Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Dark Corners: A Novel
    Dark Corners: A Novel
    Dark Corners: A Novel
    Ebook251 pages4 hours

    Dark Corners: A Novel

    By Ruth Rendell

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    “A spectacularly creepy and macabre tale” (Entertainment Weekly) of blackmail, murders both accidental and opportunistic, and of one life’s fateful unraveling—from Ruth Rendell, “one of the most remarkable novelists of her generation” (People), writing at her most mesmerizing. Rendell completed Dark Corners shortly before her death in 2015.

    When his father dies, Carl Martin inherits a house in an increasingly rich and trendy London neighborhood. Cash poor, Carl rents the upstairs room and kitchen to the first person he interviews, Dermot McKinnon. That is mistake number one. Mistake number two is keeping the bizarre collection of homeopathic and alternative “cures” that his father left in the medicine cabinet, including a stash of controversial diet pills. Mistake number three is selling fifty of those diet pills to a friend, who is then found dead.

    Dermot seizes a nefarious opportunity and begins to blackmail Carl, refusing to pay rent, and creepily invading Carl’s space. Ingeniously weaving together two storylines that finally merge in a shocking turn, Ruth Rendell describes one man’s spiral into darkness—and murder—as he falls victim to a diabolical foe he cannot escape.

    This is brilliant psychological suspense that gets under your skin. As Stephen King says, “No one surpasses Ruth Rendell when it comes to stories of obsession, instability, and malignant coincidence.” Dark Corners, her last book, “ranks among her best” (The Washington Post).

    Editor's Note

    Final book in a lasting legacy…

    Rendell’s final book is one of her best and adds to her legacy as one of the best mystery writers of all time. Even after more than 60 books, “Dark Corners” still manages to push the boundaries on themes Rendell loved to explore, like obsession and troubled psychology.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribner
    Release dateOct 27, 2015
    ISBN9781501119446
    Dark Corners: A Novel
    Author

    Ruth Rendell

    Ruth Rendell (1930–2015) won three Edgar Awards, the highest accolade from Mystery Writers of America, as well as four Gold Daggers and a Diamond Dagger for outstanding contribution to the genre from England’s prestigious Crime Writ­ers’ Association. Her remarkable career spanned a half century, with more than sixty books published. A member of the House of Lords, she was one of the great literary figures of our time.

    Read more from Ruth Rendell

    Related to Dark Corners

    Related ebooks

    Suspense For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Karin Slaughter

      Jul 2, 2020

      This American crime author has sold more than 35 million copies of her books globally. This month she’s celebrating the release of her 20th novel in as many years. It’s also the 10th book in special agent Will Trent’s series. “It feels really great a

      1 min read

    • Article

      This One So Loved

      May 9, 2019

      This One So Loved
      9 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Apr 22, 2022

      Books
      4 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reading Special

      Dec 28, 2023

      The distinctive depth of characterisation shines in this tightly knitted story of therapist Nick and retired solicitor wife Zoe, as they decide to view a deconsecrated Victorian church which is for sale. It’s “even more picturesque than it looked onl

      11 min read

    • Article

      New Calling The Rev Richard Coles Pivots To Fiction With Enviable Ease With This Charming And Funny Cosy-crime Debut Set In A Village Church

      Jun 17, 2022

      English villages are notorious havens for murderers – think of all the untimely deaths to have taken place across the county of Midsomer or in Agatha Raisin’s new home of Cars ely in the Cotswolds. Now, with a nod to its most famous predecessor, Miss

      2 min read

    • Article

      Great Reads

      Apr 3, 2024

      by Lesley Pearse (£22, HB, Penguin) Whether or not you’ve read Lesley Pearse’s novels, you will want to read the extraordinary story of her life. Born during World War Two, a neighbour found Lesley coatless in the snow, her mother having died days be

      2 min read

    • Article

      Hankering After Ghosts

      Dec 1, 2022

      It’s been 10 years since the publication of my book A Natural History of Ghosts (see FT296:42-45). I probably should have written more in it about the writer Charles Dickens. The truth is I’ve always had a special place in my heart for Dickens. I rea

      8 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Apr 19, 2023

      Great Read
      7 min read

    • Article

      Summer Reading Special

      Dec 28, 2023

      Summer Reading Special
      11 min read

    • Article

      Science Fiction And Fantasy

      Mar 23, 2023

      Jacob Kerr Serpent’s Tail 2022 Hb, 212pp, £14.99, ISBN 9781800811492 Strange, disturbing, sometimes disorientating and more than a bit scary, with strong mythological elements, The Green Man of Eshwood Hall is the essence of folk horror. Izzy is 13;

      4 min read

    • Article

      ‘I’m Not Worried About Fame Or Glory’: Lydia Davis, The Author Who Has Refused To Sell Her Book On Amazon

      Sep 30, 2023

      Lydia Davis is a miniaturist with sizable intentions. Her micro-stories, many just a couple of lines, are constrained in length only; their subject matter might be anything that takes her interest, whether a builder up his ladder, a moment of marital

      5 min read

    • Article

      Ink Upon the Furrows

      Oct 1, 2018

      Ink Upon the Furrows
      9 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Aug 16, 2023

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Giant Leaps

      Apr 24, 2022

      Giant Leaps
      2 min read

    • Article

      Spellbinding Reads

      Nov 11, 2022

      READ THIS BY RACHEL JOYCE DOUBLEDAY In The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, the title character set off on foot on his unlikely trek across England to find his old friend Queenie Hennessy, while 1his embittered and grieving wife, Maureen, was le

      3 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Aug 16, 2023

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Struggles That Made Charles Dickens

      May 12, 2022

      In 1824, at just 12 years old, Charles John Huffam Dickens had no choice but to leave school and get a job. Born on 7 February 1812, his idyllic childhood had come crashing down when his father, John, who had always been reckless with the money he ea

      3 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Dark Corners

    3.5/5

    119 ratings14 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 2/5
      Very disappointing. Ruth Rendell has written FAR better novels than this. Someone in my reading group suggested she didn't write it - that it was bits of pieces of stuff she had written shoe horned together by someone else. I wouldn't be surprised. It was unrealistic, it was supposed to be modern but felt like the 50s. Please pick something else by Ruth Rendell to read instead - you'll have a much better time.
    • 3/5
      My 1st Ruth Rendell - I am thinking I should have made a different title as my 1st Rendell - this was ok, short and quick - basically how an average guy gets caught doing something he shouldn't have done, and although not technically illegal ends up being reverse blackmailed by his 2nd floor tenant- this occurs, simply because he doesn't want bad press and the well known person involved is dead. This leads to paranoia, then murder and then...2nd attempt of murder --- The end was a bit of moral lesson. I am not sure I would recommend but if you like a Twilight Zone twist of a Murder she Wrote type theme... then this might be for you!
    • 5/5
      I'm just sorry that this is the very last book by Ruth Rendell.
    • 5/5
      In this, her last novel, Rendell has lost none of her powers. Spellbinding!
    • 3/5
      More of. 2.5 for this short novel. I found it to be ridiculous in its plot, it's characters completely whiny and unlikable, and ridiculous. Give it a miss.
    • 4/5
      A wonderful era ended for Ruth Rendell fans on May 2, 2015 when the author died as the result of a stroke she suffered a few days earlier. Rendell produced mysteries under her real name and under the pen name Barbara Vine so regularly, for so many years, that it is still hard for fans to realize that there will be no more. Dark Corners, published about six months after her death, is the last of them.As the story opens, Carl Martin is a writer with one published work to his name, but that novel, Death’s Door, had not exactly made him a rich man. Carl is living in a house recently inherited from his father, and because he has no source of income other than his writing, he decides to take on a border. Luckily for Carl, because the house is in one of London’s trendier neighborhoods, he easily locates a border willing to pay him 1200 pounds per month for the three upstairs rooms. That, though, would turn out to be a huge mistake, one Carl will regret for the rest of his life.Along with the house, Carl inherited its contents, among them his father’s vast collection of homeopathic “medicines” and cure-alls – including a stash of diet pills that are as likely to kill the person taking them as they are to help her shed a few unwanted pounds. Unfortunately for Carl (and especially for his friend Stacey), that is exactly what happens when he lets Stacey talk him into selling her fifty of the pills. Carl’s border recognizes a good blackmail opportunity when he sees one, and after Stacey’s body is discovered, he begins to “reverse blackmail” Carl by refusing to pay his monthly rent.In a side plot (which will tellingly crash into Carl’s world soon enough), a one-time friend of the dead Stacey’s has taken to living in Stacey’s apartment where she will remain until being forced out by the dead woman’s family. In her trademark fashion, Rendell explores deeply both the backgrounds of her characters and what is going on inside their heads. She wants her readers to understand why her characters do the things they do, but seldom has an entire cast of her characters been as flawed as the one in Dark Corners. Victims and criminals are, in fact, so much alike that the reader is hard pressed to find one to root for in this tale of blackmail, murder, and unintended consequences. Dark Corners is not destined to become my favorite Ruth Rendell/Barbara Vine novel. Nor is it, in my estimation, one of her better books, but because it is her last it will always have a place somewhere on my shelves and in my memory.
    • 4/5
      What a creepy yet compelling book! Its horror lies in the anxiety one character, Carl, feels when he keeps committing misdeeds and getting caught in them, and blackmailed. Sadly this is probably the author's last book, as she died in 2015.
    • 3/5
      Ordinary people who are just a little "off". Murder, blackmail...it can't end well. A reliably enjoyable Ruth Rendell offering.
    • 5/5
      Ruth Rendell died earlier this year at the age of 85. So this stand-alone is the very last of her books, and of course as a long time avid reader of her books (there have been 60 of them in the last 50 years) I had to read it.While I wouldn't rate it in her best 10, it still demonstrates what a remarkable story teller she was, and how she was able to get into the mind of her principal characters.There is no doubt here who the "murderer" is, even though Carl caused his friend's death unwittingly. But it preys constantly on his mind and he becomes unable to work, to eat, to sleep. And Rendell asks the reader whether we would react in the same way. Or would we get it over and done with, and front up to the police with an admission that we were the source of the tablets that in all probability killed Stacey. Carl chooses not to and thus becomes the victim of Dermot, his upstairs tenant, who blackmails him by refusing to pay any rent. With no income, and unable to work, Carl sinks lower and lower, to the point where his girlfriend leaves him, and Dermot preys on his mind.The story just misses out on creating enough tension although there is a second murder, and also another attempted one.There is a second story thread running alongside the first: Lizzie Milsom, a friend of the dead girl Stacey, who moves into her flat, wears her clothes, and finally gets kidnapped in a case of mistaken identity. When Lizzie's father Tom gets a free bus card when he turns 60, he takes up a new hobby: travelling on buses. After being beaten up at one bus stop, he then has a nasty experience when a passenger gets off a bus, leaving his rucksack behind.So a good if not brilliant final outing for an author who has left an indelible mark on British crime fiction.For those who do not know, Ruth Rendell was the creator of Inspector Wexford, and also wrote under the pseudonym of Barbara Vine.
    • 4/5
      I have been a Ruth Rendell fan for all of my reading life, so of course I had to read her last book. Ruth Rendell passed away In May of this year, just shortly after her contemporary novelist P.D. James. It was a very sad year for these ladies legions of readers. I know that I for one wondered who would fill the void. In all honesty, I can't think of any one author that could even attempt to fill these two pairs of very big shoes. I don't think that this book is anywhere near Ms. Rendell's best, but she can out-write and out-plot any author with one had tied behind her back. No one can depict what seems to be a perfectly ordinary life unravel so convincingly. Carl Martin is that ordinary guy. He is a published young author who has inherited his father's house in a notable neighbourhood like Maida Vale. He doesn't think he needs the whole house for his own living space, so he decides to rent the upper floor. This would provide him with a steady income while he worked on his next book. But in true Ruth Rendell fashion, things begin to fall apart fairly quickly for Carl, and he effectively becomes almost a prisoner in his own house when his tenant decides to blackmail him for a small mistake in judgement that resulted in the death of Carl's friend. Carl soon makes choices that he never would have considered months earlier. We read and watch as Carl and his neat little life spiral out of control. Ms. Rendell leads us down a deep and dark hole, that, no matter how hard we try, we can't avoid. Dark and suspenseful, this book doesn't disappoint.
    • 2/5
      I had low expectations when I began Ruth Rendell's final novel and those expectations were met. I read for nostalgia's sake - Rendell is one of my favorite crime novelists and it's sad to know there will be no more, but I would have been better off rereading one of her earlier books. Which is not to say there was no point to reading Dark Corners. The book is written in her voice, with her ability to put together ordinary people and deeply disturbed individuals, as well as her skill at keeping a plot moving. On the other hand, this was clearly a book written by an elderly person about young people, and it's set in modern day, so that the characters all behaved oddly, as though they had abruptly time traveled and were still uncertain about the ways the world had changed. They would have fit beautifully in a book set fifty years earlier, but they all seemed more than a little bizarre in 2015. The plot was also weak, not in forward momentum, but in plausibility. The story revolves around Carl, a novelist who takes a renter for the top floor of his house as he works on his second book. Carl is an odd character; incurious about the world around him in a way that seems unlikely in a writer, with a passive personality, but that's nothing compared to the man he lets the flat to; Dermot is obsessed with religion, and a natural sneak. When he discovers something about Carl, he is quick to blackmail him, and Carl is quick to allow himself to be blackmailed, lacking the imagination necessary to find a solution. Then there's Lizzie, who is living on very little money in a terrible flat. When a friend is murdered, she moves in and uses her dead friend's clothes, make-up and food. She's frivolous and selfish, with a tendency to lie when convenient, and her straight-laced father dislikes her. But her frivolity and fibs will be punished in time. The plot is weak, and there is so much going on, from muggings to bombs to kidnapping to murder, all smashed together. Rendell at the height of her powers would have woven these disparate threads into something amazing, but this is not a plot that even the most credulous of readers can accept. If you adore Rendell's writing and have read all her other books, you'll be reading this anyway, but this isn't the book to begin with. She has written so many better books.
    • 3/5
      Dark Corners by Ruth Rendell is a 2015 Scribner publication. I was provided a copy of this book by the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Ruth Rendell, who also wrote as Barbara Vine, passed away in 2015, just a few months before this book was published. I had planned on centering a blog post around Ruth, featuring a review of this, her final book, but sadly, every time I picked it up, I could not, for the life of me, stay interested. But, I needed to turn in a review for the book, one way or another, so I started all over from the beginning, and forged ahead, determined to make it all the way through, without giving up. Carl, a novelist, inherits his father’s large and unusual supply of home remedies, along with a nice home, but needs help making ends meet, so he rents out an upstairs room, and quickly becomes rather dependent on that income. When his friend, Stacey, an actress, desperate to lose weight, sees his father’s diet pills, Carl agrees to sell her some, a transaction Carl’s new tenant witnesses. So, when Stacey dies suddenly, the pills being a major contributor to her death, Carl finds himself suffering from a moral dilemma, and worried he could be held responsible. But, his problems are compounded by his tenant’s decision to blackmail Carl. From here the story becomes a cat and mouse game between Carl and his tenant, with a slight amount of dark humor tossed in. Carl, who is normally a little bland and mild-mannered, begins to slowly unravel as his conscience weighs on him and he begins to crumble under the pressure of being blackmailed and the ever present possibility his dark secret will be exposed. Alongside this story, is a secondary thread, that slowly intersects with Carl’s story, and while it’s rather odd, it was also weirdly absorbing. Although I was determined to get this book finished, I still found it very slow going, and plodded through it at a very slow rate of speed. It was not until the second half of the book that things really started to pick up and the suspense began to build in earnest. Despite the fact that my interest was finally peaked, the story was still pretty predictable, except for Lizzie’s situation, which I could never quite figure out. The plot was rather clever, but not exactly unique. For me the ending was extremely abrupt and just plain… well plain. I felt like I had gone through all of this for nothing, although I probably should have guessed this was how things would play out. I really hate that this was Ruth’s last impression, because this is not her best effort. But, one must remember that the author was in her mid-eighties when she passed and I certainly hope my mind will be that sharp if I am lucky to live that long. I have a nice collection of Ruth Rendell novels and a smattering of her Barbara Vine stories too. I enjoyed the long running Inspector Wexford series as well, and someday I hope to complete my collection of those books. I still plan to feature Ruth on the blog someday and pay tribute to her and her work, as she was one of my favorite mystery writers for a long time. Even though this book failed to make a huge impression on me, it’s still a solid enough effort, and any diehard fan of Ruth Rendell will want to add this book to their collection.
    • 4/5
      Spoilers!Though I haven’t equally liked all of Rendell’s enormous back-catalog, I have never left a book of hers unfinished. Dark Corners was almost my first. She is so good at portraying the ultimate passive, non-confrontational male. Carl is one of those people who needs a good shaking. At first, I thought Nicola would do the honors, but she flakes out on him and he ignores what good advice she was able to give before said flaking. Everything that befalls him is his own fault and he lets it get out of hand until, unbelievably, he kills his tormenter. But before that happened I was so exasperated by Carl and his situation that I skimmed ahead to see if anything would change. Discovering it did made me continue, but I stayed annoyed and frustrated by Carl the Idiot.Another thing Rendell did really well is portray the seriously delusional. Dermot is by far the most disturbing. His outward normality and false piety are a pretty good cover for a person with an outstanding ability to justify anything to himself. It would be gutsy if it weren’t so twisted. Lizzie is another character who is deluded beyond the bounds of her reality. She foists herself into a dead “friend’s” life and tries to live vicariously by taking over her now empty flat (and drinking her top shelf booze, wearing her designer clothes and eating her gourmet food). It takes a while for the main Carl/Dermot plot to catch up with Lizzie, but it eventually does in a typically neat and reasonably satisfying way. There’s a second and finally a third bout of blackmail, but a really inert and mild form so that the ultimate solution to Carl’s problem is quite weird. It’s a strange net that catches a lot of people in this novel, and while I’m not sorry for the time I spent with it, I don’t think it’s her best. Not a bad way to go out though.
    • 4/5
      It truly saddens me to be writing a review of the very last novel written by Ruth Rendell, whom the literary world lost on May 2, 2015. I’ve been a longtime fan of Ms. Rendell’s work. She will be very much missed in the literary world and by this reader.As for her last book, it’s a perfect blend of suspense and tension. As always, Ms. Rendell built her storyline to make the most of each sentence, like a spider weaving each strand of silk in its web. It’s a page turner that will draw you into the dark story of Carl Martin, who rents part of his inherited home to a fellow who blackmails him and how Carl’s life begins to unravel. Ms. Rendell is a master of psychological suspense and has created a memorable character in Carl Martin and you’ll cringe as you watch him sink deeper and deeper into unstable chaos. While we can’t always agree with Carl’s actions, it’s hard not to empathize with him. I’d prefer not to say too much about the storyline and let Ms. Rendell weave her own magic in her readers’ minds.If you aren’t familiar with Ruth Rendell’s work, then this last book of hers will open up much wonderful reading time ahead for you, as she wrote over 60 novels, most under her own name but also some under her pseudonym, Barbara Vine. Her sharp insight into the human mind and her wry humor make her books must reads. I’ve heard her work described as “cozy mysteries” but I don’t see that at all. Most of her work, including this one, gives me chills and while they may not be excessively gory, they’re certainly not cozy. Recommended.This book was given to me by the publisher through Edelweiss in return for an honest review.

    Book preview

    Dark Corners - Ruth Rendell

    1

    FOR MANY YEARS Wilfred Martin collected samples of alternative medicines, homeopathic remedies, and herbal pills. Most of them he never used, never even tried because he was afraid of them, but he kept the lot in a cupboard in a bathroom in his house in Falcon Mews, Maida Vale, and when he died, they went, along with the house and its contents, to his son, Carl.

    Carl’s mother recommended throwing it all out. It was junk, harmless at best, possibly dangerous, all those bottles and jars and sachets just taking up room. But Carl didn’t throw it out because he couldn’t be bothered. He had other things to do. If he had known how it, or one particular item among all the rest, would change his life, transform it, ruin it, he would have emptied the lot into a plastic bag, carried the bag down the road, and dumped it in the big rubbish bin.

    CARL HAD TAKEN over the former family home in Falcon Mews at the beginning of the year, his mother having moved to Camden when his parents divorced. For a while he thought no more about the contents of his bathroom cupboard. He was occupied with his girlfriend, Nicola, his novel, Death’s Door, which had just been published, and with letting the top floor of his house. He had no need of those two rooms plus kitchen and bathroom, and great need of the rent. Excited though he was about the publication of his first book, he was not so naïve at twenty-three as to suppose he could live by writing alone. Rents in central London had reached a peak, and Falcon Mews, a crescent looping out of Sutherland Avenue to Castellain Road in Maida Vale, was highly desirable and much sought after. So he placed an advertisement in the Paddington Express offering accommodation, and next morning twenty prospective tenants presented themselves on his doorstep. Why he chose the first applicant, Dermot McKinnon, he never knew. Perhaps it was because he didn’t want to interview dozens of people. It was a decision he was bitterly to regret.

    But not at the beginning. The only drawback Dermot seemed to have was his appearance—his uneven yellow teeth, for instance, his extreme thinness and round shoulders. But you don’t decide against a tenant because his looks are unprepossessing, Carl told himself, and no doubt the man could pay the rent. Dermot had a job at the Sutherland Pet Clinic in the next street and produced a reference from the chief veterinarian there. Carl asked him to pay each month’s rent at the end of the previous month, and perhaps the first mistake he made was to request that it be paid not by transfer into his bank account, but in notes or a cheque in an envelope left at Carl’s door. Carl realised that these days this was unusual, but he wanted to see the rent come in, take it in his hand. Dermot put up no objection.

    Carl had already begun work on a second novel, having been encouraged by his agent, Susanna Griggs, to get on with it. He didn’t expect an advance payment until he had finished it and Susanna and his editor had read and accepted it. No payment was promised on paperback publication of Death’s Door, as no one expected it to go into paperback. Still, what with being both a published author with good prospects and a landlord receiving rent, Carl felt rich.

    Dermot had to enter Carl’s house by the front door and go up two flights of stairs to get to his flat, but he made no noise and, as he put it, kept himself to himself. Carl had already noticed his tenant was a master of the cliché. For a while everything seemed fine, the rent paid promptly in twenty-pound notes in an envelope on the last day of the month.

    All the houses in Falcon Mews were rather small, all different in shape and colour, and all joined together in long rows facing each other. The road surface was cobbled except for where the two ends of the mews met Sutherland Avenue and where the residents could park their cars. The house Carl had inherited was painted ochre, with white window frames and white window boxes. The small, overgrown back garden had a wooden shack at the end full of broken tools and a defunct lawn mower.

    As for the alternative medicines, Carl took a couple of doses of something called benzoic acid when he had a cold. It claimed to suppress phlegm and coughs, but it had no effect. Apart from that, he had never looked inside the cupboard where all the bottles and jars lived.

    DERMOT MCKINNON SET off for the Sutherland Pet Clinic at twenty to nine each morning, returning to his flat at five thirty. On Sundays he went to church. If Dermot hadn’t told him, Carl would never have guessed that he was a churchgoer, attending one of the several churches in the neighbourhood, St. Saviour’s in Warwick Avenue, for instance, or St. Mary’s, Paddington Green.

    They encountered each other in the mews on a Sunday morning and Dermot said, Just off to morning service.

    Really?

    I’m a regular attender. The better the day the better the deed.

    Carl was on his way to have a coffee with his friend Stacey Warren. They had met at school, then gone to university together, where Carl had read philosophy and Stacey had taken a drama course. While she was still at university, her parents had been killed in a car crash, and Stacey inherited quite a lot of money, enough to buy herself a flat in Primrose Hill. Stacey wanted to act, and because of her beautiful face and slender figure was given a significant part in a TV sitcom called Station Road. Her face became known to the public overnight, while her slenderness was lost in a few months.

    I’ve put on a stone, she said to Carl across the table in their local Café Rouge. What am I going to do? Other customers were giving her not very surreptitious glances. They all know who I am. They’re all thinking I’m getting fat. What’s going to happen to me?

    Carl, who was very thin, had no idea how much he weighed and didn’t care. You’ll have to go on a diet, I suppose.

    David and I have split up. I’m finding that very hard to take. Have I got to starve myself too?

    I don’t know anything about diets, Stacey. You don’t need to starve, do you?

    I’d rather take one of those magic diet pills that get advertised online. D’you know anything about them?

    Why would I? Not my kind of thing.

    The waitress brought the two chocolate brownies and the slice of carrot cake Stacey had ordered. Carl said nothing.

    I didn’t have any breakfast, she said.

    Carl just nodded.

    On his way home, still thinking about Stacey and her problem, he passed the bookshop kept by his friend Will Finsford, the one remaining privately run bookshop for miles around. Will had confided that he lay awake at night worrying about having to close, especially as the organic shop down the road had not only gone out of business but had had the bailiffs in.

    Carl saw him rearranging the display of bestsellers in the window and went in.

    D’you have any books on losing weight, Will?

    Will looked him up and down. You already look like you’re wasting away.

    Not for me. For a girl I know.

    Not the beautiful Nicola, I hope?

    No, for someone else. A friend who’s got fat. That’s a word I’m not supposed to say, isn’t it?

    You’re safe with me. Have a look along the shelves, health section.

    Carl found nothing he thought would be suitable. Come over one evening, why don’t you? Bring Corinne. The beautiful Nicola would love to see you. We’ll ring you.

    Will said he would and went back to his window arrangement.

    Walking home, Carl realised it wasn’t really a book he wanted. Stacey had mentioned pills. He wondered if any slimming medications were among his father’s stash of pills and potions, as Carl had come to think of them. Wilfred Martin had always been thin so was unlikely to have used that sort of thing, but some drugs claimed to serve a double purpose, improving the skin, for instance, or curing indigestion.

    Carl thought of his father, a rather taciturn, quirky man. He was sorry Wilfred was gone, but they had never had much in common. Carl regretted that his father had not lived to see Death’s Door published. But he had left Carl the house, with its income potential. Had that been his way of offering his blessing on his son’s chosen career? Carl hoped so.

    The house was silent when he got in, but it usually was whether Dermot was at home or not. He was a good tenant. Carl went upstairs and saw that the bathroom door was open. Dermot had his own bathroom in his flat on the top floor, so had no reason to use this one. Probably I forgot to close the door myself, Carl thought, as he went into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.

    Wilfred’s pills and potions were in a cupboard divided into five sections on the left-hand side of the washbasin. Only the topmost section was for Carl’s current use; he didn’t need much space, as his toothbrush and toothpaste and roll-on deodorant were on the shelf above the basin. Surveying the collection of bottles and phials and jars and packages, tubes and cans and blister packs, he asked himself why he had kept all this stuff. Surely not for its sentimental value. He had loved his father, but he had never felt like that about him. On the contrary, he regarded the pills and potions as mostly quack remedies, rubbish really, and quite useless. A lot of the products, he saw, taking small jars out at random, claimed to treat heart problems and safeguard against heart failure, yet his father had had two heart attacks and died after the second one.

    No, nothing here would encourage weight loss, Carl told himself. Best throw it all out, make a clean sweep. But what was that in a large plastic zip-up bag in the second section from the top? Yellow capsules, a great many of them, labelled DNP. The foolproof way to avoid weight gain! promised the label. Behind the bag of capsules was a box full of sachets also containing DNP but in powder-to-liquid form.

    Taking the plastic bag out, he noted that, farther down, the label advised using with care, and not to exceed the stated dose, etc., etc. The usual small print. But even paracetamol containers said that. He left the bag of capsules where it was and went downstairs to look up DNP on the computer. But before he got there, the front doorbell rang and he remembered that Nicola—beautiful, clever, sweet Nicola—was coming to spend the rest of the day and the night with him. He went to let her in, telling himself he must give her a key. He wanted her as a more permanent part of his life. With Nicola, his new novel, and a reliable tenant, life was good.

    For the time being, he forgot all about the slimming pills.

    2

    AT FIRST, BEING a landlord seemed trouble-free. Dermot paid his rent on the appointed day with the minimum of fuss. That is, he did for the first two months. The thirty-first of March was a Monday, and at eight thirty Carl was, as usual, eating his breakfast when he heard Dermot’s footsteps on the stairs. Generally they would be followed by a tap at the door, but this time they were not. The front door closed, and Carl, getting up to look out of the window, saw Dermot walking down the mews towards Sutherland Avenue. Maybe the rent would come later today, Carl thought.

    Carl seldom saw a newspaper except for selected bits online, but he bought a couple of papers on April 1 to see if he could spot the jokes. The best one he had ever heard of—it was published before he was born—was the story that the arms of the Venus de Milo had been found washed up on some Mediterranean beach. Still, today’s made him laugh, and by the time he got to his mother’s flat, he had forgotten all about the missing rent. It was her birthday as well as April Fool’s Day, and Carl was invited to a celebration lunch along with a cousin and two of his mother’s close friends. His mother asked him if she should have invited his girlfriend, and he said Nicola would still be at work in the Department of Health in Whitehall. It was a lovely sunny day and he walked halfway home before getting on the 46 bus.

    But there was still the matter of the late rent, with no envelope from Dermot. Carl woke up early the next morning worrying. He disliked the idea of confronting Dermot; he found he had broken into a sweat just thinking about it. He was drinking a mug of strong coffee when he heard Dermot’s footsteps. If the front door opened, Carl told himself, he would make himself go out and ask for the money. Instead, Dermot tapped on the kitchen door and handed over an envelope. Smiling and showing his horrible yellowish teeth, he said, Did you think I was playing an April Fool’s joke?

    What? No, no, of course not.

    Just a mistake. He who makes no mistakes makes nothing. See you later.

    Carl felt great relief, but just to make sure, he counted the notes. And there it was, as it should be: twelve hundred pounds. Not nearly enough, his mother had said, considering today’s prices, but it seemed a lot to Carl.

    He filled a bowl with muesli because he was suddenly hungry, but the milk had gone sour so he had to throw the contents of the bowl away. Apart from the milk, though, things were going well, and it was a good time to get back to work on his new novel, a more serious venture than his first. Carl looked at the notes he had made about Highgate Cemetery, the research he was doing for his first four chapters. Perhaps he should have made another visit to the cemetery yesterday, but he thought he had enough material to write his first chapter. The only interruption was a phone call from Stacey. It surprised him the way friends unloaded their trivial (it seemed to him) concerns.

    I’m so sorry, Carl. She seemed to think the simple apology was enough to permit a long misery moan about her weight.

    I’m working, Stacey.

    Oh, writing, you mean?

    He sighed. People always said that, as if writing were quick and easy. Should he mention the DNP? No, it wouldn’t shut her up. On the contrary, it would fetch her round here, and as much as he liked her, he needed to work. Instead he listened, making sympathetic noises, until he told the white lie those who work from home sometimes have to employ.

    Got to go, Stacey. There’s someone at the door.

    He still couldn’t write. It was absurd and something to feel a little ashamed of, suddenly to be happy, to be carefree, because he’d received a packet with twelve hundred pounds in it. Money that was rightly his, that was owed to him. Now he came to think of it, the rent money was his sole secure income. He couldn’t count on more book money for a long time. The rent brought him relief and happiness.

    He definitely wouldn’t be able to write today. The sun was shining and he would go out, walk up to the big green space that was Paddington Recreation Ground, lie on the grass in the sun, and look up through the branches at the blue sky.

    3

    IT WASN’T APRIL Fool’s Day or even May Day but May 2 when the next rent payment arrived.

    Carl wasn’t as nervous as he had been the previous month. Nicola had spent the night with him, but he had said nothing to her about the rent’s being late in April. After all, it had come and all had been well. She had gone to work on May 2 before Dermot left the house, so she wasn’t there to see Carl listening for his tenant’s footfalls on the stair or to see Carl’s surprise when the front door closed without Dermot’s tap on the kitchen door. Perhaps the rent would come later in the day, and this in fact happened.

    They encountered each other in the hallway, Carl leaving the house to do some food shopping and Dermot coming in at five thirty from the pet clinic.

    I’ve got something for you. Dermot handed over an envelope.

    Carl thought it strange that Dermot should have carried that envelope containing twelve hundred pounds about with him all day, but still, it wasn’t important: Carl had got his money. He wouldn’t have to break into his meagre and dwindling savings to go on a week’s holiday with Nicola. They would only be going to Cornwall, not abroad anywhere, but he was looking forward to their stay in Fowey.

    Stacey had phoned again in some despair before they left, but on his mobile this time. He told her he was going away but that she must come over to see him when he got back. They’d go out to eat and he would see what he could do to help with her weight problem. Why had he said that? It must have been the DNP that had come into his mind. He dismissed it. He couldn’t help anyone lose weight.

    He and Nicola went to Fowey with the couple who had introduced them, and who were still special friends partly for that reason. They had a good time, and by the time they got back to Paddington station, Carl had asked Nicola to come to Falcon Mews: I mean to live with me. Permanently. He felt good about Nicola. They cared about the same things—books, music, the outdoors. She loved that he was a writer. He loved her.

    I’ll have to go back to my flat and tell my flatmates, but then I will. I want to. I’d been going to ask you, but . . . well, I must be sort of old-fashioned. I thought it wouldn’t be right for me to ask and not you. Me being a woman, I mean.

    She moved in three days later.

    THE DAY BEFORE Nicola moved in, Stacey came round. She and Carl planned to go out to eat at a nearby restaurant. Before that, Stacey used his bathroom to renew her makeup. Perhaps because of her acting and her modelling, she made up heavily, especially around her eyes.

    After a few minutes, Carl went upstairs to fetch himself an antihistamine pill for his hay fever. He left the bathroom door ajar. Stacey followed him in. She was one of those people who, when someone told her of a mild illness or problem, always claimed to suffer from the same complaint. Funny you should say that because I’ve got hay fever too. He opened the cabinet and found the antihistamines on the top shelf.

    Stacey was standing behind him, telling him about her symptoms and peering over his shoulder. Where did all this stuff come from? Do you use it?

    It was my dad’s. I sort of inherited it—you know, when I got the house and the furniture and everything.

    He reached into the

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1