Ruth thought she no longer measured her life in weeks or months, but in bin collections and laundry. Her days and nights were punctuated by bouts of washing up and differentiated by what type of vegetable peel was blocking the plughole, in the way they used to be punctuated by dancing and drinking and art shows. Drying-up cloth still in hand, she told this to Tom.
“ . . . so I tried dancing while I washed up, but I just ended up getting water everywhere.”
“We didn’t really go out that often,” Tom said, staring out of the window—a double-glazed, plastic-framed window which neither leaked nor rotted. “It just seems that way.” Ruth opened and closed her mouth at his back, unable to vocalise the answer to such a stupid and obvious comment. Tom raised his hand, easily shaped his expression into wide-eyed welcome and waved energetically to someone outside.
“Who . . . ?” she asked, peering over his shoulder.
“Thingy from next door,” Tom said, still waving. Outside, Thingy—real name Maura—waved cheerfully and endlessly back as she passed by. As always, she was neatly dressed, walking slowly on swollen ankles. She had a full bag-for-life clutched in one hand and leaned slightly against the weight of it. She pointed at their driveway and gave a thumbs up, then waved again. Thomas kept waving too. Ruth wanted to throw a brick through the window.
“Her arm’s going to fall off,” she said instead, petulantly. “And it’ll be your fault.”
“Well, she always waves to us when we walk past her place.”
“That’s because she’s always watching. What was she pointing at?”
“I trimmed the fir tree this morning,” said Tom. “Didn’t you notice?” He finally stopped waving, turned to her, looking slightly hurt.
“Of course I did. Lovely.” Ruth leaned past him to turn the blinds closed, not so much to block out the sight of the beautiful tree cut down to a skinny nub, but to limit the scrutiny of the house that the trimmed tree invited—their window now easily viewed from the road. A movement across the street caught her eye. Another older woman, one they hadn’t met yet, stood in her front garden. She walked right up to the low hedge that marked her territory. The sun reflected off her glasses so her eyes were white circles. Tom raised his hand again.
“Oh, don’t,” said Ruth. “Don’t encourage them.”
Tom nudged her, grinned, and waved anyway. The woman raised her hand too, and flicked it twice from the wrist, as though shooing him away, then hurried back inside. Ruth laughed and closed the blind.
“Told you,” she said. “Now she thinks you’re up to no good.”
“It’s because of the weeds,” said Tom, who liked to be liked. “I’m going to get some weedkiller today.”
“But that’s bad for the pollinators.”
“We’re letting the street down,” said Tom. “We need to at least try for a little while.”
It was true that their driveway could be mistaken for a would-be lawn. Not as bad as some places they had lived, but the wayward dandelions seemed somehow more yellow and the couch grass more ragged against the perfectly sealed red brick that surrounded them. It wasn’t Stepford, not quite. Just, when they’d taken the place, with its surprisingly low rent, they hadn’t realised they’d be surrounded by pensioners—real pensioners, who had real pensions, with time to focus on the little things she and Tom struggled to keep up, and money to spend on getting other people to do those little things for them.
Thingy next door had informed them that their arrival had caused great excitement. Young blood. Out-of-towners. Everyone expected they’d be out all hours. Would they be throwing parties? They were welcome to come round for tea in her garden. Did they realise their guttering was blocked? It’d been spilling water in the rain for months now. Very loud. Not to worry, though, she’d had her handyman fix it for them.
“But we only moved in a week ago,” Ruth had said, at the same time as Tom said, “Thanks!”
“Just smile and be nice,” Tom had said later. “She means well.”
“She does not. She means, don’t make a mess, don’t make noise, don’t rock the boat. It was like an old-person mafia warning. You’re just too nice to see it.”
“Paranoid,” said Tom, but ever since then he’d been obsessed with keeping the garden tidy in a way he hadn’t done at their old place, and even with his efforts their house stood out as a probable den of iniquity among the set-dressed, screen-ready perfections of the houses around them.
That was, except for the house across the street, which didn’t quite match up either, though in a less conspicuous way than theirs. It was, Ruth decided, dishevelled with a dignity bestowed by the owner not giving a hoot, rather than a mess because the young whippersnappers can’t stay on top of things.
“Come with me to the garden centre?” asked Tom. He was already pulling his trainers on. Ruth shook her head.
“I’ve got this report to read for work.”
“But it’s Saturday.”
“Yes, and I want Sunday off.”
Tom shrugged, pecked her on the cheek and slammed his way out of the house and into the car—always slamming. He still carried with him the puppyish enthusiasm of a teenage boy who didn’t know his own strength. Ruth peered through the living room window, keeping behind the curtains. The car coughed to a start and she flushed slightly at the unmistakable rattle of the loose exhaust. Tom raised one hand as he drove carefully past. He’d grown a beard this past month, and trimmed his hair. It made his profile unfamiliar, but there was no mistaking the careless lift of his hand, with its square fingertips and the long fingers and the little scar of a dog bite on the back.
The report was sticky, stuffed full of statistics described by long, clever words used in unexpected ways. It made Ruth’s head hurt after just a few minutes, and a few minutes after that she got up to make a cup of tea, and a few minutes after that she felt a short walk might help her digest the information. There was a wood nearby, easily reached through a cut on the other side of the street. A beech wood with concrete and dirt paths, and territorial rooks, and children hanging off rope swings and setting fires, and treasure hunts of painted pebbles. It was one of the reasons they’d chosen this cul-de-sac. She would do a quick circuit and then try to read the report again.
She had reached the cut when she realised—no keys. Had she even locked the house up? She started back, cursing herself for not thinking, still patting her pockets. She was nearly home when she found the rough shape of the keyring nestled in the corner of the deepest pocket, so light as to be invisible. She realised she was still, a month later, looking for the heavier set of keys of their old flat. This new house did not need multiple locks.
She pulled the keys out, triumphant, and was startled by a sharp rap on the window from the house behind her—she was stood by the no-hoots-given garden, and the old lady from earlier was peering through the living room window. She tapped on the glass again and gestured at Ruth, scowling. Through the smear of the double-glazing, she seemed to be on tiptoe, reaching for height she didn’t have. Her gestures were ferociously unwelcoming.
But I’m on the pavement, thought Ruth, stubbornly. Public property. She smiled contrarily, her nicest smile, waving, mouthing exaggeratedly: “Found my keys!” The woman lurched forward and smacked both hands against the glass, hard. Ruth took a step back. The woman’s face was made long by her shouting, her eyes larger than the lens of her glasses, white-rimmed. Her voice came faintly: “Get away! Get away!”
The woods no longer seemed very appealing. Ruth raised her hands in her surrender, and sauntered insolently across the road, trying to disguise the tremble in her legs. The front door was locked after all, and once she was inside she relocked it and decided it was not too early for Irish coffee. She tried to figure out why she felt so unsettled—she, who had snapped back when grabbed at in the street, and yelled at a harasser on the bus until he’d scrambled off at the next stop—shaken up by an old woman having a rant. While the coffee pot burbled, she peered through the kitchen blinds, squinting to see through the brightly lit glass whether the woman was still there. The window was a square of reflections. She couldn’t tell.
Ruth texted Tom. “Why so long?”
He sent back a zipped-mouth emoji and a wink. She threw her phone onto the sofa and paced the length of the tiny bungalow, tidying as she went. Always tidying these days. They had told themselves less space would be easier to keep clean, which it was, but it also felt as though they were forever tidying up and rearranging their belongings in an effort not drown in essential clutter. Six months, she reminded herself. We are here for six months and then we move on. There was the possibility of Tom being offered an extended contract, of course, but it seemed unlikely. That possibility was there with every job he took, but though he was good at his work, there was never enough budget to keep him on. She, of course, could work from anywhere.
She took a long drink from the Irish coffee, imagined the burn of whiskey soothing her racing heart, picked up the report again. Immediately, the statistics turned to ants in front her eyes, moving across the page in complicated patterns that she couldn’t decipher.
There was a knock on the door. A pause. Another insistent knock. Ruth froze as though whoever was out there might hear her. Could the woman have followed her over? What could they possibly have done to offend her so badly? She sidled to the front door and pressed her ear to the cool wood. There was another knock, this time from the glass of the window in the room she’d just left. She held her breath and uncovered the spyhole. She hated spyholes—could never shake the feeling that it would be something or somebody unexpected looming there, or worse (or better) a different world altogether.
Thingy’s face peered back at her.
“Yoo hoo, Ruth! Are you in?”
It was fiercely tempting not to open the door, but Thingy must have seen the light through the spyhole.
“Hello pet!” sang Thingy—she was always singing out greetings, never just saying them. “I thought you were in. Are you busy?” Thingy did not really believe in freelancing as a job, Ruth had discovered, but she tried all the same . . .
“Actually I’m just in the middle of reading something for work . . . ”
“Oh, you like reading, don’t you? Me too. I like those Jack Reacher books. How are you settling in? Is your hubby around?” She peered past Ruth, looking hopeful, and something else. Hunger that might be loneliness. “I tell you what, I’ve just been into town and I picked up this lovely deal at the shops, three for two, look, and then I thought you might like one.” She held out a glittery, clear plastic tea light holder, shaped like a tulip. “It’d look dead nice in your side window. I know you keep the curtains closed, but you could get one of those little electric tea lights, and it’s a comfort for me, too, to see the lights in the windows, a woman living alone. Lucky you stay awake so late. You’re so lucky to have a nice young husband.” Ruth had learned quickly that there was no point correcting Maura’s misunderstandings. “You know Bill from two down? He’s getting a new car today, very excited about it, he is, he was telling me all about it. It’s going to be one of those ones with the roof down. He was saying, Maura, I’ll take you out in it and this, that and other—that’ll put the wind up you. All in fun, you know, I’m friends with his wife. Have you thought about getting a new car?”
“We can’t at the moment, Maura. But—” Ruth thought she might as well take advantage of Maura’s visit. “Who’s that, lives over the road?”
“Oh, her? Bethel. She’s lovely, you know. But lonely. Has some turns. Her children all moved down South, and they come up occasionally, but not nearly enough. I keep an eye on her.”
“I don’t think she likes us much,” Ruth said, without thinking. “She was shouting at me through the window earlier.” She caught the swiftly hidden gleam in Maura’s eye, and realised too late that the whole street would know about that in the next half hour.
“Well, you can’t take it personally. She sees things, you know. Once I got home, and she came outside, and she told me, “Maura, they were dancing on your lawn, you know.” And I said, “Who, pet?” and she said, “All the little ones, the pixies, they were picking the flowers. And there was the young lad, too, only he’s asleep now, just over there.” And I said, “Oh yes, yes, I see.” She was pointing at my rose bush, you know, and there wasn’t anything there, but I thought it’d make her feel better. Sometimes she goes out walking in the night in her nightie.” She paused for breath, saw Ruth’s expression and patted her on the forearm. “What I’m saying, is, don’t worry about it, pet. It probably wasn’t even you she was seeing. I’ll go round once I’ve dropped this home and check she’s okay.” She picked up her bags, swept a look across the driveway patio.
“Tom’s gone to get some weedkiller now,” Ruth said quickly, trying not to sound defensive. “Thanks for the . . . ” She lifted the gaudy tea-light holder as though it was a flaming torch.
“Oh I’m sure, I’m sure,” said Maura. “Bye, then.”
Ruth put the gift in the window as requested. The price label was still dangling from one of the rigid leaves.
Tom came back with a barbecue set and food from the butchers, and new plants and weedkiller and a determination to use every single item in some way before the day was out. Relieved to be doing something different to the usual routine, Ruth set the report to one side and followed him around, holding whatever she was given to hold, choosing places to put the new planters, supervising the death of the weed. They glistened healthily with poison, as though freshened by rain. She was wearing shorts and sandals, and some of the back spray wafted on to her bare skin. Tom made her stand while he hosed her legs down, splashing her shorts, and she laughed and kicked water back at him, but he hushed her and turned off the tap, then conscientiously picked up the outdoor broom and swept the pooled water into the drain.
“It would have dried. I’m already nearly dry.” Actually the water on Ruth’s legs was itchy, but now she wouldn’t touch a towel out of stubbornness.
“Time to build the barbecue,” Tom said, as though she hadn’t spoken.
Between them they set up the shiny new barbecue. It looked like something from a movie, an alien object. A shame to grubby it up with charcoal, it was such a far cry from their old camping barbecue. But they did, taking it in turns to prod the flames while they waited for the coals to glow, and Ruth told Tom about her conversation with Thingy, and what she’d learned about the woman over the road.
“Bethel?” Tom repeated the name as though he was offering someone a drink. “Welsh, is it?”
“Who do you think the young lad is, though?” Ruth asked, thoughtfully. The smoke from the barbecue seemed to be following her around, and now she blinked blearily into it. There was some comfort to having the world made hazy and sore. It reminded her of dry-ice in clubs, of nights spent on beaches.
“Peter Pan?” said Tom. “The poor woman’s obviously got dementia.”
“I wonder what she sees when she looks at us, then.”
“Young love,” said Tom, grinning. “Can’t stand it.”
“No, but . . . ”
“Charcoal’s ready!” Tom dropped a mixing bowl full of sticky marinaded ribs unceremoniously onto the grill and began to separate them out. The sauce dripped onto the charcoal, hissing and spitting as though the heat hurt.
“It looks like a murder scene.”
“A delicious one.”
“Maybe she’s psychic,” said Ruth. “Maybe she’s seeing something that the rest of us just can’t. Maybe the lad is a ghost.”
“Maybe you should go and get the salad and buns and stuff from the kitchen.”
“You love this, don’t you?” said Ruth.
“What?”
“This whole domestication thing. Playing at being grown-ups.”
“We are grown-ups,” said Tom. He looked past her and raised the dripping tongs in salute. Two gardens over, a figure did the same back.
“I’m just going to get some paracetamol,” said Ruth.
The house was very dim and cool compared to the garden, and Ruth loitered, feeling blessedly invisible, like an insect when the lifted rock is lowered back down. She went to the lounge window and looked out. Now the fir tree was so much narrower, she could easily see Bethel’s house from this window, too. The sun fell bright against the front of it still, and lit up where guttering was cracking, and the grass was sprouting unruly along the hedge. There was no sign of Bethel, but then the front door opened, and Thingy emerged. Ruth threw herself to the side before she could be spotted, and counted to 100 before she peered out again.
Bethel was back in the window. She was staring at the cut tree. Ruth raised her hand, but Bethel didn’t seem to see her. Ruth figured the sun must have darkened the glass by now so she was invisible, and anyway Bethel was still focused on the tree. Her lips were moving as though in conversation.
Ruth studied the tree, too. The shortened branches rocked and moved, and Bethel’s mouth still moved, too. Ruth swallowed, and squinted, trying to see what the woman saw. Narrowed her eyes and caught the shivering outlines of a hand skimming along the branches. A flock of sparrows burst from the bushes, skittering across the sky and away over the roofs, and in the split second of activity it seemed they carried the movement in the tree away with them.
Over the road, Bethel turned away. She opened the door and ushered someone invisible in before her. She checked over her shoulder and scowled before she closed the door.
Ruth scavenged two paracetamol from the mess on the coffee table, where she’d been working. Her reading glasses were there, too. She picked them up, put them on. They were fairly new, and she wasn’t yet used to wearing them regularly—not wearing them would explain the headache, though. She squinted through the smudged lenses, glanced out of the window again. With the glasses on, the other side of the road became a pleasant blur, and everything nearer by was larger and sharper, as if she’d stepped into a TV show.
She heard Tom calling that dinner was ready, thought about telling him she wanted to eat indoors—but when she turned he was there a plate already stacked high. He had opened the parasol for shade, he said. He had poured wine. He had marinade smeared down his jumper, thick and red and lumpy, as though he’d killed their dinner with this bare hands, and he looked so proud of himself that she blotted out the sun and the neighbours with four glasses of the wine and too many ribs. She sat in Tom’s lap and pretended they could not be seen or heard, although they could see and hear Thingy in her garden next door, making phone call after endless phone call, telling the same story, it seemed, over and over again. Ruth couldn’t quite catch the words, but the rhythm of them was that of a song on repeat, like hold music.
On Sunday morning, Ruth woke to a still-clinging headache that threatened to blow into a migraine. She had the vague idea that she’d had nightmares she couldn’t remember, and the dark red strands of them were clinging to the nerves behind her eyes and at her temples. Tom made her tea and toast, and nipped to the supermarket for stronger painkillers.
“Probably the wine,” she said, grasping the steaming cup gratefully. “Too grown up to be drinking so much of it.”
“I knew I’d upset you with that,” he replied, though didn’t apologise.
“What are your plans for the day?” she asked.
“More gardening,” he replied. “And you’re to sleep until you’ve shaken this headache.”
But the abandoned report was calling and instead she watched, twitchily, for Tom to get dressed, go outside, leave her in peace. He put a pot of coffee on, set the washing machine going, did the washing up. The duvet covers felt heavier and hotter with every passing minute. Finally, he returned to the bedroom and said, “I’ll be right outside if you need anything.”
He kissed her on the forehead and she tried not to flinch. His breath was too hot by her face. As he moved away, the doorbell rang, and then there was a knock on the door, and then the doorbell rang again. Tom frowned, even his endless patience tried.
“It can’t be that urgent.”
Ruth heard him stamp through the house, and he must have used the peephole because he shouted “It’s Maura,” not so much to tell her, she guessed, but so as to warn her. And then his tone switched to polite and solicitous and Ruth listened as he agreed to, yes, help Maura mow her front lawn, but yes, first of all, come over to Bethel’s with her and help fix a broken cupboard door, and this, that and the other.
“Poor thing won’t tell me what happened,” said Thingy. “I imagine she thought she was slamming it closed on a goblin or something. I expect Ruth told you. Anyway the hinge just needs screwing back in and my handman’s busy, and you’re quite handy, aren’t you?” There was an unmistakeable flirt to her voice. Ruth groaned and laughed into her pillow.
“I’ve just got a couple of bits to do in the garden,” said Tom. “And then I’ll be right round to help.”
“Can’t Ruth do those?” asked Thingy. “Or is she not one for outside work?”
“Ruth’s got a migraine,” said Tom, firmly. Ruth groaned again. She could imagine Thingy’s expression—Ruth cast as yet another invalid in the street.
“Oh, shame,” said Thingy.
“You know what,” said Tom. “It’s okay—I’ll come and do your things now, and I’ll do the garden this afternoon. Plenty of time. Wait here, I’ll just get my tools.”
Ruth heard him trampling back through the house, rifling through his drawers for his little multi-tool. As he passed the bedroom she quickly closed her eyes, relaxed her hands and faked a deep sleep. She heard him pause for a second or two, and then he galumphed away again, and the front door closed with a heavy thud.
She spilled out of bed quickly and scampered to the front window. Past the sheared fir tree, she saw Tom, walking with the sort of reigned-in speed of child next to Thingy’s slower steps. He had taken the ever-present Bag-For-Life and was carrying it for her.
Ruth stayed half hidden by the curtains, watching them walk up to Bethel’s front door. It was a greyer day, and as Thingy rang the doorbell, knocked on the door, Ruth felt sure she caught a shadow figure flit from one side of the room to the other and vanish behind the drapes. Thingy’s laugh rang clear across the street, and she pulled out a ring of keys and opened the door, and she and Tom vanished into the house. The door closed. Nothing moved in the window.
Ruth drew the curtains.
Ten minutes later she had forced herself to wash and dress, and settled in front of the report again. The pills were starting to work. She remember to put on her glasses this time, noise-cancelling headphones in, and what with the quiet and the painkillers and the lenses, the words were finally pinned to their rightful places on the page and this time she could make sense of them, even the parts that were, actually, nonsense. The time slipped by in increments of sentences and paragraphs and scattered punctuation, and eventually she looked up and realised an hour had gone by. Her neck was stiff, her tea cold. She got up and stretched, unselfconscious behind the material, and checked her phone. There was nothing from Tom.
In the kitchen, Tom had left a message on the fridge “gone next door to help Thingy’, and left the rest of the room meticulously washed up and wiped down. Absurdly grateful, she messaged him two kisses and a smile emoji, and waited for his quick reply—always a quick reply. But there was nothing. A bee buzzed against the window. She went to open it a crack to let the bee out, and as she did it struck her that the bee was the only sound. Even her own movements seemed deadened. She clapped experimentally and thought it sounded as though her palms were covered in felt. She tried to ignore the sweat that was beginning to tickle the back of her neck. She took her tea and went out to the front of the house, where the weeds seemed to have browned and wilted slightly under the onslaught of heat and poison. She walked up to the edge of the property, nearly to the pavement, and looked up and down the street.
There was no one. No cars. No people. The landscape was slightly blurred.
Except at Bethel’s house: she thought she caught a movement and felt her heart pump wildly before she remembered that Tom was in there, fixing cupboards. And yes, there they were, Tom and another figure. Tom unmistakeable, always: his heft; his loose, enthusiastic wave. The other figure, she wasn’t sure whether it was Thingy or Bethel. She raised her hand. Tom waved harder. Ruth rolled her eyes and flapped at him: “Get back to work!” Then she turned away, taking her own advice. The front door seemed to be getting heavier, less happy to close properly and she had to lean on it to get it to click shut, which it did with a dull thud she felt in her feet.
It was only when she had sat back down at the computer and her headphones beeped a low battery warning that she remembered she had her reading glasses on and basically had earplugs in, and she took the headphones off just in time to catch the noise of Thingy’s tinkling laugh and Tom’s deeper one again, and she rushed to the window, but they were already going into Thingy’s house.
Another couple of hours later, Ruth closed the computer and looked up with the light of a day off in her eyes. Now that that pesky bit of work was done, she could relax properly, take Monday off even, make it up to Tom. Perhaps they’d go into town to an actual pub and go Out out. She sent him a message: “Finished! Out tonight?” He hadn’t yet received the last message, but she sent it anyway, then thought that actually, perhaps, she could just go and knock on the door.
She went to Thingy’s first—Maura Maura Maura, she reminded herself. Do not call her Thingy to her face—and rang the bell, but no one answered. She walked round the side of the house, where not a single weed besmirched the pristine sealed patio stones, but the garden gate was locked. So, steeling herself to be shouted at, she crossed the road to Bethel’s house, marched determinedly up the path and rang the doorbell. She heard it buzz inside, faintly, and heard something like steps, but no one answered the door. She knocked, sharply, instead, and walked over to the window where Bethel had stood the day before. She peered into the dark room. There was a television, off. Shelves of books. Bright paintings on the wall. Papers on a coffee table. It looked, surprisingly, like the room of someone she’d quite like, or at least get on with. But there was no sign of Bethel, or Tom, or Thingy.
Her headache began to bloom again. He might have been in the garden the whole time, she told herself. It wouldn’t be the first time she’d been so wrapped up in work she simply hadn’t noticed him come home. She fought the urge to pull out her phone and call him in a panic. She felt eyes on her, she was sure of it, and so she walked calmly across the street and was about to open the front door when Thingy appeared at the corner. Tom was not with her.
Thingy waved, cheerfully, and Ruth hurried over to meet her.
“Hello, dear!” said Thingy, “You’re looking a lot better. You did have a funny turn this morning.” She carried on walking towards her house, and Ruth followed.
“Oh, just a migraine, Maura,” said Ruth. “That’s what comes from working on a computer all day—er, I don’t suppose you know where Tom is?”
Thingy looked at her with her head tilted, lips pursed. “Oh, now, love, where do you think he is?”
“I don’t know,” said Ruth, trying to keep her tone polite. “I know he came to mow your lawn—which is done—and he’s not at Bethel’s, so I thought maybe he’d nipped to the shop or something.”
“My lawn?” Thingy repeated. “Tom, was it, mowed my lawn?”
Now the headache had moved behind Ruth’s eyes, and the sun came out and Thingy was a silhouette in front of her, a wall blocking all information. Ruth grit her teeth.
“Yes, remember? You came round this morning while I was ill, and asked him to mow the lawn and fix a cupboard door at Bethel’s.” She pointed for good measure. The shadow looked where she was pointing.
“At Bethel’s,” repeated the shadow, nodding its head. “Okay then, pet. Well, he’s not at mine anymore, so suppose I walk you over to yours, and we look for him there?”
“He’s not answering his phone.”
“Well . . . ” said the shadow, and Ruth realised she was being steered over the road, to Bethel’s house.
“No—we’re right next door, Thingy, you know that.”
“Come on, pet.” The shadow held Ruth’s elbow firmly. “A good cup of tea’ll set you right, and you can tell me about what you saw on my lawn.”
“Get off me!” said Ruth. “I’m not interested in your lawn with your pixies or your ghosts or whatever Bethel goes on about . . . ” She cast around for anyone to help, but the street was empty as it had been before. The sun vanished again, and Maura stopped being a squat shadow and turned back into a little old lady. Ruth wrenched herself free, and squinted at the front of Maura’s house. Through the glass of the living room window, made dim with shapes and shadows and angled light, was the unmistakable slump of Tom, asleep in an armchair, his beard smudging his chin, arms folded. “Is that him? Is that him there? He’s asleep—I can see him! Did you drug him or something? My god, did you drug me?”
“Calm down, pet, we can go wherever you want to go,” said Maura, soothingly, but Ruth was beyond soothing. She pushed past Maura and wrenched at the front door, but it was locked, and so she tried the garden gate, but the gate had become a fence, and Maura watched her silently and would not help. So she ran to their bungalow, hers and Toms, and wrestled at the door, but it wouldn’t open and the key didn’t fit the lock. Maura followed her, still quiet. She pulled out her phone and called Tom’s number, but the number wouldn’t connect. Again and again, the line beeped once and cut off. All the time, Maura stood by, watching and waiting. She looked, Ruth realised with loathing, she looked sympathetic.
“But Tom,” said Ruth, finally, faintly.
Maura took her hand and walked her over the road to the bungalow with the shadow behind the curtains. She took the key from Ruth and opened the door, ushered her inside and through to the kitchen. It was pin neat. There was no notes on the fridge.
“This is not our house,” said Ruth. “This is Bethel’s house.” But her voice sounded quavery and wrong. She rummaged through the fridge. There were no leftover ribs, no strange jams that Tom had collected. She opened and closed the cupboards to make her point, as though Maura would recognise the fine white china was not their IKEA crockery. She slammed the doors harder and harder. One of the hinges snapped.
“Oh dear,” said Maura. “I’ll have to get my handyman on that.” She made tea in a teapot, and as Ruth watched Maura pour, the burbling sound of the filling cup receded, and the world receded and blurred, and she felt as though she was in a strange cloudy dream and could only live through it. She drank the tea obediently. It chilled her insides as though she was drinking ice water and soothed her voice away. Maura walked her through to the sitting room, where a pair of reading glasses sat by a laptop on the coffee table.
“I’m just going away over the road,” said Maura. “You settle down. I’ll be back later.” She left the key on the coffee table.
The sun fell in such a way that it flooded the sitting room with light and heat, and it became almost unbearably hot. She went to the window and watched people living their lives, passing back and forth, chatting with Maura, weeding their patios, and wondered if they had been there all along and where she had been. She became aware of a young woman standing just beyond the boundary of her world, poised on the pavement and still free to leave. Ruth knocked on the window. Help me, she tried to say with her non-voice, help me. The girl jumped, and turned frowning, then seemed to recognise Ruth, and waved cheerfully.
Ruth didn’t see the wave, only the woman’s eyes, which stared at her as though she were a monster, and which were eyes she knew. She forced herself to move, smacking the window with her fists, forcing her voice up in warning, or pleading, smacking the glass until her skin split. But by then the girl had walked away, casually, to the house opposite, the one with the ruined tree and the weedy drive, and she had gone inside and closed the door, and then Maura was there in the street with her Bag-For-Life, and she waved at Ruth as though everything was perfectly normal, and then she followed the girl up the path and knocked on the door and a young man answered it, and then Ruth checked her phone again, and wondered who it was she thought might call.
Originally published in Black Static, Issue 82/83, July 2023.
