Into the Darkest Corner

I heard his voice change. ‘You’re going back to work?’

  ‘Yes, don’t worry, it won’t take long. I’ll probably be back before you get home.’

  There was a pause on the other end of the phone. ‘Cathy. You are okay? Aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, putting a smile into my voice, ‘of course I am. I just want to get this out of the way so that I won’t be worrying about it all night.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Take your phone with you.’

  ‘I will. I’ll see you later.’

  ‘I love you.’

  ‘You too,’ I said.

  When I rang off I stood for a moment, thinking about what I’d said and what it might have sounded like to anyone who might have been listening. I’d avoided speaking to Stuart in my flat before, just in case Lee had bugged the place, and was listening in. I wondered how long I could keep it up.

  I found a bus that was going in roughly the right direction, South of the river. Traffic was starting to get lighter, and it was completely dark by the time I got to Sylvia’s road. I walked from the station where the bus had dropped me off, trying to remember which of the almost identical roads was the right one. It was nearly an hour since Stuart had rung me in the flat.

  The painted black door was shut fast this time. I rang the buzzer for Flat 2. I could hear it ringing all the way from the back of the house, but there was no answer. I waited a moment, then rang again. I checked my watch. Ten past nine. Surely she should be at home? Most people were on a Sunday night, even in London. I rang again, and this time the intercom crackled into life. Not Sylvia, though – someone else.

  ‘Look, she’s clearly not at home. Why don’t you piss off?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I’m supposed to be meeting her, would you mind letting me in?’

  No reply – the intercom was silent.

  Well, I couldn’t just sit here all night. I walked to the end of the street, turning left, following the gable end of the terrace to the inevitable alleyway running along the back of the houses. It was pitch-dark down there, no doubt full of dog shit, overturned rubbish bins and all sorts of horrors – but at least, somewhere down there, was the back of Sylvia’s flat and the garden where we’d sat and drunk mugs of tea in the sunshine.

  Two hundred and ten steps across rough ground, exactly the same number as it had taken me from the front of her house to the end of the street, and I was faced with a gate, overgrown with weeds at the bottom, and a dilapidated wall. I felt the rough bricks, ran my fingers along the top, shoulder-height, and pulled myself up, scraping my knee, trying to get a toe-hold with my sneakers.

  Once I’d got my elbows up on the wall I could see into the garden, and the downstairs windows – all in darkness. Upstairs on the first and second floor all the windows were brightly lit, and wide open to the warm night. I’d have to be quiet.

  I pulled myself up onto the wall, balancing my behind precariously on the top, and debated what to do. It was more than likely that she just wasn’t home. She’d gone away for the weekend, gone to visit friends somewhere, or even her parents back up in Lancaster. She’d escaped from him, maybe for good, the way I never managed to.

  Or else she was inside. With all the lights off.

  Well, I’d come this far – I couldn’t just go home without checking. I scissored my legs over to the garden side of the wall and lowered myself down, scraping the backs of my legs down the brickwork and cursing myself for not wearing something more sensible than a sundress.

  I could hear voices, laughter, from the flat upstairs. Some sort of classical music – a piano, soothing, melodic. Perhaps they were having a dinner party.

  I trotted down the garden, lit up bright as day by the lights from upstairs, hoping to God that they wouldn’t choose that moment to cast a glance outside. Only just remembering in time the low wall which dropped down onto the patio, shrouded in shadow.

  Once my eyes had adjusted to the darkness I peered in through the glass to the living room beyond. It was much as I remembered – the prints, the misshapen sofa covered in satiny throws, books, magazines piled haphazardly. Through the doorway and into the gloom I could just about make out the doors in the hallway, bathroom on the left, bedroom on the right as far as I remembered.

  Both of the doors were ajar.

  That was it, then. Wherever she was, she wasn’t being held prisoner in her flat.

  I took a step back and my foot gave a little beneath me. It was the grille above the windows to the basement flat. I looked down into the dark pit beneath, the lights from above just showing the outline of the windows, also in complete darkness, and it made me shudder.

  Feeling rather foolish now, I chanced a quick run to the bottom of the garden, expecting a shout at any moment as someone upstairs noticed me with my bare arms and legs scooting across the grass.

  But before I took another breath, I was at the wall. It looked much higher from this side, and the brickwork was smoother. I was going to really struggle to get over. The gate leading on to the alleyway had a huge shiny padlock on it, so that wasn’t going to make it easy for me either. An old dustbin with a metal lid stood a few feet back from the wall. It was empty, as far as I could tell, although it didn’t smell too pleasant. I dragged it the remaining few feet across the tussocky grass and leaned it close against the wall, every scrape and clang sounding deafening above the pleasant sounds of Shostakovich’s second piano concerto from the rooms above.

  I tested my weight on the lid of the bin and it held. I only needed a leg up, really, and that was all I got, for as soon as my arms had enough grip on the top of the wall, the bin lid slid away from under my foot and clattered and clanged onto the grass. As I scrambled over the wall, the music suddenly fell silent and the voices – worried, ‘What was that?’ … ‘Oh, probably just a fox… don’t worry, darling, honestly.’

  I was on the other side of the wall, then, breathless, feeling stupid, wondering what the fuck I was doing clambering over walls when I could be at home with Stuart, who by now would be there wondering when I was going to be getting back.

  Time to go. Wherever Sylvia was, at least I’d checked.

  I jumped back on the only bus heading in the right direction. It left me on the other side of the park, less than a mile away, and I half-walked, half-ran through the darkness to get back to Talbot Street. The heat was getting worse, the odd rumble of thunder from a long way away punctuating my walk and threatening rain.

  I walked the length of the street, looked up at Stuart’s windows on the top floor as I passed and noted that the lights were on. He’d beaten me home. I fought the urge to go straight in and instead carried on walking, to the end of the street, turn left, round the back to the alleyway.

  I wanted to think.

  I’d not seen a soul on my walk from the bus stop; a few solitary cars and one cyclist had passed me, but no one on foot. Nobody walked in London these days, not in the suburbs at any rate. And not after dark.

  Just me.

  Something bad had happened to Sylvia. I knew it as surely as I knew my own name. She’d seemed so different. Not abrasive any longer, she was quieter, her eyes – haunted. I’d thought he was just using her to get to me, but what if he wasn’t interested in me any longer? What if he’d found someone else to control?

  That was my thought, right up until the moment when I peered through the gap between the gate and the hinge at the back of the house, and saw my dining room curtains wide open, and a light coming from within.

  I stood for a moment, frozen to the spot. He had been inside. He was probably still in there.

  I thought for a second, wondered about phoning Sam Hollands, and then considered that it might actually be Stuart – I’d given him a key – wondering whether I was downstairs and deciding to go and have a look to see if I was all right.

  Just then a figure appeared at the window and I shrank back, only to let out a long breath a moment later. It was Stuart, standing by the window with his mobile
phone in his hand, pressing keys. At that moment the phone in my pocket vibrated.

  C – Where are you? Are you all right? S x

  At that moment I wanted to see him more than anything else in the whole world. I ran to the end of the alleyway, stumbling over rough ground and laughing, almost, because he was there and everything was all right after all.

  All the way round to the front door. I put my key into the lock but somehow I already knew I wouldn’t need it. I pushed it with the key in the lock and it swung open. I flipped the latch and pushed it shut, checking once through force of habit, feeling stupid and happy and wanting to be upstairs now, wanting to be with Stuart, wanting to hold him and forget all about the past and just think about the future.

  At my flat door, I stopped for a moment and listened. Not a sound. Not a breath, a whisper.

  I turned the key in the lock, opened it and let it swing open. In front of me, I could see through to the living room and the dining room, both dark. The only light came from my bedroom.

  Something was dreadfully wrong. Why had Stuart turned the lights off?

  But then, standing in the doorway, I could smell it, smell him. Only faintly, but I recognised it and it made my heart pound, my stomach turn.

  Lee.

  He must be in there, in the living room.

  I tried to picture where he might be hiding, waiting for me to get home.

  I took a step into the hallway, another step until I was level with the open door, the light from my bedside lamp casting a soft glow across the floor, long, deep shadows.

  Stuart was lying on my bed, looking for all the world as though he’d fallen fast asleep. For a moment I breathed out and felt myself relax a little, but there was something unnatural about his position – and his shoes were still on. Then I saw something red on the pillow, spreading out onto the white cotton from the side of his head.

  I moved before I thought. ‘Stuart! Oh, no!’ and I was beside him, lifting his head in my hand, gazing in utter horror at the red on my fingers. He was breathing, regular shallow breaths.

  I heard a noise behind me and I froze.

  I stood up slowly, turned.

  He was in the doorway of my bedroom, blocking my exit.

  It was the strangest thing. Even though my heart was thumping, even though I felt nauseous and light-headed, I had a strange sense of calm. I recognised it: it was that dreadful inevitability I’d felt just before he was going to kill me last time. Of course he hadn’t managed to finish me off then, either. If he hadn’t managed it then, he wouldn’t manage it now. I almost laughed as I automatically calculated my anxiety level – probably about a sixty.

  ‘Mr Newell,’ I said, ‘how nice of you to stop by.’

  He laughed. At the same moment I sensed uncertainty from him. He wasn’t as big as he used to be, or maybe I’d just created this huge monster of a man in my mind? In any case, I don’t think he recognised me, either. I was a very different Catherine from the one he’d left behind.

  ‘Don’t think much to your new bloke,’ he said. ‘Bit of a pushover.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Just to talk.’

  ‘Come on, then.’

  To my surprise he let me pass. I cast a glance at the front door, wondering whether to chance it, and at the same time knowing that I wouldn’t leave Stuart behind.

  I put the light on next to the sofa and sat down. In the pocket of my skirt, my mobile phone. As he moved to sit opposite me, I pressed the button on the phone keypad that I hoped would redial the last number called. I gave it a few seconds and terminated the call. Hoping it had had time to ring the other end.

  ‘You look good,’ he said. And then, to my horror, ‘I missed you.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course I did. I thought about you every day, every single day. It should never have ended the way it did. It was all wrong.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I felt anger rising. It made me more defiant. I tried to consider my options. Be nice? Or be mean? Which was likely to buy me the most time?

  ‘You should have told me.’

  ‘Told you what?’

  ‘That you were pregnant. You should have told me, Catherine.’ His voice was quiet, almost tender.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You lost the baby, our baby. Didn’t you? If you’d told me… it would have been so different. We’d still be together.’

  ‘You mean you wouldn’t have tried to kill me if you’d known I was pregnant?’

  ‘I would have stopped you… being so tough on yourself. I would have taken better care of you, got you some help, before it came to all that…’

  I shook my head slowly. ‘You actually think it was my fault? You believe your own lies?’

  ‘Catherine, come on. You know what you were like. Of course it was your fault. That’s why I had to find you, to see you again. To stop you hurting yourself. To stop you doing it again. We could do it properly – try for a baby. We could be a family.’

  I stared at him for a moment, almost wanting to laugh. Of all the things I’d been anticipating for the last four years, this certainly wasn’t it. ‘I need a drink,’ I said at last. ‘Do you want one?’

  He looked at me for a long moment, those blue eyes contemplating. ‘Sure.’

  I went to the kitchen and got a bottle of wine out of the fridge. I was thinking about using it as a weapon. I think he realised that too, because he was on his feet and heading towards me when my mobile phone rang in my pocket.

  We faced each other. I pulled the phone out and looked at the display.

  ‘Don’t answer,’ he said, in exactly the same moment as I hit the ‘accept’ button.

  ‘Hi! Sam! How are you?’

  Sam Hollands’ voice on the other end, my salvation. Sounding tired. ‘I had a missed call. Everything okay?’

  ‘How was your Easter?’ I said. ‘I was thinking of you…’

  Lee grabbed the phone from my hand and threw it against the kitchen wall. It smashed into several pieces, scattering across the tiled floor. ‘I said don’t answer. Were you not listening? As usual?’ his voice rising, using his bulk to try to intimidate me.

  ‘That was a bit stupid,’ I said. ‘What if she comes to check on me?’

  I’d crossed the line. He hit me across the face with the back of his hand and I backed into the kitchen counter. My cheek stung, blood on the inside of my mouth. I should have been scared. I should have been terrified. Instead, I had simply had enough of this man controlling my life for so many years.

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Sam,’ I said. ‘Thought you’d have heard me say that. Of course, since you’ve broken my phone, you won’t be able to check if I’m telling the truth, will you?’

  He smirked at me. ‘Sam’s in Lancaster, so she’s not likely to call round, is she?’

  ‘Different Sam.’

  I took the moment of relaxation to grasp the wine bottle around its neck and swing it as hard as I could, a scream of rage from within me that probably half-deafened him. I was aiming for his head but I caught his shoulder, not hard enough to cause damage but hard enough to knock him off balance. The bottle slipped out of my fingers and crashed to the floor.

  I seized the chance and ran for the bathroom, slamming the door behind me and locking it.

  ‘Go away!’ I screamed. ‘Go away, leave me alone!’

  As if he would. It was only a second later that the hammering started, followed by the pause, then the thump as he shouldered the door. It jumped on its hinges but held. It wouldn’t hold much more.

  When the door slammed back against the edge of the bath with a noise like the world coming to an end, I was ready for him. The only weapon I had was a can of deodorant, which I sprayed in his face whilst his arms flailed at me, punches flying, but none of them connected. He backed out of the room, his hands over his face, coughing, yelling, ‘You bitch! You crazy fucking bitch, Catherin
e!’

  And I was screaming too. ‘What have you done to Stuart? What have you done, you bastard! You shit!’

  I pushed past him, running for the kitchen, for a knife. Anything. My fingers felt like jelly as I pulled out drawers, whimpering, searching for anything, and all I could find was a potato peeler. I gripped it as hard as I possibly could and turned to face him.

  He wasn’t there. No sound except the crazy thumping of my heart, and the first heavy drops of rain landing on the balcony outside, splashing off the glass. Minutes passed.

  ‘Come out!’ I yelled. ‘Where are you? You bastard! Where the fuck are you! I am not fucking afraid of you any more. Come on then, you fucking chickenshit coward!’

  My hands were shaking but my grip on the peeler was tight, held aloft as though it had a six-inch blade of steel instead of two blunt inches and a plastic handle.

  If he’d been standing in front of me I would have rammed it into his body, as far as it would go, into his neck, into his face. But he just wasn’t there.

  In the half-light from the bedroom I looked around, frantically. He could have gone out of the front door. I chanced a glance around the kitchen and saw something else – the lighter for the gas stove. I shoved the peeler into my pocket and picked up the lighter instead.

  ‘Show yourself!’ I screamed. ‘What are you waiting for?!’

  From here I could see to the front door, slightly ajar, the light from the hallway filtering in. ‘No,’ I muttered to myself, and ran towards the door after him.

  He was behind the sofa and stood suddenly, tripping me up, the can of deodorant and the lighter skittering out of my hands and across the floor as I landed face-down on the carpet with an almighty thump.

  He laughed, his face manic in the half-light, his face wet with tears, residue from the spray smeared around his eyes. ‘You’re not afraid? Huh? Is that what you said?’ He was sitting astride my chest, my fists pounding him as hard as I could everywhere and anywhere I could reach, but clearly not bothering him in the slightest.

  ‘Get off me, you shit,’ I hissed. ‘Get the fuck off me!’