Darkside_ A Novel - Belinda Bauer [76]
Their tiny terraced house smelled of sweat, mildew and something else which she took days to identify as a bag of onions liquefying in the vegetable rack. One part of her wanted so badly to scrub the place from top to bottom that she kept opening the cupboard under the sink and staring at the bleach; another part of her rebelled at the thought that, because she was a woman, she should clean the house. She had a degree in Criminal Psychology! She'd graduated top of her class at Portishead! She was a highly trained and highly effective officer of the law!
It sucked, because she really wanted to clean that house.
The Marshes weren't under arrest; they were free to come and go - but they hardly did. By day Alan stared at The Jeremy
Kyle Show and Homes under the Hammer as if he had common ground with unwed slags and millionaire property developers. Danny would slouch down at breakfast and attempt to make small talk over the cornflakes. Very small talk. He was no talker, Danny Marsh, but he was a surprisingly good listener. He would ask her something and then just let her keep talking while he poured milk and sprinkled sugar and crunched cereal. Now and then he would look up and make eye-contact; now and then he would grunt; now and then he would nod. It was the only encouragement she needed. Sometimes she found herself telling him things about her own life that she hadn't even told her boyfriend, Eric. Sometimes she told him things about Eric! Afterwards she was always sorry she'd been disloyal, but Danny Marsh's grunts and nods seemed to open her eyes to certain aspects of Eric's personality that she had to admit she'd never noticed before. Or if she had, they had never bothered her before. It had taken Danny Marsh and his objectivity to make her see ...
She locked them all in every night. Back door, front door and all the downstairs windows. Alan Marsh was too out of it to notice, but Danny had watched her do it the first night and had asked, 'Are you locking someone out, or locking us in?'
'Someone out, of course,' she'd said, but she could feel her cheeks grow warm and hoped he hadn't noticed.
Every night she kept the keys under her pillow while she slept in the tiny box room they had cleared for her. 'Cleared' was a euphemism for shoving everything that apparently wouldn't fit in the attic against the opposite wall, and Rice had to turn sideways to approach the bed at nights, down a narrow pathway of ugly green carpet.
She crab-walked down that pathway around midnight every night and woke at six. She checked on the Marshes as soon as she woke - but for the rapid application of mascara to her pale lashes, because that was next to waking like cleanliness is next to godliness - and she checked by pressing an ear against their bedroom doors and listening to them breathe. Alan snored; his son did not, but in the still darkness of dawn she could always hear him breathe eventually, once she focused and calmed her own breathing.
From day three onwards she had inquired of Alan and Danny whether they might like to return to work at the ramshackle little garage behind their home. She'd gathered that they kept half the cars on Exmoor running from the dingy corrugated-iron shed, and was more than prepared to jump around and stamp her feet to stay warm if only it took them all out of this stuffy little house. But no amount of encouragement would shift them into any action that was not slow or short-lived. Danny went to the pub now and then, but constantly forgot that he was supposed to have bought something for tea, and eventually Rice chose female submission over starvation and stormed down to the Spar to keep them all in the most mundane of foods - beans, toast, eggs, toast, cheese, toast and more toast. Her low-carb diet was a thing of the past and she felt the old white-bread addiction gripping her like crack, the longer her pointless occupation of the Marsh home continued.