Adam approached the bed with a growing sense of dread, lifted up the sheet and pushed the mattress to one side. It was, he says, “like a wound opening”. Hundreds of bedbugs poured out. Earlier that day, he had noticed blood spots on his bedlinen around the area where his feet were, thought perhaps he had been scratching himself in his sleep, and taken everything to the launderette. Later, working from home and sitting at the desk in his room, he had noticed a small dark insect, then another, and another. Looking over at his bed, he saw one on the clean duvet cover. That’s when he made his sickening discovery. “I was, like, oh my God, this is horrific,” he says. He thinks he’d had them for several months, but because he is one of the estimated 30% of people who don’t react to bites, hadn’t realised they were feeding on him.
Adam, who is British but was flat-sharing in New York at the time, threw out his bed, sofa, desk and many possessions. He wrapped his vinyl records in clingfilm and sealed them with tape; it was three years before he opened them again. “The bedbugs were in the bedframe. They were inside my books, in the spines – they can hide there until they can come out and destroy your life again.” Bedbugs can become dormant for many months without food. “All our clothes were bagged up and sent to the launderette to be washed and dried at ridiculous temperatures. By the end of that day, I basically had nothing.” He laughs at the memory, but adds: “On a serious note, I don’t think people realise how much you have to get rid of.” For people with no money, in substandard housing, and with negligent landlords, a bedbug infestation can be devastating.
