Page 30 of Hex House
Haina dropped Siobhan’s hand and moved to Theo. Gently, she pulled him in close, and to Siobhan’s surprise, Theo let her. His face rested on Haina’s shoulder, turned towards Siobhan, his expression stunned and eyes watery. Haina stroked his back, fingernails drawing slow circles. She was tactile with all the guests, but with Theo, something felt different. There was nothing comforting or maternal about it. Siobhan looked away, skin bristling.
“Those whoneedus will find us,” Haina whispered. “Anyone else will simply find themselves lost in the woods.”
Siobhan feels cold all over, like she’ll never be warm again. She exits the video player and sits shaking on the sofa. She’s shivering so much her teeth are smashing together, so hard it hurts. She doesn’t know how long she sits there. She doesn’t know how long it is until her phone rings.
Zara’s name appears on the screen. Siobhan stares at it for a long second before it makes sense to her. Zara has called multiple times since their meeting at Black Medicine Coffee, but Siobhan has ignored each one. She doesn’t know what makes her answer this time – perhaps only the sudden, desperate need not to feel so alone in the flat, to rid herself of the image of Lakshmi’s broken body, Haina’s dispassionate gaze.
“Siobhan,” Zara’s northern lilt chimes down the phone, “thanks so much for picking up.”
“What time is it?” Siobhan says. She feels disorientated, exhausted.
A hesitant pause. “About 10 p.m. Why? Are you alright? You sound a bit… shaken.”
Four hours. She’s been watching clips of Hex House for four hours. After a while, the laptop screen had seemed to melt away, and it was as if she were there again, walking the corridors with their peeling wallpaper and vases of flowers on every surface, brushing her fingers along the velvety roses outside the parlour window. The camera crawled its way through the house, drinking in everything with its single eye, and the time elapsed between this life and that one had dissolved into vapour. She could almost smell the fresh bread cooking in the kitchen, hear the creak of the floorboard on the landing as the guests came and went from the dormitory, see the way the sunlight refracted through the stained-glass window on the landing. The light in that house. It made her feel weightless once. Like anything was possible, like she could live forever.
“Siobhan?” Zara’s voice down the line, questioning and insistent. “Look, I’m really sorry about the other day. I pushed you too far, too fast – I can see that now. I shouldn’t have asked you about… well, you know.”
When Siobhan swallows, it feels like pure bile.
“Would you be willing to meet me again? Just to chat. I won’t press you, I promise.”
“Can I come over now?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Can I come to your flat?”
Siobhan rubs her hand along her lower abdomen, feeling the ridges of her scar bristle against the fabric ofher T-shirt. If she doesn’t have company, if she doesn’t have a real person’s face to look at and voice to respond to, she’s going to tear it wide open.
A long pause. “It’s late.”
“Please,” Siobhan says.
“I’ll come to you,” Zara says eventually, haltingly, then adds, “if you want me to, sure, of course. I can come.”
Once she’s given Zara the address and hung up, Siobhan takes a deep breath in, relieved she won’t be here alone all night. If she had to guess, she would say that Zara would be the kind of person to have well-watered house plants on every surface, framed feminist art prints, all line drawings of breasts and vulvas. There was probably organic handwash by the sink. Maybe a purring cat sleeping on an artisan throw.
Siobhan looks around her own flat, trying to see it through Zara’s eyes: the woven rug that had been there when she moved in (sometimes she imagines all of the people-dust trapped inside all the fibres, all the eyelashes and hairs and tiny fragments of nail); the fridge containing half a bottle of wine and an expired yoghurt; the unmade bed covered with sheets she can’t remember washing. This flat is a display of her most intimate failings. It’s where she keeps all her broken parts. The thought of bringing Zara here feels a bit like showing her the inside of her mouth, the softening places where the cavities hide. She thinks about tidying up, putting some of the washing in the machine, clearing the sink of its debris, but can’t summon the energy. Instead, she clicks on the radio, pours the last of the wine and listens absent-mindedly to tinny trance tracks until the buzzer rings.
She opens the door to Zara bundled in a bright orangeteddy coat, gold hoops dangling from her stretched lobes, so large Siobhan could fit her fist through them. Her rounded cheeks are flushed red with cold. She’s drawn on thick eyeliner in two symmetrical flicks and wears a pair of shining Doc Martens. In one hand, she holds a bottle of vodka – the cheap, perfect kind that burns on the way down – and in the other, a plastic bag filled with takeaway cartons. Siobhan can already smell greasy noodles, sweet and sour sauce. “Just in case you didn’t have anything in,” Zara says. “And you sounded like you needed this.” She holds up the bottle as she follows Siobhan inside.
Zara takes a seat on the sofa. If she has an issue with the way it sags underneath her, or the pile of clothes teetering on the arm, she doesn’t show it. She unpacks the takeaway boxes while Siobhan rinses plates and glasses and brings them through to the coffee table. She pours them each a generous measure of vodka, watching Zara heap their plates high with chow mein and spring rolls.
“Cheers,” Zara says, picking up her glass.
“To what?”
Zara shrugs. “To whatever. To vodka.”
They clink glasses. Siobhan starts to feel calmer when she’s drained hers, when the spirit wraps itself around her senses and dulls them, files off all their edges. They don’t speak for a while, so Siobhan can hear the fierce wind that’s picked up outside. The flat’s old windows tremble in their frames.
“Thanks for giving me another chance,” Zara says eventually, through a mouthful of food.
Siobhan doesn’t touch hers. “I don’t want to talk about Hex House. I can’t, not tonight.”
“That’s fine,” Zara says quickly – too quickly. “We can talk about whatever.”
Siobhan watches her taking delicate sips from her glass, wincing each time. Her nails are long and painted dark red. She finds herself looking at the small eye tattoo she’d noticed last time, staring out at her from just below Zara’s thumbnail, always watching.
