The Safe House, page 26
There would be so much to do after something like this, Thea thought: the forms and phone calls, appointments and claims. The effort. She didn’t have it in her. She felt so light there was nothing left of her and dealing with all of this needed solidity; it needed heft, a person who felt like they left a footprint when they walked. If someone blew on her she would simply dissipate, like dust on the wind.
Idly, she watched liquid seep from under her car and with the same blankness with which she’d thought of everything else, she wondered if the liquid was flammable, or if it was merely water.
She should have cared, one way or the other.
At that moment her hand buzzed. She blinked. Maybe it was an injury of some kind, she thought slowly. She would probably need to get it checked out, once she got up from this really rather comfortable bit of damp ground. It buzzed again and this time her eyes managed to get the message over to her brain that she was still clutching her phone. Looking down at it, a notification flashed up, some advert from one of her apps, something she’d probably seen a thousand times before. At first, she thought it was the universe’s idea of a cruel joke. But then, as she sat there amongst the twisted metal and shattered glass, she came to think of it more as salvation:
Morpheus. Dream your way to a better you – one sleep at a time.
Chapter 2
Thea stared at the frog.
She had successfully risen from the dead for yet another day.
It was one week after the car crash. Thea had removed all clocks from her bedroom to prevent feeling anxious at night about the hours passing. However, this now meant she spent the time feeling anxious about not knowing how many hours were passing, which she wasn’t sure was an improvement. Last night she had certainly spent many hours in bed, a lot of them with her eyes shut kidding herself she was dozing. The sky had been a watery blue when she finally did drop off.
Waking to the alarm was like dragging herself out of a deep grave.
She did the usual estimation again: an hour or so of sleep, tops. That was pretty much classed as sleep deprivation, wasn’t it? Some dictatorships used that as torture. By rights, after years of sleeping like this, she shouldn’t have been walking, talking, working … driving. She should have been huddled in a corner, hollow-eyed and drooling.
Mornings were finely tuned. As adrenaline kicked at brain cells that only wanted sleep, she had discovered that mornings were not a time for decision-making. She washed, dressed in the clothes laid out ready the night before, grabbed her preprepared breakfast and lunch and got out of the door, her head beginning to pound.
She was a bruise and the rest of the world was a poking finger.
The frog looked at her.
Instead of work, this morning Thea found herself at the Car Recovery Centre, picking her way through the graveyard of other people’s vehicles with an overly cheerful assistant. She clutched a cardboard box to her chest. It was filled with the belongings that had been rescued from her car. The bright green frog sprawled on top, a present from her mother when she had bought her first car. He had a red kerchief around his neck and a button in his middle that, when pressed, played a selection of children’s songs. His green was clean, his kerchief still tied neatly, his button still working. It was as if the crash had never happened. She, on the other hand, felt as if her own stuffing was showing.
‘We clear out the cars ourselves, but just wanna check that there’s nothing we missed.’ The man edged his stomach past the hulk of an estate car.
‘Umm … I’m okay. You seem to have it all here. I don’t need to see the—’
‘There you go.’ He pointed.
The thing in front of her still had some of the essential features of a car, but they were in all the wrong places: wheels squashed too close together, windscreen crumpled, half the bonnet missing. Suddenly, the car park around her shifted and fell away and she was back in the driver’s seat, the airbags a cushion around her, smoke in her hair.
She took a deep breath.
Someone else could have ended up as twisted and shattered as the lump of metal and glass in front of her.
And then, within twenty minutes, she really was back in the driver’s seat. A different car provided by her insurance, the inside smelling of polish and air freshener.
All she had to do was turn the ignition key.
A woman with a clipboard stood expectantly by the car, waiting for her to drive away, smile frozen.
It was now 10 a.m. and the world had come into pulsing, throbbing focus. Thea popped a paracetamol for her eternal headache, stared at the dashboard and blinked a few times, hoping that would make her eyelids lighter.
The woman waited expectantly.
All she had to do was turn the key.
Her hand hovered near the ignition, but, in her head, she could hear the grinding squeal of metal against metal and the noise was so loud it made her fingers shake.
People as twisted and shattered as that lump of metal and glass.
She fumbled for the door handle and lurched out of the car, grabbing her box of belongings.
‘Umm … Miss Mackenzie?’ She heard the woman call out after her, but the voice was an echo and Thea walked fast, away, out of the car park, not looking back.
‘I’m sorry!’ She shouted behind her. ‘Can you just—? Look, I’ll pick it up later …’
And she kept walking until the whole place was out of sight and she was out of breath, her eyes stinging with tears she hadn’t realized she’d cried. The frog stared at her as she got out her phone to call a taxi, and, once again, the notification popped up on her screen:
Morpheus. Dream your way to a better you – one sleep at a time.
Thea blamed the frog and the broken carcass of her car as the reasons why she found herself that evening in the local pub, squashed between her desk-mate, Lisa, and a man from a different department with a thin face and thinner hair.
The office where she spent her days moving numbers from one spreadsheet to another was a grey, open-plan box. It always smelled of microwave-ready meals from the encrusted kitchen in the corner, had carpet the consistency of Velcro and an air-conditioning system that had a poor grasp of the seasons. She didn’t even have a desk of her own but shared one with Lisa, a middle-aged woman who filled her workspace with so many photographs, paperweights and cute figures that they often made attempts to colonize Thea’s territory. She spent probably too much of her day pushing back googly-eyed unicorns with a pencil. One cuddly car-frog was more than enough for her.
But, this time, when Lisa had asked her to the pub for after-work drinks, Thea had said yes.
She deserved a night out. She deserved the kind of night other people had regularly. One without worrying about how late it could get and that she wouldn’t have time for her wind-down routine and it was Thursday and she had work the next morning and she couldn’t get up late but she wouldn’t get any sleep at all and that car crash would be nothing compared to the mistakes she could make if she was utterly, utterly sleepless—
‘See? Aren’t you glad you came out? You should do it more often.’ Lisa’s nails had tiny daisies painted on them.
It was Margaret’s leaving drinks. Thea hadn’t really known that Margaret had ever arrived in the first place.
‘Too good for the likes of us, eh?’ The thin man smiled.
Thea thought about trying to explain it. She didn’t feel like she was better than them at all; in fact they were all quite clearly better than her – better at being human and sociable and remembering each other’s birthdays and the ages of their children. Thea didn’t have the energy for any of that. She tried sleeping later at the weekends in the hope that would tide her over for the coming week, but it never did. Sleep debt, it was called, and her debt was the kind that got loan sharks circling. She would never be able to repay it.
But that was going to stop, Thea thought, taking a swig of her wine. She couldn’t let insomnia continue to ruin her days as well as her nights. A life – that’s what she was going to have. Starting now.
‘Cheers, Mark,’ she said, raising her glass with a hand that continued to shake.
‘It’s Mike.’
Luckily, her 7 p.m. boost of brief energy kicked in and she listened, laughed in the right places, bought drinks, admired photos of holidays and children and did it all despite the fact that her brain began to whirl and the noise and heat of the pub began to close in on her.
‘And so, Mark, what do you like to do in your free time?’
He had a weak chin and there was a strange smell to him, as if he’d been out in the rain and left to dry too slowly, but he seemed pleasant enough. Thea smiled.
‘It’s Mike.’
More photos, more drinks, more laughing, more brain swirling, more noise and heat. But the noise was welcome; it drowned out the sound of grinding metal that she couldn’t get out of her head. Lisa’s perfume masked the acrid smell of burnt rubber.
People as twisted and shattered as that lump of metal and glass.
‘Another, Mark?’ She forced the corners of her mouth back up into a smile and motioned with her empty wine glass.
‘Mike.’
‘Shit! Sorry! Really, I’m—’
But he had already turned away to the woman on his other side. She couldn’t blame him. It seemed that she could do everything except remember this man’s name. It slipped out of her grasp every time she opened her mouth. The wine churned in her empty stomach and suddenly she wanted to leave, before Mark – Mike! – told everyone how stupid she was, before she threw up the wine, before her exhausted brain refused to tell her equally exhausted body what to do and she had to be carried out of the pub like an invalid.
Using every last bit of willpower, she heaved herself up from her seat and shuffled past Lisa who tried to grab her hand and slur something incomprehensible. Then she was out of the door, the air hitting her like an open palm. She wasn’t sure if it was alcohol or exhaustion that made her steps wobble.
Of course, back at home, after a bath and a ready meal, she was wide awake. This state continued until early the next morning, and, at some point during one of those red-eyed hours, she looked once more at the notifications on her phone, emboldened by the wine still fizzing in her blood.
Morpheus. Dream your way to a better you – one sleep at a time.
She clicked on it.
Chapter 3
‘Well, it’s probably a cult, isn’t it, darling?’
It was a week after Thea’s unsuccessful trip to the pub and her mother was eating haloumi salad, her silk scarf nearly trailing in the food. Luckily, you had to get really close to see that the scarf was printed with tiny little vaginas.
‘You’ll get there and then, give it a few weeks, you’ll be having orgies and giving blow jobs. Constantly. Mark my words. Cult.’
Sometimes Thea wished she didn’t have a mother who said things like “orgies” and “blow jobs” in the middle of a crowded restaurant where the tables were so close you could practically breathe on someone else’s food.
‘A cult might be good for you.’ Vivian speared an asparagus tip thoughtfully. ‘More sex.’
Thea could feel her face burning. She wasn’t sure how much more of this she could stand.
Vivian lowered her voice to a dramatic stage whisper, but couldn’t hide the glint in her eyes: ‘I think I have more sex than you!’
She probably did. Thea had to admit it.
‘Mum! I swear I will leave if you carry on!’ Thea tried to keep her voice stern as Vivian smiled at the few furtive glances she was getting, like a queen amongst her courtiers.
‘Sorry, teapot. Can’t help myself. Winding you up is too much fun. Will be good.’
Thea hated being called “teapot” too. Her mother had started it when she was little because, ‘You had such a sweet little rounded tummy and these skinny arms and legs.’ Vivian thought it cute. Thea disagreed.
‘Right. It’s not a cult. It’s a trial for a new sleep app and they’ll pay for me to be a part of it. All I have to do is apply for an interview. Thing is, it’ll last for six weeks, and obviously the office won’t give me leave for that long so’ – Thea momentarily found her ham panini fascinating – ‘umm … if I’m accepted, I’ll just leave my job.’
That was all it had ever been – a job. Not a career, not a vocation, not a calling. Hers was one desk among many in an office with strip lighting that buzzed. It paid the bills. Of course, those bills would still need to be paid, even if she left that desk …
Unhinged, that’s how she felt. It was as if the car accident had snapped a vital part of her and it was now flapping wildly in the wind, loose from its fixings, hanging in there by not very much at all.
Vivian stopped eating and reached across the table, laying her hand over Thea’s. She stared intensely into her daughter’s eyes and, when she spoke, it was with a deliberate solemnity. ‘That, my love, is the best news I’ve heard this year. I’m delighted! You’re wasted in … whatever it is that you do in that little office. Come help us out at HQ. We always need someone to paint the placards.’
HQ was a living room. The Menopausal Army (‘Probably best to call us Post-Menopausal now, darling!’) had had many names over the years but always the same goal: change. Vivian Mackenzie had spent nearly thirty fervent, bright-eyed years protesting, marching, arguing and educating on anything and everything that needed it. A lot of things needed it. They still did, but Vivian had, over the last few years, taken a step back from leading it all. Thea was banned from calling this retirement.
‘You are a creative soul, anyway – I’ve always thought it,’ Vivian continued. ‘We can find you another job.’ She gripped Thea’s hand tighter. ‘I blame myself, you know, for this inability of yours to sleep properly. We moved around so much when you were little, there was no routine, no stability. You were so well behaved, but it’s left its mark. I see that now.’ She emphasized the next words. ‘I own it.’
There it was. There was the pause, which Thea was meant to fill with the reassurance that Vivian’s chaotic lifestyle when she was little had not irrevocably scarred her in any way. Old age was making her mother sentimental.
‘Mum, it’s not your fault—’
‘Is it dangerous? How does it work? You hear such stories these days. These big companies, they have no morals, no sense of responsibility …’
‘I don’t know. I’m being sent an introductory pack. I can back out if it doesn’t sound right. There are loads of these kinds of sleep apps around. It’ll probably turn out to be crap and I’ll be back at square one.’
Vivian sighed, frowned and fiddled with the huge turquoise bangle on her wrist. Today she was dressed in a bright red tunic top and a necklace in the shape of bats joined together at the wing, even though Hallowe’en was weeks away. Thea wished she’d worn better-fitting jeans, and that maybe she hadn’t decided to cut her own fringe this month. But both jeans and hair were clean, and on some bleak mornings, after only an hour’s sleep, that was all she could manage.
‘I don’t like it,’ Vivian finally proclaimed. ‘But I raised you to know your own mind. So do it if you want to. But you call me the minute anything feels off and I will come and get you wherever you are. And, darling … remember the keys.’
Ah yes, the old key trick: Vivian’s idea of teaching Thea self-defence when she turned thirteen. ‘When out late at night, teapot, hold your keys in your hand like this … yes, that’s it, with the points sticking out between your fingers, like a knuckleduster. Okay, then if any man makes a grab at you, just swipe … yes, like that … mind the cat, teapot … swipe up and nearly blind the bugger.’ She hadn’t yet had a chance to try it out.
‘Okay, Mum.’
Vivian unwound her scarf, shaking it out so anyone left in the café who hadn’t yet seen its print got an eyeful. ‘I suppose you could make some new friends at least, and anyway – you might not even get accepted for this interview, hmm?’
That was the thing, Thea thought as she avoided her mother’s eye. She already had been.
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Acknowledgements
It is only fitting that I should liken the whole process of writing The Safe House to … well, a house; a house very much under construction for the most part of the writing process but luckily surrounded by some much-needed scaffolding to keep the thing from collapsing.
Here’s to my scaffolding.
My agent, the ever-supportive and best cheerleader Kate, who was one of the first to read my final-definitely-not-going-to-rip-it-up-and-start-again draft and her encouraging words meant more to me than possibly she knows.
My insightful and brilliant editor Abi, who immediately nailed what needed to be improved when I couldn’t work it out anymore and who always remains unfailingly enthusiastic and kind.
Once again, to my literary fairy godmother Lisa Milton who gave me a chance in the first place and, without her, I wouldn’t be in this amazing and privileged position of publishing my second book.
Everyone at HQ who has worked on the book in whatever form: the design team, publicity and marketing, Helena my copy-editor, typesetting and proofreading (especially proofreading!). They are all stars.
I have never lived in a bunker, though, some might say, growing up in a small Welsh town in the Eighties is perhaps a very similar thing. So, to answer queries and questions, I read a lot about the end-of-the-world business and doomsday preppers and I now know perhaps too much about how to grow vegetables in the dark. Particularly the book Bunker: Building for the End Times by Bradley Garrett and the beautifully bizarre Christopher Walken/Brendan Fraser film Blast From The Past. Thanks also to James Borland for explaining some legal issues to me.
