The Woman in Cabin 10 (3 page)

Normally I leave the bathroom door open—it’s only me and Delilah, and the walls are prone to damp, being under ground level. I’m also not great with enclosed spaces, and the room feels very small when the window blinds are down.

The front door was locked, and the new London bar was in place, but I still checked the window and closed and locked the bathroom door before I finished peeling off my clothes. I was tired—God, I was
so
tired. I had an image of falling asleep in the tub, slipping below the water, Judah finding my naked bloated body a week later . . . I shook myself. I needed to stop being so bloody dramatic. The tub was barely four feet long. I had trouble contorting myself so I could rinse my hair, let alone drown.

The bath was hot enough to make the cut on my cheek sting, and I shut my eyes and tried to imagine myself somewhere else, somewhere quite different from this chilly, claustrophobic little space, far away from sordid, crime-ridden London. Walking on a cool Nordic shore, perhaps, in my ears the soothing sound of the . . . er . . . would it be the Baltic? For a travel journalist I’m worryingly bad at geography.

But unwanted images kept intruding. The locksmith saying “a quarter of all burglaries are repeats.” Me, cowering in my own bedroom, feet braced against the floorboards. The sight of strong hands encased in pale latex, the black hairs just showing through . . .

Shit.
Shit.

I opened my eyes, but for once the reality check didn’t help. Instead, I saw the damp bathroom walls looming over me, shutting me in. . . .

You’re losing it again
, my internal voice sniped.
You can feel it, can’t you?

Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up. I squeezed my eyes closed again and began to count, deliberately, trying to force the pictures out of my head.
One. Two. Three. Breathe in.
Four. Five. Six. Breathe out. One. Two. Three. Breathe in. Four. Five. Six. Breathe out.

At last the pictures receded, but the bath was spoiled, and the need to get out of the airless little room was suddenly overwhelming. I got up, wrapped a towel around myself and another around my hair, and went into the bedroom, where my laptop was still lying on the bed from earlier.

I opened it, fired up Google, and typed:
What % burglars return
.

A page of links came up and I clicked on one at random and scanned down it until I came to a paragraph that read:

WHEN BURGLARS RETURN . . .

A nationwide survey indicated that, over a twelve-month period, approximately 25 to 50 percent of burglaries are repeat incidents; and between 25 and 35 percent of victims are repeat victims. Figures gathered by UK police forces suggest that 28 to 51 percent of repeat burglaries occur within one month, 11 to 25 percent within a week.

Great. So it seemed like my friendly doom-and-gloom merchant, the locksmith, had actually been
under
stating the problem, not winding me up. Although the maths involved in up to 50 percent repeat offenses but only 35 percent repeat victims made my head hurt. Either way, I didn’t relish the idea of being among their number.

I had promised myself I wouldn’t drink tonight, so after I had checked the front door, back door, window locks, and front door for the second—or maybe even the third—time, and put the pay-as-you-go phone on to charge beside my bed, I made myself a cup of chamomile tea.

I took it back through to the bedroom with my laptop, the press file for the trip, and a packet of chocolate cookies. It was only eight o’clock and I hadn’t had any supper, but I was suddenly exhausted—too exhausted to cook, too exhausted even to phone for takeaway. I opened up the Nordic cruise press pack and huddled down into my duvet, and waited for sleep to claim me.

Except it didn’t. I dunked my way through the whole packet of cookies and read page after page of facts and figures on the
Aurora
—just ten luxuriously appointed cabins . . . maximum of twenty passengers at any one time . . . handpicked staff from the world’s top hotels and restaurants . . . Even the technical specifications of the boat’s draft and tonnage weren’t enough to lull me to sleep. I stayed awake, shattered yet somehow, at the same time, wired.

As I lay there in my cocoon I tried not to think about the burglar. I thought, very deliberately, about work, about all the practicalities I had to sort out before Sunday. Pick up my new bank cards. I had to pack and do my research for the trip. Would I see Jude before I left? He’d be trying my old phone.

I put down the press pack and pulled up my e-mails.

“Hi, love,” I typed, and then I paused and bit the side of my nail. What to say? No point in telling him about the burglary, not yet. He’d just feel bad about not being here when I needed him. “I’ve lost my phone,” I wrote instead. “Long story, I’ll explain when you get back. But if you need me, e-mail, don’t text. What’s your ETA on Sunday? I’m off to Hull early, for this Nordic thing. Hope we can see each other before I leave—otherwise, see you next week? Lo x”

I pressed send, hoping he didn’t wonder what I was doing up and e-mailing at 12:45 a.m., and then shut down the computer, picked up my book, and tried to read myself to sleep.

It didn’t work.

At 3:35 a.m. I staggered through to the kitchen, picked up the bottle of gin, and poured myself the stiffest gin and tonic I could bring myself to drink. I gulped it down like medicine, shuddering at the harsh taste, and then poured a second and drank that, too, more slowly this time. I stood for a moment, feeling the alcohol tingling through my veins, relaxing my muscles, damping down my jangled nerves.

I poured the dregs of the gin into the glass and took it back to the bedroom, where I lay down, stiff and anxious, my eyes on the glowing face of the clock, and waited for the alcohol to take effect.

One. Two. Three. Breathe in. Four. . . . Five. . . . Fi . . .

I
don’t remember falling asleep, but I must have. One minute I was looking at the clock with bleary, headachy eyes, waiting for it to click over onto 4:44, the next minute I was blinking into Delilah’s furry face as she butted her whiskery nose against mine and tried to tell me it was time for breakfast. I groaned. My head ached worse than yesterday—although I wasn’t sure if it was my cheek or another hangover. The last gin and tonic was half full on my bedside table, beside the clock. I sniffed it and almost choked. It must have been two-thirds gin. What had I been thinking?

The clock said 6:04 and I calculated that meant I’d had less than an hour and a half’s sleep, but I was awake now, no point in trying to fight it. Instead, I got up, pulled back the curtain, and peered into the gray dawn and the thin fingers of sun that trickled into my basement window. The day felt cold and sour, and I shoved my feet into my slippers and shivered as I made my way down the hall to the thermostat, ready to override the automatic timer and start the heating for the day.

It was Saturday, so I didn’t have to work, but somehow the work involved in getting my mobile number assigned to a new phone and my bank cards reissued took up most of the day, and by the evening I was drunk with tiredness.

It felt as bad as the time I’d flown back from Thailand via LA—a series of red-eyes that left me wild with sleep deprivation and hopelessly disoriented. Somewhere over the Atlantic, I realized that I had gone beyond sleep, that I might as well give up. Back home, I fell into bed like falling into a well, plunging headlong into oblivion, and I slept for twenty-two hours, coming up groggy and stiff-limbed to find Judah banging at my door with the Sunday papers. But this time, my bed was no longer a refuge.

I
had
to get myself together before I left for this trip. It was an unmissable, unrepeatable opportunity to prove myself after ten years at the coalface of boring cut-and-paste journalism. This was my chance to show I could hack it—that I, like Rowan, could network and schmooze and get
Velocity
’s name in there with the high fliers. And Lord Bullmer, the owner of the
Aurora Borealis
, was a very high flier indeed, from what I’d gathered. Even 1 percent of his advertising budget could keep
Velocity
afloat for months, not to mention all the well-known names in travel and photography who would doubtless have been invited along on this maiden voyage, and whose bylines on our cover would look very nice indeed.

I wasn’t about to start hard selling Bullmer over dinner—nothing as crude and commercial as that. But if I could get his number on my contacts list and ensure that when I phoned him up, he took my call . . . well, it would go a long way to finally getting me that promotion.

As I ate supper, mechanically forking frozen pizza into my face until I felt too full to continue, I picked up where I’d left off with the press pack, but the words and pictures swam in front of my eyes, the adjectives blurring into one another:
boutique 
. . .
glittering 
. . .
luxury 
. . .
handcrafted 
. . .
artisan 
. . .

I let the page drop with a yawn, then looked at my watch and realized it was past nine. I could go to bed, thank God. As I checked and rechecked the doors and locks, I reflected that the one silver lining to being so shattered was that it couldn’t possibly be a repeat of last night.

I was so tired that even if a burglar
did
come, I’d probably sleep right through it.

A
t 10:47, I realized I was wrong.

At 11:23, I started to cry, weakly and stupidly.

Was this it, then? Was I never going to sleep again?

I had to sleep. I
had
to. I’d had . . . I counted on my fingers, unable to do the maths in my head. What . . . less than four hours of sleep in the last three days.

I could
taste
sleep. I could
feel
it, just out of my reach. I had to sleep. I had to. I was going to go crazy if I didn’t sleep.

The tears were coming again—I didn’t even know what they were. Tears of frustration? Rage, at myself, at the burglar? Or just exhaustion?

I only knew that I couldn’t sleep—that it was dangling like an unkept promise just inches away from me. I felt like I was running towards a mirage that kept receding, slipping away faster and faster the more desperately I ran. Or that it was like a fish in water, something I had to catch and hold, that kept slipping through my fingers.

Oh God, I want to sleep. . . .

Delilah turned her head towards me, startled. Had I really said it aloud? I couldn’t even tell anymore. Christ, I was losing it.

A flash of a face—gleaming liquid eyes in the darkness.

I sat up, my heart pounding so hard that I could feel it in the back of my skull.

I had to get away from here.

I got up, stumbling, trancelike with exhaustion, and pushed my feet into my shoes, and my sleeves into my coat, over the top of my pajamas. Then I picked up my bag. If I couldn’t sleep, I’d walk. Somewhere. Anywhere. I’d try to exhaust myself into sleeping.

If sleep wouldn’t come to me, then I’d damn well hunt it down myself.

- CHAPTER 3 -

T
he streets at midnight weren’t empty, but they weren’t the same ones I trod every day on my way to work, either.

Between the sulfur-yellow pools of streetlight, they were gray and shadowed, and a cold wind blew discarded papers against my legs, leaves and rubbish gusting in the gutters. I should have felt afraid—a thirty-two-year-old woman, clearly wearing pajamas, wandering the streets in the small hours. But I felt safer out here than I did in my flat. Out here, someone would hear you cry.

I had no plan, no route beyond walking the streets until I was too tired to stand. Somewhere around Highbury and Islington I realized that it had begun to rain, that it must have started some time back because I was wet through. I stood in my soggy shoes, my exhausted punch-drunk brain trying to formulate a plan, and almost by themselves my feet began to walk again, not homewards, but south, towards Angel.

I didn’t realize where I was going until I was there. Until I was standing beneath the porch of his building, frowning dazedly at the bell panel, where his name was written in his own small, neat handwriting.
LEWIS
.

He wasn’t here. He was away in Ukraine, not due back until tomorrow. But I had his spare keys in my coat pocket, and I couldn’t face the walk back to my flat.
You could get a cab
, carped the small, snide voice in the back of my head.
It’s not the walk you can’t face. Coward.

I shook my head, sending raindrops spattering across the stainless-steel bell panel, and I sorted through the bunch of keys until I found the one for the outside door and slipped inside, into the oppressive warmth of the communal hallway.

Up on the second floor, I let myself cautiously into the flat.

It was completely dark. All the doors were closed, and the entrance hall had no windows.

“Judah?” I called. I was certain he wasn’t home, but it wasn’t impossible that he’d let a mate crash there, and I didn’t want to give anyone a middle-of-the-night heart attack. I knew, all too well, what that felt like. “Jude, it’s just me, Lo.”

But there was no answer. The flat was silent—completely and utterly silent. I opened the door to the left of me, the door to the eat-in kitchen, and tiptoed inside. I didn’t switch on the light. I just peeled off my wet clothes—coat, pajamas, and all—and dumped them in the sink.

Then I walked, naked, through to the bedroom, where Judah’s wide double bed lay empty in a shaft of moonlight, the gray sheets tumbled as if he’d just that moment got up. I crawled on my hands and knees into the middle of the bed, feeling the lived-in softness of the sheets, and smelling the scent of him, of sweat and aftershave and just—
him
.

I shut my eyes.

One. Two. . . .

Sleep crashed over me, claiming me like a wave.

I
woke to the sound of a woman screaming, and the feeling of someone on top of me, holding me down, someone grappling with my hands even as I fought.

A hand grabbed at my wrist, the grip far stronger than mine. Blind, mad with panic, I groped in the pitch black with my free hand, searching for something, anything, to use as a weapon, and my hand closed over the bedside lamp.

The man’s hand was over my mouth now, smothering me, the weight of him choking me, and with all my strength, I lifted up the heavy lamp and brought it crashing down.

There was a shout of pain, and through the fog of terror I heard a voice, the words slurred and broken.

“Lo, it’s me. It’s me for Christ’s sake, stop!”

What?

Oh God.

My hands were shaking so much that when I tried to find the light, all I did was knock something over.

From beside me I could hear Judah, gasping, alongside a bubbling sound that terrified me. Where the hell was the lamp? Then I realized—the lamp was gone. I’d smashed it into Judah’s face.

I stumbled out of bed, my legs shaking, and found the switch by the door, and the room was instantly flooded with the unforgivingly bright glare of a dozen halogen spots, each illuminating every detail of the horror show in front of me.

Judah was crouched on the bed, holding his face, with blood soaking his beard and his chest.

“Oh my God, Jude!” I scrambled across to him, my hands still trembling, and began to grab tissues from the box by the bed. He pressed them to his face. “Oh God, what happened? Who was screaming?”

“You!” he groaned. The paper was already sodden and red.

“What?” I was still flooded with adrenaline. I looked confusedly around the room for the woman and the attacker. “What do you mean?”

“I came home,” he said painfully, his Brooklyn accent blurred through the paper. “You started screaming, half-asleep. So I tried to wake you up and—this.”

“Oh, fuck.” I put my hands to my mouth. “I’m so sorry.”

That screaming—it had been so real. Was it really just me?

He took his hands cautiously away from his mouth. There was something in the wad of scarlet paper, something small and white. It was only when I looked at his face that I realized—one of his teeth was missing.

“Oh Jesus.”

He looked at me, blood still dripping slowly from his mouth and his nose.

“What a welcome home,” was all he said.

“I
’m sorry.” I felt tears prick at the back of my throat but I refused to cry in front of the taxi driver. Instead, I swallowed against the hard ache. “Judah?”

Judah said nothing; he just looked out of the window at the gray dawn that was starting to break over London. It had taken two hours at UCH accident and emergency, and then all they’d done was stitch Judah’s lip and refer him to an emergency dentist who shoved the tooth back in place and told him, more or less, to cross his fingers. Apparently the tooth might be saved if it reimplanted. If not, it would be either a bridge or a dental implant. He shut his eyes wearily, and I felt my gut twist with remorse.

“I’m sorry,” I said again, more desperately this time. “I don’t know what else to say.”

“No, I’m sorry,” he said wearily. The word came out as
shorry,
like a drunken Sean Connery impression, the local anesthetic in his lip making it hard to talk.

“You? What are you sorry for?”

“I don’t know. Fucking up. Not being there for you.”

“The burglar, you mean?”

He nodded.

“That. But any time, really. I wish I wasn’t away so much.”

I leaned across and he put his arm around me. I rested my head on his shoulder and listened to the slow, steady thud of his heart, reassuringly unhurried in comparison to my own panicky drumming pulse. Beneath his jacket he was wearing a blood-spattered T-shirt, the fabric soft and worn beneath my cheek. When I breathed in, a long, shaky breath, it smelled of his sweat, and I felt my pulse slow in time with his.

“You couldn’t have done anything,” I said into his chest. He shook his head.

“I still should have been there.”

I
t was growing light as we paid off the taxi driver and climbed wearily up the two flights of stairs to his flat, and when I looked at my watch I saw that it was nearly six. Shit. I had to be on a train to Hull in a few hours.

Inside, Judah stripped off his clothes and we fell into bed, skin against skin. He pulled me against him, inhaling the scent of my hair as he closed his eyes. I was so tired I could hardly think straight, but instead of lying back and letting sleep claim me, I found myself climbing on top of him, kissing his throat, his belly, the dark stripe of hair that arrowed to his groin.

“Lo . . .” He groaned, and he tried to pull me up towards him, to kiss me, but I shook my head.

“Don’t, your mouth. Just lie back.”

He let his head fall back, his throat arching in the pale strip of dawn that penetrated the curtains.

It was eight days since I’d last seen him. Now it would be another week until I saw him again. If we didn’t do this now . . .

Afterwards, I lay in his arms, waiting for my breathing and heart to steady, and I felt his cheek against mine crinkle in a smile.

“That’s more like it,” he said.

“More like what?”

“More like the homecoming I was expecting.”

I flinched and he touched my face.

“Lo, honey, it was a joke.”

“I know.”

We were both quiet for a long time. I thought he was slipping into sleep, and I shut my own eyes and let the tiredness wash over me, but then I felt his chest lift, and the muscles in his arm tense as he took a deep breath.

“Lo, I’m not going to ask again, but . . .”

He didn’t finish, but he didn’t have to. I could feel what he wanted to say. It was what he’d said on New Year’s Eve—he wanted us to move forward. Move in together.

“Let me think about it,” I said at last, in a voice that didn’t seem to be mine, a voice that was unusually subdued.

“That’s what you said months ago.”

“I’m still thinking.”

“Well, I’ve made up my mind.” He touched my chin, pulling my face gently towards his. What I saw there made my heart flip-flop. I reached out for him, but he caught my hand and held it. “Lo, stop trying to make this go away. I’ve been really patient, you know I have, but I’m starting to feel like we’re not on the same page.”

I felt my insides flutter with a familiar panic—something between hope and terror.

“Not on the same page?” My smile felt forced. “Have you been watching
Oprah
again?”

He let go of my hand at that, and something in his face had closed off as he turned away. I bit my lip.

“Jude—”

“No,” he said. “Just—no. I wanted to talk about this but you clearly don’t, so— Look, I’m tired. It’s nearly morning. Let’s go to sleep.”

“Jude,” I said again, pleadingly this time, hating myself for being such a bitch, hating
him
for pushing me into this.

“I said no,” he said wearily, into the pillow. I thought he was talking about our conversation, but then he continued. “To a job. Back in New York. I turned it down. For you.”

Fuck.