Chapter 5

CHAPTER 5

"Could you not even close up the fucking attic," she hears him call. Then he goes into the kitchen; the splashing of a tap, multiplying the water sounds.

"Lauren," he says. The door to the bedroom opens, but he doesn't come in. Listen to the noise , she thinks. Listen to the attic . It's louder now, with the bedroom door open. She hears a creak that could be from the ladder, and another; perhaps he's climbing, though probably not far enough to change, maybe not even far enough to see in. She thinks about the Bluetooth speaker's light, and whether it'll give everything away.

"Lauren," she hears him call again. Come on, she thinks, it's water noises in your attic, are you not going to investigate, but then her phone lights up with a call from him, illuminating the clothes and her own hands and the inside of the wardrobe door; and up above, in the attic, the ring sounds, relayed through the speaker, loud, biddle-de-beeep , biddle-de-beeep . Fuck, fuck .

She turns the phone face-down on to her knee to hide the light but the noise continues; she flips it back and tries to silence it, fumbles.

"What the fuck, Lauren," she hears the husband say, his voice coming from outside the door and then again, crackling from above, relayed through the speaker in the attic, a half-moment later, and she hangs up successfully this time and tries to restart the water sounds, but she must have done it wrong because the hen-night playlist starts again, the Veronicas loud above her.

She hits stop and stays motionless as she hears him swear again and climb up the ladder, and—yes—stop a few steps up and then start again.

And another step. Another.

And the static, that sharp crackle, louder than usual. And she hears someone climbing down.

It's worked. It must have.

"Hey" is all the voice says, but she is almost sure it's not him. And again, from the landing: "Lauren? Where have you got to?"

This time it's clear: the vowels, the rhythm of the voice. A new man. She falls out of the wardrobe, flopping an old coat on to the ground and dislodging shirts and dresses, trailing one of them behind her, through the changed-again bedroom and on to the landing where she hugs, hard, the new husband, who is maybe her height or maybe a little shorter, and he has his shirt off which reveals a tattoo of ivy curling over one shoulder and which makes him, as she squeezes, the first husband whose chest she has touched. Her hair on her shoulders, the right length again, and smooth floorboards under her feet.

"Hello there," the husband says, and laughs. She leans back to look at him. His eyes crinkle at the corners; his hair is short and sits in loose curls, like a mass of flowers. He is wearing jeans and canvas shoes. He is solid, tanned, smells of dirt and sunlight. She cannot tell how old he is, though the eyes suggest older than her. The change of husband can't have affected the weather, but the landing is glowing. Maybe it's the floorboards, or the new yellow walls.

"Hello," she says, and feels herself grinning.

"Want a coffee?" he asks, smiling back.

"I would love a coffee." She never did drink any of the tea that she and the other husbands kept handing around.

The husband laughs again, like he's enjoying her delight, which she tries to tamp down but she can't because it worked , she got rid of Kieran and the attic has gifted her this joyful coffee-bringer. She stands back from his naked chest, a little embarrassed.

"Wanna drink it in the garden? I'll bring them out."

"Perfect," she says. The garden! She's always meant to use the garden more.

She steps back again to take it all in. The flat, though it feels brighter than before, is a mess: papers on the kitchen counter, towels on a chair in the corner, cables, a box of empty cans waiting to go down to the recycling bin.

"Hey," she says, "you're not going back up, are you?" and she nods her head towards the attic.

"Ah, no, I'm done," the husband says. "Sorry, should've closed it up."

"Good." She pushes the ladder away. "Don't. Promise you won't go back in."

He looks at her. "What's up?"

"Nothing," she says. "Just, no more attic today, okay? Or tomorrow. I had a—like a premonition of you falling. So steer clear."

He laughs. "I promise. No attic."

The carpet has gone from their stairs, but there's a runner down the middle, green. And when she heads around the side to the back, she finds an arch of maybe-roses, and she steps through and finds herself in a real garden.

Flowers and grass and a wooden table. A dozen little brown birds that take off as she approaches. In the back corner, a big netted box with mazy branches inside and a blackbird outside gripping on and pecking through the holes. The fence dividing their side of the garden from Toby and Maryam's is a wooden lattice, taller and growing all over with vines, some of them green and some with clusters of tiny white flowers and some pouring with long purple strands; but there's a gate in the middle of it, connecting the two halves.

Lauren checks her phone, and her texts to her friends are back, her adventures last night. Even an Uber home instead of the bus. Wait, is she rich now? She owns half her flat, of course; she and Nat inherited it together from their grandmother. So certainly she is rich enough that she knows better than to complain about money in front of her friends. But is she casual ￡45-car-ride-to-Zone-4 rich? Maybe!

She takes a picture of the newly lush garden, the chairs, the trees, the vines.

Maryam comes out of the kitchen next door with a laundry basket, and heads over to unpeg tea towels from the washing line.

"Hi there," Lauren calls out. "What a gorgeous day!"

"Oh, hi," Maryam says. "Yeah, it's nice, isn't it?" She looks up at the sky like it's a surprise. This is part of why she and Toby work so well together, Lauren has always thought: Toby notices and Maryam acts.

"Hey," Lauren says. "Have I ever had a cat?"

"I guess," Maryam says. "You seem the type."

"No, I mean while I've lived here."

Maryam unpegs another towel and looks over. She is always distracted, Lauren thinks, until she's not, and then for a moment you're the most important person in the world. She feels it: the switch as Maryam moves her from background to foreground, puzzled. "What?" she says. "No. I don't think so. Right?"

It is, Lauren supposes, a weird question for her to have asked. "You're right," she says. "No cats."

Maryam frowns, but lets it go, heads inside with the towels. Inconclusive! But on the side of Gladstone never existing?

Lauren takes a seat behind the table and kicks her legs out, face in the shade but her body stretching into afternoon sunlight.

The sun is picking out the hairs on her legs, sparse but clustered just below the knee; she has, she supposes, grown lax about shaving, a married woman. A wife . She doesn't like that her body keeps changing like this, without her say-so, not just the world but herself in it. She pulls her chair forward to put the legs under the table, free herself of the sight until she can shave them later, then she looks up towards the kitchen. The husband is barely visible inside, a dark shape moving.

There's a pot of daisies on the table. She picks one, and pulls off a petal, two, three. She's halfway around when the husband appears under the arch of maybe-roses. He's carrying a tray, with two small cups and a packet of chocolate digestives, half-empty, twisted at the end. He's put a T-shirt on, and she gets a good view as he approaches: lopsided nose; big wide eyes, eyebrows that reach towards each other along hard ridges but stop just shy of meeting in the middle. Flip-flops for the garden. Still hard to tell how old he is but, from a distance, the crinkles around the eyes are less of a distraction: about her age after all, perhaps. And he's smiling.

He seems like a husband she can live with for a while.