Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

The second man is even taller than the first, and more strongly built. He has the short cut and wavering hairline of someone who is balding young and not at peace with the fact, but he is startlingly good-looking, his cheekbones sharp, his olive skin flawless, a dark-green T-shirt fitting him closely.

"Uh," she says, looking at his face and then his forearms (his forearms!). He, too, is wearing a wedding ring.

"Is that for me?" he says, nodding at the mug. A slight accent: Turkish, perhaps? The mug in her hands is yellow with thin black lines.

"…Yes?"

"Great," he says. His eyelashes are dark.

She doesn't move.

"Are you okay?" the maybe-Turkish gratuitously handsome husband says after a moment. His immaculate eyebrows furrow in concern. She looks up at the attic, searching for Michael, then back at the landing. Its walls—usually grey, more recently blue—are white. She steps backwards and peers into the living room. The wedding picture is gone.

"You're not still hungover, are you?" the man asks.

"No," she lies, and switches her focus back to him. "Were you just in the attic?"

"What? Yes. You saw me."

"Was anyone else there?"

"Where?"

She looks at the dark square. "Up there. Is Mich— Was there anyone in the attic?"

"Like a squirrel? Mice? I don't think so. Do you want me to check?" He stands, one hand on the ladder, teetering between irritation and concern. The mug is still warm in her hands.

"Yes," she says.

"Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes. Yes, if you could check, please."

The husband tightens his shapely lips and climbs partway back up the ladder, and then continues, up, up, all the way in, his bare feet (uncalloused, perfectly formed) disappearing before her eyes. There's a moment of movement and brightness above her, like a flash of sunlight through train windows, and a sharp crackle.

A moment later a blue furry slipper emerges from the trapdoor. And another.

Huh.

The third husband is less attractive than the first two, with a rectangular head and a sunburn across his pale nose. His red-brown hair sticks out at all angles. She is still holding the mug (it's now pink). Her hands are hot; she shifts her grip. His slippers have purple spots and black claws and she thinks they may be Monsters, Inc. themed.

"We really should clean it out up there." From his voice he is, perhaps, Welsh, she's not sure. He dumps a bag on the ground and, without waiting for a reply, he goes back up, climbs halfway in, brings down another bag he must have left by the hatch, and heads up again, all the way this time. Another moment of light, bright and then dark, and a sound, a fuzz. And moments later—and it's almost not a surprise, this time—another new man calls out, "Lauren, Lauren, look what I found," loud and plummy, like an agitated professor. "It's the most remarkable thing. It's extraordinary."

This time the feet that emerge are bare again, and so are the legs, and so too is the shockingly round white bottom that follows them. She takes two quick steps backwards as the bottom's owner finishes his descent and turns to face her, then spreads his arms.This husband is shorter than the others and extremely thin, other than those remarkable buttocks, with sharp-edged shins, visible ribs, and a narrow but very long penis which he points to with both hands. "It's a penis!" he says.

She stares. As he points she sees that he, too, is wearing a wedding ring. He is wearing nothing else.

"Not funny? Come on, I don't have any clothes on!" When she doesn't react he waits a moment, then again he says, in the same excited and informative tone: "Penis!" This time he sparkles his fingers to either side of it, ta-da , and twists around to flop it from side to side.

Lauren shifts her grip on the mug, ready to throw hot tea over him if he gets any closer.

"We can take it on Antiques Roadshow ," the husband says, jiggling. "Nice specimen, beautifully crafted, excellent condition, very unusual to see one of this size." To be fair to him, the penis really is extraordinarily long.

Lauren is torn between wanting to look into the attic, and not wanting to get any closer to either it or the naked man. She compromises by doing nothing.

"An exceptional piece," the man adds, undaunted. "No? Still not funny? Never mind, hold on a minute, I found something else too," and he climbs back up into the attic and thankfully she never finds out what the next stage of his joke was going to be. Instead: the buzz, the flicker of light, and the man who climbs down thirty seconds later is fully clothed in jeans and a T-shirt, and even an apron that, when its wearer turns, says This Is What a Feminist Cooks Like . Pink tips to his hair, which she's not at all sure about, but she can deal with the hairstyle once she's dealt with the man.

"Nah," he says. "No sign of it."

She still has the mug in her hands. He steps towards her and she holds it out automatically. "Cheers," he says, and takes it. "Are we out of milk?"

"I forgot," she says. She feels slow, she's still working it out, but the flat is different again, different carpet beneath her feet when she looks down; everything is changing every time, but always behind her back; her gaze holds everything in place until she looks away, and when she turns around it's like someone has flipped a card or pulled a lever and exposed a new world.

The apron husband takes the tea to the kitchen, and she hears him open the fridge. She looks into the living room, at the new walls and the sofa and the books.

"Are you okay?" the husband says, stepping back on to the landing, whose walls, now that she has glanced away and back, have settled into pale orange. "What's up?"

She looks at the open attic.

"I thought I heard something," she says, then adds, "maybe a squirrel," shamelessly copying from the husband with the eyelashes and the forearms. "Could you check?"

"Shit, really? God, I hope it's not rats again." The husband balances his now-milky tea on the radiator and heads straight up the ladder, pauses halfway. "What did it sound like?" he says.

"Chittering," she says firmly. "It's very plausible," she adds, because it is.

"I'm not sure rats chitter," he says, doubtful.

He climbs. The sound, the thick white noise. She stares straight ahead, eyes trained on the pale-orange wall opposite, a vintage advertisement for trains: The Matlocks for a Restful Holiday, Express Services then the man pushes the ladder up and she can't help herself, she flicks her eyes to look at him. Black, slender, wearing glasses, the pattern on his trousers a green check. When she looks back at the poster, it has become a framed print of a fluorescent ice-cream cone. The walls are off-white.

"Could you leave the ladder?" she says to the new husband. Shirtsleeves rolled up, no wedding ring but perhaps he's taken it off to do chores.

"Okay," and he pulls it back down. "Only for a few minutes, right? It's hot up there, don't want the whole flat to warm up."

"Sure," she says. Her phone: the lock screen this time is a picture of her niece and nephew. A small table on the landing: no letters, but a wallet which she flicks open. She finds a name, Anthony Baptiste, on an organ donor card.

"Anthony," she calls.

"Yeah?" he says from the living room.

She walks back over to the ladder, touches it.

"Yeah?" he repeats. "You said something?"

She'll film, she thinks, record him going up, someone else coming down. Get some evidence.

"Have another look in the attic," she says, steadily.

"What?" he says. "Why? Is a bucket of water going to fall on my head?"

"No. Nothing's going to happen. I just need you to have a look."

"Why?"

"It's okay," she says. "It's a—it's a surprise. A gift. This will all make sense in a moment." She is massively overpromising on the explanatory power of the attic, but she manages a smile.

"It's not a big rubber spider, is it? You know I can't do jump scares."

Weirdly nervous is one of her types, actually. She likes men at the extremes of self-assurance, men who know what they want and are either confident they can have it or terrified they can't; she can imagine being into this guy.

"No," she says. "You'll love it. No rubber spiders." She's talking herself into a corner she has no way of getting out of, but the evidence so far suggests that she simply won't have to. "You'll be so happy," she adds, bold with promises. "I've been planning this for months."

Anthony lets the frown lapse into a puzzled smile, and glances upwards, then hands her his mug and climbs, his head to the trapdoor. A little further.

"What am I looking for?" he says, halfway in. His body stretches away from her, framed by the attic; she touches the button on her phone, starts filming.

"Keep going. I can't wait for you to see it. This is the best thing I've ever done for you."

He climbs again. Again, one foot in, and then finally, finally, his lagging foot disappears from sight. The attic brightens, and this time she can see that the light is coming from the bare hanging bulb. It flares, illuminating the wooden struts on the underside of the roof, then fades.

"Hello?" she calls out towards, she can only imagine, another man, another husband. She steps back, the flurry of novelty revealed as she turns, a new world flicking into place behind her back. The walls have changed again, even though she was pointing the camera at them the whole time. She feels clearheaded—maybe in this version of the world she drank less last night, or maybe things are starting to make sense. A sound from above.

"What's it like up there?" she calls out, wondering who's going to answer.