SIX

All was as she had left it: a chipped Formica table, the old bed concealed by her purple duvet, a red rug on floorboards painted with brown emulsion, the hideous gold and black curtains, the white bedside cabinet at odds in style and time with the imitation walnut wardrobe. The room looked like the scene of a potential suicide following an occupant’s long period of depression, isolation and poverty, cobbled together out of oddments of junkshop furniture. Plaster wainscoting, an iron fireplace and hardwood skirting boards suggested bourgeoisie grandeur so faded as to be almost undetectable behind the tat. Sparse, but somehow too lived in. Overcrowded with the past, but left barren by neglect. Despair: an installation created by stuff given away on Gumtree. It could win the Turner Prize without breaking a sweat. The smile on her lips surprised Stephanie, and she realized she was looking at the room with new eyes; with the scrutiny afforded by the death of wishful thinking.

She dropped her handbag and supermarket bag on the bed, but kept her boots on because the floors were dusty and because they made noises, and had voices in them that she could not account for.

She killed the thought. Plugged in her phone to recharge. Slapped her iPod into another socket. Locked her room and went down to the kitchen with her Tesco Express bag. A carton of salad that had to be eaten that day and a pasty with the same imminent expiry bumped against her hip as she descended the staircase.

The kitchen was on the first floor landing, opposite the bathroom; both communal rooms were set before the staircase. The other doors in the first floor corridor sank away from the landing towards the front of the house and into darkness.

Beneath a bedroom door on the right hand side she could see a warm and welcome strip of electric light. No sound came from beyond the door.

Inside the kitchen the orange and lemon coloured lino peeled up skirting boards black-rimmed with dust. A table had been shoved into one corner. A quick wipe of a finger across the vast L-shaped counter blackened the pad with dust. The plastic swing-lid bin was empty and smelled of ancient bleach. Detergent and limescale traces had evolved into white powdery rimes in the arid kitchen sink. Puzzled, she went to the ancient fridge and opened the door. Completely empty save the wire-frame shelves. Old stains darkened the bottom of a tray that promised to be a ‘Vegetable Crisper’. The fridge had been emptied at some point but not cleaned. The freezer compartment was a solid brick of ice that had broken the hinges of the ice box door.

Black spills around the electric cooking rings were ancient too. She snapped two of them off the enamelled metal. They looked like flattened, desiccated worms.

Like the bathroom, the kitchen had not been used in a long time, nor had it been cleaned recently. Even the mouse traps were old, the bait long gone. In the corners the petrified black rice of mouse droppings were suspended in a grey fur of dust, gathering as if the spoor had been absorbed by a monstrous fungus.

Knacker had said there were other people living here, so what did they do to prepare food? Eat out? Takeaways went with the territory, especially if the household was male-oriented, but this one was supposedly all female. Certainly didn’t look like it. And who could afford takeaways every day? Not someone who lived here. Stephanie’s last vestige of illusion that she might have sat in here with other girls, and bitched about work over coffee, as communal stir-fries sizzled on the stove, doused like the final spark in a cold fireplace.

Yet as she plugged the microwave in to see if it still worked, and then fiddled with the buttons to change the setting from HELLO . . . DEFROST . . . ADD WEIGHT, she heard footsteps outside: high heels on the tiles of the ground floor before they began to rise up the stairs to the first floor.

A girl!

With her warmest smile primed in anticipation, Stephanie headed for the kitchen doorway. ‘Hey! Hello there,’ she called out.

The footsteps softened as they hit the carpeted landing of the first floor, before continuing on to the second floor without slowing down. Wasn’t Birmingham supposed to be friendly? The big heart of England? She would have to crawl out of its arse before she found its heart.

‘Hello. Hi,’ Stephanie said as she came into the corridor outside the kitchen.

The girl turned on the first part of the staircase to the second floor. Stephanie didn’t see much beyond a slender silhouette moving across the undraped window of the stairwell.

She lives on my floor. The idea made Stephanie so excited she desperately slapped at the light switch on the wall outside the kitchen. But the woman was already rising up the stairs to the second floor, leaving Stephanie with only the sounds of muted high heels.

‘Hello. Sorry. I just wanted to introduce . . .’

Engulfed in the woman’s perfumed wake, Stephanie followed the footsteps. The scent was strong but pleasant. She thought she recognized it and must have once smelled a sample in Debenhams. When Stephanie turned the staircase and the second floor came into sight, the light below clicked off and left her in darkness.

‘Hi. Hello!’ An edge had come into her voice; she just wanted to say hello to a neighbour. The woman must have heard her. And it was odd that the girl had walked up these stairs so swiftly without turning the lights on. She must have been living here a while to cross the terrain so confidently.

Stephanie made the second floor and reached for the nearest light switch. In the darkness ahead of her the swish of clothing and thump of high heels moved away, and quickly too, as if in flight. A key rattled inside a lock.

‘Hello,’ Stephanie repeated, and more loudly this time as she snapped the corridor light on, which briefly revealed a woman entering the room opposite hers in the middle of the corridor. A glimpse of long blonde hair, a pale face, tight jeans and dark high heels was all she received before the door closed and was locked. Inside the room a light clicked on.

‘Suit yourself.’

Stephanie walked back to the kitchen, her footsteps accompanied by the angry bark of the dog outside. The draught around the stairwell window smelled of the wet yard and she shivered. The woman had been anxious not to make contact; her movement through the dark had actually sped up when Stephanie spoke. An evasion. What was that about?

You won’t be here long so don’t sweat it. She might fancy herself as a glamour puss but she lives the fuck here.

In the kitchen Stephanie tugged open the cabinet doors beside the stove and found two plates. She washed them in hot water as there was no washing up liquid, then slid her pasty into the microwave. She’d eat in her room. It was that kind of place.

The rude girl in the dark revived her fighting spirit. Once she got this food down she’d go and face the landlord. No wonder he kept a low profile, renting out this hole. He’d been delighted by her interest in the room, and her pitiful enthusiasm had made her an easy mark. He had positively shivered with glee when she handed over the three twenty.

Three hundred and twenty quid!