protracted rattle and a thud. Though it sounded like the springing of a trap, it was the sash of an upstairs window. Hugh leaned out, only to stare both ways along the street. 'I'm here,' Charlotte called.
As his eyes met hers she saw they looked hollow and sleepless, presumably from worrying about his brother. 'Are you coming to let me in?' she eventually had to ask.
She was waiting for his footsteps on the stairs when he reappeared at the window. 'Can you?' he said.
He jerked a fist over the sill, so violently that he might have been trying to punch someone invisible in the face. By the time Charlotte grasped his intention he'd dropped the key beside the path. As she retrieved it she smelled earth, but she wasn't taking that as any kind of omen. She twisted the key in the stiff lock and pushed the door wide.
The interior smelled stale, too nearly airless. At the end of a narrow hall halved by stairs and watched over by copies of Rory's family portraits, she saw and heard a tap release a dull flat drip into a metal sink. As she closed the front door the hall with its drab brownish wallpaper took on more gloom. She was expecting Hugh to appear at the top of the stairs by the time she reached them, but she couldn't even hear him moving. 'Are you all right?' she called.
'I'm still here.'
The tap emitted another drip, and she wondered how long he'd left it that way. She made for the kitchen, past a room where a dusty television squatted near a bookcase rather less than full of Cougar books and shabbier volumes. A gentle turn sufficed to quell the drips, and she was returning to the hall when she faltered. It couldn't really have narrowed. Perhaps that was an effect of the gathering darkness, which seemed capable of transforming the space beneath the stairs into a den. Of course nobody was crouching there, and so she oughtn't to have sounded nervous as she called 'Aren't you ever coming down?'
'You come up first.'
If his tone had betrayed any enjoyment, Hugh might almost have been proposing a game. Charlotte hurried past the earthy shadows under the stairs and grabbed the banister. At the top she was faced with a rudimentary landing beneath a low roof. A faint glistening trail wandered back and forth over the faded brown carpet, starting in the room from which she heard the spring-like trickle of a presumably unstoppable flush. The track, reminiscent of a snail's but surely too large, also led in and out of the front bedroom. She couldn't help hesitating before she pushed the door open and ventured into the room.
Hugh was standing with his back to her beyond the single bed and facing the window. The end of the plain pale quilt near the foot of the bed was grubby with marks, from which she deduced that he'd been lying down with his shoes on. As she stepped forwards she kicked an object on the floor – a plastic cap that belonged to the can of shaving foam in Hugh's hand. She had trouble believing she'd identified the source of the trail that led from the bathroom to him. 'What on earth have you been doing?' she said. 'Why have you made such a mess?'
'It's my house.'
'Nobody's saying it isn't,' Charlotte told him, though there was little in the shabby room to demonstrate his ownership – just some discarded clothes on a chair. 'People are worried about you, that's all. Mrs Devi was saying you haven't been to work for days. You'll have taken them off because of Rory, won't you?'
'Who?'
Charlotte's attempt to laugh only shook her voice. 'Rory. Your brother.'
'I know who my brother is. I asked who else you said.'
'Mrs Devi. The lady from next door.'
'First I've heard she's called that. I didn't know you'd be checking up on me.'
'How long are we going to talk like this? Can't you look at me?'
He only shrugged – left shoulder, then the right, and again as if trying to establish which was which. Oughtn't she to go to him? She'd taken a step, watching her feet to avoid the trail on the carpet, before she realised he was moving, so tentatively that she could almost have concluded he was having to remember how to turn. His wary gaze found hers at last, only to fall to the can in his hand. Much of his face reddened as he lurched to grab the cap beside his feet and jam it onto the container, which he dropped on the bed. Having waited for an explanation or even for him to look at her again, Charlotte said 'All right, I won't ask.'
'Don't.'
That hadn't worked the way she'd hoped it would. As his gaze sought her face he held out a hand. She could almost have thought he was pleading mutely to be led from the room until she realised he must want his key back. When she planted it in his hand his fingers twitched as if they were eager to close around more than the key. The room was threatening to feel as small and dark as the inside of her skull. 'Aren't you going to offer me a drink?' she said.
His face grew yet more mottled. 'I'd have to go out.'
'You've nothing to drink in the house?'
'Not the kind you're after. Are you feeling bad?'
'No,' she said and more truthfully 'I'm feeling thirsty. We're talking tea here, Hugh.'
'I've got that. I'm some use.'
'I'm sure nobody would say you weren't.' When his eyes remained guarded, little better than blank, Charlotte said 'I expect it's in the kitchen, is it?'
'It will be.'
Even this didn't move him until she made with some impatience for the stairs. As she reached the landing she felt his breath on her neck. At least it was Hugh, not some imaginary pursuer, but she said 'No need to get so close.'
'Sorry,' he gasped, which tousled her hair.
'I'll follow you down. I'm just going to the private room.'
She didn't glance back as she shut the door. The overcast sky blackened the window, which was already on the way to opaque with a rash of glass pimples. A greyish shower curtain sagging from immovable plastic hooks helped confine her in the token space between the bath and the opposite wall, where its reflection in the mirror failed to add even a pretence of spaciousness. The trickle of the cistern behind her might have been mocking her own activity, but she hadn't finished when she realised she had yet to hear Hugh go downstairs. Was he listening like a sly jailer outside the door? The room seemed shrunken by darkness, and the light cord was out of reach. She rose to her feet as soon as she could, because she felt watched too. What was twitching the shower curtain aside to peer around it? Her own hasty movement had stirred it, and the shrivelled clawlike hand consisted of wrinkles in the plastic. It was enough to put her in a fury at her rampant imagination, and when she stalked out of the room the sight of her cousin loitering in his bedroom doorway made her angrier still. 'What do you think you're doing now?' she demanded.
His face was reddening again, a process that her question accelerated. 'Waiting for you,' he mumbled.
'Don't you think I can find my way around your little house? I wouldn't mind if it was twice the size.'
She oughtn't to seem to be denigrating where he'd chosen to live, but he had to be the reason why she was on edge. She felt worse than guilty for wishing Ellen would arrive so that she wasn't alone with him. 'Come on, let's make that tea,' she said.
The instant she planted a foot on the top stair he came after her. 'Not so close,' she had to warn him again, and kept hold of the banister. Gaining the hall would have been a relief if it had been wider. She was heading for the at least slightly roomier kitchen before she noticed he had frozen three steps up. 'What's –' she cried as she turned to see what in the front room was appalling him. He was gazing across it and through the window, and in a moment she saw the figure outside the house.
TWENTY
As Ellen plodded into the station concourse a voice as large as the building finished an announcement, and she heard a tuneless humming behind her, which rose as if she'd aggravated its impatience. Nevertheless it was being emitted by an invalid tricycle, not its rider, who called 'Can you mind out, love? I can't see round you.'
She might have fled without looking at him, to a different exit and home – she'd already had children turning to stare at her once they'd sat ahead of her on the bus across Southport – but she mustn't care about anything
