The house was perfect. It was some old student dive or squat or something, but the estate agent had reassured Michelle that all the damp and cockroaches had been shooed out. They weren't lying; it smelled of fresh paint, and was fully-furnished. They found it tough, selling most of their old furniture; a child’s life-time of memories wrapped up in chests of drawers and old toys that weren’t sentimental enough to keep had drifted from their old home and into charity shops or the local pawn shop. It had been tough, but Michelle knew that it would be worth it. It was closer to work for one thing, with new opportunities for Sam, and Jake was now too big for his poky old room. He had been upset to leave his friends behind of course – as were they all – but it was just too good an opportunity to pass up. The house itself was a steal, and, with Jake’s potential brother or sister on the cards, the extra space seemed practically palatial by comparison to their old place.
In the end, they’d decided it was simply easier to hire a van. It took them all day to even mostly unpack so, for the whole of the Friday they’d both taken off work, they pushed things around and worked out the place, arranging Jake’s room to make him feel at home sooner. It was a little threadbare, cardboard boxes everywhere, largely still sealed, but, by Saturday night, with Jake put to bed, they collapsed in an exhausted heap on the sofa, eating Chinese straight out of the Tupperware containers it came in. Finally fed and able to relax, Michelle lay on her side, feeling the warmth from her dinner in her stomach and Sam's breath reassuringly tucked up behind her. They agreed they didn’t care what went on the telly, so they just flicked onto a trashy sitcom with a resigned jab of the remote control. Not even after the first canned laugh from the fictional studio audience, the television spluttered for a moment, and switched onto the news.
Sam must have been lying on the remote. One of them grumbled and heaved over, wriggling the remote out from whatever crevice it had dug into, and changed the channel back. Then, sooner than before, it went back to the news.
“Fucking
thing,” growled Michelle, sitting up in frustration and holding her hand out for the remote. Sam remained where he was, covering his face with his hand in sheer weariness.
“Don’t tell me we have to get a new tv.”
It took them until Sunday evening to pack everything back up and leave.
They were woken at roughly 4AM by Jake, who would not sleep. It seemed that, in the night, he had woken up and destroyed his room, flung books from shelves and eviscerated the fluffy internal organs of his teddy bears, including the one his Aunt had given him the day he was born. He denied it, obviously, and, although equally furious, Sam persuaded Michelle to go easy on him after the move. The fact that Jake denied it made it all the more exasperating, but, still utterly shattered, she gave in, tucked him, squirming, back into bed, wished him goodnight, and returned to her room, nearly tripping over a huge tin of paint she hadn’t noticed before.
Michelle next woke at 10AM. Sam was shaking her by the shoulders, gently, but firmly.
“What?!” she grumbled, not opening her eyes and rolling over.
“Wake up!”
After a moment, she came to her senses – not that she believed her eyes anyway. On the ceiling, directly above them, there was a mural of a door; a perfect replica of their new front door, with the lightbulb, now exposed with its lampshade removed, also painted to represent the doorknob. Michelle scrambled for her glasses to look more clearly, while Sam gingerly climbed onto the mattress. With gently shaking fingers, he reached up and touched the mural with his little finger. Apparently it was still wet; his finger smeared the paint and scooped it onto a splodge. Disbelieving, he sniffed at it, and then offered it to Michelle. It smelled of paint, but also something sweet and vinegary. There was an empty bottle of ketchup on their bedside table, and, when she stood up, she spotted an upset tin of paint, the same one from last night, by the door. The dregs had seeped over the floor.
They had to break down the door to Jake’s room, in the end. It simply wouldn’t budge, while Jake was too distraught to be consoled or even make sense through his tears. While Michelle scrabbled desperately to find their phones (not that she knew who she was going to call), Sam took up a sledgehammer to break the door off its hinges. It had been barricaded from the inside, by, among other things, a small bookcase, Jake’s bed, and a wardrobe that was at least twice the child’s weight. Michelle stroked his hair as he sobbed into her chest, sitting together in the inexplicable rubble of his bedroom. She couldn’t look him in the eyes.
When Sam came upstairs, he said that the car was started, and that they would go to his parents’. She looked up at him, and nodded. She tried to say something, but her mouth was dry and she had nothing to say. As she numbly descended the staircase (Sam had whisked Jake out as quickly as possible), she looked around to find their possessions torn from their packaging and strewn around the room. There was a two-word message on every surface:
fuck off. It was put together from their cutlery and books and torn clothes and it was daubed over every flat surface in what she dimly recognised to be her own make-up.
She just stood there, in the living room, and looked around herself in disbelief. It was only when she heard Sam honk the horn from the car outside that she blinked away the tears in her welling eyes, lifted her head up, and shut the front door to 19 Heather Way in her wake.
