Eight Perfect Hours by Lia Louis

Chapter Fifteen

It takes me a while to find the correct entrance to the block of flats in Farthing Heights and by the time I find the right one, I’m flustered and sweaty, and nervous I’ve blown this casual job interview that I didn’t even want in the first place. Frank’s son is home and waiting for me apparently, at his dad’s flat on the seventh floor, and for what feels like an age, I stand in the lift on the ground floor waiting for the doors to close. It’s like they know. ‘I thought you wanted to spend your spare time on that floristry course you saw on that online university,’ the doors say. ‘I’ll remain open, you know, just to give you a chance to walk away.’ I don’t move. They close. The lift starts slowly drifting upwards.

Ed and I viewed a flat in a block a little like this about seven years ago, when he got back from uni. Ed had side-eyed me as the estate agent looked at his watch and the elevator light above our head flickered, wordlessly saying, ‘Let’s hope the flat is better than this lift, eh, Nell?’ And God, it really hadn’t been. There was a shower over the toilet, a terrace that wasn’t a terrace, but a window that you could climb out of onto a tiny square of flat asbestos-looking roof, and every room had smelled like raw potatoes, especially the bedroom, which had a huge mirror on the ceiling. We’d stifled giggles the whole way around, which we released as soon as the estate agent drove off.

‘I know the carpet stain isn’t appetising,’Ed had imitated the estate agent on the way home, his hand squeezing mine, ‘but a good rug and Bob’s your uncle! No, mate, sorry. Bob is not my bloody uncle if my uncle is that absolute pile of shit.’ We’d found somewhere better a few weeks later. Cleaner, more modern, but still tiny, and everything – absolutely everything felt possible the day we put the deposit down. A year. That’s all we got, until I moved back home. I pull out my phone as the lift continues to glide upwards. Should I text him back? He’d sent one straight after the coffee at the hospital. ‘Nice seeing you, Nell, hope your mum is OK,’ is all it’d said. But I hadn’t responded. I’ve typed out numerous replies since – a couple every day. But then deleted them and closed the window. I stare at his name on my screen. I put my phone back in my bag.

When the elevator doors clatter open, I’m greeted by the smell of garlic and the piney smell of a newly mopped floor, and Frank’s flat directly across the corridor, just as Ian had said. 178A. There is silence. No television mumbling, no music playing. Daisy lived in a flat similar to this in a block a few streets away, and there were always sounds to be heard when I approached her door. The clatter of pots and pans where her mum would be cooking, the tinny music of Daisy’s bedroom, the mumble of Saturday evening game shows when Daisy’s dad was home from work. But here, there is nothing. I knock on the door, the wood hard beneath my knuckles.

For a moment, I don’t think anyone’s in. Then I hear the clatter of a latch on the other side of the door. It opens in one swoop.

‘Sam.’

‘Noelle.’