Page 10 of The World Outside My Window

Debbie takes another mouthful. ‘Do you want some of mine? I had a huge lunch so I’m not that hungry.’

Laura shakes her head. ‘I think there might be some ice cream in the freezer though.’ She stands. What she really wants right now is to open a bottle of wine, drink the whole thing down and pass out in bed again, oblivious. But she knows what Debbie would have to say about that. So instead she busies herself scooping ice cream into a bowl and eating it slowly.

Debbie pushes her plate away and wipes her fingers. ‘Have you got any paper?’

Laura opens a drawer in the dresser and pulls out the list she started earlier. She turns over the top page to reveal a fresh sheet and hands it over.

‘Right. I’ve been thinking about this on the way over,’ Debbie says, tucking a stray hair behind her ear. ‘I think we need a plan, starting with a list of people who might have some clue about where Jim could have gone.’

‘There isn’t anyone, I told you. And I don’t know where his address book is anyway.’

Debbie holds her pen up in the air. ‘I don’t mean his old friends,’ she says, lowering the pen onto the paper. ‘Didn’t you tell me that Jim has been getting to know the neighbours since you moved here?’

‘Well, yes,’ Laura says. ‘But I don’t see how that helps. We’ve only been here five minutes.’

Debbie sniffs. ‘You moved here seven months ago, darling. I know it’s felt like no time to you, but knowing Jim he will have made friends with some of your neighbours, and I reckon we could use that to our advantage.’

Laura frowns. ‘But how? I don’t know them at all. And I can’t leave the house, so it’s not as if I can knock on people’s doors and ask them if they’ve seen my husband.’

‘I’m not suggesting that. At least, not yet.’

‘Ri-i-i-ight…’ Laura feels panic starting in the pit of her belly and spreading out to her chest, limbs, fingers and toes until her entire body is quaking. She watches as Debbie writes a word at the top of the page and underlines it twice. Laura strains her head to read it.

Neighbours.

‘Okay, what do we know about the people on this street?’

Laura shakes her head. ‘Nothing. I told you, I’ve never met them before.’

‘That doesn’t mean you don’t know anything about them.’ She fixes Laura with a look. ‘Think about it. When Jim has been out to see someone, he must have told you something?’

Laura shakes her head again. She can’t do this, she just can’t.

‘I need a drink,’ she says suddenly, standing. She opens the fridge and pulls out a bottle of Zinfandel, grabs two glasses from the cupboard and tries to ignore the look on Debbie’s face as she fetches the corkscrew from the drawer. As she pours the drinks Debbie stands up. ‘Wait there a sec,’ she says. She leaves the room and Laura hears her walk down the hallway, past the living room, and open the front door.

Laura takes a large gulp of wine, and as the alcohol hits her bloodstream, her limbs instantly start to relax. She takes another sip, and another until the glass is empty, and she pours some more and gulps it down quickly. She glances at the door. WhereisDebbie? The seconds tick by on the kitchen clock and she starts to wonder whether her friend has got so fed up with her that she’s left as well. But just as a familiar swell of panic begins, she hears the front door close and soft footsteps approaching along the hallway. As Debbie enters the room Laura notices her friend glance at the half-empty bottle of wine on the table, but she doesn’t mention it, and instead places her notebook back on the table.

‘What’s this?’ Laura says, trying to decipher the lines, squares and squiggles Debbie has drawn.

‘It’s a map of your street.’ She points her pen at one of the squares. ‘This is your house.’ She moves her pen across to the adjacent square. ‘This is your next-door neighbour. These are all the other houses on the street, and this is the green with the tree in the middle.’ She grins. ‘I’m quite proud of that.’

Laura studies it for a moment. Debbie has marked out the rough position of every house on the cul-de-sac, and written a number in the centre of each one.

‘How’s this going to help?’

‘We’re going to collect some clues,’ Debbie says, deliberately ignoring Laura’s belligerent tone.

‘What do you mean?’

She clears her throat. ‘I don’t believe for one minute that you know nothing at all about any of your neighbours. So together we’re going to work out who lives where, and what little snippets of information you might have about them, buried deep in there.’ She taps her index finger on her temple.

‘How’s that going to help me find Jim?’

‘Well, once we’ve worked out who Jim might have got to know best over the last seven months, we’re going to pay them a visit.’

Laura stares at her. ‘And I assume byweyou mean both of us?’ she says.

Debbie nods sheepishly. ‘I do. But—’ she holds her hand up as Laura starts to object ‘—just listen. I’m not expecting you to do this straight away. But I really, really think that, if there’s even a slim chance that your neighbours might know something about what’s happened to Jim, it’s got to be worth asking them. And it would be better if it was you rather than me who asks them. Ialsothink that you can totally do this, Laura. With my help, of course.’ She places her pen down on top of the notebook firmly, and tries to meet Laura’s eye.

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