Suburb

The call comes late at night – after the kids have been put to bed, and the curtains drawn, and the energy-saving streetlights flicker on one by one; as Bob is putting the finishing touches to tomorrow’s PowerPoint in the darkened study before he folds his laptop up for the night, just as Alice is preparing to set the burglar alarm, there is a knocking at the door. It is hasty, insistent, disregarding of the doorbell, and accompanied soon after by a woman’s voice which says, “Help! Help me, please. Please, let me in.”

Alice hastily unlocks the latch and switches on the light and opens the door to reveal a dishevelled young black woman – no more than a girl, really, thinks Alice – on the doorstep sobbing. Her hair is in a right state and she has make-up smeared all down her face (thick make-up too, not the kind you’d wear to work, more what Alice sees on the TV on those awful misogynist reality shows). She wears clothes to match: cleavage-emphasising bra and miniskirt. One knee is grazed; the graze is fresh and caked with dirt. She wears tights but no shoes.

“Oh my gosh!” says Alice.

“Please,” says the girl, weaker this time. “Something horrible is happening. You have to help me.”

Bob has wandered downstairs from the study and he stands awkwardly with his hands in his pockets as Alice ushers the girl to the living room. Her footprints leave a trail of mud and damp on the carpet. Alice says, “Bob, don’t just stand there like a bloody turnip. Make yourself useful. Get her something to drink.”

The girl collapses onto the sofa and is racked by sobs. Alice says, rather weakly, it must be said, “There, there. What’s your name?” And then, because she read that people find it persuasive if you offer them something before demanding something from them, she added: “My name is Alice. This is my husband, Bob.”

The girl pulls herself up and wipes her nose with her arm. “Sorry. I'm Patience. I don’t remember – where am I? Where is this?”

Alice looks to Bob and back to Patience. “We’re 78 Oak Rise, dear. You’re safe.”

“Please,” says Patience. “I need to get out of the suburb. Can you call me a cab to the station? I know my card off by heart. I can pay.”

Alice says, “Absolutely not. We can pay for you. Bob, go call a taxi, will you?” Bob leaves the room and goes to get his phone. “But, dear,” says Alice, “what happened to you? Shall we call the police?”

Patience shudders at this. “Don’t – please. There’s nothing the police can do. I just need to get out. I don’t know how to explain it.”

Alice says, “Well, why don’t you start from the beginning?” And Patience does.

“We’ve been on a few dates now. Two, actually. In town. He seemed nice, White guy. Worked in marketing or tech or something. I thought he looked like a bit of a dork but in a nice way, you know? And he was never anything other than lovely to me. A real gentleman.” Patience coughs. Alice pushes the glass of water towards her and she sips. “Thanks. Well, he invited me over for dinner. He’s just bought a house in the suburb. Bit of a trek. He picked me up at the station in his little silver Volvo. It had a slightly bashed bumper and, I remember, a Jesus Loves You sticker on the back. On his online profile he said he only dated Christian girls and at the time it made me feel safer. Because we had God in common. But on his car it just looked a bit shabby and sad.

Like, when I saw him standing there waiting for me, I thought… I don’t know. I had a bad feeling. He didn’t look happy to see me. Just opened the door for me and said, ‘Get in.’ I didn’t want to. I can’t explain it. Like in a movie when someone says something totally normal but the music goes all ominous. That’s how I felt. But I got in anyway. Idiot of me.” She laughs and it turns into a sob halfway.

“He drove in silence. When we’d met before he’d asked about me and really listened. He had those eyes that make you feel he really cared what you had to say. But the whole drive he didn’t say a word. I tried asking after the area or his move and he just shrugged it off.

“Eventually we pulled into Ridge Crescent and he parked the car outside a row of identical new-build houses. He started to warm up the moment we’d gotten out of the car. ‘I don’t like going in to town,’ he said, ‘I prefer to stay in the neighbourhood. It’s peaceful here.’ He took my bags in and showed me around. His house was bigger than I’d expected. Three whole bedrooms, all just for him. Maybe he tried to get a smaller one and couldn’t, because all the houses on the street were all the same. He said he was going to turn one bedroom into a study and another into a music room. Music! He hadn’t mentioned music at all as one of his hobbies before. Come to think of it, I didn’t really know what his hobbies were.

“The one room I didn’t see was his study. The door was a bit ajar when we passed it and he quickly closed it so I couldn’t see. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘it’s a bit of a mess. I blur my background when I’m on calls because I haven’t finished unpacking.’ Fair enough – my ex had his man-cave too where I wasn’t allowed in, and that was an absolute tip. But his house in general was a lot less tidy. In fact, everything in this house was spotless.

“I asked him about work and he said he’d stopped going in to the office since moving into the suburb. ‘The commute is so far,’ he said. ‘It’s much better for me to work from home. I get all the work-life balance I need. And the air quality in town is much worse – it exacerbates my asthma.’

“Dinner was risotto. He poured me a small glass of wine and filled his own up almost to the brim. I thought, well, okay, if you think alcohol’s unladylike, whatever. I’ll just pace myself. As he poured I noticed he had a line of sticky plasters down the inside of his left arm. I asked him about it and he said he’d cut himself chopping onions earlier. Pretty catastrophic onion accident, I thought, but I didn’t say anything.

“I guess it was over dinner that things started to feel bad again, like in the car. He started asking about my life in town and I told him about how my placement was going. I’m on rotation. I’m training to be a nurse. I blew off some steam because I’d had a long week, honestly, and it had been stressful. But then he started going, ‘Well, if you hate it so much, you should quit. Come move in with me, in the suburb.’

“I honestly spluttered into my wine. Was he actually making a move on me? I decided the best thing was to ignore what he was implying. ‘No, I don’t hate my job,’ I said. ‘It just… takes a lot out of me. I love it. Really.’

“‘Well, then, keep the job, but move in anyway. Life here is far better than in town. There is so much space, and it’s so quiet. And the people are so lovely.’ There was an edge of desperation in his voice.

“I said, ‘I can’t. It would double my commute. And my job has to happen in the hospital. I can’t do it remotely, like you.’

“‘You don’t understand,’ he said. ‘You’d get it if you lived here. Why don’t you want to give it a try? You could get a remote job, work from home, like me. You wouldn’t ever need to commute in to town again. My life is so much better than when I was living in town. It’s all the little things. Like having space to park your car, or roads where children can play.’

“I don’t know why he thought that. We hadn’t seen any children playing in the street on our way here. Even though it was a sunny Saturday afternoon, they’d all been quiet as midnight.

“I realised he was looking at me earnestly. He was completely serious.

“I said, ‘Can I use your toilet?’

In the bathroom I looked at myself hard in the mirror. He was being forward, sure, but he still seemed like a nice guy. And was it such a crazy idea to look at moving out of town? I already had a commute of more than an hour. Maybe I could get a job in the county hospital, or in a local GP clinic or something. I looked out of the window and it really was quiet, no police cars, nobody in the street. I didn’t need to rush into anything I didn’t want to do.

“I left the bathroom and as I was about to go back down the stairs I noticed the door to the study again.

“I’m not sure why I opened it. It looked like any of the other doors to any of the other rooms in the house. But I could hear him clearing away the mains downstairs and I knew I had a bit of time to myself. So I clasped the handle firmly and slowly, slowly, opened the door.

“The room was dark, but I could see it wasn’t a study. No furniture – no desk, no chair. I realised I didn’t know what he did for a living. He said he’d been working from home, so, some kind of office job? But there was no computer here. Just a low table with something on it. And a great wooden carving set into the wall.

I opened the door further and tried to see what the wood carving was, but it didn’t seem to make any sense. It wasn’t writing or a picture. Just lines criss-crossing and overlapping each other over and over. The changing shadows as the door opened made them seem to writhe. At first I took it for an octopus or some kind of plant, but when I looked closer it put me in the mind of a maths problem, or a map. In fact, as I looked closer, it was a map. They were roads. Big ones and small ones, intersecting. That loop there was a crescent; that whorl a cul-de-sac. It was a map of the suburb. I could see Ridge Crescent there in the middle.

“In my examination of the carving I stumbled on the low table and something fell on the floor. It gleamed black in the light. Gingerly I picked it up and almost cut myself – it was razor-sharp. But it was too irregular in shape to be a knife; the sharp edges were all over it, at every angle, you’d cut yourself just trying to get a grip on it.

“I put the blade back on the table next to a shallow bowl which held an amount of deep black liquid. I looked into the bowl. I was mesmerised. Slowly, I dipped one finger in and withdrew. It was warmer than it should have been; blood-warm. I looked at my finger in the light and it glistened red.

“I ran.

“I just ran, ok? I snuck down the stairs and he was still in the kitchen. My bag with my phone in was on the sofa and I couldn’t get it without him seeing me. But I grabbed my shoes from beside the door. Didn’t even have time to put them on.” She brushes an arm towards her scratched, bleeding feet. “Opened the front door as quietly as I could and I don’t think I even closed it. Just ran.

“I ran to the end of Ridge Crescent and I saw a cut through to the next street, just a path, no cars, and I went down it, I thought, well, he might follow in his car. I had to make sure he couldn’t follow. So I hung a left, then the path came out by a road, so I followed that for a bit. Then I cut down a short flight of stairs to an underpass and across the street. That brought me out by a long, straight road lined with houses. It was dark already so I could see all the cars coming a mile off and hide if I needed to. I thought about stopping to put my shoes on but I just made myself walk a little further, just to the next turning, just long enough to be sure.

“Once I’d walked maybe fifteen minutes I paused to get my breath back and put on my shoes. I sat on a low wall in front of a row of houses which looked a lot like his. One had the front door slightly ajar. In fact, there was a silver Volvo parked right outside here, too. It had a slightly battered front bumper. I put down my shoes and stood up. In silent horror I walked around to the rear of the Volvo.

“There it was: Jesus Loves You.

I forgot completely about my shoes at this point. I just turned around and ran in the opposite direction, any direction, away from the house. I know what you’re thinking. I’d had something to drink, it was dark, I got lost. I get it, ok? I know how this sounds. But I swear as God is my witness, there is no way I had looped back on myself. Except for a few turns I was walking on one straight road the whole time. My sense of direction is good. I could not possibly have been back where I started. But there was the house and there was the Volvo. Same space as before. Had it moved? But it was the same house, too. The same curtains and the same front door that I had left open.

“The streets were totally empty. I took a different street to before and ran uphill for a few minutes. After maybe five minutes, steadily climbing the whole time, I rounded a corner and there it was again: the houses and the Volvo. I tried another way. Right this time – up the road marked cul-de-sac. I climbed through someone’s garden and into an alley, over a wall. I fell and scratched my knee. At last I made it into another street. But it wasn’t another street. It was the same street.

“I started to shout out to anyone who could hear, ‘Help me!’ But it was a ghost town.

“I don’t know how long I’ve been running for. I don’t know how far I am from his house. I don’t know how to get back to the station or the police or out of the suburb. I started knocking on people’s doors. I tried five before I got yours.” Patience sniffs. “Nobody else was home, or maybe they just didn’t want to open their doors. I’m so glad you were there.”

Bob re-enters the room holding his phone and shaking his head.

Alice says, “What is it? Oh, are the cab companies all closed already? Well, they’ll reopen in the morning. Dear, why don’t you stay here the night? There’s a camp bed in the cellar we can put you in. Just until tomorrow morning, then we can go to the police and they’ll sort everything out.”

Patience hesitates. “I… yes, please. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to impose. Thank you. You’ve been so kind.”

Bob unlocks the cellar door and pulls the light cord, which blinks into activity. The stairs down are uncarpeted and cold. Patience hesitates, but at Alice’s indication she tentatively makes her way down the stairs.

“Oh wow, Alice, you have so much space down here. You’d never know it from the street.”

Alice says, “Oh yes, we’re very lucky. We don’t want for space. It’s one of the great things about living in the suburb.”

Behind her, Bob closes the cellar door.

“It’s a good thing you knocked instead of ringing the doorbell. I was just locking up and you would have woken the children. They’re five and eight. I just like to avoid disturbing them if at all possible. We take our peace and quiet very seriously. Some prefer the hustle and bustle but they tend not to fit in so well. I find it far better to keep one’s head down. Ah, I see you’ve noticed our mural. The kids painted it. It’s a map of the suburb. Do you like it?”