PROLOGUE
I have stopped loving you. I have stopped caring about you. I have stopped worrying about you. I have simply . . . stopped.
This might come as news to you but despite everything, despite the cruelty, the selfishness and the pain you have caused, I still found a way to care. But not any more.
Now, I am putting you on notice. I no longer need you. I don’t think fondly of our early days, so I am erasing these memories and all that followed. For much of our time together I wished for a better relationship than the one we have, but I’ve come to understand this is the hand I have been dealt. And now I am showing you all my cards. Our game is complete.
You are the person I share this house with, nothing more, nothing less. You mean no more to me than the shutters that hide what goes on in here, the floorboards I walk over or the doors we use to separate us.
I have spent too much of my life trying to figure out your intricacies, of suffering your deeds like knives cutting through scar tissue. I am through with sacrificing who I should have been to keep you happy as it has only locked us in this status quo. I have wasted too much time wanting you to want me. I ache when I recall the opportunities I’ve been too scared to accept because of you. Such frittered-away chances make me want to crawl on my hands and knees to the end of the garden, curl up into a ball on a mound of earth and wait until the nettles and the ivy choke and cover me from view.
It’s only now that I recognise the wretched life you cloaked me in and how your misery needed my company to prevent you from feeling so isolated.
There is just one lesson I have learned from the life we share. And it is this: everything that is wrong with me is wrong with you too. We are one and the same. When I die, your flame will also extinguish.
The next time we are together, I want one of us to be lying stiff in a coffin wearing rags that no longer fit our dead, shrunken frame.
Only then can we separate. Only then can we be ourselves. Only then do I stand a chance of finding peace. Only then will I be free of you.
And should my soul soar, I promise that yours will sink like the heaviest of rocks, never to be seen again.
PART ONE
CHAPTER 1
MAGGIE
You can’t see me from my place up here in the crow’s nest. No one going about their business in the street can. I know that because I must have waved at my neighbours hundreds of times and they’ve never responded. To all intents and purposes, I’m invisible to the world. I don’t exist, I have expired, I am a ghost.
I probably resemble one too, standing behind these shutters that mute the light entering my bedroom and turn me into a shadow. When the lamps aren’t switched on outside, it’s like dusk in here even during the sunniest of days. It’s why each time I venture downstairs, I squint until my eyes adjust to the daylight. When the shutters were first installed, they made me claustrophobic; a barrier between the outside world and me. But I’ve grown accustomed to them. Given a little time, I become used to most things in the end. I’m that kind of woman; I’ve learned to be adaptable.
I refer to this room as the crow’s nest because it reminds me of a ship’s lookout point on the tallest of its masts. Sailors use them to see for miles across the horizon. My view extends as far as this housing estate.
Right now, I’m watching Barbara helping her mum Elsie into the passenger seat of a car. Barbara always makes time for her mum. Any parent would be proud of her. Elsie recently became reliant on a walking frame, one of those aluminium ones with castors attached to the front. I remember her complaining how the arthritis in her ankles and knee joints was escalating and that over-the-counter anti-inflammatories were no longer effective. I can’t tell you the number of times I suggested she make an appointment to see Dr Fellowes. Once I even offered to pull a few strings in my job as the deputy practice manager to ensure she got an appointment on a day of her choosing. But she’s a stubborn old coot. She thinks she’s being a nuisance if she sees a doctor more than once a year for her flu jab.
I wonder if Elsie still thinks of me. I wonder if she ever questions why I just stopped going to her house for coffee every Thursday afternoon. Half-past three sharp, regular as clockwork; we stuck to that routine for years. I’d return home from work, grab my own jar of coffee from the shelf – she always served that bitter supermarket brand I hated – and we’d spend a couple of hours putting the world to rights or gossiping about the neighbours. I miss those chats. I’ve caught her looking towards the house on numerous occasions, so I like to think she hasn’t forgotten about me.
Barbara’s car moves off the drive, along the street and past number forty. The letting agency has taken its eye off the ball with that one. From up here, I can just about see into the rear of the property – and what a pigsty it is now. If the previous owner, Mr Steadman, knew what had become of his once-beautiful garden, he’d be turning in his grave. The lawn has grown into the borders he spent hours fussing over and they’re filled with cans and takeaway boxes. Students have no respect for anything.
His grandson should have just sold the place. Or perhaps he couldn’t find a buyer. Not everyone is content to live in a house where the previous occupant’s dead body lay undiscovered for weeks. I was the only one who noticed the build-up of newspapers poking through Mr Steadman’s letterbox and spotted that his curtains hadn’t been opened. I would have raised the alarm myself but of course that’s the last thing I can do.
Outside, a red car with a dent in the front bumper parks on the grass verge by the telegraph pole. It’s Louise at number eighteen and when she exits, I can see the swell of her belly under her T-shirt. She’s pregnant again and I’m delighted for her. She reached this stage once before, then one day, an ambulance arrived at her house and the next time I saw her, she had suddenly just stopped being pregnant. Her body returned to its normal shape as if nothing had happened. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have to ‘untell’ people. I don’t think you can ever be normal again after losing something you were so looking forward to loving.
I wonder if she is still working part-time at the cash and carry. I haven’t seen her wearing her uniform for a while. I know that her husband is still a cabbie because his taxi’s headlights frequently flash across my ceiling when he arrives home after a night shift. Sometimes if I can’t sleep, I’ll watch his shadow behind the wheel, engine switched off, his face barely illuminated by the dashboard. I often wonder, what prevents him from going inside straight away? Perhaps he’s imagining a different life to the one beyond that front door. I can understand that; I often imagine my own alternative existence. But like that old song goes, you can’t always get what you want.
There’s nobody else to look at so I turn to face my room. There isn’t much in here, but then I don’t need a lot. A double bed, two side tables, two lamps, a wardrobe, a dressing table and an ottoman. The wall-mounted television has long since ceased to work and I haven’t asked Nina for a new one because I don’t want her to think I’m missing it. And without it, I’m no longer reminded of how much life I’m lacking.
I have my books to keep me company and sometimes I can convince myself they’re enough. I don’t get to pick what I read – I’m reliant on what she brings home for me. Every couple of days, I’ll start and finish a brand-new one. I prefer detective or psychological thrillers, anything that promises and then delivers a twist. I like to get the old grey matter working and decipher who the bad guy is. I’m hard to please though. If I guess the culprit correctly, I’ll be disappointed at how predictable the story is. If I get it wrong, I’ll be annoyed at myself for not spotting it earlier.