Silent Souls (Wattys 2014)

Chapter Six

Him

She has some good days, and some bad days – unfortunately, as of late, more the latter than the former.

The second I step into the library, I know that something’s not right.

She’s not there.

I swallow back the dread growing inside me. I can’t see Mrs Hutton, her employer, nor can I see Kyle, whom she’s quite close to.

Something’s wrong.

*

We’re sitting on her bed (which, for once, isn’t a total mess). There’s a film playing on her telly, but I have no idea what it is. I’m so immersed in her that I don’t want to give it any of my undivided attention.

A couple of stubborn loose strands of auburn hair hang over her face. I can’t resist brushing them away. As my skin touches hers, I see a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth.

She glances over at me, and that blush from the first day we met comes back again. She bites back a smile, eyes travelling downwards, her gaze settling on my hand.

“I get what it’s like to be with someone, to want to hold their hand and have second thoughts because you feel like you don’t deserve that,” I remember her saying. I watch as the smile fades from her face and an unreadable look flashes across her eyes.

She gnaws on her bottom lip; she looks a little nervous.

“You feel like you don’t deserve to do that – to feel good about doing that – because you’re not worth that,” she’d said, “and because you believe there’s someone else out there who is.”

Something twists inside me, and that day comes back to me again: the way her voice trembled, and the way she tried so hard for me, told me that she wanted me…

My fingers creep towards hers, and I note the way her breath hitches as I touch her own and trace small circles into her palm. I lift her hand up to my lips, kissing each fingertip, and, as I do, not once do my eyes leave hers.

*

Reluctantly, I push the memory of two weeks ago away. Before I know it, I’m stumbling out of the library, sprinting in the direction of her house before I even consciously register where I’m going.

My mind goes back to what happened scarcely a week ago with the door, and—

Oh no.

I push myself harder, gasping for breath as I turn the corner. The wind burns my eyes as I run, and my lungs burn as I force myself to suck in the bitterly cold air.

But when I get there, the house is completely empty. The voice in my head is suggesting terrible, terrible scenarios, but I refuse to listen to any of them.

If anything’s happened…

I peer through all the ground floor windows, but there’s nothing there to see. Ignoring the weird looks a woman from across the street is shooting me, I begin to scale the wall using the water pipes, grabbing hold of the gutter with shaky fingers as I start to make my way up.

I clutch her windowsill, pulling myself up, peering through the window…

Nothing.

But I’d expected that. What I didn’t expect was the tidiness. Her room is so clean.

Too clean, the voice says.

And the bed, the crisp clean sheets, folded back neatly, so neatly…as if she’d never slept in it at all.