Marie knew better than to push her any further, and sleep found Violet quickly.
The next time she woke up was to an empty flat. Marie must have been out at whatever was so much more important than work, but Violet gave her door a gentle knock anyway. She had no intention of apologising for earlier, she’d been totally in the right, but given their housing situation, Violet was wary of creating any rifts with her old friend. And today their tiny flat felt like an oddly lonely place to wake up to silence, so she would have welcomed the company. But there was no response, so Violet made her way to the kitchen. The roar of the kettle grated on her in the quiet, and she noticed her right hand shaking ever so slightly as she spooned out the coffee granules.
She was fine. There was no reason for her not to be, so she was fine. It was times like this she’d welcome the reassuring scratch scratch scratch of a murderer living in the walls. At least it would be some company. She couldn’t quite bring herself to laugh at her own joke as she drank her coffee and told herself she felt better.
There were people in the lift when it finally arrived. She’d been standing so long in the cigarette-scented hall she’d almost written it off as broken again, but just as she turned towards the stairway the doors started to open. Two figures stood inside, huddled close together, facing towards the back corner as though in close conversation, though Violet couldn’t make out what they were saying. She tried to get a look at their faces, see if she recognised them from around the building, but one had a thick hood pulled up over their head and the other was turned too much away from her. Their clothes were muted, denim and canvas, and neither seemed to be paying her any attention at all.
For some reason, the idea of stepping into that lift, slowly riding down those eight floors next to them, filled Violet with horror. Was it because of that arsehole from yesterday? Had one ‘boo’ left her feeling like this forever? No, this was something else. It must be.
Perhaps she was worried it would break, trapping them all inside for four days until they had to eat her. Again, the memory of her mother’s stories failed to raise the usual smile. She’d just take the damn lift, she decided, but by that time the doors were already closing again. Violet took the stairs.
Work went slowly, as it so often did. She was tired, and the machine-dispensed coffee didn’t seem to be helping. She cycled through the strange, synthetic menu, trying to find the one that would finally break through her haze. Instant coffee, ‘freshbrew’ coffee, latte, they all tasted of the same chemicals her tongue has adapted to years ago, but none of them could shift this weariness. She found herself measuring out the work day by the smokers’ cigarette breaks, the rise and fall of that familiar irritation as regular as any clock. When she finally left to take her walk and passed them huddled in the chill outside the front door, she found herself mumbling about their laziness, but they kept their backs to her and didn’t appear to have heard.
She avoided Augustine Road, and turned once or twice when she almost crossed paths with another late-night wanderer. She hated herself for it but decided that having a peaceful walk was more important than proving some sort of point. Even so, relaxation was elusive tonight, and she ended up staying out ten minutes longer than she technically had for her break. Nobody seemed to notice, but it bothered her.
Back at home, Marie was sullenly getting ready for work.
‘I just called in a migraine yesterday, so have to go in today.’
‘Sorry,’ Violet said. She wasn’t.
‘Oh, and your mother called, something about your uncle’s sixtieth?’
‘Thanks. I’ll call her back,’ Violet said. She wouldn’t.
In the cold, cultivated darkness of her room, Violet lay down on the bed, trying to figure out what was wrong. Everything was fine. Everything was normal. So why did her jaw ache from clenching her teeth? Why was she so tired? She lay there and surrendered to sleep.
The next night was strange. Violet woke up. She must have. But there was still that disconnection, as though she had been somehow severed from the world. Everything was muted, and when she tried to focus on any one thing too closely her head started to ache. Marie had clearly had a difficult day and she did not seem inclined to chat as she ate her dinner, leaving Violet to her breakfast: toast that didn’t want to cook right and coffee that got cold almost as soon as it was put down. She still drank it, though, desperately trying to grasp just a splinter more wakefulness. It was half an hour later than usual when she finally got out of the door, and she had no idea what she might have been doing for all that time.
She stepped out into a cloud of cigarette smoke and stopped, coughing, at the unexpected sensation. Thrust into the real world again, if only for that moment of physical discomfort. She looked around and, sure enough, standing in front of the door to 116 was a young man in an old grey suit. His shirt should have been white, but time had rendered it the same dull colour as his jacket, and he wore it unbuttoned over the sun-darkened skin of his chest. His curling black hair was just long enough to be dishevelled. He did not seem to have noticed Violet leaving her flat, or her reaction to the waves of smoke that rolled from his cigarette and curled around a peeling ‘No Smoking’ sign. All of his attention seemed focused towards the end of the hallway, past the lift, to where a window looked down over the night- covered city below.
The fluorescent bulb above that window had burned out weeks before and had not been replaced, leaving that part of the corridor shadowed and dark, but as Violet followed the stranger’s gaze she could just about make out a silhouette. She blinked, trying to focus on it. Somebody was there. They seemed to be standing very still, and it wasn’t immediately clear if they were facing away and looking out through the glass, or staring back down the corridor.
Violet wanted to ignore them, to just cross over to the lift and go to work (she needed to get to work). Her nerves were still alight from her encounter two nights before. Yet there was something about the figure by the window that made her certain that they were looking at her. Not the man with the cigarette, her. She felt compelled to call out, greet them, assure them that she was going to work, she was, when a hand grasped her firmly by the arm. She spun around to see her strange neighbour shaking his head insistently.
‘Do you see them?’ he asked her, his voice thick with concern and an accent she couldn’t quite place.
She nodded, her mind racing. Which of her mother’s stories was this?
He seemed visibly relieved. His grip relaxed and she pulled her arm away, instinctively stepping back. His face softened for a moment, and he stammered out an apology. As if sensing her next question, he gestured to the door behind him and, Violet assumed, to the old woman who lived behind it.
‘Old friend,’ he said, as though expecting this to answer all her questions, but her head was starting to swim again, and the blood pounded through her ears, drowning out the choking silence of that hall. She turned to leave, not wanting to ask this stranger any more questions when her eyes flicked instinctively back to the window and she froze. There were now two people standing there. The second was just as much a silhouette as the first, and just as still. Their heads leaned towards each other, as though passing some quiet conversation, and if she strained, Violet thought could just about hear the faintest whisper of what they were saying …