Pausing in the corridor outside his room, he could hear footsteps upstairs. Feet shuffling and bumping, interspersed with a low chatter from the television.
A cupboard was opened and closed, the dulled sound audible through the ceiling. A light clicked on. The ring-pull of a can was cracked and emitted a hiss of gas. The noise of the television rose higher and a picture in the hallway vibrated. A solid object fell to the floor of the living room, bounced and rolled.
Seb went up, drifting through a familiar scent cloud; the sweat of cattle, the kidney and shellfish of a male groin too long unclean, and something else like burned bone, binding all of the other flavours together.
Coughing to clear his airways was futile. The entire building was filled with the stench. It was seeping out of the living room that Ewan occupied. No doubt the miasma had filled the kitchen and his office too.
Imagining that he might smell Ewan everywhere, and on all of his things, for weeks brought Seb close to a convulsion. That’s how it had gone down in London. Ewan’s odours had been absorbed by the upholstery, thickened in the confines of wardrobes and drawers, and drifted from every book cover and ornament, his spoor ever present for weeks after he’d gone.
Ewan could not remain here. Seb would have to run to town and withdraw money, should he need to pay for a room for Ewan until he knew what the man wanted. One payment and that would be it, just like in London. He loathed himself for contemplating this appeasement, but was unable to think of another way of ridding the house of this stinking menace.
He’d need to do some research and consult a solicitor about obtaining a restraining order, but didn’t imagine that getting one would be easy. The police and courts would have to be involved. Maybe police intervention would frighten Ewan enough to stop appearing. Though Ewan might also move his tactics up a notch. He’d promised as much. Explaining his predicament to the police, without appearing mad himself, was something Seb also struggled to imagine.
On the first-floor landing, Seb broke out in a sudden and uncomfortable sweat. From the kitchen, on the floor above, he heard the whoosh of the boiler. The central heating was on. Electric lights burned in every room on the next floor, save the living room, where only the television screen’s white light flickered around the door, which had been left ajar.
Into the lounge Seb burst.
And was immediately disoriented. The television blared and flashed in the darkness. Canned laughter crackled the speakers. The floor thumped and transmitted the sound into Seb’s chest.
The screen was showing a music channel: Scuzz.
A warm day out too, but the balcony doors were closed and the blinds drawn.
Stale cider and fast-food smells competed with the other odours. Seb coughed to clear his airways but it sounded more like retching.
In the gloom on the far side of the room, Ewan’s gangly shape was slumped into Seb’s favourite chair. One shoe had been removed and Ewan had placed a discoloured foot upon his lap. Only when something exploded white on the television, did Seb see the full horror of that foot.
Yellow teeth gritted and nose creased, Ewan concentrated as two of his dirty claws scratched the psoriasis on his instep.
‘Jesus,’ Seb said, at the same time as his foot connected with an empty cider can and sent it skidding into another two empties beneath the side table. They were all labelled as a brand of extra-strong cider.
His thoughts bumped into each other and careened away into nothingness. He only retained the presence of mind to locate the remote control on the coffee table. He snatched it up and turned the volume of the television down.
Ewan pulled the remnant of a black sock over his foot and ankle. ‘It itches,’ he said, smiling.
‘I’m not surprised.’
When they’d cohabited, Ewan had always staked out the living room as his own territory, and sat too close to the screen like a child that had never been told otherwise. He now seemed intent on repeating the habit, in line with turning the room into an unnerving facsimile of his old bedroom in Wylding Lane. A disorderly nest.
Seb was choked more by exasperation than the smell. Did that make him forget what he wanted to say? Perhaps the intense way Ewan looked at him was disarming. Ewan had no time for the glance. His eyes were still and he looked at Seb like a cat that Seb remembered from his childhood. A cat that would sit and stare with black eyes that had always made him feel uneasy and guilty, as if its suspicions of Seb’s unacceptable thoughts had become more than a hunch.
Ewan, like the cat, was really expecting some kind of challenge or attack. Those were the eyes of someone incapable of trust, who pushed his luck and awaited reprisals.
Suffering an aversion to meeting Ewan’s black eyes – one that writhed in his gut – Seb looked away.