The House Mate Nina Manning For My Mum, Lee Taylor. Contents Prologue Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Epilogue Acknowledgments Book Club Questions More from Nina Manning About the Author About Boldwood Books Prologue I crouch under the table and desperately try to control my ragged breathing. How the hell did I end up here? Curiosity or just pure bloody-mindedness? I think back to the simplicity of my life, before all this. I was on a path to recovery; things had become a little easier. I had my routines; life had a structure. Now all of my senses are working on overdrive. I am thrust back to my cognitive behavioural therapy classes, and so I begin to think outside of myself to distract from the fear and panic. The ‘5-4-3-2-1’ technique. Right, let’s do this. Okay, five things I can see: a chair leg; a table leg; a length of brown-and-orange tablecloth, matted and greasy at the corner; a dent in the wooden floor, where something heavy had been dropped; a small handmade wooden bear the size of my hand, wearing a hessian jacket. Four things I can touch. Stay calm, stay calm. The hard floor beneath my knees, sweat on my forehead, a sticky patch next to my knee where someone has dropped some jam or something similar, a cut on my right leg. Three things I can hear: a clock ticking, a fan oven cooling… footsteps. I hear footsteps. Two things I smell: the putrid stench of vomit mixed with a cleaning product. One thing I can taste: There is blood in my mouth. I can taste blood. Instagram post: 25th April 2019 Wow, guys, I cannot believe a whole year has passed and I’m still here. I started this Instagram account because I enjoy cleaning and showcasing the results to other people and you guys have shown me such great support, I feel grateful. One year in and I can hardly believe I have one million followers. And I love every single one of you – even though I can’t see you in person, I feel all your love and support for what I do. I hope I can keep offering you great cleaning advice and that you will continue on this journey with me. Keep up the cleaning, guys. Mrs C x #cleaning #cleanstagrammer #anniversary #mrsclean 76,378 likes 1 Now I piled four coins on top of one another on the mantlepiece in my bedroom, turning each one a fraction so the tiny indentations on the side of each coin were in perfect alignment. Then I took two steps to the left and turned my attention to the locks on the window. I pulled each latch back and forth six times until it was back on lock again. I headed to the bedroom door, let myself out and shut it behind me. Once on the other side, I locked and unlocked the bedroom door six times, then I left it locked and put the key in my back pocket. I walked down the stairs, silently counting each step as I descended. An even ten every time. I arrived in the hallway and stole a brief look at myself in the oval mirror on the wall. Once upon a time I would have relished showing off my taut cheekbones, delighted in the looks of intrigue people would give when they saw the greenness of my eyes against my pale skin and thank the hairdressers who would reliably inform me my shoulder-length black hair was the sleekest they had ever styled. I used to take time over my appearance, but these days I simply slipped my purple fabric tie-dye scarf around my neck and pulled on my boho slouch hat with a peak so I could shade my eyes and hide my face from the world. I pulled on my denim jacket over my slight frame, aware that I no longer worried about dieting; any excess weight had fallen off years ago and had made no attempt to creep back on. I slid into my black Doc Martens and hit the concrete outside. I refrained from opening and reopening the front door due to the imposition on my house mates, even though it pained me not to do so; instead I closed it with one click. The act brought little satisfaction. So I compensated by walking only inside the lines of the pavement stones for a gratifying ten steps. Today was one of my worst days. Usually I could get away with performing only one or two compulsions, but today I carried out my full repertoire of compulsions to ease the fear. To balance out the scales so nothing bad would happen. These compulsions, behaviours, are a force that come on quickly and sometimes from nowhere. It’s a monster I must feed. I don’t consider myself ill. It doesn’t bring any inconvenience to my life. So long as I can just do some or all these small acts each day, everything will be okay. Nothing bad will happen. At least not again. This morning I had woken with a weight on my chest I couldn’t shift. Today was the anniversary. Three years had passed. Yet still here I was, a mere shell of the woman I once was. I looked back at the five-bed, three-storey Victorian house I had been living in with three strangers for the last few weeks and looked up at a cloudless blue sky and the tall imposing buildings that cocooned me, protected me. People say they are drawn to the ocean to heal; the gentle lap of the waves are melodic and can repair your soul. But moving to a town like Richmond was the only option. Here, there were no spaces wide enough to expose
