Downstairs

Something slid across the floor in the other room. Liv's hand rested on the case's zip. A short, hard knock, then a rattle she couldn't place. Wood on wood, she thought. She was about to get up when Els said, very close to her, ‘I'm downstairs already.’

The voice came from the wall behind the bed.

Liv looked towards it. The mattress had shifted slightly, half hiding the brass grille. The words hadn't been loud. Els telling her the coffee was ready, with no expectation of an answer.

She stood.

‘Roos?’ she called towards the stairs.

A chair moved below.

‘Yes?’

‘Is Els with you?’

‘No. She's upstairs.’

Liv was already on the landing. Eight was shut. She pressed down the handle and gave the door an ordinary push. It opened a few centimetres and stopped. Something scraped across the floor.

Els screamed.

Liv snatched back her hand as though she'd burnt it.

‘Don't push!’

Els behind the door, hoarse and breathless. Liv let go of the handle.

‘I'm here. What happened?’

‘My leg. There's something on my leg.’

Through the gap Liv saw a strip of wall, dark wood, nothing that looked like a person. She dropped to her knees, but something crossed the opening even at floor level. A chair leg, angled towards her, too close. Behind it the shadows of more legs.

‘I won't touch the door again,’ she said. ‘I'm getting help.’

She pulled out her phone and shouted for Bram so loudly her throat hurt. Roos was already on the bottom stair.

‘Eight,’ Liv said. ‘She's trapped. Don't push.’

She dialled 112. Her thumb hit the edge of the screen first and she had to try again. The phone rang. For a moment she couldn't remember the house number. It was in her diary, on the confirmation for her first stay. She looked at the front door below as she gave the street name, and remembered.

Els said something behind her. Liv couldn't listen to both her and the operator.

‘Someone's hurt, upstairs,’ she said. ‘Her leg's under some chairs. The door's blocked. We can't get to her.’

She answered the questions. Els was conscious and able to respond. She was in a room on the first floor. You could reach the window from the rear courtyard, but it was high; no one had tried to climb in. No, Liv couldn't see how the leg was trapped.

Bram came in. Footsteps along the hall, then on the stairs. Liv held out her free hand, palm towards him. He stopped partway across the landing and looked at the gap.

‘Don't push,’ she repeated.

‘All right.’

He knelt beside her and called Els's name. She answered. He lowered his head towards the opening without moving anything. Liv told the operator someone who knew the room was with her now. More questions. She gave her number and confirmed where the entrance was.

The ordinary words helped her speak. Street. Floor. Answering. Leg. Can't see it. Each time she had to pause before the next.

Roos stood behind them holding the empty water bottle, looking from the phone to the gap.

‘Can I go round the back?’

Liv nodded. ‘The window's open.’

‘I'll call up. So she knows where we are.’

She went at once. Bram held a hand just above the floor without touching anything. A small movement inside. Els swore. Quiet again.

‘Els,’ he said. ‘It's Bram. I'm staying here. Help's coming.’

‘I'm on the floor.’

‘We can hear you. Can you tell us where?’

‘The far side of that lot. It's fallen. If the door opens, it comes towards me.’

Liv stared at the dark chair leg in the gap. She'd pushed. Not hard, the way she pushed a door every day without thinking. Els had screamed when she'd tried to open it.

‘I pushed,’ she said.

Bram glanced up. ‘You stopped.’

Another question on the phone. Liv answered and listened. She repeated what she knew, left the rest open. It wasn't a long call. Once it ended, she sat with the phone still at her ear for another moment.

Roos's voice came from outside, clear rather than loud or shrill, with space between the words.

‘Els? I'm at the back. By the window.’

A faint shift of cloth as Els turned. ‘I can't see you.’

‘You don't need to. I'm down below.’

‘The door—’

‘Liv and Bram are there. I'm here.’

Liv shut her eyes. Two places Els could hear them now. Neither opened the door.

Bram got up. He pointed to the stairs and told Liv quietly that he'd clear the way downstairs for the people coming, then wait out at the front. She heard him tell Els the same thing, not sending her anywhere or asking permission she couldn't give.

Liv stayed on the landing. The floor was hard beneath her knees. She sat a little straighter, back to the wall beside the door.

‘I'm still here,’ she said.

‘I can hear you.’

‘Roos is out the back. Bram's waiting for them.’

‘Yes.’

Els's breathing was uneven. Sometimes a gulp of air between breaths, then a very slow exhalation. Liv caught herself matching it and forced her mouth shut. She didn't want Els having to listen to her breathing too.

‘Does it hurt a lot?’

‘Yes.’

‘Where exactly?’

‘Liv.’

She fell silent.

‘They're coming,’ she said at last.

‘I heard.’

As sharp as Els could be at the kitchen table. The rebuke brought painful relief. Liv didn't need to tell her she was glad she could still get cross. She shifted her feet and looked at her phone.

No new message. The call was at the top of the list. The time beside it was simply when she'd rung.

A quiet sound came from seven.

Liv turned her head. The door was open, as she'd left it. She could see the side of her bag, the folded tripod on the floor. Behind them the bed and a narrow stretch of wall. She'd left nothing playing. Her recorder was off, inside its case. Her laptop was shut.

She listened a moment too long.

‘Liv?’ Els said.

‘Yes. Beside the door.’

‘Don't go.’

‘I'm staying.’

She put her phone against the wall beside her, screen up. If it rang she'd hear and see it. She looked at the wood of the door. A small white curved scratch in the bottom panel, one she hadn't noticed before. Els had said she was only straightening things up.

‘What are you doing?’ Els asked.

‘Sitting.’

‘Now, I mean.’

‘I'm sitting beside the door. My back's against the wall.’

Outside Roos said she'd opened the back door. Els didn't answer. Liv heard what sounded like speech near the wooden case, muffled through the gap, then gone. No words she could make out. She looked from the opening between door and frame to her hand on her knee.

‘I'm here,’ she said again, more quietly.

Els began to cry, not sobbing but catching her breath whenever she tried to speak. Liv bent towards the gap. She still couldn't see her.

‘I had hold of it,’ Els said. ‘I was holding it.’

‘Tell me later.’

‘I didn't let go.’

Liv put her hand against the solid part of the door. Cool wood. She couldn't press without remembering that first push.

‘You don't have to explain now.’

Els said something Liv couldn't catch. She didn't ask again. Round the back she heard Roos speak to someone, then her footsteps returned beneath the window.

‘I'm still here,’ Roos called.

Someone secured a door downstairs. Bram spoke; another voice answered. Liv got up, knees stiff, dust on her trousers. She picked up her phone and put it in her pocket. She was in the way of anyone coming past, so moved at once towards seven.

‘People are here,’ she told Els.

A man in work clothes came up, Bram behind him, someone else behind them. They looked at the door, at Liv, at the gap. She told them what she knew, briefly. When they asked where they could put their things, she pointed to the room opposite eight. Her bag was in the way. She slid it under the little table and put the tripod beside it.

The man crouched by the door and spoke to Els, giving his name. She answered more clearly now. Liv heard how low her voice was, not just behind the gap as she'd pictured it, but diagonally further into the room.

Questions followed. What had fallen, whether anything else lay on her, where the pain was, whether she could reach the window. She said no to that last one, almost apologising.

‘You don't need to,’ the man said.

Liv looked at him. He'd already taken that decision out of her hands.

Bram showed him a photograph of the chairs before. Liv didn't know when he'd taken it, probably during the inspection. Looking over his arm she saw how impossibly ordinary it was: a stack, a white wall, the corner of a Christmas box in an older photograph beside it. Nothing to warn anyone of the exact shape in which it was now jammed.

‘Earlier,’ Bram said. ‘We've taken quite a bit out since. The back window's open.’

The man nodded, asked another question and went downstairs. The other stayed at the door, talking to Els. Liv was asked to leave the landing clear. She stepped back into the room until the bed touched the backs of her legs.

A strange shock to be here again. A minute ago, or longer, she'd been about to zip the case. She looked at the wall where the voice had said Els was downstairs. Surely it couldn't have sounded as close as she remembered. Yet she remembered how casual it had been, merely saving her a needless trip down the stairs.

‘Excuse me?’

She turned at once.

One of the responders asked whether she owned the house. No. Els did. Els was behind the door. He nodded and asked her name, how she knew Els. She hesitated.

‘I'm helping here today.’

He accepted it. No questions about the recorder in her bag, why she'd been in seven, why she hadn't heard the difference at once. He wanted the back entrance and to know whether someone was waiting there. Liv pointed, gave him Roos's name and went as far as the stairs with him.

From the bottom step she could look out along the hall. The front door was open. Movement by the van, someone going round the house. A neighbour across the road had come to his doorway and stood watching with his hands in his pockets. The light was bright enough to show the crack in a paving slab.

Bram stood by the breakfast-room window talking to someone Liv didn't know. Roos was still round the back. Everyone had a task someone else could ask about.

Liv went up again and stopped before the landing. People were working and speaking by the door. She could see the face of the man keeping contact with Els. He looked into the gap, waited for an answer and said, ‘We'll help you. You don't have to get it off yourself.’

Els answered too softly for Liv to hear.

She stayed out of the way. Her phone vibrated in her trouser pocket. An ordinary notification. She didn't check. Through eight's open window she heard someone outside now, higher up, closer to the room than Roos had sounded. The next answer Els gave carried a different, clearer note.