No One Gets Out Alive by Adam Nevill Page B

second floor. And for a
painful moment, she genuinely wondered whether the man was real, or another one of
them
: heard and even seen, but who didn’t seem entirely
here.
    What is here?
    The man turned his entire body to face Stephanie so quickly that she flinched and dropped the post. At the sight of her, his bony face didn’t soften its expression of pitiless distaste.
This was an unkind face with unsmiling blue eyes; a face still vaguely boyish but toughened to an inflexibility, or limited range of expression, by hard times. A
street
face.
    Stephanie cleared her throat. She retrieved the post from where she’d dropped it, then stared at the man without smiling.
    His gaze did not waver, and remained severe, as if her presence in the hall was a great inconvenience.
    She felt too light on her feet, ungainly, muted, horribly chastened. But by what? She’d only come home from work to the building where she rented a room. Who the hell was
he
to
make her feel awkward and tense? Stephanie glared at the man before walking quickly to the staircase. He watched her without speaking.
    As she climbed the stairs he laughed in a deep, forced way that almost became verbal: a ‘Ho, ho, ho’ accompanied by a mocking grin she didn’t look at for long. When he cut off
the contrived laugh, he settled for staring at her until she passed from sight.
    There had been nothing amorous in the intensity of his attention, but something that seemed far worse. When Stephanie reached her room she was grinding her teeth and clenching her fists, one of
them around a stack of post that wasn’t for her. ‘Shit.’ She wasn’t taking the post back down there, where
he
was.
But at least he’s real.
There was
no other comfort to draw from the encounter.

TWENTY
    Stephanie waited in her room for over an hour but Ryan didn’t call. Eventually she phoned him.
    ‘Thanks for calling,’ she said when he picked up.
    ‘Steph, you OK?’
    She remained silent for a few seconds. The sound of his voice brought a lump to her throat. ‘Not really.’
    ‘What’s going on? Your message worried me.’
    But not that much.
    She looked at the door; beyond her room the house was having one of its quiet periods. ‘I’m in a bind. A real bind here. Look . . . I’m sorry, how are things with
you?’
    ‘All right. You know, still doing the night shifts. Contract, but it’s still work . . .’ He said other things but she found herself unable to pay attention; she was too engaged
with trying to work out how to explain her situation to him. He finished what he had been saying with, ‘You? Workwise?’
    ‘Bits and pieces. Shit mostly. Nothing changed there.’
    ‘So what’s this mistake?’
    ‘This house. This . . . place that I’m staying in . . .’ She kept her narrative to details about Knacker being ‘unstable’, and things of that nature: the deposit he
would not return, her parlous financial state, the missing bank card, and her need to move out fast. And though some of Ryan’s old protectiveness towards her reappeared, she was disappointed
that he didn’t immediately offer money; at one time he would have done so, confident that she was good for a loan, that she was not dishonest and hated dishonesty. With the little bit of
money her dad left her, she had also helped him by covering the deposit and a few months’ rent on their first place together. Had he forgotten? She’d never asked him for anything else,
besides to let her go, and repeatedly during the last three months of their time together.
    He must suspect that if she was calling him she had no one else to turn to. But if she wasn’t mistaken Ryan’s voice was different now: quieter, less tight with emotion, as it had
been whenever they’d spoken closer to the time of their split. She also intuited a wariness because she had made contact with him.
How things change.
‘You’re seeing
someone?’ she blurted.
    He went quiet for at least three seconds. ‘Yeah.’
    It hurt,