Page 19 of Love Unlocked

‘I have a no-men-in-the-apartment rule and I’m breaking it,’ she says to him, stabbing the watermelon again.

‘I’m your brother.’

‘That’s okay, I don’t mind. He’s your brother,’ Melody says, agreeing.

‘Doesn’t mean you should trust him. Women are statistically most likely to be murdered by a man they know.’

‘Hello!’ Tom says. ‘I’m right here, and you’re the one stabbing watermelons.’

‘And I don’t really know him,’ Melody says.

‘I won’t be home tonight,’ Claire says.

Melody’s stomach sinks. She’ll have to make plans at short notice.

‘She’s afraid to be alone,’ Claire explains to Tom, as if Melody isn’t in the room.

‘Just at night.’

‘Are you afraid of the dark?’ Tom asks.

‘No.’

Melody ponders how to explain how every little sound terrifies her. How she sets traps from the front door all the way to her bedroom and sleeps with the door open and one eye open. How she’s afraid she’ll be attacked, that the place will go on fire, that she’ll be raped, beaten, abducted, tortured, that she’ll wake to find a psycho standing over her watching her. That her entire family and friends will be kidnapped and she’ll be forced to choose one to live. She’s afraid there will be natural disasters, that the Liffey will flood, that there will be a fire in the building, that a tornado will whip through the city, that a foreign army will overthrow the country, that there will be an outbreak, another pandemic, and that having one person in the apartment with her, just one, in another room, asleep, who hasn’t the ability to protect her in any of these circumstances will be the difference in her not having any of these thoughts at all.

They’re both looking at her.

‘She’s afraid of her thoughts,’ Claire says, in her practical voice.

‘Are you staying?’ she asks Tom.

He looks hopefully at his sister.

‘Nope. Tom is going to be busy moving on with his life. I said one night and it’s been more than one night.’

‘Okay,’ he says, with a sigh. He pulls himself up from the couch and drags himself to the counter where he studies the watermelon that she has stabbed, and the photographs. ‘That one,’ he says, pointing to a knife with a serrated edge. ‘It matches the slash here.’

‘And that’s why you’re not staying here tonight,’ Claire says, eyeing her brother.

Melody takes her breakfast to her room and immediately rings Belinda.

‘Hi, Mum, how do you fancy a night in Dublin tonight?’

Usually Belinda says yes. She likes a day in the city now and then, but mostly she is the best mother who is more often than not there when Melody needs.

‘I can’t, sweetheart, I’m sorry. I’m currently going through Derek’s things and getting them all out of here. Out, out, out.’

She sounds distracted, busy. As though she’s stuffed inside someone’s shoe.

‘The man is a hoarder and I’m not being stuck with his crap.’

‘What are you doing with his things?’ Melody asks, aghast, feeling heartbroken for boring Derek. All of his weird little bric-a-brac tat that he bought at yard sales. How he’d proudly exhibit eerie little porcelain statues that look like they belonged in old lady houses, or a pair of binoculars that need a new lens, or tide clocks that don’t work.

‘I’m putting them in boxes and if he doesn’t come and get them quickly I’ll send them to a charity shop.’

‘Mum, that’s mean.’

She sighs. ‘I’ll give him a day to collect them.’