I pull back from the window so fast I crash painfully into the television. It’s an old one and, for a second, the blonde grinning woman on the screen fragments. There is a zigzagging of the image, an angry hiss of static, before the picture rights itself again.
Staggering back into the shadows, rubbing my bruised hip, I reel from the hot scald of humiliation for the second time in a day.
What was he trying to say with that look? That he has seen me before, watching, and finds it odd. I squeeze my hands into fists so tightly my nails bite the soft flesh of my palms.
I walk into the kitchen on trembling legs and slump into a chair, trying to catch my galloping breath.
I have nothing whatsoever to be embarrassed about, yet I seem to ache with shame. Pressing my hand to my cheek I can feel that I am flushed and feverish.
How dare that van driver judge me?
How could someone like him possibly understand someone like me?
It’s not that I’m spying on Melissa. It’s just a way of keeping in touch with what’s going on in her life.
I sometimes find it hard to make sense of where it all went so wrong.
When that little family first moved in next door, I noticed how she carried Tilly, as though the baby were a grenade. Melissa often looked exhausted but she was still beautiful, still wonderfully turned out. A rush of tender motherly emotion would wash over me as I watched her awkwardly rock the tiny bundle in her arms. I knew I could help her if she would let me.
And she did. For a time. In fact, there was a period when I became quite indispensable to her, if you want the truth.
I was always babysitting at late notice for Tilly. Over time I believe she came to think of me as sort of an aunt, although I couldn’t get ‘Auntie Hester’ to stick as a monica, or whatever that expression is.
There was a time when I fancied I might be invited on holiday with them, even though I was never convinced Mark liked me. Melissa had been complaining about the fact that Tilly would never join the children’s holiday clubs when they went to their various resorts. Always classy places, like Mark Warner, or Sandals. Although I imagine these days, with his television career, they go to fancier venues still.
Anyway, all I did was hint that an extra pair of hands could really help but Melissa seemed not to understand. I didn’t want to push it.
Now Tilly is away at boarding school and, when she comes home, she smiles politely and answers my questions, but there is a sense that she is keen to get away. I see it in her eyes. How can things have changed so much?
She’s certainly not that same girl who liked to make biscuits with me in my kitchen. I think of her small arms moving like pistons inside my big mixing bowl, flour dusting her hair, and it’s hard to connect the picture with that near-adult. But there’s no point dwelling on it. Time moves on.
But I don’t see why Melissa and I can’t still be friends, just because Tilly has grown up. She began to drift away as soon as Tilly started primary school, locally.
First, she was never in when I called round to ask her for coffee. At least, I don’t think she was there. Once, I thought I saw movement at an upstairs window but I’m sure I must have imagined this.
Why on earth would Melissa hide from me of all people?
A few months slipped by, then half a year. We always seemed to be coming in and out at different times. Missing each other.
But I think it was the business with the bins that really caused the rift.
You see there’s an alleyway running alongside my house where the bins, for both Melissa’s house and my own, are kept. I have always put the bins out on a Monday morning and our little ‘system’ (as I liked to think of it) was that she would put them back that evening.
When she left them out in the road until Wednesday morning the first couple of times, I thought nothing of it. But then it seemed to become a habit. And that wasn’t the only thing. It’s very clear that one set of bins is for number 140, mine, and another for 142, hers. But she started to put things in randomly, as though it didn’t matter which bin belonged to whom. I’d go to recycle my read copies of the ’Mail and find it was filled with wine bottles and online shopping packaging. It really was quite irritating. I’m very fond of Melissa, but I suppose this began to really bother me on top of everything else.
At first I’d gently remove the items and put them back into her own bin, hoping that it would get the message across. But it carried on until one day when my entire bin was filled with packaging from Habitat. (It contained a duvet. Duck down. 9.5 tog.) I really felt I should say something. So I went round there. I was perfectly polite and friendly. But I think I may have caught her on a bad day.
She is usually immaculate, as I said, from her shining crown of blonde hair to her prettily painted toenails. That day though, she had on some sort of tracksuit thing and her hair was scraped back into an untidy ponytail. Her eyes looked dull and oddly vacant. It was like no one was there, if that makes sense. Although my heart went out to her (really, I longed to give her a hug and tell her it would be okay) I was determined to say my piece.
But it all seemed to go wrong. She listened without commenting and then simply closed the door in my face. I felt as though I had been slapped. I did something quite out of character at home. I found a dusty old bottle of sherry at the back of my cupboard and had a small glass to calm my nerves. The cloying thickness almost made me sick. God knows how long it had been there. But the whole thing really cut me to the quick.
Such a silly business to fall out over; things have never really been the same since.
I couldn’t think of a reason to go round. I would try to make conversation from the front garden (I’d watch for the car and then make sure I was in position) but it has never really been the same.
I so wish that we could be friends again.
Bertie, who always senses when I am distressed, huffs to his feet now. I reach down and scratch the wiry grey hair behind his ears in what I think of as his ‘special spot’. He shudders with bliss and his eyes roll back in his head.
My boy.
I’ve read that King Charles spaniels can live to the age of fifteen. Bertie is only thirteen but I can tell he has lost his lustre a bit lately. He’s not the only one.
‘Shall Mummy get your dinner?’ I say wearily.
His tail jerks and circles like a wonky propeller. I get up. I pour some of his special food into his bowl and place it down on his mat. He starts to eat it with enthusiasm but then loses interest. Sighing again, I open the back door. The kitchen suddenly feels very small.
For one awful moment I think I am going to go quite mad. I’m so very sick of being lonely.
And then, as I stand there, looking out at my overgrown lawn, I have the beginnings of a wonderful idea.
Melissa must be having a party, with all that alcohol arriving. There will be such a lot to do. It would take me no time to knock up some scones or a Victoria sponge. She never was much of a baker. She once told me that my lemon drizzle cake was like ‘sex on a plate’. I was a bit embarrassed by this, to be honest, but I appreciated that she meant it in a complimentary way. And didn’t I have an urge to do some baking earlier? Maybe it was an omen. Perhaps I was meant to leave the library the way I did.
For all I know, Melissa has been waiting for an excuse to patch things up between us. This could be the perfect opportunity to mend bridges.
I’m not even offended that I haven’t been invited. I couldn’t expect her to, when relations were so strained between us.
‘Right, Bertie,’ I say, reaching for my apron, which hangs on a hook on the kitchen door. ‘Mummy had better get busy.’
I’m the older, more mature, person. It’s time to put things right.
MELISSA
The diazepam doesn’t seem to be working. She took it more than two hours ago but she’s still waiting for the blunting sensation to take effect, for all the hard angles in her mind to soften and blur. The sensation of unease she experienced at the hairdressers has clung to her like a succubus.
She keeps telling herself there’s no reason to feel anxious.
Nothing has happened.