THE SIXTH GUEST: Chapter Two - Part Four

Henry’s heart rate fell as soon as he was out of sight at the top of the stairs. Clare was still moving around down there somewhere but he was safe for now.

The upstairs of the house was slightly split level. The stairs came up in the centre of the building next to a large frosted glass window. Straight ahead, at the back of the house over the kitchen, were Clare’s room and the shared bathroom (Henry still found it difficult having to compete for space in there). The other bedrooms were at the front of the house: The first room belonged to Joey, the boy with the perpetual hood on his head who did nothing but waste his time in front of his video games. To the right was an empty double room, not yet let, that also housed the washing machine.

Between them was the sanctuary: Henry’s room, the biggest bedroom in the house. He’d been first in and was willing to pay what, in his younger days, would have been sufficient weekly cash to rent the whole house, so that he could get it. He needed the size for all his belongings. Going from a full detached home crammed to the brim with mementos and keepsakes down to a single room had been a struggle comprised of the heart-raking chore of disposing of three quarters of his life’s gatherings. Even then there was no surface left in the room free of clutter, every piece as good as priceless to him but probably no better than refuse to anyone else.

The death of his wife, Lillian, had left him in a comfortable but very lonely existence: wandering into empty rooms to find that he didn’t know why he was in there; staring mindlessly at the grey blankness of the deactivated television screen, shovelling spoonfuls of food into his slowly chewing mouth not to savour the taste but because he would shrivel into nothing if he didn’t. He had quickly realised that he needed company if he wasn’t going to die; company that was alive instead of the deathly company he already had.

Hence the sale of the house, the disposal of the lifelong clutter and the moving in here.

It was better not to think of the other reason he had to leave that house; probably the principle reason if he gave it any thought.

He went into his room, noting that Joey next door was silent for a change but not thinking much past that, certainly not coming to the point where he might knock to see if the young man was okay. He closed his door and stood the other side of it, palm on the wood, eyes closed; resting.

All three blackout blinds were fully down in the bay window, casting the entire room into shadow, the way Henry liked it. His PC monitor was switched off, screen locked behind the seventeen character alphanumeric password that he privately felt was unbreakable. The covers on his bed were ruffled. It had never been neatly made. He hadn’t climbed into a made bed since Lillian’s death.

He walked over to his desk to the right of the bay window. Next to it was a black LaserJet printer. On top of that was his shredder. Henry switched it on, took a final lingering look at the picture on the sheet of paper he’d taken down with him to the toilet and then fed it in the grinding letterbox slot in the top of the device, watching until it was gone.

He sat on the corner of his bed and propped his forehead on the heel of each palm. This was the last time he was going to do that. The very last time. It was far too dangerous. He’d almost been caught. If Clare had caught sight of the picture, anything could have happened. She would have jumped to conclusions and it didn’t matter that he’d never taken action, she would have condemned him just for fantasising about it. His life could have been destroyed.

But he went back over to the computer all the same and typed in his password. He opened Internet Explorer, went to Google Images (where he’d found the picture in the first place) and typed in the same search criteria. The picture was on the fourth page of results. Clicking the link took him straight through to the larger image.

He sat staring at it for several minutes, and though it wasn’t long at all since he’d ejaculated he found his fingers teasing the end of his slugworm through the fabric of his chords.

The picture on the screen wasn’t black and white like the printout had been; it was full colour. There was nothing wrong with it – no blatant reason why looking at it should make him feel ashamed. But it did.

It was a picture of a little girl, no older than seven, with a pretty blue dress on, smiling into the camera as she held a yellow balloon in her chubby little hand.