The Other Tenant, page 3
Dev pulls a face. ‘Well, she can still do that, can’t she? We’ll leave the bags outside till she’s signed the form.’
Rob shakes his head and keeps walking. ‘We don’t do it that way. Sorry. We have a system.’
I exchange a glance with Dev behind Rob’s back. The ‘Head Guardian’ title has clearly gone to this guy’s head. All the talk of squads and systems is making me uneasy. It’s like being back at …
I laugh under my breath at the absurdity of it all. It isn’t like being back at school. I am back at school, and in September too. Just like the start of a new school year.
A great heaviness fills me. I’d thought seeing it like this, empty and abandoned, would be good for me, but already I’m regretting it. The old feelings are coming back. Not that they’ve ever gone away.
We’re halfway across the playground before I risk a glance at the enclosed garden on the left – Lottie’s garden – and am shocked to see that the sculptures have been removed. All three of them.
Rob sees me looking and stops.
‘There used to be an art studio there, but it was demolished after a fire.’
It’s a common joke as a child, to say you wished your school would burn down. I bet most kids have said it, or thought it, at one time or another, but you never really mean it. When that fire started, it was terrifying. I only have to smell a whiff of smoke now and it all comes back.
‘They said it was probably accidental,’ Rob says. ‘Something to do with batteries exploding, apparently. Although they couldn’t entirely rule out the possibility of it being deliberate.’ He starts walking again. ‘One of the pupils died,’ he adds, almost as an afterthought.
I stare at the back of his shoulders, appalled at the matter-of-fact way he says this, as if Lottie Lansdowne’s tragic death wasn’t the most awful, shocking thing to have happened. She was my closest friend. McKinleys was never the same again. How could it have been? The events of that terrible day cast a pall over everything. They’re why I flunked my exams, and I wouldn’t mind betting they were one of the main reasons why the governing body eventually chose to merge with another school and sell the premises, burying the name McKinleys and all that dreadful history for ever.
‘The family have started a local petition to keep the memorial garden on site and incorporate it into the new development,’ Rob says. ‘There’s a lot of support for them locally. It’s turned into a real campaign.’
He carries on walking. ‘The owner’s in negotiations with them over it, but between you and me, I doubt he’s going to give in. He strikes me as the sort of man who always gets his own way. Which means it’s only a matter of time before this whole playground, including the garden, becomes a residents’ car park.’
Rob ushers us into Block C, his last words about a car park reverberating in my head. The graffiti on the fence makes sense now. Lottie’s parents must be devastated, although I can’t imagine they’d condone vandalism. But before I can fully digest everything Rob has told me, he’s introducing me to two people who are coming down the stairs as we go in. A young woman with auburn hair cut in a sharp, chin-length bob, and a man with short Afro hair shaved at the sides.
‘This is Craig and Elle,’ he says. ‘They’re in Unit 8, two floors down from you.’ He nods in my direction. ‘And this is Marlow. She’s replacing Hayley.’
‘Replacing her?’ Elle’s face looks pinched with worry. ‘Has Hayley gone then? She never said anything.’
‘’Fraid so,’ Rob says. ‘Family emergency.’
Elle turns to Craig. ‘Did you know she’d gone?’ Her face isn’t pretty, but it’s interesting. Attractive. Rob seems to think so too. He can’t take his eyes off her.
Craig shakes his head. ‘I had no idea. What kind of emergency? Did she say?’
‘No. And even if she did, I wouldn’t be allowed to tell you because of confidentiality.’
Craig rolls his eyes at Dev and me. ‘No, of course you wouldn’t.’
Later, when Rob’s shown me the room and gone through all the paperwork, he finally gives me the go-ahead to start moving in. Dev is already outside, unlocking the van. As I go to join him, I can’t resist glancing at one of the classrooms that lead off the main hall. I can’t see inside because the window in the door has been covered with a piece of cardboard on which someone has written ‘WET FLOOR – DO NOT ENTER’.
Curious, I try the handle, but the door is locked. I wonder why Hayley was allowed to live in there with a leak and yet I can’t. Unless the leak was only discovered after she’d gone. I try to unpick the tape from one corner of the cardboard.
‘Marlow? Are you coming or what?’ Dev is standing by the main entrance, a frustrated expression on his face, and I hurry over to join him. As I’m carrying the first of my boxes across the hall and past Hayley’s room a few minutes later, I have the same sensation in my gut I had when I first arrived. An internal trembling. A dread.
I swallow hard and increase my pace until I’m outside and the fresh air blows the feeling away. It must be all the negative energy associated with this school and its tragic past.
So why do I feel like it’s more than that?
4
Rob
Rob makes up a new folder for Marlow Cairns and puts her signed inventory and induction papers inside it, lining them up carefully and paperclipping them in place. He opens the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet to the side of his desk and inserts the folder into the hanging file marked ‘Licensees’, making sure that it is positioned exactly in the centre so that there is an equal amount of green cardboard showing at either side. Then he closes the drawer, picks up his spoon, and starts shovelling the remains of the cold Pot Noodle into his mouth.
At least she didn’t make a fuss when he told her about the room. She’s fed up about it – he can usually recognize that emotion in others now – but she’s accepted it. That’s the main thing. She has a plain face, he thinks, and her nose is on the large side, but she looks clean. He doesn’t like her two-tone hair though. Why would anyone want a purple fringe?
He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, and carries the empty container and the spoon out to the kitchen. The day has turned gloomy all of a sudden, and he flicks on one of the wall switches, hearing the familiar low-level buzz of the fluorescent strip lights overhead. Instinctively, he heads for his favourite sink, the one he singled out for use on first arriving at the site, back in those glorious days when he was the only one here and had the full run of the place.
He rinses the container under the cold tap, then disposes of it in the recycling bin. Not for the first time, it occurs to him how much like a mortuary the kitchen looks, with its bank of stainless-steel equipment, now dulled with time, its clinical shelving units and metal tables on wheels.
A disturbing image flashes into his mind, but he forces himself to think of something else. For a second, he thinks he sees her in the corner of his eye. An apparition. He spins round, but there is nothing there. Of course there isn’t.
On his way back to the office, he finds himself whistling one of his made-up tunes. But as he passes Hayley’s old room, the anxiety returns, and he stops. The palms of his hands have begun to sweat.
Just when he thinks he is on the verge of understanding people, they go and do something monumentally stupid. His mouth sets in a grim little line. The sooner he stops thinking about her, the better.
5
Marlow
When Dev’s gone, and I’m back in Unit 9 with all my belongings piled up on the floor, I take stock of my new surroundings. The room is bland and functional with ugly vertical pipework running up one of the walls. It’s only when I look more closely at the ghosts of algebraic equations on the whiteboard that I recognize the handwriting. Of course. This floor is where the maths department used to be. This is Mrs Barrie’s old classroom.
It’s not what I was expecting, but I suppose it will have to do. That’s the thing about being a property guardian. You learn how to transform the strangest of places into a home. All it takes is a little thought and imagination. A touch of creative flair. I could use the board as the base for some sort of collage. I could even make a feature out of this old flipchart stand in the corner, and attach some of my black-and-white photographs to it.
I run my hand over the last remaining sheet of paper. There’s a faint imprint from a page long since torn off. It looks like the beginning of one of those logic puzzles. I squint at the words. Bryony and Dave have been seeing each other for five weeks and four days. Thankfully, that’s the only part of the question I can make out. If I knew the rest, I’d be tempted to stop everything and work out the answer. I’ve always loved puzzles. They force me to focus and take me away from any worries, giving me a break from my incessant internal monologue.
I wander over to the windows. What they lack in aesthetics, they more than make up for with their view of the school campus and the city beyond. I never fully appreciated it when I was at school here. I took it for granted, that skyline. But a view like this comes at a premium. Whoever’s bought this site is going to make an absolute killing.
The original vertical blinds are still in place, but they’re old and unsightly. Broken, too, by the looks of them. I gaze down at Lottie’s garden and, for a couple of seconds, the building that once stood there shimmers like a mirage in my mind’s eye. A fissure of panic opens up inside me, and I have to press my hands on to the windowsill and breathe deeply till it passes.
Everything passes. Eventually. The acrid smell of smoke. The screams. The terror. But the embers remain. They never entirely go out.
I focus on a sun-catcher sticker stuck on one of the windows. It’s designed to look like a stained-glass tulip but, having lived with the real thing for the past ten months, I think it looks a bit naff and am about to peel it off. Then I have an idea. I pin the blinds out of the way with my elbow and take a stream of photos of the view, filtered through it. It’s like an itch, this compulsion to take pictures, to view the world through a frame.
I resize the best of the images, pleased with the result.
‘OK, tulip, you can stay.’
I put the picture on Instagram, and the likes come in almost immediately. The hit of dopamine I so desperately need right now. It’s only as I’m turning away from the window that I catch a glimpse of something on the far end of the windowsill, partially hidden by one of the tatty blind slats. A pair of binoculars in a case and a small flask. That’s odd. Neither of these objects were on the inventory Rob made me sign, which makes me think he doesn’t know about them.
I unscrew the top of the flask, expecting to see grey mould, but when I gingerly peer inside, it’s neither mouldy nor empty. There’s an inch of milky brown liquid at the bottom. I give it a tentative sniff. The milk is starting to turn, but only just. Whoever left this here must have done so very recently. And yet, according to Rob, no one has been living in here.
I take the binoculars out of their case, instinctively drawing them up to my eyes and fiddling with the focus, although it’s pretty sharp already. I can see directly into one of the classrooms on the first floor of the drama block opposite. A figure comes into view – a young woman wearing only her underwear, fair hair in a messy topknot – and I hastily put them down. Has one of the other guardians been coming in here to spy on her? I doubt very much they’ve been using these things for birdwatching. Not the feathered kind, anyway.
A sharp tap at the door makes me jump. I slide the binoculars further back behind the blinds. Maybe this is their owner right now. They’ve just realized the room is going to be occupied and are coming to retrieve them. Although won’t that be tantamount to a confession that they’re a Peeping Tom?
I open the door and see Rob, armed with a clipboard. ‘Ready for the tour?’ he asks.
‘Tell me about the other tenants,’ I say, as we head back across the playground towards the older part of the school.
Rob holds the door to the main hall open for me. ‘We’re not tenants,’ he says. ‘We’re licensees. A tenant is someone who has a legally binding right to—’
‘Yes, I know. I’ve been a property guardian before, remember? It’s just that “tenant” is quicker and easier to say.’
Rob frowns. He pauses to remove his glasses, and gives them a quick clean with the hem of his jumper. ‘There are three of us in this building,’ he says. ‘I’m in the old staffroom next door to the office, and Mags and Lou are further down the corridor.’ He points in the direction of what used to be the English department. ‘Don’t get on the wrong side of Lou,’ he says. ‘She can be a bit … fierce.’
We’re level with Hayley’s old room now, and I wonder if Rob’s noticed where I tried to unpick the gaffer tape from the cardboard notice on the window earlier. I might be imagining it, but I sense him stiffening as we pass. ‘You’re better off in Block C,’ he says, even though I haven’t said a word. ‘It’s much better equipped.’
He opens the door to the girls’ toilets to prove his point. ‘They’re pretty rank now, as you can see. The ones in the newer part of the campus are more modern, plus the buildings are better insulated, and you’ve got the benefit of the showers in the drama and PE blocks.’
‘I suppose you use the old staff loos then.’
‘Yes. And a shower pod’s been installed in what used to be the caretaker’s cupboard.’
He’s leading me into the kitchen now. I’ve only ever glimpsed it from the other side of the shuttered serving hatch that opens into the hall, which used to double as our refectory. I try to imagine the place full of red-faced cooks and dinner ladies, steam rising from pans, and for a moment, I fancy I hear the echoes of clanking plates and the lunchtime chatter of girls queuing up at the hatch, the imagined smell of school dinners connecting me to the past in an instant. Why, oh why, did I ever agree to this?
Rob points out the safety leaflets for each appliance and urges me to read them at my leisure. Now we’re heading for the part of the corridor that turns right towards the science block and the old chemistry labs. A barrier blocks our access.
‘You mustn’t go beyond this point,’ Rob says. ‘It’s one of the no-go areas.’
‘Why’s that?’
He shrugs. ‘I guess it’s possible there might be traces of hazardous materials somewhere. There’s lots of junk still in the store cupboards.’
I raise my eyebrows. ‘So you’ve had a look, have you?’
A slight flush creeps into Rob’s cheeks. ‘Certainly not. It’s a no-go area. I thought I just told you that. Same goes for the bell-tower. The stairs aren’t safe.’
He turns on his heel and marches back the way we’ve come. ‘Just the drama and PE blocks now,’ he says, as we emerge into the playground once more. ‘Then we’ll do a circuit of the grounds.’
The old gym smells the same as it always did, of rubber and stale sweat. The markings on the floor are faded now and most of the equipment has gone, but there’s a torn leather pommel horse pushed up against the wall in the corner. Even in its current dilapidated state, it brings back unpleasant memories. The dreaded run towards it, knowing full well that there was no way on earth I was going to vault gracefully over it like the other girls, and that with every second I was getting nearer and nearer the ritual humiliation of having to clamber over, bare legs scrabbling to clear the leather, heart pounding from the effort, ears ringing with shame.
‘Some of the squad play badminton in here, or use it to work out,’ Rob says. ‘Lou and Mags, mainly. And Big Dave. You’ll meet them at the meeting this evening. Dave’s always on the lookout for a badminton partner, so if that’s your bag …’
‘It isn’t.’
Rob makes an approving noise. ‘You and me both.’
‘The only sport I was ever good at was swimming,’ I say.
‘Hah! You’d have liked being at school here then. They had their own pool. It’s drained now, of course.’
Art and swimming – my two favourite lessons. The only things that made my life here bearable, until Lottie died and nothing about this place was ever the same again. Although, according to my parents, losing a friend in a school fire which also destroyed every last component of my A Level coursework was merely ‘an obstacle to overcome’. A terrible obstacle, admittedly, Dad said. A tragic one, Mum added. But not something I should let derail me from my future.
My stomach tightens. They were of the opinion that I should have buckled down and spent every waking moment redoing my coursework, and doing it even better than before, not to mention all the other revision I still had to do for my academic subjects.
They thought having something to focus on was the best way through. The only way through. But it wasn’t. Not for me. As if any of that exam shit mattered after what happened to Lottie. If good, kind people like her could die like that, in such a horrible, horrible way, what was the point in striving for anything?
Now though, and it pains me to admit this, I’m starting to wonder if perhaps they were right. I can’t keep living this itinerant lifestyle for ever.
Rob sets off again.
‘Hang on, aren’t we going to look at the pool?’
He shakes his head. ‘Why would you want to look at an empty, dirty old pool?’
I can hardly say it’s for old times’ sake, so I settle for another, less revealing truth. ‘I like architecture and design. I take photos of interesting places.’
Rob frowns at me as if I’ve just admitted to torturing small animals for pleasure. ‘I’m afraid that part of the school is strictly out of bounds. The pool, the pump room. It’s too dangerous.’
‘I only want to look at it. I’m not intending to dive in.’
He shoots me a stern look, as if diving in is something I’ve seriously considered. ‘You can’t, it’s been drained.’
I sigh. Rob Hornby is hard work.
‘Besides which, it’s structurally unsound. The whole building is going to be demolished at some point. Come on,’ he says, striding ahead of me. ‘I’ll show you where the showers are, and then we’ll head over to the drama studio so you know where to go for the meeting.’
