TWENTY-ONE

It was Knacker. ‘Awright, darlin’.’ He was holding a bottle of wine and two glasses. ‘Didn’t like the fought of you being on your own down here on Friday night. Fought you might like to celebrate moving in, like. House warming.’

Had he been listening outside her door? The thought of Knacker knowing Ryan was no longer an alternative for accommodation chilled her. ‘No. Not a good time. But thanks.’

Reeking of aftershave, Knacker stepped into the room without invitation, his body moving at her and around her at the same time. He came so close she pulled back as if from a blow.

‘Don’t be like that. I can see from a mile away that you been crying again. Somefing upset ya?’ He raised the wine glasses. ‘Nuffin’ funny, like. No offence, sister, but you ain’t my type and I don’t mix business wiv pleasure. It’s not like I’m short a that kind a fing anyway.’ He spoke as though he were rejecting a proposition from her. ‘Just offering a bit a hospitality, like.’

She could not refuse him entrance. It wasn’t really her room, but a token of his charity; she’d been in it for one night and her ownership of the space hadn’t been established. The realization prompted a vision of his face going stiff and white with rage if she told him to piss off; followed by another of her standing outside in the rain with her bags at her feet.

‘Mind if I sit?’ Even if she had minded it wouldn’t have done any good, and when he sat heavily on her bed she shivered with revulsion. He was steadily erasing the last vestiges of her resistance. Deliberately too, and with relish, and she hated him for it.

‘No wonder you can’t keep a fella, girl. Face like that. Who’d wanna look at that all day?’

‘You . . .’ Her voice died when Knacker raised his chin provocatively. He was wearing a new red Helly Hansen ski jacket and Diesel jeans with his pristine green trainers. A peacock hooligan; she’d never liked them.

‘I hear you met Fergal. Me cousin. Said he seen you downstairs.’ As he spoke his eyes slid about as he scoped out the room behind her. ‘That the post?’ He rose and snatched it off the little table. ‘What you doing wiv it?’

‘I . . . picked it up.’

Every trace of mocking humour vanished from his eyes so quickly it shocked her. ‘I can see that, but it ain’t yours.’

‘I know.’ She swallowed. ‘Your cousin, he . . .’

‘What?’

‘Startled me. And I forgot I had it in my hand.’

Knacker was delighted and sat down again. ‘Startled you! I like that, “startled”. You don’t hear that much. You’s got a nice way of putting fings, girl. You just need to smile a bit and the world’s your oyster.’

‘What was he doing? Downstairs, by that door?’

Knacker frowned. ‘It’s his house as well as mine. He can do what he likes.’

It struck her as odd that a cousin would be a co-owner of the house. ‘Who lives down there?’

Knacker started to sniff. ‘No one. Out of bounds.’ He uncapped the wine bottle. ‘That whole part of the house is.’

‘Why?’

‘We need to do a bit of work on it. Here, you want some a this booze or not? Don’t often touch it much meself. Loopy juice. I get a couple in me and people’s holding me back, like. Does somefing to me head. I prefer a bit a weed, bit a coke. But I don’t fink one glass will hurt.’

Knacker’s cousin, Fergal, resting his head against the door in an unlit corridor, as if meditating, had not appeared like preparation for renovations. And Knacker was trying to change the subject.

‘Decorating?’ she said as a prompt.

‘Bigger job, love. Structural work first, like. We gonna have our hands full.’

‘A man lives down there though? I’ve heard him go out in the morning. Or was that your cousin?’

Knacker avoided her eyes, sniffed. ‘Probably.’ He passed a glass brimming with white wine at her. ‘Here you are, time to stop nosing about and start drinking.’

Stephanie took the glass and resigned herself to using the coffee table as a seat.

For the next thirty minutes, stupefied by her own awkwardness and reticence, and never offering more than monosyllabic answers if she could help it, Stephanie fielded the landlord’s quick-fire questions about her temporary work, her stepmother, her friends, what she studied, with Knacker taking a special interest in her psychology A level: ‘Been finking about doing somefing like that meself’.

She did her best to mentally screen the bragging monologues that formed the majority share of his discourse, and mostly looked at the floor with a dazed expression on her face, hoping her lack of engagement would cut short the duration of his visit. He didn’t seem to notice, and his face grew redder from the wine. As well as his fondness for undermining her, he found selling an idea of himself as a wily, tough, financially successful man even more delightful. He claimed he had been a paratrooper, that he had property ‘all over’, he was a builder, did ‘electrics’, and once had a nightclub in the rave scene. Spain was a popular topic. He’d done ‘a bit of everyfing. You name it, done it. All of it.’

He wanted to impress her. Which was futile as she hated him and considered him ridiculous. She found his expectation of approval astounding, considering how he had bullied and insulted her from her first day at the house; a memory of his taunts made her stomach writhe at the very sight of him. But Knacker appeared unable to accept her evident dislike. Either that or he was stubbornly resisting her signals, which made her nervous.

As his self-aggrandizing gathered momentum, she found herself acknowledging, with difficulty, that permanent roles had already been assigned: he had the upper hand and would not take kindly to her digressing from this position. Just like the bullies she’d encountered in casual work. Just like her stepmother. In her unfortunate experience of what she understood to be a form of narcissism – because her stepmother had been diagnosed with a narcissistic personality disorder while her dad was still alive – her only real defence would be a retreat and a removal of herself from his presence. Only that wasn’t possible until she had more money. She wondered if her frustration was contributing to her perception of him and the house, and perhaps even warping that perception.

‘. . . You see, girl. Life is what you make it. End of the day, like, what you need to remember . . .’

What to do? She had no work lined up for the following week, and only £120 to her name. Once Knacker the arsehole left her room, she would call her friends in Stoke, like Ryan suggested, and see if she could borrow a sofa tomorrow. But for how long? Indefinitely? The work situation in her home town was as impossible as anywhere she’d known, and her stepmother was there. Going back to Stoke would not only be an admission of defeat but a dead end. She wondered if she would ever have the strength to leave it a second time, and alone, without Ryan.

It would take six days for her new cash card to arrive. She couldn’t stay here that long. But if she went to Stoke she’d still have to come back here to collect the new card. What to do? She wanted to scream and keep on screaming.

‘End of the day, when all is said and done, like, I’m a fighter, me . . . You’ll never . . . a McGuire . . .’

She began to eye her uninvited visitor’s new clothes and she pondered the absence of any evidence of renovation in the property. Knacker had lied about this room being newly decorated. In fact, he’d told so many lies she doubted even he could keep track of them, but he would become instantly hostile if she pointed out contradictions. Her thoughts were throttling her; they’d been a noose all day and most days for months now.

‘Problem with most people—’

‘What’s her story? The girl next door.’ She asked the question to prevent Knacker from giving her any more advice about life.

‘What you talking about? Who lives here, who lives there? What’s it to ya?’

‘Perfectly natural to want to know who you’re living next to in shared accommodation. And you seem to have an interest in your tenants.’ She opened the palms of her hands to indicate his increasingly sprawled posture, or lack of posture, on her bed.

And that was going too far, because now he’d started to go pale, and his eyes were lidding. There was also a shrug as he sat upright, and a rustle as both shoulders rotated inside the ski jacket.

She kept her tone of voice level, struggling to suppress the sarcasm. ‘It’s just that I keep hearing them. Girls. Upset. But they won’t speak to me. In the bathroom—’

‘I don’t get you. I don’t get you at all. You get the best room in the house for forty quid a week. Which, I might add, may come under review sooner than you fink if you keep this up. Who lives here, who lives there? Other people’s mail in your hand. It’s none of your fuckin’ business. You is prying. What’s your game, eh?’

‘I don’t have one. I’m just—’

He wasn’t listening. He was working himself up. She remembered what he’d said about the effect alcohol had upon him. She swallowed.

‘I’ll tell you what your game is—’

The door opened so quickly they both jumped.