Look for Me under the Stairs

by Louise Beech

louise@joelou.karoo.co.uk

Look for me under the stairs.  I could not recall when this sentence began haunting me.  Look for me under the stairs.  Look for me under the stairs.  I heard it in the gush of water as I showered.  I heard it on the wind as I drank caffeine-free tea near the open window.  I turned around to look for a speaker knowing that this was as silly as the fact that six, seemingly random, words were taunting me.

I was seven months pregnant.  I stroked my swollen belly, contented, loving my child already.  Look for me under the stairs.  I cried.  Pregnancy was tough.

I looked for my husband on Monday.  He was in the bathroom.

“I have to tell you something,” I said.  He was struggling with an errant nasal hair.

“What?”  He was barely listening.

“I have to tell you to look for me under the stairs.”

I awaited his sarcastic response.

“Okay,” he said.

“That’s it?” I demanded.  The baby kicked.  “It’s Monday, our son is watching Power Rangers in the other room, your pregnant, normally sane wife has just asked you to look for her under the stairs and that’s all you have to say?” 

“I love you, and I have to go to work.”

He went.

On Tuesday I paced the flat.  The words had gone.  I went into the kitchen, clattered cups more than necessary, anticipating the bizarre sentence to merge with the tinkle of china.  Nothing.  I turned on the tap, full.  Water sprayed up the tiles and onto the counter.  I listened.  Nothing.  The words were gone.  Since I said them aloud to my husband they were gone.

“Look for me under the stairs,” I said to the wall.

I cried again.

On Wednesday I was bored.  At ten thirty the doorbell rang.  I frowned.  Nobody bothered me during the day.  Hauling my mammoth frame out of the chair I went down the twenty stairs that led from our spacious flat into the narrow hallway.  I opened the door.

“Gas meter reading, love,” said a chunky man in a blue jacket.

“Really?”  I was unsure.  “I think we just had a bill.”

“Must have been for electricity.” He grinned.  “I’m reading the gas.  It’ll only take a second, love.”

Laugh lines creased his face.  I opened the door a little wider.  His foot touched the step.

“Have you got one of those badges please?” I asked.

“Ah silly me, I left it in the van.  I’m just not with it today, love.”

“I should really see your badge,” I said.

“Come on, love, I left the van way up the road.  I’m in my uniform; you know I’m from British Gas.”

The baby was still.  I could not see the sun.  The gas man was blocking the light.

“I want to see your badge,” I said.

“For pity’s sake, it’s just wasting time.  I’ve got ten other readings to do before lunch.”

“I want you to get your badge or you’re not coming in,” I said.

The laugh lines disappeared.  He paused and it seemed an eternity.  I looked up the street, for life, people.  His foot stayed on the step.  There was dog shit on his shoe.

“I’ll get my badge,” he said. 

He disappeared.  The sun blinded me.  I waited.  After ten minutes I turned, went inside, and halfway up the stairs came back down and locked the door.

On Thursday I telephoned British Gas.

“We didn’t send anyone yesterday,” they said.

On Friday I sat near the open window with a caffeine-free coffee, biscuits and a newspaper.  I was looking in the classified ads for a cheap baby bath, preferably lime green to match the little towels and bedding waiting upstairs in the baby’s room. 

The headline on page four distracted me from my search. 

“Elderly woman attacked in home.” 

I skim-read the piece.  She had unwittingly let in a man who claimed to be there to read the meter.  She lived less than a mile away from me.  She was still in the hospital.  I spilt coffee, cursing at the heat through my skirt. 

I cried again.

On Saturday, with no one around to help, I dragged a bag of rubbish down the stairs and around the back of our flats to where the bins were lined up.  The smell was more foul than usual.  I hoisted the bag into our grey bin.  Leaning against the lid for a moment, I shut my eyes.  I was tired of my senses being so heightened, of smells being so intense, of sights that made me cry, of sounds that came and went.

Heading back inside, an old newspaper snaked around my foot like overgrown weeds and sent me tumbling to the ground.  I picked it up.  The paper boy had tried to shove it through the peeling green door that was parallel to ours, a door that appeared to lead to a flat but was just a cupboard where the old gas meter lived.

I’m reading the gas.  It’ll only take a second, love.

I opened the door.  The dark cupboard within smelt fusty.  Months of newspapers were rotting on the floor.  At the back, where light barely reached, the wood was stained.  Bloodlike the streaks of damp reached for the stairs above.

Look for me under stairs.

Would they have?

On Sunday I didn’t cry.

©2008 Louise Beech

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