Mark Haddon - The Red House

It is the cold that wakes her, the fire dying, the light off and only a dim glow from the landing upstairs seeping into the room. Karen is sitting in the armchair. A jolt of fear and relief. This will be over soon. But Karen is not Karen, not the Karen she had imagined. Bird bones and sunken cheeks, matted greasy hair. For a second Angela wonders if she is dead, then her glassy eyes open and turn. Such economy of movement, so little energy to spare. The unwashed stink of her, beyond animal, homeless all these years. Gypsy camps and the breakers’ yards. A sore at the corner of her mouth, that tramp smell, urine and faeces, raw papery skin. Five thousand nights in the open air. She looks eighty, not eighteen. She does not speak, perhaps she has never learnt to speak. Angela is terrified, she wants desperately to move but her arms and legs will not answer her commands. She is trapped inside her body. Instead it is Karen who is moving, bony hands on the arms of the chair, straining to lift such a small weight. This is not about apology or explanation or penance, this is punishment, and Angela will have no say in it just as Karen once had no say. On her feet, unsteady but determined. She fixes Angela with her eyes and does not look away. Angela can see now how truly frail she is, the way her clothes hang, greasy brown rags, all colour gone. Things moving in her hair. Three steps and she is standing in front of Angela, the stink overpowering now, leaning down, her face changing shape as it closes in to kiss her. A ragged fin of grey flesh rising through the hair, eyes narrowing to gashes in the wet clay. Teeth and claws. Mouth on Angela’s mouth, forcing it open, dry cracked lips. The dirty wet meat of her tongue. Angela hears shrieking from high on the jagged rocks, the splintering of timber and the roar of water rushing in.

Bright light suddenly. Karen vanished and a girl kneeling in front of her. Mum…?

Angela can’t remember how to speak.

The girl stands and says, Oh shit .

Daisy. It’s Daisy. This confusion. This is how her mother left the world. The nurses burning her hands. When will Richard come to see me?

But he’s here now, her brother, the doctor. He leans on the arm of the chair. Angela…? He clicks his fingers directly in front of her face, examines her eyes in turn. There’s a woman in the room. Jennifer. No, the other one.

Richard takes her earlobe between his thumb and forefinger and squeezes it hard. Ow . She pulls her head away from his hand. She can move again.

Angela…?

It feels like a very long time since she last talked. I fell asleep .

How are you feeling now?

It required thought. Leafing through memories of the last few days. What’s the time?

Half-two .

I heard something , said Daisy. So I came down .

Was it Karen she heard? She let the foolish question slide away.

We’ve been trying to wake you for some time , says Richard.

Louisa standing in the corner, watching. Angela wants to hear her speak, the suspicion that she might not actually be there. She catches Louisa’s eye. You scared us , says Louisa. So she’s real.

Daisy touches her hand. Seriously, how are you feeling?

Suddenly she sees the situation from their point of view. That she has done this to them. I’m really sorry .

There’s no need to apologise , says Richard.

She gets to her feet, a little unsteady at first. I think we all need some sleep .

Only as they are returning upstairs do they realise how deftly she has sidestepped the question they have been asking for the last ten minutes. What happened down there? But Angela is right and they all do need sleep and perhaps some questions are best left unanswered.

♦

He doesn’t get to take her shirt off, doesn’t get to feel her tits, let alone see them. She rolls backwards onto the bed, he unbuckles his jeans and pulls down his boxers and leans over, left hand beside her head. He’s not exactly an expert when it comes to this kind of thing and she seems really dry so it takes a while to get his cock in. Her face still blank, like she’s looking through him. Fifteen, twenty seconds and he’s about to come. Then everything changes, like she’s woken up suddenly. She grabs his arm and shoves her free hand hard against his windpipe, a punch almost. He stumbles against the little dresser, regains his balance and slides onto the chair, trousers round his ankles, cock still hard, that weird tremor of being on the brink of coming, a big blunt pain in the small of his back. She slaps his face as hard as she can. Now get the fuck out of here .

Other people have hit him that hard, but no has ever hit him with that venom. He raises one hand in a gesture of ceasefire and uses the other to pull up his jeans and boxers.

Really quiet this time. Just fuck off . Eyes narrowed.

Yeh. Don’t worry. I’m going . He reaches down and retrieves his shirt. Trousers still undone and no time for checking the corridor before he steps out but that doesn’t seem like top priority right now. Then he’s gone and she holds it together long enough to hear his footsteps fade down the corridor, before rolling onto her side and holding the pillow against her face so that no one can hear her crying.

He doesn’t even have time to grab any toilet paper. Just drops his shirt and lets go of his belt and steps into the shower and brings himself off all over the tiling in a couple of strokes. Holy shit. Did that actually happen? He fucked Melissa. He actually fucked Melissa.

♦

Angela slipped into the bedroom. Little bedside light still on, Dominic stirring briefly then becoming still again. She sat on the chair and waited for the others to use the bathroom and return to bed. Silence at last. She leant over and then took hold of the green plastic bag that lay scrunched on the floor beside the chest of drawers, a tuft of hair protruding from the top. She stood up and went back out onto the landing, quietly closing the door behind her. She avoided the creakier steps then turned into the living room at the bottom of the stairs. The fire low but still burning. Bending down, she undid the little latch and eased the door open, slow as a second hand to prevent it squeaking. She took five pieces of kindling from the basket and laid them parallel in the single lazy flame. Little blonde sleepers. She took the doll from the bag. A brief hesitation, letting the doubts graze her before spinning away. She laid the doll along the kindling, the dress catching immediately, a poisonous blue flame leaping up. Slowly, she shut the metal door. The tiny muffled thud of the webbing seal. Latch closed. The toddler on the sheepskin rug, the rainbow-coloured windbreak, OGDENS . They were pictures of Daisy, weren’t they? Flames licking round the doll now, as if she were falling through the air in a dress of sunset colours, violet, orange, green. A fierce little star. And they cast her bound into the midst of the fire. And she had no hurt .

Alex wakes early for one final run, south to Hatterall Hill via the grouse butts and the little disused quarries, thinking how he will probably never come back here, looking around, storing it, another place to visit in his head. He has returned to the house and is squatting to untie his trainers on the lawn when he sees his father crossing to the shed with a big white rubbish bag for the bin. Alex realises suddenly that he is going to do it. After last night he feels superhuman. He waits for his father to return then steps onto the path.

Dominic stops and raises his eyebrows because the body language is unequivocal. What’s this about?