SEVENTY-ONE

Amber sat in the kitchen and watched the sun rise over the trees at the end of the garden.

She had been drunk. A half empty bottle of rum, dehydration and a feeling of seasickness was sufficient evidence of excess. And she had immersed herself too quickly and too deeply in the faces and the stories that were shut inside the study. So many familiar eyes, smiling out of the old photographs beside yellowing headlines, all but forgotten in the world beyond her doors, had made the recollections materialize beyond the reach of her control.

That is all it was.

No one who came close to understanding what she had suffered, and what she knew, would hold her to account over a nightmare endured at any time for the remainder of her life. And since post-production on the feature film had finished, she had not examined the story of 82 Edgehill Road, and her leading role within it, in any way similar to last night’s scrutiny. Post-production was a year distant. So the cause of her recent relapse was obvious. And when you are alone, as she knew so well, it just takes longer to calm down.

She turned on the radio, tuned it to a local station. She half listened to a joyous report of fecundity in parts of South Devon: the size of the soft fruits, tomatoes, potatoes, wheat, the market gardens in bloom like never before, the best harvest in decades. She watched the same headlines every night on the local television. The cheery news made her feel better. This was a good time, this was a good sign. She was in a place of beauty, of growth; she would be healed by nature, by the sea air, the sun . . .

But how could she lay to rest this uneasy suggestion, the one she’d failed to dispel, that the nightmare she had suffered was distinctly different to those she had experienced during the first two years that followed her escape from that place? And, in both intensity and clarity, the nightmare was an exception to the dreams she’d endured while at sea. Those dreams had been nonsensical, old fragments reviving and blending with current situations: Knacker capering around the ship’s decks, dressed like a teenager and trying to sell drugs to wealthy octogenarians; Fergal captaining a ship in dress whites, his gingery face grinning from beneath a peaked cap; The Friends of Light holding a séance at an adjoining table in a restaurant.

The scars of her experience had manifested in curious ways. The ruffle and rustle of plastic would never be mere background noise again; polythene had lost its utilitarian innocence three years ago. She would be unable to live anywhere within view of a late Victorian house; the very design of certain houses made her shudder inwardly when passing them in the street. She had run from rooms to prove her aversion to the smell of Paco Rabanne aftershave, which brought on anxiety attacks. Her first sighting of cut hair on the tiled floor of a hairdresser’s salon, where she had her own long hair cut off and the remainder dyed black, had made her nauseous. Dust was something she could not abide on the floor of any room she crossed. She would never again sleep in a room that contained a fireplace; they had all been removed and the chimney flues filled before she took possession of the farmhouse.

Most of her more recent dreams she only half remembered after she’d awoken, their traces mere lingering discomforts that ceased unsettling her when their obvious absurdity was consciously confronted in daylight. Some dreams still made her call out and cry in her sleep, but there were fewer and fewer of those now. The shock of the surreal scenarios had lessened as time flowed behind the new course she had set in her life; as greater distances moved her away from that place.

The dream last night had been different. It had possessed textures that dreams should not emit: scents, temperatures, sounds and voices too loud and clear to be produced from the muddle of an unconscious mind.

She had been inside the farmhouse, she was sure of that, but it was transformed into another building, and one she had also once dreamed inside and in just such a vivid way; she had experienced things inside that other place that were also impossible, as doctors and therapists and counsellors had told her patiently, in reasonable voices, and in so many soothing rooms.

The dream had come too easily, as if provoked by the mere act of thinking about the house and the dead girls, by letting her heart reach out.

What did I do?

Amber watched the clock on the microwave. As soon as it was fully light she would go out and . . . do something . . . drive. Drive anywhere. Maybe visit a nearby town or seafront, go to an aquarium, a zoo, ride on a steam train, idle along a beach, eat a cream tea, because she no longer wanted to be alone in her new home.

The motivation to leave the house made her angry.

Already?

She felt tricked by the farmhouse, as if it had retaught her contentment, but used the promise of happiness as bait.

Intent on a shower and change of clothes, she paused at the foot of the staircase and looked up at the smooth walls and rosewood banisters. Her stomach clenched on coffee and residues of rum. Her neck and shoulders tensed. She was apprehensive about climbing these stairs and walking deeper inside her beautiful home. Up there, inside the study, were the mementoes that would make her dream of terrible things, over and over again, in a place she wanted to be at peace.

It’ll never end because you won’t let it end.

Burn the fucking lot!

Fingers spread wide on her cheeks, she closed her eyes. At least one year had passed since she had felt like this; since she had felt this bad. She’d almost forgotten how bad it could be.

Was you finking you could just walk away, girl? That we wouldn’t find you, yeah? You is taking the piss, girl.

Yeah. Yeah. You owe us three years’ rent on that room. Ho, ho, ho.

Was you finking you could take McGuires for cunts?

Stop! Stop!

She opened her eyes.

Don’t let them back in. Not their voices. Never again. Because when she heard the squeaking of the rats that she’d put down in that shit-tip of a house, she would see the two cruel and bony faces in her mind again. She would open a dialogue, a discourse she had endured most every day for a year after she’d escaped them, as they chattered and cajoled and manipulated and twisted her mind. It had taken one year of cognitive behavioural therapy to silence their voices.

Amber climbed the stairs.

Halfway up she saw the dust: a large tuft of sooty dross lying insolently on a middle step.