NINETEEN

As the duration of her journey from the bus stop to 82 Edgehill Road dwindled to a matter of minutes, Stephanie felt the growth of an anxiety that made her near nauseous. After her first night in the house, each time she’d returned to the anonymous street she’d felt increasingly vulnerable. Mostly unlit, the buildings and their watching windows struck her this evening as being strongly averse to her presence in the street.

Her phone trilled. Frantic to speak with Ryan, Stephanie yanked the handset out of her pocket. He’d sent a text that afternoon:

@ WORK. WILL CALL LATER.

There had been no characteristic X to end the message, and she believed it was the most unfeeling and abrupt message he’d ever sent her in the two years she’d known him. Her disappointment at the brevity of the text message had made her sullen for most of her last afternoon of work at the Bullring, where she’d been giving out bite-size portions of large cookies to shoppers for eight hours. Her sulk was soon overwhelmed by the next crisis, when she discovered that her debit card was missing from her purse.

She’d upended her bag on the staff room floor and scattered her fingers through the contents, on the verge of tears throughout a frantic search that failed to recover her bank card. There was nothing in her account to withdraw and she had no arranged overdraft, so couldn’t recall the last time she’d noticed her card in her purse. After she’d calmed down, she realized the last time she’d used it was four days previously, when she’d withdrawn her last thirty pounds to feed herself and cover bus fare until she was paid at the end of this week.

She’d called the bank and cancelled the card; another would be on its way, but in six working days. Ryan might now have to provide her with more than temporary accommodation, if he was willing. But who had taken the card? She wanted to accuse everyone: the two stupid girls she’d worked with, the indifferent supervisor, the customers, that guy who had come back three times for samples, until she’d told him it was one per customer, and he’d responded by asking her out on a date.

She’d then thought of the house, of the landlord, the other tenants she’d failed to properly meet; someone could have entered her room while she was in the bathroom. Stuff was always going missing in shared accommodation.

It wouldn’t stop, it just would not stop: the bad luck, the horrible slide that just kept sending her further down, faster and faster, while she gathered a momentum of misfortune.

This caller’s number on her phone screen was unfamiliar. Not Ryan, but the last of five landlords she’d called that lunchtime to arrange viewings of rooms in shared houses. This would be the call back from the message she’d left.

She stopped walking to take the call, and then finished it with a tremor in her voice. All of the respective rooms on offer at the address were immediately available, but all required one month’s rent in advance and a deposit, with no exceptions. Three days in the Bullring had put £120 in her bank account, but that didn’t even cover half of what she needed to move. The word hostel had made an unwelcome appearance in her thoughts throughout the day. She’d have to find out where the nearest hostels were. At least she could withdraw cash across the bank counter tomorrow to provide enough money if she had to evacuate Edgehill Road in a hurry.

As if her voice in the street had provoked a reaction from the scarce evidence of the living about her, a black BMW slowed to a halt. The window slid down. From inside, a young man grinned at her. In the passenger seat, another man leaned forward to crowd the driver. There was someone in the back seat, though she couldn’t see their face.

‘Get in, luv,’ the driver said. ‘Get in.’

Stephanie didn’t react beyond staring at what she interpreted as an insolent grin on the driver’s face.

‘Got a phone number, yeah?’ the passenger in the front seat added.

When she came to an understanding of the communal intent of the car’s passengers, she took a step away from the car.

‘Slag,’ the passenger said.

‘Fuck off, twat!’ she shouted at the open window and hurried away in the direction of the house.

The car pulled away to the heavy thump of interior music she hoped had been started to cover the embarrassment of the car’s occupants. She’d often used the same response in Stoke, to some effect in the same situation, as she walked to and from college.

Her unappealing contact with the outside world was only just beginning. ‘You’s got a room then?’ The voice came out of the front yard neighbouring the unruly privet hedge of number 82. A portly man in a dark waterproof grinned at her from behind the front wall of another untidy house. In one hand he held a black plastic bag that he was about to place inside a rubber dustbin.

‘Er, yes.’

Inside the cavernous hood of his coat, the man’s pink face was shiny with rain; the broad bifocal lenses of his glasses were speckled with droplets of moisture and disguised eyes she sensed more than saw.

‘Nice to see the place up and running.’ His Brummy accent was thick. ‘The son still around then? You with him?’

‘Sorry, what? No. I’ve just moved in—’

‘Not seen him for a bit. He’s been ill. Better now then? Fought so.’ The neighbour seemed happier to do the talking, or the telling. He rolled his eyes knowingly. ‘I wondered when he’d get his act togever. You the first then?’

What did he mean, the first new tenant? ‘Er . . .’ But then Stephanie realized she did not want to give the man the impression that she was the only girl in the house. And she wasn’t, was she? ‘No. There’s others. And another two are coming. Moving in.’ She felt flustered and didn’t like his overfamiliar smile that could also have been a smirk, one she was unable to meet with anything but wariness. ‘My boyfriend—’

‘Good to hear it. His dad been gone a while. Him carrying on the family tradition, eh?’ The man seemed to find this comment about Knacker extremely funny and guffawed to himself for longer than was necessary; he didn’t seem to be aware that Stephanie wasn’t encouraging his mirth. ‘Might pop round, eh, and see you all some night soon. Bin quiet round here, like, since his dad died.’

She had no answer, or anything to contribute to the mystifying conversation and its intrusive tone, and began to wonder if the man was crazy. ‘Gotta get on.’

‘Ta-ra! Might I say I’m very impressed, like, if this keeps up.’

Stephanie didn’t look back. She hurried on, still shaky from the confrontation with the youths and now confused by the neighbour.

As she closed the front door of number 82 she made a wish that all strangers would leave her alone forever. But of her encounters so far this evening, all in less than one hundred yards of the house, she quickly understood that another engagement with a stranger awaited, and this would be the oddest and most sinister contact yet.

The tall figure at the end of the hallway, a man she had never seen before, did not move his head as she came into the house more hastily than usual.

The man continued to stare intently at the solitary door at the foot of the ground floor corridor, situated on the right hand side. His long neck reached out of the scruffy brown puffer jacket, his forehead placed close to the ivory paintwork. He seemed to be listening with his eyes closed, while also issuing the weird suggestion of reverence, or prayer, his gangly body remaining perfectly still.

Stephanie picked up the post from the floor. It was stacked inside a red rubber band. Though none of the mail could possibly have been for her, she just felt a need to do something other than stand uncomfortably still.

She turned the light on. ‘Hi,’ she said to get the man’s attention, though she wasn’t entirely sure she wanted it.

The man did not speak or move. What light seeped through the hallway revealed short red hair, pale skin and a freakish height. His thin neck was distinguished by a pointed Adam’s apple, the skin of his jaw coated in shaving rash and a fuzz of coppery stubble. From his long feet, clad in dirty white trainers, to his gingery head, he must have been six foot seven or more.

As the period of time in which he ignored her lengthened and became acutely uncomfortable to endure, Stephanie’s thoughts filled with reminders of the voice in the bathroom, her invisible neighbour, her first room, and the mysterious male footsteps that walked this floor each morning, and possibly bolted up the stairs to the Russian girl’s room on the second floor. And for a painful moment, she genuinely wondered whether the man was real, or another one of them: heard and even seen, but who didn’t seem entirely here.

What is here?

The man turned his entire body to face Stephanie so quickly that she flinched and dropped the post. At the sight of her, his bony face didn’t soften its expression of pitiless distaste. This was an unkind face with unsmiling blue eyes; a face still vaguely boyish but toughened to an inflexibility, or limited range of expression, by hard times. A street face.

Stephanie cleared her throat. She retrieved the post from where she’d dropped it, then stared at the man without smiling.

His gaze did not waver, and remained severe, as if her presence in the hall was a great inconvenience.

She felt too light on her feet, ungainly, muted, horribly chastened. But by what? She’d only come home from work to the building where she rented a room. Who the hell was he to make her feel awkward and tense? Stephanie glared at the man before walking quickly to the staircase. He watched her without speaking.

As she climbed the stairs he laughed in a deep, forced way that almost became verbal: a ‘Ho, ho, ho’ accompanied by a mocking grin she didn’t look at for long. When he cut off the contrived laugh, he settled for staring at her until she passed from sight.

There had been nothing amorous in the intensity of his attention, but something that seemed far worse. When Stephanie reached her room she was grinding her teeth and clenching her fists, one of them around a stack of post that wasn’t for her. ‘Shit.’ She wasn’t taking the post back down there, where he was. But at least he’s real. There was no other comfort to draw from the encounter.