Mortal Sin - Sin Book II

Chapter 13

I shrugged. I wasn't desperate enough for human interaction to indulge in conversation through a closed wooden door. The wood would become bored of being the middle man in such a dialogue (potentially involving another sort of log...) and Barry would, no doubt, be embarrassed to be discussing the prospect of rain when he was making his own. I turned and looked around the landing.

It was large. A great rectangle of black diamonds on a red background led from the doorway to the bedroom I'd been in, past the bathroom and over the top of the stairs. Three other doors, closed, invited scrutiny by curious investigators - or bemused memory-losers who wondered if their mind might possibly be hiding within those rooms.

I looked at the carpet again. Black diamonds on red. Why not red on black? Would I have been more optimistic if I'd chosen the latter rather than the former? If Freud had been interviewing me for his late night radio show, would he have believed my glass was half full if I'd preferred crimson on night instead of shadows on blood? Would he have insisted my mother didn't fill my glass enough during my childhood and this had led to my memories taking flight? They'd run away to find someone who's glass runneth over and left my own mental passages barren, dusty and coated with the crust of emptiness.

I changed my mind. It was red on black. I may as well be upbeat about something.

I assumed the three doors were bedrooms. From my view through the window, I'd seen the neighbouring houses were quite large, detached from each other like the segments of a centipede which had been marching up the street until Jack's giant came along and chopped it up, Gordon Ramsay style, for a stir fry or casserole.

Would a centipede suit one more than the other? Was it like carrots and cauliflower or peppers and onion? Was there a difference between diced centi- or millipede? Would more legs make you feel you were flossing as you ate?

In a house the size of these, four bedrooms would be the norm. Perhaps there'd be a 'box room', the sort I lived in when I was very young, but the others would be big enough to at least put a bed, wardrobes and the rest of standard bedroom paraphernalia. If the builders had been generous in their construction, there might have been space for a treadmill or gaming chair or a large rug in front of an open fire for night-time treats.

My hand hovered over the handle of the nearest door when I realised something.

I lived in a box room when I was young. The wallpaper was a strange sort of blue, which you'd never see in the sky or the sea. Beneath the wallpaper was polystyrene. I remembered the rolls of the stuff, put up beneath the wallpaper to insulate and prevent me seeing my breath. My breath was still there afterwards, but the polystyrene wall coverings had magically turned it invisible, so it was no longer the ghost like ectoplasm escaping my mouth. My bed was against one wall and there was a ledge, produced from the headspace on the stairs below, where I had all my folded clothes. Apart from a bookcase, there was no room for any other furniture, so the ledge was my wardrobe, desk and bedside table (even though it was at the foot of the bed, not beside it).

I could see it clearly. I could remember the time I was in bed and the wall shook, from the outer wall which housed the window, all the way along to the door, which then joined in the shaking. Then it stopped, fading away like the rumble of a truck vanishing into the distance. Except there were no trucks. We lived on a quiet street and, at that time, everyone was in bed or watching TV.

I remembered the time I'd not long started to sleep without pyjamas. I'd wear them to bed, embarrassed to admit I might be growing up and want to be an adult a few years before my time. I remembered my mother coming in, in the morning, and standing there asking me if I was getting up while I tried my best to get my pyjamas back on under the covers before she noticed.