Lucy Clarke - You Let Me In

I finish collecting the litter, then drag the bin back into position at the end of the driveway. If I were Fiona, I’d go over and demand an apology from Mark, but I don’t have the energy for a confrontation.

My novel, I think. That’s what I need to focus on.

Setting myself at my desk with a steaming coffee and salt-damp hair, I am ready. I open the drawer to grab a pencil – but can’t find one. I pull the drawer right out, trailing my hand through the mess of pens, Sharpie markers, Post-it notes, and glue sticks. There is a hole puncher, a calculator, a pot of drawing pins, a lighter for my oil burner – but no bloody pencils.

It’s a stupid detail, but it bothers me: I always have spares.

I tramp downstairs and locate a pencil from the depths of my handbag. I’m tetchy by the time I return to my writing room. I open the window, settle myself for a second time. I keep a well-thumbed dictionary on my desk and I watch as its cover lifts in the breeze, pages fanning.

Something doesn’t feel quite right. I try not to indulge the feeling – I don’t want to become one of those writers who demand a certain ambience to create – but I can’t shake the thought that something is off-balance.

Then I realise what it is. The dictionary. It is usually secured by a paperweight – a beautiful glass globe that my mother bought on a hiking holiday in Malta three years before her death.

‘It looks like it’s caught the sea inside,’ she’d told me, a wistful look in her eyes. I always keep the paperweight on top of the dictionary – but oddly, it is now positioned beside it.

I pick up the paperweight, turning it through my fingers, feeling its solidity and coolness against my palms. Daylight catches in the silver flecks, making it shimmer like the surface of the sea. As I rotate it, my skin catches on something jagged.

Lifting the globe towards my face, I see the crack – a chip no greater than the length of a fingernail.

I can’t remember damaging it.

There is something unsettling at the back of my mind, a sense of discord. I pace for a moment, trying to work it loose.

Then I seize on it: the jagged shard of glass that punctured my foot. It’d looked like a tiny, lethal icicle. The same colour as this.

I hurry from the writing room, descending the stairs, fingers gripping the paperweight. Pushing open my bedroom door, I go straight to the wastepaper basket at the foot of my mirror. Digging through it, I pull out a parcel of tissue.

Opening it carefully, I remove the dagger of glass I’d found embedded in the carpet.

I press the missing fragment against the paperweight.

Like a key slipped into a lock, it is the exact fit.

When staying in someone else’s house, one would have to be incurious not to wonder about the owner. There are clues everywhere – the photos carefully selected for display on the walls, the clothes hanging in the floor-to-ceiling wardrobes, the stock of medicines in the bathroom cabinet, the box file filled with documents in the bureau, the post that arrives with the handwritten address.

I can take my time, enjoy these small discoveries because, for now, your house is mine.

I drift from the kitchen to the lounge, admiring the sense of continuity and flow between rooms. Everything is marvellously tasteful: the low-backed cream sofa, framed by two upholstered tub armchairs, each carefully angled to face the water. The neutral tones and uncluttered lines naturally focus the gaze towards the sea. Even on a dull day, such as this, there is a mesmerising quality to the water. In warmer weather, I imagine sliding back the bifold doors, removing a wall of the room so that it feels as if the house and water are just a breath apart.

It’s a truly beautiful home. I’m sure some people would be quick to add, ‘Well, yes, easy if you’ve got the money.’

I disagree. This takes vision.

I could never have created this.

My gaze is drawn to a slight groove in the seat of your sofa, the lightest depression in the fabric. This is where you sit. My eye travels to the adjacent coffee table, where there is a scuff mark close to the edge where you must put your feet up.

I lower myself into the spot that is familiar to you. I find my hand sliding down the side of the sofa. It’s the forgotten corners in a home that are often the most revealing. I feel the rough grate of sand or crumbs beneath my nails. My fingers meet something firm and narrow, and I withdraw a pencil. The end of it is splintered, the lead protruding further than the wooden housing. It appears as if the pencil has been snapped in two.

An accident?

Pushing myself to my feet, I turn. Behind the sofa is a library wall. Carefully selected pieces of pottery punctuate the rows of books with the grace of well-placed commas. I stand for a moment admiring your literary choices, many of them classics: Hemingway, Shakespeare, Brontë and Austen. A little predictable, but nice all the same.

I step closer, running my finger along the worn spines of the fiction shelf, passing psychological thrillers, romance novels, literary novels – but no, I still do not see it. I keep looking until I’m sure.

There is only one notable absence on these shelves: your book.

I drop the final piece of naan into my mouth, then gather the takeaway dishes, following Fiona through to her kitchen.

‘Avert your eyes,’ Fiona instructs, glancing at the sink, which is piled with washing up. ‘One of those weeks.’