The Killing Hour

‘Who do you think?’


‘Why would you break into your own place?’ she asks, but immediately she has an answer. ‘It’s all part of the show, isn’t it, Charlie? What, you came by here this afternoon and kicked in the door so I’d believe you?’

I don’t bother answering because she’s already decided to disbelieve anything I have to say. All the curtains inside are drawn. Did I leave them like this? The air inside isn’t as stagnant as yesterday, thanks to the back door being broken open for the day. Cyris wasn’t thoughtful enough to smash the windows to let the air circulate. Apart from the door nothing seems out of place. The living room is relatively tidy and I can’t see anything damaged. I lead the way into the lounge. I’m expecting to see torn curtains, the TV tipped over, the sofa and chairs shredded, but there’s no evidence he even came in here. I move to the windows. The sun has nearly gone and so has the blue sky. The clouds from this morning are back. They’ve appeared from nowhere and in the distance they look black.

I turn from the approaching rain and enter the hallway. We pass the bathroom and I think back to when I stood outside the bathroom door at Luciana’s. I remember opening it and seeing the most grisly thing I’d ever seen. That would change fifteen minutes later.

There are no corpses behind the bathroom door and no damage either. We check the spare bedroom and once again everything’s intact. We double back and check the bedroom on the right, the room I use as a study.

And here is the evidence of vandalism I was thinking I wouldn’t find. Only this is nothing as menacing as the plugholes blocked with rags and the taps turned on full so the house is flooded. This is not as vulgar as large body parts drawn on the walls with paintbrushes. This is time-consuming. It has taken effort.

The computer monitor lies on the floor. The tube isn’t cracked but several crevices run the length of the plastic casing. It looks sad down there. The keyboard has fared no better: it has been twisted and bent and several of the keys have popped off from the pressure and are scattered like misshapen dice. My laser printer has been tossed aside. It has gouged out a hole in the wall and a black puddle of toner has spilled onto the carpet. Of the two bookcases the first has been tipped over so that it lies on an angle with books crushed beneath it, their pages and covers bent and torn. The second bookcase is upright but the books have been removed and the covers ripped away. A pile of loose pages has been stacked next to it.

Straight ahead beneath the window in a black cabinet is a small stereo system. The covers have been removed from the speakers and the cones pushed in and ripped. The front of the stereo has been smashed in, damaged by the computer lying at the foot of the cabinet. The stereo is on and some of the lights work – most of the display doesn’t. Hissing comes from the speakers but no music, and the CD player is making a soft clicking noise over and over like a metronome. The TV has been repeatedly rammed until the tube finally shattered. It takes a lot of strength and determination to break a TV tube. The aerial, twisted on the floor, looks like a tool somebody would break into a car with. The remote control is next to it. Each of the rubber buttons has been stretched and torn out. The batteries have been removed and crushed with what seem to have been teeth. Behind the TV my aluminium rubbish bin has had the sides and lid kicked in denting any reflection it once offered. Its contents, only paper and plastic, have been littered over the rest of this mess. My small collection of die-cast cars, all classics from the fifties and sixties, haven’t been smashed underfoot, but the doors, the bonnets, the wheels and the boot lids have all been removed. The cars are still on the shelves, on the drawers, on my desk, but the broken accessories are in a mixed pile on the floor like confetti.

I realise I’m holding my breath. I begin to let it out as I slowly turn a complete circle in my room, spotting new damage as I do so. The video beneath my TV has a book jammed into the slot. The display on it has been broken and the play button pried off. A lamp is on the floor, the framework twisted and bent, the bulb shattered, the prongs on the plug wrenched sideways.

Jo waits in the hallway asking me over and over what I’ve done. All this destruction around me. This is my room. My personal space. If I snapped right now, if I lost my mind and went completely berserk, there’s nothing left in here for me to break.