nagging at the back of his mind. She doesn’t seem to be able to take a hint, he thinks. I’ve given her enough, over the last couple of years. The cockroaches and the leaking bathtub upstairs, the burglary, the Weedol in the herbery… that rat was a stroke of genius. Why on earth does she stay? I wouldn’t. I’d’ve been gone months ago. She’s stubborn, just bloody stubborn. Looks like I’m going to have to step up my game before I end up having to lay out a grand on a new boiler for the old bitch.
I wish she’d just bloody die and get out of my hair, he thinks again as he picks up the phone to dial, then his finger stills over the keypad. The water heater, he thinks. Bloody ancient. The Corgi man said as much the last time he was in for servicing. Said it wasn’t far off failing its MOT completely.
Maybe, he thinks, I can help it on its way.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Vesta doesn’t go to a hotel. She can’t bear to not know what’s happening to her home, can’t leave Cher, can’t face the thought of not having her things around her. It’s a miserable evening spent moving as many of her belongings as aren’t soiled to the front room and proofing the door with blankets against the stench. But still the smell elbows its way through. In the toilet, the lavatory overflows with its backed-up load and the floor is an inch deep in filth. Even the bath has regurgitated, and lies half full with stagnant sludge. No point in trying to clear it up. While the drains are still blocked, any attempts to deal with the results will be rendered pointless the moment someone upstairs forgets themselves and flushes their cistern. It would be like cleaning the Augean stables. Literally.
She eats with Cher: feeds her Heinz tomato soup and a soft white bread roll, spoon by spoon, crumb by crumb, letting her suck her way to nutriment through swollen lips, then comes down to her stinky basement and crawls, exhausted, into the makeshift bed she’s made on the settee. She leaves the front window open, to try to get some clean air into the room, and falls, despite the unfamiliar sounds out in the street, into an uncomfortable doze some time before midnight.
She dreams that she’s up in Cher’s room and they have barricaded the door with the bed. Someone is trying to get in. The door handle rattles in its socket and fingernails scratch, scratch, scratch at the panels. And they can hear breathing. Breathing, breathing, breathing.
And then, in the dark, something tells her that the sounds are real.
Wakefulness runs through her like cold water. She’s lying on her back, knees drawn up under her blanket, scanning the night with her fading ears. She looks around, wildly, can’t place where she is for a moment before she remembers what has happened.
It’s all right, she thinks, and settles back against the cushion. Just a sound in the street and a silly dream, someone passing by. You’re not used to it, you’ve been sleeping in the same bedroom for so long you’re bound to —
A sound from the back of the flat. Unmistakable. The sound of her back door opening.
No. No, no, no. It’s just your mind. Just —
A floorboard creaks in the kitchen. Someone is coming in.
Vesta’s body defaults into foetal position on the cushions. She pulls the blanket uselessly over her face, as though it will protect her. Oh, no. Oh, no, no. What do I do? I can’t get out. He’s in there between the outside and me. I’m old and stiff. If I try to run up the stairs, he’ll catch me while I’m still trying to get the door unlocked…
Slowly, slowly, she works her way off the couch and creeps to the door. Maybe, at least, I can hold it shut. If he comes this way I’ll sit against it, push with all my weight, and maybe he won’t be able to…