Free The Lodger: A Novel by Louisa Treger Page A

of their silhouettes were visible against the sky, but only just. Heavy clouds covered the moon, swallowing everything down into shadow.
    She made her way through the rose garden. The red roses were like dark shadows; the white ones resembled pale faces in the dimness, watching her. She passed the vegetable garden and the terraced square, and took the uneven track that led down to the sea. It was getting darker; she had to strain to see where she was going. The path was treacherous, and once or twice she stumbled. The rain soaked through her clothes and hair. She was starting to feel cold and afraid, but she didn’t want to return to the house.
    Her foot caught on a twisted root lying across the path. She lost her balance and the ground came rushing up to meet her …
    Dorothy lay convulsed against the cold slimy stone. There was searing pain in her left knee. A sticky ooze of blood was spreading beneath her stockings.
    She was freezing, but she didn’t want to move. She was maddened by shame and pain; tormented by the hurt she’d caused Jane. Without Bertie’s interest illuminating her life, she was nothing.
    She couldn’t stand being alone with the stabbing needles of her thoughts. There was no reprieve from them, except in madness; a swiftly enfolding, redeeming madness that would obliterate awareness. She welcomed the idea. The line between sanity and madness seemed pitifully puny: both states harboring the same impulses; the difference lying merely in the mind’s power to exert a restraining signal … She couldn’t struggle any longer. If she could only see her mother again, if she could spend a few minutes with her, she would willingly sacrifice the rest of her life …
    Tears came. She wept for a long time, silently, there on the path.
    After she’d cried herself out completely, she felt calmer. A strange, icy numbness descended on her, as though she was on another planet and the air was lighter. She stumbled to her feet. Her clothes were wet and muddy, with sodden bits of grass and leaves sticking to them. Clumsily, she brushed herself down. Her knee was still bleeding. She shambled slowly back toward the house.

 
    Seven
     
    Her taste of bliss was over before she’d even had a chance to grow accustomed to it. An annihilating torpor threatened to engulf Dorothy; a strange, frightening state. She lay on her bed, rigid. All the good things, all the hope seemed to have drained from the world. It was terrifying to feel the meaning seeping out of everything, leaving only blankness in its wake. It was like dying; like being buried alive.
    Her face was contorted with the effort of holding back tears. She raised her throbbing head from the pillow and glanced around her attic room. It had lost its charm; become nothing but a confined space in which she waited for the next visit to the Wellses. And now there would be no more visits.
    A bout of weeping seized her then: hard, dry sobs. She was surprised by how much crying hurt. She wondered wretchedly who she could talk to, whose company might ease this withering pain.
    Benjamin had finally found other lodgings and moved out, leaving her relieved, but with a gaping sense of loss. She thought about the other boarders and her various London friends. No one was quite right.
    Mrs. Baker. She pictured the landlady’s kind weary face; she seemed at that moment very like Dorothy’s mother. I’ll go and find her, Dorothy thought. I couldn’t possibly confide in her. Bertie is a married man; she would be shocked to the core; her good opinion of me smashed. But she is real; just being in her presence is a comfort. She knows that everyone is alone, and the hustle and noise people make is just a front to try to hide their loneliness and fear.
    *   *   *
    DOROTHY OPENED THE drawing room door. At first sight, the room seemed deserted; the gas was turned frugally low. But in the dimness, she could just make out two figures: a man balanced on the arm of the sofa, and