You Let Me In Page 9

  ‘Checks out? Elle, you do realise how that sounds? Joanna and her family stayed in your house, paid their bill, left it beautifully. And now you’re wanting to investigate her?’

  ‘Not investigate. Make contact. Just for peace of mind.’

  ‘I know it’s hard being in the house on your own. It’s natural to be jumpy. Just don’t live too much in your head, okay?’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Look, I’m not going to patronise you by saying you’re reading too deeply into these things, but equally I don’t want to fan your fears because – that’s what they are. You’re a writer, Elle. Imagination is your tool.’

  I need to get it out of my thoughts, I tell myself, as I return home and open my laptop. Logging into my Airbnb account, I find the most recent correspondence with Joanna, where I finalised the details of the rental and passed on Fiona’s number in case of problems while I was abroad. Joanna had responded with thanks, saying that their family were excited about their visit.

  Continuing the message thread, I begin to type.

  Hi Joanna,

  Thought I’d drop you a line to see how you enjoyed your stay. I hope the weather was good for you and the family. Do feel free to leave a review, if you have a chance.

  I just wanted to let you know that you left behind some nappy rash cream and a toy giraffe. I’m sorry not to have been in touch sooner. Do let me know your address and I’ll pop them in the post.

  All best wishes,

  Elle x

  I just want to make contact, that is all.

  I’m about to put away my laptop when an auto-generated reply pings straight into my inbox. It says only: This user is no longer a member of Airbnb.

  Joanna’s account is no longer active. Her details have gone.

  My fingers drum against the desk. I don’t like this.

  Is there another way to get in touch with her? All our communication has happened via the website. We’ve never spoken on the phone, and I’d had no need for Joanna’s address.

  I type Joanna Elmer, Winchester, into Google. The search pulls up several Joanna Elmers: a mental health nurse, a seventeen-year-old Joanna pouting in purple lip-gloss on Facebook, a pug breeder in her late sixties. But no images that match Joanna’s Airbnb profile picture.

  Next, I open my online banking to see whether there is any information on my payments. I find the dates: two payments, as per the terms and conditions, on the correct dates. The only discrepancy is that they weren’t made by a Mrs Joanna Elmer, but by C. Elmer. Of course, the payment could have come out of her husband’s account, so it isn’t particularly unusual.

  I’ve learned nothing illuminating. I run a knuckle back and forth along my lip. What else can I do? If Joanna has closed her account, I can hardly beg Airbnb to track her down. I have no complaint to make.

  I close the lid of my laptop. It is ridiculous to be speculating about this when I should be writing. I need to put it out of my head, focus.

  Yet somehow, a steady beat of unease continues to build in my chest: Joanna has deactivated her account. There is no trace of her online. It’s as if she no longer exists.

  2003

  It was three in the morning when Elle finished her shift, stepping out of the nightclub onto a rain-slicked pavement, ears ringing. She pulled up the hood of her jacket to keep out the mizzling rain and stuffed her hands deep into her pockets.

  She’d spent six hours sitting on a plastic stool in what was effectively an oversized closet, handing out coat tickets to clubbers who, hours later, searched for those pink rectangles of paper in purses, in the zipped nooks of handbags, in cotton pockets that jangled with loose change, before pleading with her, to just Give me my coat. It’s that one. There. The red one. The fur-lined one. It’s got a badge on the collar. I’m sure I checked it in. No? Maybe I wore the parka, actually. Shall I just come around, have a look myself?

  A taxi drove past, an arc of water lifted by its wheels. Its ‘Vacant’ sign glowed temptingly. The fare home would be half her wage. It wasn’t even a consideration.

  As she walked, she wondered how her mother was, whether she was lonely in the rented flat with its empty rooms. Elle would ring her tomorrow, see if she wanted to come and visit for a weekend. They could have a picnic in Bute Park. Or maybe if her mother came by car, they could drive out to the Gower for the day, walk the beaches together.

  A vehicle slowed alongside her, windscreen wipers swishing. She imagined another taxi, but when she glanced across she saw a dark car, its headlights beaming across the black surface of a puddle.

  There was a whir as an electric window slid down.

  She felt herself stiffen. The street was empty. She didn’t know anyone in Cardiff who drove.

  ‘Elle?’

  She recognised the timbre of the voice – had heard it in the dry air of a lecture hall.

  She adjusted her hood so she could see better. Luke Linden was leaning towards the open window.

  ‘It is you.’ He smiled. ‘Do you need a ride?’

  Glancing up towards the night, she felt the rain splatter across her forehead and cheeks. Then she looked towards the dry warmth of the car, at Luke Linden smiling.

  It seemed like nothing at the time. Just a yes or a no. Months later, when she’d returned to Bristol, trying to forget Luke Linden, she would think back to that moment and wonder how things would have been if she’d walked on, rather than smiled, said, ‘Yes, that’d be great.’

  She ducked around the back of his car and climbed in.

  The car smelled of cigarette smoke, a menthol brand that made her eyes burn. Pearl Jam was playing on the radio. He leant forward and turned down the volume. The heater was blasting air from the vents and as she clicked the seat belt in, she sighed.

  ‘Busy shift?’

  She looked at him.

  ‘You work in the club,’ he said, pointing to the lanyard around her neck.

  ‘Eight hours,’ she told him. ‘I do the cloakroom. And then a walk home in the rain.’

  ‘Lucky I spotted you.’

  She didn’t ask him what he was doing outside the club at three in the morning, or why he’d slowed when he’d seen her.

  As he pulled away, she watched his hand on the gear stick, a gold wedding band catching in the passing beam of a street light.

  She had only ever seen Luke Linden in a lecture hall, a library, a university corridor – places imbued with a professionalism that reminded her of their roles: he lecturer, she student.

  But in his car, in the blue-black hours of the night, her skin damp with rain – everything felt different.

  He glanced at her sideways, just once. He didn’t ask her how she was enjoying her second semester, what she thought of the course. He said nothing – and neither did she. They travelled in silence and there was a thrill in it, the possibility in the unsaid.

  ‘So,’ he said, pulling up outside her student house. ‘This is where you live.’

  10

  Elle

  ‘When you are considering your villain, remember the old adage holds truth: “It’s usually someone you know.” The job of the author is to explore how well your protagonist ever really knew them.’

  Author Elle Fielding

  I move through my lounge offering wine and glossy chilli-flecked olives from a wooden bowl. Two women are sitting on my sofa, knees angled towards each other, laughing. A woman in an elegant waist-cinching skirt rests her wine glass on the bookcase, as she talks enthusiastically to an artist from St Ives. Music plays throughout the downstairs and chatter rises above it, washing through with laughter.

  I feel as if I’m watching the scene from underwater, everything holding a slightly refracted quality. I hadn’t anticipated hosting book club. Hadn’t imagined my home suddenly being filled with strangers.

  ‘Listen,’ Fiona had said when she’d called earlier, ‘our central heating has crashed. It’s like the bloody Arctic here. Not only that, but there’s a sickness bug doing
the rounds at Drake’s nursery, and I’m terrified he’s brought it into the house. I can’t fell the entire book club in one swoop. Even if they survive the sickness, they’ll probably be hypothermic after an evening in this frigid house. We need to come to you.’

  I’d started to protest, but Fiona cut me off, saying, ‘You don’t need to do a thing. Not a thing. I’ve got everything ready: wine, cheese, those chocolate nibbly sticks women go misty-eyed about. All you need to do is open your front door and usher people to seats that aren’t booby-trapped with Duplo. Say yes?’

  My sister has never liked having people to her house. When Bill’s parents visited in the summer, she booked them into a B&B up the road.

  ‘Is it wrong to like a little privacy?’ she’d snapped when Bill had challenged her.

  I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the central heating was fine.

  ‘Can I top anyone up?’ I ask, approaching Maeve and Laura who are talking together by the hearth.

  ‘Driving,’ Maeve says.

  ‘Don’t try and lead astray a bobby’s wife,’ Laura says, holding out her glass instead.

  Laura can only be in her early twenties and I can’t help wondering if she doesn’t have something she’d prefer to do with her evenings. I refill her glass, then open the window, letting a refreshing blast of sea air blow through the room.

  ‘You’re lucky to live right on the cliff,’ Maeve says. ‘The views must be incredible in the daylight.’

  ‘It’s the first time I’ve ever lived by the sea – and I’ve completely fallen in love with it.’

  ‘The house is amazing,’ Laura says. ‘I mean, I knew it would be from Facebook – but it looks even more beautiful in the flesh.’

  We are joined by a third woman, Ana, who runs a coffee house in town. She has luminescent skin and a striking crop of blonde hair. Her wrists are ringed in silver bangles, which jingle as she raises her wine glass and clinks it against mine.

  ‘Here’s to our newest book club member. Good recruitment skills,’ she adds to Maeve and Laura.

  ‘It’s so nice to finally have people over,’ I say, with meaning. I’m enjoying my home being filled with people and noise and laughter. I’ve found it hard to meet friends since moving here. I don’t have work colleagues. I don’t have a partner to draw me into their group of friends. I don’t have a child to make those easy connections that seem to flower between mothers. Maybe I should borrow Drake, take him to one of those soft-play places that Fiona refuses to step inside on the grounds of her sanity.

  I laugh, a light snort. God, am I a little drunk? Quite possibly. I had a couple of glasses of wine before the book club arrived, just to help myself ease into the evening.

  Ana tucks a hand into the pocket of her wide harem pants, the indigo fabric ballooning from her petite frame.

  ‘Now you’ve let us in, you’ll be struggling to get rid of us.’ She smiles, then turns to Maeve, saying, ‘I don’t think we’ve caught up since your retreat. How was it?’

  ‘Wonderful. An entire week without cooking or cleaning or ferrying around a teenager.’

  ‘What kind of retreat was it?’ I ask.

  ‘A friend of Ana’s runs a wilderness centre in Devon. She holds an annual retreat in the last week of October, so it’s my chance to escape into the woods and pretend to do yoga and meditate. Really it’s just a holiday from real life.’

  ‘We could all do with one of those,’ Laura says.

  I agree, although there’s something about the way Laura says it – sad, wistful – that makes me wonder what she means by it.

  The rest of the conversation flows around me. I observe the curve of Ana’s mouth as she smiles, the way Maeve looks through the sides of her eyes as she listens. The details pixelate in my mind’s eye and I catch myself thinking, I’ll write about this later.

  When the doorbell rings, I slip out into the hallway.

  ‘You’re late.’

  Fiona moves through the door, shouldering off her coat.

  ‘Sorry, sorry. I’m here now,’ she says, through red-painted lips. She thrusts out a carrier bag filled with warm white wine and several bags of crisps and dip. ‘All okay?’

  ‘Absolutely fine. Go through. I’ll get you a drink.’

  In the kitchen, I take a long-stemmed glass and pour Fiona a glass of the wine she’s brought. Then I empty a bag of cracked-black-pepper crisps into a bowl, placing a couple into my mouth. I’m swaying lightly on my feet and the sensation isn’t entirely unpleasant.

  I take out my phone and snap a picture of the wine and crisp bowl, putting out a quick post about book club.

  Haven’t started discussing the book yet, but the wine is going down nicely. #bookclub #wineclub

  I slip my phone away, then wander back to the lounge. Moving through my house, I look around, as if seeing it for the first time. Sometimes it catches me by surprise, the sheer scale of it. The size, the beauty feels overpowering, almost vertiginous. It is too much.

  I don’t deserve it.

  Reaching the hallway, I pause mid-step aware of someone watching me. Maeve is descending my stairway, a hand sliding down the bannister. Her hair is pinned up and fastened with a headscarf, drawing the gaze to her small features.

  ‘The downstairs bathroom was occupied.’

  I smile. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thanks for having us over last minute. You know we’re all going to want to do book club here every month?’

  I laugh, following Maeve back into the lounge – just as Laura is exiting. ‘Nipping for a wee! Don’t start the book chat without me!’

  Fiona has anchored herself to the hearth. Her shoulders look stiff, her chin lifted.

  ‘Thanks,’ she says taking the wine. She leans in close and whispers, ‘I hope you’ve served me the crap stuff I bought.’

  ‘I have.’ I grin.

  ‘The neighbours called the police,’ Ana is saying to the room. ‘My hairdresser had to fly back early from her holiday. When she opened her front door, she cried. They hadn’t even attempted to clear up. There were smashed glasses in her sink, cigarette butts stamped into the carpet, the dining table was scratched to pieces from girls dancing in stilettos. I won’t even repeat what she said about the state of their bedroom.’

  ‘Not like you to skimp on the details,’ Fiona says with a wry smile.

  Ana grins.

  ‘You hear such terrible things about those Airbnb stays,’ the woman in the waist-cinching skirt says. Katherine, that’s her name. She’s an Assistant Head at the local comprehensive, and I can imagine her radiating a quiet sort of discipline as she patrols the playground with her stiff-backed posture. ‘I read an article about a woman returning home to find her living room had been turned into a setting for a pornographic photoshoot.’

  ‘Sounds like that would make arriving home a lot more fun,’ Ana says.

  ‘Let’s not scare Elle,’ Fiona says. ‘She’s only just recovering from Airbnb-ing this place.’

  ‘Here?’ Ana asks, surprised. ‘I can’t believe you’d rent out this house. How did it go?’

  ‘It was left immaculately,’ I answer.

  ‘I’m not sure I’d like the idea of strangers in my house,’ Katherine says. ‘It’s very brave of you.’

  ‘It was just a test run. I only did a fortnight.’

  ‘Tell them about the paperweight,’ Fiona says.

  I shoot her a look – I don’t want my anxieties repackaged as anecdotes – but it is too late; the attention of the room has turned to me.

  ‘Oh, it’s nothing really. It’s just I have this lovely paperweight that I keep on my writing desk. When I got back home, it was chipped. That’s all. I suppose with any rental there’ll always be little things like that.’

  ‘It wasn’t the chip that was the problem though, was it?’ Fiona says. ‘It was that Elle kept the paperweight in her writing room – which she’d locked.’

  ‘What, you think the renters broke in?’ Ana asks.

  �
�Not really, no. It must have happened before I went away. When I mentioned it to Fiona, I was just speculating, letting my imagination run away with itself. Which, as you pointed out,’ I say, inclining my head in Fiona’s direction, ‘is my trade.’

  Everyone laughs.

  ‘What I can’t believe,’ Ana says, her gaze turning to Fiona, ‘is that we’ve been doing book club all this time and you never mentioned your sister was an author!’

  Had she not?

  ‘Didn’t know myself,’ Fiona says. ‘Elle kept her book-writing activities top secret, didn’t you?’

  ‘When you first start writing you don’t actually believe you’ll get published. The last thing I wanted to do was start saying, Hey everyone, I’m working on a book!’

  ‘Except I’m not everyone.’

  My sister is in one of her provocative moods. I can guess there’s been an argument with Bill before coming out and she hasn’t quite shaken off her viper reflex.

  ‘Is it true,’ Maeve asks, ‘that it’s best to write about what you know?’

  The question causes me to pause and I take a moment to frame my response.

  ‘I suppose it lends a credibility, a sense of vividness and emotion if it’s something you’ve experienced. But I don’t think authors should be limited by it.’

  Katherine says, ‘I read a fascinating article about method actors and the lengths they go to to get into role. Have you watched The Fall?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘Oh, you must. It’s a chilling series about a serial killer. The actor – Jamie Dornan, I think his name is – wanted to experience the thrill of the chase. So one evening on the tube, he followed a woman as she got off. Apparently, he kept his distance, so she had no idea she was being followed, but he stayed on her tail for a few streets, experiencing what it felt like to pursue someone.’

  ‘That’s just creepy,’ Laura says, shivering.

  I don’t disagree, although I can see why he did it – the benefit of being able to live that emotional experience, to then channel that feeling into playing the part.

  ‘So, have you always wanted to be a writer?’ Ana asks.