‘I hit him,’ sobs Vesta. ‘I hit him! I didn’t know it was him. How could I know it was him? It’s the middle of the night. What’s he doing here? He shouldn’t be here! And then I slipped. In this… this… it’s… slippy, and I banged my head, and when I came round, he was… oh, God, I’ve killed him! I tried to get him out. I tried. But I can’t shift him. Oh, God, help him! Somebody! Help him!’
‘Shit,’ says Hossein.
Never a truer word. ‘You can say that again,’ says Collette.
Vesta tugs hopelessly at the back of the man’s marquee of a T-shirt. It stretches and compresses the flesh within so that the dimpled buttocks seem to swell and grow. The body bumps slightly and the head bobs in the toilet pan.
‘Is that the Landlord?’ asks Collette.
‘I think so,’ says Thomas. ‘It looks like him.’
They’ve all followed that backside up a set of stairs at some point in their lives. It’s not a memory you easily forget.
‘What’s he doing here?’ asks Thomas.
Vesta looks up at them in astonishment. Tears have etched pink streaks through her green-brown facemask and her eyes shine white in the half-light. ‘Don’t just… Help me, for God’s sake!’
Thomas looks at Hossein, who looks at Collette. Collette looks back at Thomas and folds her arms across her body. Jigs uneasily from foot to foot. There’s no way she wants to touch him. What if someone decides he needs mouth-to-mouth?
‘How long has he been like that?’ asks Thomas, echoing her thoughts.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know!’
‘Well, how long were you out for?’
Vesta suddenly shows a flash of her old self. Rolls her eyes and tuts. ‘Well, if I knew that, I wouldn’t have been unconscious, would I?’
‘Sorry,’ says Thomas. ‘It’s just – well, it makes a difference. To, you know, whether it’s worth…’
The man in the toilet shows no signs of stirring. His face is buried to the ears in effluent and his arms are slack, his fingers trailing across the lino like sausages. The pants have ridden down in the front and Collette can glimpse an apron of fat that extends halfway down his thighs.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says, ‘but what do you expect us to do?’
‘Get him out. Help him – something.’
‘I think he’s dead already,’ says Hossein, succinctly.
‘We should get him out, though.’ Collette looks at him, pleadingly. When I say we, she thinks, I mean you men. I’m all for the gender division of labour, in this instance. ‘We should. In case.’
‘What’s he doing here?’ asks Hossein. ‘It’s two in the morning.’
‘Drowning,’ says Vesta. ‘Can we talk about this later?’
‘Yes,’ says Hossein. Takes a deep breath and offers her a hand to get up off the floor. She slips, twice, on her bare soles as she rises; props herself against the wall. In her nightie she looks small and frail, that strange warrior queen quality to her features stripped away, and every second of her almost-seventy years is etched across her face. Hossein puts his fists on his hips and stares at the body. It really is huge. It looks like a narwhal has climbed out through the drains and fainted.
‘What the fook’s going on here?’ says a voice. Cher, black eye and split lip, stands in the kitchen in leggings and a pink Hello Kitty T-shirt, her forehead creased in confusion, a hand on the door-jamb propping her up as she holds her injured ankle off the floor.
Vesta starts to weep. ‘I thought it was a burglar. How was I to know it was him? What was he doing here at this time of night?’
Collette overcomes her horror of the dirt and goes over to put an arm round Vesta’s shoulders. Under her nightie, she’s all skin and bone, and shivering as though the temperature has suddenly dropped. Poor Vesta, she thinks, I can’t imagine how this must feel.
‘I don’t know,’ says Hossein, and nudges the tool bag with his foot. The bottom cover of the water heater has been removed, and propped in the bath. ‘But I don’t think it was a social call.’
‘He’s all over shite,’ says Cher.
‘Thanks for pointing that out,’ says Hossein.
‘How did he end up like that?’
‘I hit him with a steam iron,’ says Vesta. ‘I thought he was a burglar.’
‘C’mon,’ says Thomas. ‘We have to get him out.’
Hossein pulls a face that says that he would rather be back in Evin prison than here, and steps forward to give him a hand. Gingerly, they each hook a hand into an armpit, and heave. The liquid in the toilet pan slurps, sucks like quicksand, then lets go with a sulphurous belch. The Landlord flips free, lurches out of their grip and lands face up in the doorway.