Page 35 of The World Outside My Window

Laura shakes her head. ‘No, I’m sorry. I’m being ridiculous.’ She opens the door fully. ‘Do you want to come in? I promise not to run away this time.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Mainly because it’s my house and there’s nowhere else to go.’ She tries a weak smile at her own joke.

He hesitates. He really does want to go in. Partly because he wants to find out what’s happened to his friend, and partly – or perhaps mainly – because there’s something about this woman that intrigues him. Making a split-second decision, he steps inside. Laura slams the door behind them, cutting the howling wind off in its tracks and leaving the hallway feeling deathly quiet as he drips water all over her floor. He kicks off his shoes, hangs his sodden jacket at the bottom of the stairs, then follows Laura into the kitchen, which, although the same size as his, is much more homely. Which isn’t hard, if he’s honest. Things have kind of fallen apart a bit in the last couple of years since… He stops. This is not the time to think about that.

Laura gestures for him to sit at the table and he does, obediently. ‘Do you want that coffee you never got?’

‘That would be great, thanks.’

While she makes it he looks around. He knows Jim and Laura haven’t lived here long so this probably isn’t to their taste, but it still feels welcoming. Mugs of different sizes line the shelves and pans hang from hooks above the worktop. There’s a photo stuck to the fridge of a younger Laura and a much younger-looking Jim grinning into the camera outside a black and white building and he wonders idly where they were.

Laura plonks a coffee cup on the table and sits opposite him, clutching her own mug like a security blanket. He hopes she isn’t about to start telling him something terrible; he isn’t sure he can cope. He realises he’s holding his breath and lets it out slowly so she doesn’t hear.

‘I really am sorry about before. I feel I owe you an explanation,’ she starts.

‘You don’t have to—’

‘I do. I…’ Laura pauses, clearly trying to form the words. ‘I suffer from agoraphobia.’

Ben looks up, surprised. That isn’t what he was expecting. ‘You mean, like, you can’t leave the house?’

‘Yes and no. I can’t leave the house because every time I even think about it I feel sick and panicky, and terrified something terrible is going to happen to me. I can’t have people in the house either, and I struggle to concentrate on one thing at a time. I’ve stopped caring about anything. I’m in a constant state of anxiety. And so I stay here, inside these four walls, stuck, like some sort of tragic Miss Faversham, destined to rot away and never see the light of day again.’ She stops and takes a sip of coffee while he processes what she’s just said. ‘Jim’s been brilliant, he looks after me, but – well. He’s gone, and now I don’t know what to do.’

‘Wow.’ It isn’t enough but it’s all he has, for now.

‘I know. I’m sorry, it’s a lot to put on someone I’ve only just met, but – well, I did just run practically screaming from your house with absolutely no explanation. So there you are. That’s why. It was also… the agoraphobia was triggered after I was attacked, outside my own flat. And I just thought – well, I panicked, when I realised I was in someone else’s house and that nobody knew where I was.’

Ben nods. ‘You were scared of me.’

‘I’m scared of everything.’ She smiles weakly and he smiles back. She looks pretty when she smiles, little dimples forming in her cheeks and her eyes crinkling at the edges.

He places his hands flat on the table and studies his nails. ‘So tell me about Jim. What’s happened?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out. Two weeks and two days ago, he left the house. As far as I know he went to work, but he never came home. Now I have no idea where he is or what’s happened to him. Neither does anyone else, it seems.’ Her voice wavers but there’s no sign of tears.

‘Oh, my goodness. Have you spoken to the police?’

‘Yes. They’re looking into it. But there’s nothing so far. No money taken from his account. He’s just – gone. And I’m scared, Ben.’

It’s the first time she’s said his name and it sounds strange on her lips.

‘So you’re trying to find him yourself?’

She gives a mirthless laugh. ‘I’ve got to do something. Things have been pretty tough recently. For him. For us. We’ve left London, and our friends – well, his mainly – and I’m stuck in here, going mad day after day, and he’s taken the brunt. He just wants to get on with his life but he can’t because he’s trapped here looking after me. Me, work, me, work, and nothing else. So quite honestly I can’t blame him if he has left me, but I just need to find him. I need to know he’s okay.’ She wipes her face with her hands and rubs her eyes. ‘God, it’s a bloody mess.’

They both sit and drink their coffee for a while.

‘I promise I’ll try and think whether Jim said anything to me, but I have to be honest, he never told me any of this. It feels like he might have been protecting you from – pity, I suppose. So I only knew your name and that you were his wife, and then he never spoke about you, and I – I never asked anything else.’ He shrugs. ‘It’s just blokes, I guess. But it does seem unlikely that he’d ever have told me anything about your problems or about wanting to leave you. It’s just not what we talked about. I’m really sorry, I know that’s not what you need to hear.’

Laura shakes her head. ‘Don’t worry. I’m not expecting it to be that easy. Chances are I won’t find anything at all. But I just feel like someone, somewhere, must hold a clue. He must have saidsomethingto somebody that might give us an idea about where he’s gone. And even if that clue doesn’t exist, I’ve got to at leasttryand find it. I owe him that.’

Ben pauses. ‘Am I the first person you’ve come to see? On the street, I mean.’

‘You’re the second. I went to see Mr and Mrs Loveday first – sorry, Carol and Arthur – next door.’ She pauses. ‘It was closer.’

Ben nods in understanding. ‘Did they have anything that might help? Jim knows them, doesn’t he?’

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