was more Bill’s size.’
‘I do love a leotard,’ he said, patting his stomach fondly. ‘Seriously though, you could charge a fortune for your place. You should think about it.’
And I had. I thought about it as I stared at the final invoice from the builders, my fingers trembling as I tapped numbers into my calculator. Fiona and Bill didn’t know – they still don’t – that I had to remortgage to pay the builders.
So this first Airbnb rental is a trial, a test run. The idea is that I rent out the house again in the summer and bugger off somewhere. My two best friends both live on the other side of the world; Nadia has moved to Dubai to teach English, and Sadie lives on a farm in Tasmania with her husband’s family.
I turn to Fiona, asking, ‘What were the family like who rented it?’
‘Yes, fine,’ she says, setting her wine glass on the lounge table.
‘Did they seem nice?’
‘I only met them briefly.’
I detect a tightness in her tone, which makes me ask, ‘Everything did go okay?’
‘Yes, absolutely. No breakages. I’ve released the deposit. They left a couple of bits and pieces behind.’ As Fiona unfolds herself from the sofa, I notice she’s lost weight. We’ve both always been slim, but there’s something angular about the breadth of her shoulders, her sternum pronounced at the open neckline of her shirt.
Fiona moves to the sideboard, picking up a pot of nappy rash cream, and a well-chewed plastic giraffe.
‘These were the only things I came across,’ she says, squeezing the giraffe until it squeaks.
Unexpectedly, sadness swells in my chest.
‘I’ve washed all the bedding – hot wash,’ she adds with a wink, ‘and taken Drake’s high chair home.’
‘Oh yes, thanks for the loan.’
‘I dropped it in the evening before they arrived and almost had a heart-attack as the alarm was on. I’d forgotten you’d told me you’d set it.’
‘You turned it off okay?’
‘On the sixth attempt. My eardrums bled. Right,’ Fiona says, sweeping across the lounge towards the doorway. ‘I’m going. Told Bill I’d only be half an hour.’
‘Sorry for stealing you.’
‘It’s fine, he has the television. Three’s a crowd.’
I stand and kiss my sister, our cheekbones clashing.
Locking the door behind Fiona, I move into the kitchen, flicking on all the lights and the radio.
I take my notebook from my handbag and position a pencil beside it. I take a step back, looking through the screen of my phone at the configuration. I snap the picture, then upload it to Facebook, adding the caption:
After a lovely fortnight tutoring on a writing retreat, I’m back home and SO excited to be diving into my novel – on the home straight now! #amwriting #authorlife
Then I put the props away.
Opening the fridge, I inspect its contents, hoping Fiona might have left a pint of milk or a loaf of bread – but it’s bare.
Too tired to contemplate getting back in the car, I root around in the pantry and pull out a bag of pre-cooked quinoa and toss it through with tahini and lemon juice. I eat standing up, flicking through the post.
I glance at the bills, trying to ignore the words FINAL REMINDER blazoned across my electricity statement. Next there are a couple of packages from my agent containing proof copies of other authors’ books requesting advance praise. The remainder of the mail includes requests for charity donations, two fan letters forwarded on from my publishers, and an invite to a friend’s birthday. Nearing the bottom of the pile my hands reach for a thick cream envelope embossed with a gold logo. It’s from Flynn’s solicitor.
In France I’d been reminded of our first trip together in our mid-twenties, when we’d taken the ferry to Bilbao and then driven north to Hossegor in Flynn’s battered Seat Ibiza with a surfboard strapped to the roof and a tent in the boot. We’d camped in the shade of thick pine trees and lived on noodles and warm batons of French bread. We drank cheap stubby beers and wine from cardboard containers, and spent the evenings playing cards by headtorch, or lying in the tent, the door unzipped, salt and sun-cream glossing our entwined limbs.
On that trip Flynn had talked about all the places he wanted to travel – and I had said yes to it all, knowing that I wanted to be anywhere but home. When I was with him, the rest of my life seemed like something that had happened to a different person, someone I was happy to leave behind in the campus of a university town I’d never return to.
I scrape the rest of the quinoa into the bin, then collect my suitcase and go upstairs. Flicking on my bedroom light, I pause in the doorway, my gaze on my bed.
Fiona has done a half job of making it, of course. The cushions aren’t plumped, the soft olive throw is stretched across the entire bed, not just the foot of it. These tiny details remind me that I wasn’t the last person to sleep in this bed – rather another woman and her husband.
I set down my case, then wander round my room, eyes scanning the clean surfaces. I slide open my wardrobe door; my clothes are still hanging in one portion of the wardrobe just as I’d left them, the rest of the rail clear for the other couple’s clothes. I move to my bedside drawer and pull it open. Empty, as I’d left it – oh, except for a small pot of men’s hair wax pushed right to the back. I twist off the lid and, seeing it is almost empty, drop it into the bin.
Taking out my washbag, I move to the large free-standing mirror at the foot of my bed, where I dab cleanser onto a cotton pad and sweep it gently around my face. I’ve picked up a little colour in France, and my hair has been lightened by the sun to a warm caramel shade.
As I lean in, that’s when I notice them: fingerprints. Larger than mine. I look closer: a hand has been pressed flat to the mirror, the smear of a stranger’s skin marking the glass.
Standing here with the empty room reflected behind me, an unsettling feeling creeps over my skin. Someone else has been in this room. Been in my house. The woman who’d rented it – Joanna – must have stood where I am, her image caught in the mirror. It feels as if this stranger’s gaze is still here, watching.
As I step back, a hot pain bursts into my heel.
I snatch up my foot, reaching out for the wall for balance. There is a deep puncture in the very centre of my heel, a bead of blood springing to the surface. What the hell have I stood on? I crouch down, searching the carpet, running my palms across it until they meet the waspish scratch of something.
A shard of glass, knife-sharp, is lodged deep in the plush carpet. I grip it between my fingers and carefully pull it out. The downlights illuminate a beautiful blue icicle, something vaguely familiar in the glitter of the glass.
Has something of mine been broken? I can’t think of anything in my bedroom that this piece could’ve come from. I keep the surfaces of my bedside table clear, except for a tripod lamp and a jug for flowers. My bottles of perfume have been packed away with the other breakables and valuables, which I’d locked in my writing room. It’s unsettling to not be able to place this lethal dagger of glass.
I wrap it in a tissue and, as I drop it into the bin, I glance down at the cream carpet and see it is marked with the crimson blush of my blood.
Oak, jasmine and something citrus – those are the smells that greet me as I step inside. There is a clean, fresh quality to the air that is different to my house: it is dry, free of cooking smells, or that earthy dampness that comes from washing dried on radiators.