Page 5 of The World Outside My Window

‘I’m sure he’ll be home soon, Mrs Parks,’ he said, cutting her off.

‘Can I at least leave my details, in case?’ she said quickly, twisting the phone cord round and round her fingers until they turned white. The officer sighed, and someone shouted in the background.

‘As I said, Mrs—’

‘Fine. Don’t worry.’ She hung up before she started crying, but then the tears sprang immediately, uncontrollably.

Now she doesn’t know what to do with herself. It’s only been two hours since Jim was expected home, which means there are almost two long days to get through before the police will listen to her, and even then it’s doubtful they’ll understand quite how worried she is. She’s not sure how she can make them care.

She walks over to the kitchen window again and peers through the blinds, twiddling with her sapphire wedding ring, which is now too loose on her finger. The street outside is as much a mystery to her as the Sahara Desert or the Himalayas: insurmountable, distant. Terrifying. It’s peaceful now, the darkness fully drawn across the sky, and she watches the branches of the willow tree in the centre of the green dance in the Wotsit-orange light from the street lamp. An empty crisp packet skitters across the road, becoming lodged in the wall of number five before finally escaping and continuing its journey. She wishes she could follow it. She knows it would be so simple to just open the front door, step outside and walk across the road to knock on the tatty plastic door of number nine, introduce herself to the people who live there, and ask for their help. Her headknowsthere’s nothing to be afraid of out there.

And yet it feels like an impossible task.

Since the attack, she hasn’t been outside, not once. When they left London to move here, to this lovely little commuter town half an hour outside the city, she was heavily drugged like some sort of cattle and deposited in this house so that she never even knew she’d been outside. And even though it had been her idea – she’d been insistent that a change of scenery was what she needed, that getting away from the bustle of the city would help her to get over the attack – it quickly became apparent that she’d simply brought her anxiety with her lock, stock and barrel. So that’s why, since they arrived here seven months before, she hasn’t left the house, not even to go out into the garden, which mocks her every day as the weeds grow taller and the flowers bloom and die.

Jim’s home for half the week, and when he’s here she feels as though maybe things aren’t so bad after all. It matters less that she’s unable to do anything for herself, because Jim does it for her. He does the food shopping, and doesn’t even object to buying the vodka and wine she asks for every week. He cleans, he cooks, he pays the bills.

Plus, it’s Jim who’s made a home for himself here. It’s Jim who has got to know the neighbours.

‘I hate the thought of you being here all by yourself, I wish you’d come with me to meet some of them,’ he said one day just before he was due to leave for another four days of work.

‘I can’t, Jim, you know that.’

‘Maybe I could invite someone round, then? Make a night of it?’

‘No.’

He bit his lip and turned his head away. Laura knew he found it frustrating but she couldn’t help it. Every time she got anywhere near the door, visions of those eyes peering out from the black balaclava flashed before her, and she couldn’t take another step. The thought of someone she barely knew coming into the house was almost as bad.

So she’s stuck here all day, alone, with only the occasional visit from Debbie – not exactly Jim’s greatest fan – to break the monotony. How has her life become so infinitesimal?

Now, as the daylight fades and shadows deepen in the corners of the room, everything makes her jump. Simon from across the road putting the bins out; his wife pulling into her driveway and slamming the car door; a cat dashing out from behind next door’s front wall and knocking over a garden gnome. Everything makes her heart race.

And now Jim isn’t home when he’s meant to be, and she has no idea what to do.

* * *

In the end, she drinks, the same as she always does. She knows she really needs to eat something, but cooking has been another thing that she hasn’t been able to face doing much of recently. She misses it.

Cooking has always been a part of her for as long as she can remember. When things were tough, whenever she felt sad or insecure, she cooked. The slice of a knife, the smell of roasting garlic, the sizzle of a steak – they were all things she could lose herself in whenever she felt down. But now she can hardly even bring herself to open a tin of beans or turn on the oven for a frozen lasagne. It all just feels too much.

Jim has been understanding, of course, the way he always is. But the ready meals and baked potatoes he rustles up after a long day at the office are a huge come-down from the sorts of meals she loved to cook: fragrant curries, wild mushroom risottos, grilled seabass, duck confit, the smells of the spices filling every corner of the house. Those things seem a million miles away from her now, and it makes her feel as though she’s lost a part of herself.

She opens the bread bin and pulls out a half-eaten loaf of Mighty White and checks a slice for mould. It looks fine so she sticks it in the toaster and waits. When it’s cooked she spreads a thin layer of butter on it, grabs her vodka bottle, and heads to bed. If she can just fall asleep, maybe things will look brighter tomorrow.

Maybe Jim will be home.

* * *

For a few seconds after she wakes up, she’s forgotten everything that happened yesterday. In fact the main feeling is of a pounding headache and a nauseous feeling in her stomach, which momentarily overrides everything else. Her eyelids are stuck down and when she peels them open the light pouring round the edges of the curtains is so bright she has to close them again and hold her palms over her eyes while the blotches subside.

She rolls over onto her side and fumbles on the bedside table, trying to find a glass of water, something to quench her raging thirst. But instead her hand hits something cold and hard and the crash it makes as it hits the carpet wakes her up with a start. She peers over the edge of the bed and sees the vodka bottle she brought up with her last night, rolling around on the floor. It’s empty. Ugh.

She stays still a moment longer, waiting for her head to settle, then rolls onto her back and stares up at the ceiling, trying to put her thoughts into some sort of coherent order. She drank most of a bottle of vodka last night. Debbie would be furious if she knew. Jim won’t be too happy either.

Jim!

The memory of the previous evening hits her then and she pulls herself up to sitting, ignoring the spinning room, instead listening for any noises that might indicate that Jim finally came home while she was passed out, or that last night was, in fact, nothing more than a terrible nightmare. She strains her ears, listening to the sounds of this shabby house – familiar now, after seven months: the clunk of the boiler as it fires up, the drip of the broken tap in the bathroom, a low hum from next door’s hoover. She hasn’t even met the woman who stands just a few feet away from her on the other side of this wall, and yet she hears her daily movements all the time. What an odd existence.

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