Page 2 of We Live Here Now

Freddie

Jesus, I can’t believe I’m in this mess.

It’s getting dark outside, marginally preferable to the endless suffocating gray of the awful winter moors, and even though the heating’s on I’m cold again. There’s always a draft in this bloody house and it does nothing to improve my mood.

The warmth of the Aga stove seeps through my jeans as I lean against it, boiling water for pasta. My phone’s on silent in my pocket,just in case, and I can hear Emily’s stick tapping as she explores the house, her walk a slow echo of her usual confident—overconfident—stride. The sound makes me feel worse.

I am not a good person. How could I have done this to her? How can Istillbe doing it to her? After what she’s been through.Everythingshe’s been through. The guilt—the constant fear of discovery—is a cancer inside me. How have I got myself so trapped?

I turn on the radio, needing distraction, some cheesy nineties local radio station, and whistle along, feigning normality, as I add pasta to the boiling water and dig around in the cupboard for a sauce.

I can sort it. I have to. It’s all going to be fine. It is.

As long as Emily never finds out.

3

Emily

There are so many rooms downstairs I feel almost dizzy. My walking sticktap tapson the wooden floor, and I keep one hand on the cool walls as I slowly explore. The wallpaper’s thick, lining every room thus far, the different damask patterns in the flock like braille under my fingertips. The rich colors—faded greens, yellows, blues, and reds—remind me of ladies’ evening gowns from long ago, stretched out across the walls like skin. The formality of the colors against the dark wood floor makes the rooms oppressive and austere and full of shadows.Uninviting.

The house, I decide, as I move from room to room, is like a prim governess judging me disapprovingly for my baggy jeans and sweatshirt. It doesn’t help that several rooms are still unused, the air filled with dust and abandonment. God knows how long the place has been empty, but I make a mental note to get some paint samples as soon as possible. Light, bright colors will make a world of difference. Bring some joy to the place.

Along with the kitchen and sitting room that I’ve already seen, there’s a dining room, a drawing room, and another room that Freddie’s turned into a games room, as well as a smaller room that may have been a study since there’s a desk pushed up against the wall, maybe left by the previous occupants, and beyond there a downstairs toilet and a utility or storage room.

Past the kitchen there’s a corridor leading to what must have once been tack and boot rooms. There’s no wooden floor in those, just uneven flagstone, freezing underfoot, and high, narrow windowsthat need a winder to open. They’re colder than the other rooms too, no pretense at heating, and I guess we could use them as a pantry or storage room.

I head back to the warmth of the central hallway, where I can hear Freddie whistling along to the radio as he cooks on the Aga. I’ve always wanted an Aga. I get a frisson of happiness at that, a hopeful moment that once I’m used to this house, it’ll be okay. I wish we’d moved in summer. I wish Larkin Lodgefeltlike it had looked in the photos. I wish I could stop being so ridiculous.

I climb the stairs to the middle floor, slowly and carefully, my right leg taking every step, the left following behind, and the creaking wood gives away my slow progress. No running up and down with no thought of danger for me. Maybe never again. One serious brush with death brings every danger into sharp focus. It changes a person. I grip the handrail tight and finally turn the corner.

From up here I can’t hear Freddie anymore, only the rattling of the landing window from a breeze outside, and I tighten up the lock to quiet it before continuing. Three double bedrooms and two bathrooms. The doors’ hinges creak as I push them open. The largest of the bedrooms is made up, the pink duvet cover a spark of brightness amid the dour, and has our things on the bedside tables, and in the nearest bathroom I find the beautiful roll-top bath I’d seen in the photos—which makes me happy because I’ve always wanted one of those too—and all our toiletries.

There’s a steeper staircase leading up to the third floor where the primary suite is, but, as Freddie warned me, until my leg is stronger, there’s no way I can contemplate making it up there. I go back into the bedroom Freddie’s allocated to us and look out the window. The thin mist of earlier has become a thick fog, wound around the house in the darkening sky like a shroud, and if I want to see the views or garden I’m going to have to wait until morning.

“It’s ready,” I hear Freddie call up from the bottom of the stairs. “Hope you’re hungry.”

As I turn my back on the creeping fog, I hear a creak from somewhere in the upstairs corridor. It’s long and slow, almost deliberate. Too close to be downstairs. Has Freddie come up to get me?

The landing, however, is empty and quiet.It’s just an old house, I tell myself, shaking away my unsettled feeling.Old houses creak like old bones.

4

Emily

I’m dreaming, I know I’m dreaming because although I’m back on that narrow cliff path, I’m wearing a hospital gown and a ventilator mask on my face and not my shorts and T-shirt.

I’m walking ahead of Freddie, like I was then, annoyed at the heat of the Ibiza sun that burst through the clouds just as we’d reached the trickiest part of the hike and at the baked sandy stones that make my footsteps unsteady. I didn’t even want to do this walk; I wanted to stay by the pool and have some time to myself. But Mark and Iso paid for the whole holiday, the luxury villa, the ridiculous chef, and none of us could say no. Cat is up ahead with Russell, and I know she’s not struggling but she didn’t want to come either. I could tell. The six of us, different-colored threads once wound tight around the spool of friendship, now unraveling, pulling in different directions.

It’s all slower in the dream than it was, as if with each step I’m being dragged through honey to the inescapable future. Freddie’s close behind me, and while we’re making an effort for the others, we’re in foul moods with each other. We haven’t had sex once since we came away and it’s really starting to piss him off. I walk a little faster, trying to put some space between us—a space big enough for all my secret guilt—and a few pebbles scatter over the edge. It’s not a sheer cliff edge here but maybe a fifteen-foot drop undulating to fifty in places. Far enough to kill yourself, for sure, and hearing the noise, Iso looks back at me. Iso, hair white-blond, perfectly beautiful, my oldest friend—is she even really my friend anymore or are we habit?—shields her eyes with her hand to check I’m okay, but I wave her and her perfect thighs on.

“I’m okay,” I call out to her. In reality, I’m so very far from okay. I’vedone something terrible, I’m consumed by a guilt that stops me sleeping and has left me with a growing reminder of my mistake, and in moments everything is about to get very much worse.

“You don’t have to, you know.” It’s Russell’s voice and in the dream he’s momentarily there beside me, before I start to climb the incline I’m about to fall from. “You can turn back now.” In the dream he whispers with a stale breath. “Bad things are that way. You’ll die if you go that way.” He starts to fade then, evaporating as I look at him.

“It’s too late,” I answer, confused. “I’m already there.”

The rest of the dream replays as it happened. I hear Freddie muttering behind me about going faster, close on my heels, pressuring me to speed up. I take a large stride and bite my tongue to stop myself from saying a million things I might or might not regret, and instead I focus on the promotion and starting my new role in ten days and the lie I’ll tell Freddie so he’ll never know, and then, as I swat a fly away from my face, I stumble forward. At least I think I stumble—or did he knock into me—and as I turn to confront him, my ankle twists under me, I lose my balance, and as I tilt backward—no no no no—I stretch my arms out to Freddie, my hands grasping for him. He reaches out. He does. I know that. I see that. So do the others, turning back to see why I yelped, but his fingers don’t even brush mine and I’m sure he could lean farther forward, and our eyes meet and as mine plead, all I see is fear—and is that relief?—in his. And then I start to fall.

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