The House Guest
By the end of the session, the women looked exhausted, their private thoughts and fears exposed so fully I could barely hide my embarrassment. ‘You should all be proud of yourselves,’ Della was saying as they sank into the expensive sofas, though they didn’t look it, and I imagined with dread having to take part in one of these exercises myself. Like the excruciating improv sessions for Drama GCSE, only worse.
But despite it all, there was something bewitching about that evening that stays with me, even now, after everything that’s happened – the sense of secrets shared, confessions absolved, our spotless, minimalist surroundings. I can still picture myself, that uncertain suburban girl, taking one last look around this sophisticated North London home. It was dark outside, and the room had taken on a warm glow, thanks to the vanilla candles that gave off a sweet, almost sickly scent. I knew that the house I shared with Liam and Gina would look even smaller and gloomier when I got back that evening, and I had a pang of something that could have been envy but felt more like ambition. Here was a life I had not believed existed. But perhaps it could be mine, too, one day. Anything seemed possible in that moment.
I turned to leave with the others, but Della pulled my arm, motioning for me to wait while they put on their coats and said their goodbyes. It was only when we were standing on the doorstep, alone in the cool evening air, that the sense of familiarity hit me fully. I’d felt it when we first met, and I felt it then, that dizzying rush of memory. Where did I know her from?
‘You will come again, won’t you?’ she was saying, squeezing my arm.
‘I’ll try to …’ I shifted away slightly. Was it her eyes? The steady gaze. That confidence.
‘I was like you once, you know,’ she said, after a pause.
I turned to look at her, the old paranoia kicking in immediately.
‘Always searching. Never able to rest,’ she continued. My heart rate picked up. There she was, talking as though she knew all about Scarlett. Knew what we’d been through. But she couldn’t, could she?
‘I’m just … I’m really busy. And it’s—’
‘I know,’ Della interrupted, laying a hand on my arm. ‘You feel lost. But eventually you realise that what you’re looking for is inside you. And it takes work – that’s where I come in. I can help you find yourself.’
I exhaled, my breathing slowing. Of course she didn’t know. It was more of that therapy talk. But I couldn’t deny that I needed to move on. Perhaps I might even learn something about myself, at least until the free sessions ran out.
‘I’ll see you next week,’ I said uncertainly, taking a step back. Della smiled, her eyes seeming almost to tear up in the light from the street lamp.
‘I’m so pleased,’ she said, and I felt my body expand as I drank in her approval.
I was like a wilting plant then. Like any young woman, thirsty for recognition, reassurance, comfort. It could have been anyone who came across me, nurtured me, watched me grow. But it was her. It was our lives that became twisted together like vines, impossible to untangle.
‘You won’t regret it,’ she said, almost under her breath, as I walked down the path into the darkness of the street.
Sometimes when I wake in the night, I can still hear those words.
Chapter Two
The sun streams through the small high window, casting a shadow that draws a line diagonally across the bare, greying wall. I follow it with my eyes until it reaches the corner of the room, a spider scuttling into the darkness. I let my head fall back on the bed, listening for the creak of the spring, the one that reminds me where I am, even in the early hours, when I wake shivering and damp from the cooling sweat.
I reach my arm out and touch the cold Formica side table, feeling for my plastic cup. Glass could break and create a weapon, or worse. I hear shouts, followed by silence – enforced or cajoled? It’s hard to tell.
Why am I going over all this again? What could possibly be gained from reliving those months in London, the girl I was then? Still, I can’t help it. Scenes run through my mind over and over, memories projected like film reel. I lie awake late into the night, sifting through each encounter for clues, replaying conversations, listening out for giveaway words, a sign, anything that could have served as a warning.
What else is there to do in here, anyway? At least this way I can fill the tiny, bare room with people, noises, light. I can create a world for myself inside my head, like I’ve always done, one way or another. Maybe, somehow, I’ll be able to work out how I ended up here. This hollow shell, the emptiness inside the biggest part of me.
I swallow, that bitter taste. The anger rises in my chest. My shoulders tense. That’s why I’m doing this, really: I need to piece it all together. To understand how I came to give up everything I had. Or to have it taken away.
But why start there – with the Janes? Why not start with Della? With the day she turned up at the café, changing the temperature of the room, the energy around us, the sense of possibility almost tangible. Changing everything.
She was watching me, I could feel it. The blonde woman in the corner. I’d been trying to clear tables, but I felt hot, the left side of my face prickling as if I’d fallen asleep in the sun. I let my hair fall forward – the steam from the coffee machine had made it into strings, and I peered through them, over my shoulder. But she’d looked away; she was reading her book, pen in hand. Perhaps I’d been imagining it. Anything to distract myself from the squawking babies and the relentless drone of the grinder.
It was mid-shift on a Wednesday. I’d already gone to that place I went in my mind, when it all got too much. I didn’t even see the kid’s smoothie as I swept my cloth across the table. And then it was too late.
‘That’s an iPhone, you know,’ a woman hissed, her face pink against an auburn bob, pointing her phone at me, its screen blank. A copper-haired boy of three or four was standing next to her, red juice dripping down his beige dungarees.
‘I’m sorry, I …’
‘It’s going to need fixing. That’s if it can be fixed. I’m going to have to talk to the manager. We’ll need some kind of reimbursement …’
‘What?’ I could barely hear above the blood pounding in my ears. What would that be: two weeks’ wages? A month’s rent? And for her – probably an afternoon’s spending money.
Pete must have seen the way I was staring because he swooped in and took over.
‘I’m really sorry about all this. I’m the manager, can I offer you some free drinks? A pastry?’
I turned away, grateful, though I knew I’d be for it later. I busied myself with the tables by the door, as far away as possible from the bowing and scraping going on at the till. Pete was using his soothing voice, the rueful smile he saved for the more attractive customers; the one that said he could be running somewhere much more impressive than this small organic café on Crouch Hill, with its bleached pine and signs exhorting customers to Keep Calm And Drink Coffee. The scene was quieter now, the phone restarted, the mishap smoothed over. But the hum in my head hadn’t died down. The blonde woman had to touch my arm twice before I even registered.
‘Are you OK?’ she asked. I was slow to turn around. She was another one of those Crouch End mums, after all – the ones who usually ignored me, unless I’d recently ruined their top-of-the-range smartphone. But when I looked up, the concern in her eyes seemed genuine. She’d put her book to one side.
‘Fine, thanks.’ I brushed away the tears that were gathering.
‘It’s just, you seem a bit …’ The woman trailed off. ‘Here, sit down a minute, have a drink of something.’ She pulled out a chair, but I shook my head, glancing over at Pete.
‘Thanks, that’s really kind, but I’d better not. Not after all that.’ I motioned towards the till and she raised an eyebrow with a smile. Perhaps she wasn’t one of them after all.
‘Can I get you a refill?’ I asked, looking at her empty cup.
‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t want anything … I’ll have a black Americano.’
‘Good choice.’ I nodded. Not like most of the customers around here, with their skinny lattes and cappuccinos.
‘I like to taste my coffee, rather than turning it into a …’
‘Milkshake?’ We both smiled, and then I looked away, my eye resting on her book. The Power of Now. Self-help. I don’t know why I felt disappointed. It was so rare to see a customer reading a book instead of a phone, I suppose, and I’d hoped it might be one I’d read, so we could have a proper conversation for once. One of the classics I’d gone through in those years at the library; maybe even a mystery, though she didn’t look the type.
‘Eckhart Tolle,’ she said as I brought over her coffee. ‘The book, I mean. Very inspiring. Though maybe not your thing?’ She put the paperback into her large, expensive-looking leather handbag and a look passed between us. An understanding – between me and this glamorous older woman, who seemed to care what some young waitress thought of her reading material. What would she say if she could see the stash of children’s books I kept hidden under my bed, for the nights when I woke panting after running down empty streets, shouting in a voice that wouldn’t come? Anne of Green Gables. Little Women. The ones that made me feel safe, like they had all those years ago.
After a moment’s pause, the woman reached into her bag and pulled out a piece of pink paper.
‘I hope you don’t think I’m being too forward, but I wondered if you might like to …’ she held out a flyer, with the letters AIM written in block capitals. ‘I’m holding a group session next week. It might be exactly what you need.’
I must have looked confused, because she added, ‘My name’s Della Hunter. I’m a life coach. You might have seen me on television?’
I looked at her more closely. For a moment I had that stomach-sinking feeling, when a face from the past appears in the wrong place. Blond hair tied loosely, light eyes, confident, as though she was daring me to recognise her. Perhaps I had seen her on TV, but those eyes, so pale blue they looked almost unreal, the way they seemed to cut right through you – she was almost more familiar than that. Closer to home. Anyway, I didn’t have much time for telly, what with my shifts and the search. I felt a memory pulling at me and I concentrated on trying to bring it into focus, but it was no good.
‘Sorry, I … yes, I think I have seen you on TV,’ I said, and she gave the kind of self-assured smile I was used to seeing in that setting. Perhaps that’s all it was: she looked like all the other women in Crouch End. The same expensively casual style – a crisp white shirt, gold chain, designer jeans. None of them had stains at the sleeves where they’d accidentally mopped up spills. They didn’t wear comfortable shoes because they were on their feet all day.
I looked at the flyer, trying to ignore the niggling feeling that there was a face that matched hers, somewhere in my memory bank. There was a tiny nick in her skin, just under her right eye, and my mind snagged on that. Where had I seen it before?
I heard a small sigh and tried to focus on what I was reading. AIM: Accessing Inner Motivation. What was all this?
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘I might come along.’ I was sure I wouldn’t.
‘I hope you do,’ Della said and then, resting her hand on my arm, she held my eye, lowering her voice. ‘You will find what you’ve lost, Kate. Don’t give up.’
My stomach lurched. What did she know? But she’d already switched back into a breezy sales patter. ‘The first three sessions are free, while you see whether my style of coaching is for you … People always stay.’ She smiled. ‘All the details are on the flyer.’ And then from nowhere, with what must have been a surge of sympathy for a waitress down on her luck, she hugged me.
‘Don’t worry,’ she said, into my ear, ‘everything will get better, you’ll see.’
She held me at arm’s length, studying my face, and I felt my eyes fill with tears again, though not the frustrated kind this time. It was more like relief, a sense of acceptance.
And then, without warning she was gone, the door slamming shut behind her.
‘Who was that?’ Pete asked. He was looking at me as though I’d grown a new head – his awkward waitress, not long arrived in London, hugging some beautiful customer out of nowhere. But I just shrugged.
‘I don’t know. Isn’t she a regular?’ I could still feel the weight of her hands resting on my shoulders. Had she been able to tell in those few moments how much I’d been struggling since I got to London? Or even, somehow, why I was here?
‘Never seen her before,’ Pete said, shaking his head, and we both watched the door as though she might walk back in at any minute – this stranger, so familiar, who had turned up at the right moment and made me feel, fleetingly, so understood; so at home.
‘We’re having a house meeting.’
It was the last thing I wanted to hear as I closed the front door. I was desperate to get upstairs and google ‘Della Hunter’; work out where I knew her from. The café Wi-Fi had been patchy all day, and I’d run out of data. But Liam was standing in the doorway to the living room, his dark eyes glinting, and beyond him Gina was slumped on the threadbare sofa, looking like she was waiting for a detention.
‘The rent’s going up,’ Liam said, before I’d even got my coat off. I looked at him in shock. I was barely making it through the month as it was.
But Liam was caught up in the drama of it all – any opportunity to bring his reluctant housemates together. ‘Joanne’s well aware of the upturn in the housing market and she wants to cash in,’ he said, sitting down next to Gina and scooping up the pile of papers lying on the grubby glass coffee table. ‘Don’t worry, though. We’re not giving in without a fight. This place is a dump.’
I sat down and tried to catch Gina’s eye, but she was too busy picking her nails to notice – they were painted bright pink today, to match her workout leggings.
Liam was right, of course. The house smelled of rotting carpets, and there had been almost constant infestations in the three months I’d lived there – rats, then mice, then flies. The fabrics Gina bought visiting her gran in Nigeria hadn’t done much to cover up the tatty sofas, and the crimson velvet curtains created a gloom even on sunny days, though they did at least shield us from next door’s drug deals, and the almost constant traffic crossing our section of the Harringay ladder and onto Green Lanes. But what could you expect for what we were paying? If Liam started making a fuss, we might get thrown out. Where could I possibly find to live in London that was cheaper than this?
‘Seriously, look at this place though,’ Gina said, fiddling with her braids. ‘That woman’s taking the piss.’
‘Well, you’re always at your mum’s or in Dalston.’ Liam shot Gina a look. We clearly weren’t the sitcom house-share he’d had in mind.
‘God, what do you care?’ Gina rolled her eyes at me and stretched up from the sofa. ‘Anyway, I’ve got hot yoga, and then I’m staying at Nate’s. Later.’ She shut the living-room door behind her.
‘Give her a break,’ I said to Liam. ‘She doesn’t owe you anything.’
I didn’t understand what Liam was doing there, really. He’d moved from Dublin six years earlier and worked in computers for a media company – something called front-end development. He must have earned a decent amount, more than Gina or me on our zero-hours contracts, but he chose to live in this dump, watching his flatmates come and go every six months or so, trying to create some kind of weird, forced friendship dynamic. He was older, too. Only by three years, but I sure as hell hoped I wasn’t living somewhere like this by the time I was twenty-eight.
Liam was always on the verge of launching the next website or app that was going to make his fortune, and he told me about his latest as I heated up some leftovers.
‘It’s called “online reputation management”,’ he was saying, sitting down opposite me as I finished off the rest of last night’s pasta pesto. ‘Everyone wants to clean up their Google search, don’t they?’
‘Do they?’
‘Course they do. I can make sure only good things come up when someone searches for you online.’ He was watching each forkful as it left my plate, and I sped up a little, keen to get upstairs. ‘Imagine you’re looking for a job, or you’re a business. Or you said the wrong thing once on Facebook. I can make that go away.’
I paused, my fork mid-air. ‘So, you can make people disappear … But can you find them?’
‘No problem. Who are you looking for?’
‘No one in particular. Just wondering.’ I didn’t know if I could trust him with that information yet.
I watched him push his dark hair from his face as he went on about personal brands and unique selling points. He wasn’t bad looking, with sharp-angled features and thick brows, and he was sweet, bringing home crosswords from the newspapers at work ever since he’d heard me discussing clues with Dad on the phone one Sunday. But Liam wasn’t such a wordsmith, and sitting bent over the kitchen table together, I couldn’t help feeling like we were playing parts – the long-married couple, rather than two relative strangers who’d found themselves in the same dingy London terrace. Besides, I didn’t have time to get distracted by any kind of house-share romance.
‘Kate? I’ve lost you, haven’t I? Sorry.’ He looked hurt, or maybe embarrassed. ‘What have you been up to? We’ve barely seen you the last few days.’
I considered telling him about the woman who’d come into the café that afternoon and the flyer she’d given me. But I already knew it would come out all wrong – she’d end up sounding odd, or I would. I hadn’t had a chance to make sense of it all yet. So instead I grabbed my bag and dumped my plate in the sink.
‘Nothing much. Just working, you know. Trying to get extra shifts so I can make the rent. Thanks for talking to the landlady.’ I smiled and Liam looked all pleased. ‘You give her hell.’
I closed my bedroom door behind me, appreciating for a moment the feeling of shutting myself away in the one small space I’d carved out for myself. Even if it was a featureless box, one grimy window, tatty desk, Ikea bookshelf. It was mine. I flopped onto my single bed and opened up my laptop.
Della Hunter: Be Your Own Life Coach. That was her latest book, though she’d published a few and been on most of the daytime TV shows by the looks of it. I couldn’t find anything about her group though, this AIM business, so I read up a bit on life-coaching and what it involved – personal goals, achievement targets. And then I skimmed the missing persons forums, as I did every night, to see if there were any new developments, any sightings, any leads.
By the time I got through it all, it was gone eleven. I needed to get some sleep before my early shift, but I found myself looping back to her web page: ‘Della Dares, Do You?’ A headshot took up most of the home screen, a close-up of that broad smile, pale eyes animated, white collar crisp and hair twisted up, with wisps arranged prettily around her face.
She must have been at least ten years older than me, maybe more, but in this picture her face was entirely without lines. Perhaps there was a filter on it … but there was that little dip, under her eye. That tiny imperfection.
I felt a nagging again in the pit of my stomach. I closed my eyes and tried to give shape to a memory that wanted to break through, but I got lost in the haze. Ragged cartwheels on a small patch of lawn. Whispers from bed to bed. The fragments, before everything went dim.
Della’s face faded into all the others over the years. It was no use. I lay on my bed and tried to clear my mind. I pictured the blue sea, the waves stretching out. I listened for the birds, the long grass swishing in the wind.
As I drifted off, I replayed the words Della had said to me in the café, so kind and reassuring, so perceptive. ‘You will find what you’ve lost, Kate.’ I was just sinking under, giving in to the pull, when my eyes shot open. I sat up in bed, my heart racing.
How had she known my name?
Chapter Three
The market was quiet. It was early April, a couple of days after the first meeting at Della’s house. I was still deciding whether I should go again. The meeting itself had left me on edge, as our encounter at the café had. Della must have heard Pete address me during the smoothie fallout, there was no other rational explanation. But that still didn’t account for the sense of recognition I’d had, the feeling we’d met somewhere before.
That was why I wanted to see her, I suppose. To work out where I knew her from. And to get another fix of her attention. Already, I felt more like my old self, more alive, more confident. Anyway, I’d said I would go, and it wasn’t like I had any other pressing engagements after work on a Tuesday. There were only so many hours I could spend at the market.
I usually got there earlier, when it was in full swing and the tourists were everywhere. But today I’d caught the 29 to Camden straight after work, hoping to catch a different crowd.
It was still busy; everywhere I looked a blur of eyes, mouths, phones pressed to cheeks, heads turning away from the low sun’s glare. I walked along the canalside searching the faces. Every stall I went past, I was sure would be the one. At every turn, I was ready to see Scarlett’s eyes – knowing, mocking. The tangle of curls. The upright back. The way she always held herself, defiant.
I studied the lines on the faces, the crinkles of foreheads, the piercings, the tattoos, the dye-jobs, the dreadlocks. The stallholders were a more alternative bunch than their customers on the whole, though you did see the odd punk browsing the stands, left behind from another century. Mostly it was school groups, tours, visitors on a pilgrimage to a once trendy part of London. And, at this time in the evening, the late workers and early drinkers, heading towards pubs, a day done and an evening yet to come.
It was the locals I was interested in, though. The ones who seemed to have made a life for themselves here, standing by as their market got polished up, re-paved, sanitised. I watched them as they stood by their over-priced puppets and vintage beer mats, sharing knowing looks across the heads of tourists. They lit joss sticks and cradled cups of chai from the stall by the lock. And occasionally they caught my eye. Some of them had started to notice me, I think – loitering in the corners, haunting the market, watching.
I’d always had an eye for faces. Nosy, Mum called it. Stop staring. Even as a baby I’d just looked at her, silently, she said. Slow to talk. Disconcerting. But it had come in useful in recent months. Perhaps I’d been preparing the skill my whole life, without even knowing it. Sometimes I wondered about that – how much life shaped you, and how far you made your own fate. Had I known what was coming? My eyes and brain perfecting the flicker and scan, flicker and scan.
Today was one of the good days, when I felt hopeful. I enjoyed getting caught up in the forward motion, swept along, able to disappear. Surrounded by so many others, I didn’t have to worry about what anyone thought of me. Whether they were looking at me. Whether I was being judged.
It was only when the crowd thinned out, as I got further along the canal, that the loneliness hit. I stopped in the patchy sunlight on a bench by the towpath, watching the students and suits go by, earphones in, silently marching to the same beat. Furtively, though barely anyone glanced in my direction, I checked the map on my phone, tracing my finger over the spread of the market either side of Camden High Street, reminding myself of its contours.
It was much bigger than I’d remembered from my few visits as a teenager. When I first got to London, I’d imagined my task would be fairly easy. Scarlett worked here somewhere, it was just a case of finding her. That was before I discovered it was made up of different sections, with different names. Some of the stalls would rotate. Others were on different floors, up steep staircases and through narrow corridors.