I pressed a palm to my chest. No, I had to be sure before I gave in to relief.
I padded across the basement and felt for the edges of the door in the wall. The plaster looked and felt as sealed as ever. I pushed at the centre of the doorway, but it didn’t give. It was as if it had been cemented shut, almost part of the brickwork. Aside from the fact that it clearly looked like a door, there was no indication it had ever been openable, let alone opened last night.
I scanned the floor again for any sign, a spot, a spray, of the violence I was convinced I’d committed.
A bright glint of something metallic at the centre of the concrete floor caught my eye. I knelt down to look closer.
A thick, curved needle.
I carefully picked it up with my thumb and forefinger. It was a hefty thing. Thicker than the delicate tinsel-like sewing needles in my grandmother’s sewing box, it had a weight to it, a robustness. It could probably be used to sew leather. Maybe it had belonged to the leatherworker Fergus talked about. I’d assumed he’d just made the whole thing up, but clearly there was some truth to his story. I rolled the needle between my fingers and looked up at the floorboards above. That was the spot where I’d been pricked when I first arrived. No wonder it hurt so much. But this didn’t explain what happened—or what I thought had happened—last night. Tucking the needle into my pocket, I went back upstairs.
I looked about the quiet house. Maybe it hadn’t happened at all.
I slumped down onto the floor in the middle of the living room, not stopping until I was fully laid out across the floorboards, head finding its way to the sheepskin rug. Relief flooded my body alongside the rising nausea and growing headache.
Of course I wouldn’t do something like that. It wasn’t too crazy to think that I’d imagined her there. Swung at nothing in the dark. Frightened myself. I’d been half-convinced there was some monster in the basement after the pinprick in my foot. But now I had the needle in my pocket. No monsters. No blood. No bodies. Just an old needle and a hangover.
I fingered the needle in my pocket.
Had I really imagined it all? It had felt so real.
Gingerly, I turned my aching head to the wall I shared with my neighbour and listened. She was quiet again today. It was strange. That first night I could hear every creak and groan in that place as if it had been my own house.
Now this morning, silence again.
I got up and listened. Nothing.
I pressed my ear to the wall. Still nothing.
She was alright, right? Probably just sleeping off last night’s pub visit. She hadn’t looked like the type that got out often. Maybe she was just hungover in bed, like where I should have been in that moment.
Or maybe she’s lying cold on the floor of her basement.
CHAPTER 18
I stood outside her front door. The air was still, the sky was overcast and that early-summer-late-spring clamminess was already starting to cling to my clothes. My tacky, unwashed, post-drinking skin felt thoroughly gross. I was minging. Bogging. I wished I’d had another bath first. A planter full of tumbling begonias had been added to my neighbour’s window sill. Surely that was enough evidence she was fine.
Unless she put it up yesterday after I left for the pub.
I peered through the window into the living room. The net curtain occluded much of what I could see. A shadow of furniture here and there. But no neighbour.
I backed away from the two houses and looked up to see if I could spot movement from the upper windows. Again, I don’t know whether it was the curtains or the reflection of the light grey skies, but I couldn’t get a sense of life within.
I checked my phone. It was eleven in the morning. She’d be up by now.
I wiped my face with my hands.
I should probably do something. Break down the door? Smash in a window?
Could try knocking first.
I raised my fist and then wavered over the wood. Just like I did last night when I decided not to invite her to the pub.
When you decided to ditch her.
Shut up.
Even though you knew what that felt like.
