Page 14 of The World Outside My Window

‘What do you mean?’ I took a sip of my tea but it was scalding hot, so I reached over and placed it carefully on my bedside table then turned back to face Jim. ‘What’s happening tonight?’

The smile on his face told me he was up to something. ‘I’ve booked a table for you and your friends.’

‘What? Where?’

‘It’s a secret.’

‘But how am I supposed to get there if I don’t know where I’m going?’

He tapped his nose. ‘I’ve arranged for a taxi to pick you up and take you. And your friends. It’s all arranged.’

‘But—’ I stopped as Jim gripped my hands.

‘Listen, I know you don’t see your friends very often and I don’t like to think that’s because of me. So I want to treat you. I thought it would be nice for you to have a night out.’

I dropped my gaze. He was being so kind, so generous. So thoughtful. How could I tell him that I preferred to just go to the pub with my friends where we could drink wine and laugh as hard as we wanted, rather than to some fancy restaurant where we’d have to mind our manners and limit the amount of wine we drank because we kept having to check the price of everything?

How could I tell him that, in fact, all I really wanted to do was come with him, meet some of his friends and colleagues and be part of his life, officially?

I couldn’t, not when he was trying to do something nice for me.

‘Thank you, Jim, that’s really kind,’ I said instead.

‘You’re welcome, sweetheart.’ He kissed my knuckles, then his face turned serious. ‘I’d do anything to make you happy. You know that, don’t you?’

7

NOW – 23 SEPTEMBER 1992

‘Right, stay there, I’m just going to open the back door. You don’t have to move towards it, you don’t have to do anything, okay? Just sit there, and watch me.’

Laura does as Debbie says, keeping her thighs glued to the wooden kitchen chair, her hands gripping the edges. Her palms are wet and her heart is pounding so hard it feels as though it might bruise her chest. She feels sick.

She watches, frozen, as Debbie pushes down on the handle and, inch by painful inch, pulls the door inward across the kitchen tiles. The garden reveals itself slowly: a slice of sky, a chunk of hedge, a corner of grass, the edge of the patio. The sky is a pale, hazy blue, smudged by wispy cloud, and the grass glistens with dew. Laura stares at it and inhales slowly, in through the nose, out through the mouth, filling her lungs and chest with air the way Debbie has taught her. Her heart is still hammering, and her skin prickles as though a breeze is rippling across the hairs on her arms. She shivers and closes her eyes, steadies her breathing. She can do this.

‘Okay, try and open your eyes again,’ Debbie says, her voice coming from a few feet away. ‘Nothing bad will happen, I promise.’

Laura sits for a moment longer, takes a deep breath in and then out, then slowly prises her eyelids open, taking a few seconds to focus on the scene in front of her. The back door is still open, and Debbie is standing beside it, her face full of hope.

‘Look, that’s it,’ she says, indicating the garden beyond the door. ‘There’s nothing scary there. Just grass. And trees. And sunlight.’ She nods encouragingly but Laura can’t bring herself to look at the benign strip of garden beyond the door. She feels as though she might topple off the seat so she grips it even more tightly.

‘I’m going to open it a bit more, but not much, okay?’

Laura gives a tight nod and holds her breath as Debbie pulls the door slightly more open so that the slice of garden becomes a chunk, the lawn overgrown and unruly, the potted plants brown and dying. A chilly breeze weaves its way through the gap and across the floor.

And then Debbie opens the door fully so that Laura can see a door-sized section of the outside world. Her head is spinning and fear slithers around inside her, but she forces herself to look at it. She tries to picture herself standing up, then putting one foot in front of the other until she reaches the threshold. Then she tries to imagine stepping outside for the first time, first one foot, then the other onto the weed-strewn patio, so that her entire body is standing outside in the fresh air; breathing it through her nose until her head is filled with lightness, air, freedom.

She wishes she were the Laura who could do that without a second thought. She wishes with all her heart that she could get this over and done with and move on with trying to find Jim. But she knows it’s going to take a lot of effort to emerge from this frightened shell. The question is, can she do it before it’s too late?

Her legs are trembling.

‘I—’ She stops, her voice stuck in her throat, her mouth parched.

‘Are you okay?’ Debbie’s voice seems like a million miles away as she stares out of the door. She watches as a single magpie hops across the lawn, dipping its beak every now and then before flapping its wings and flying away. She gives him a salute as he soars off, decades of ingrained superstition overriding her fear. She smiles at the ridiculousness of it – but it’s one for sorrow,twofor joy, and there was only one. She can’t take the risk.

‘I want to walk towards it but I just can’t.’

‘That’s okay. You’re doing really well.’

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