by Nora Valters
I swallow back the bile and continue my observation. The toast pops. She inspects it, finds it wanting and puts it back in the toaster to brown a little more. She wanders out of the kitchen, and I can no longer see her.
Movement in my mirror catches my eye, and I see a dogwalker coming towards me with a tail-wagging golden retriever. I scramble for my phone in my bag and hold it to my ear, pretending to have an intense conversation and saying loudly, “That’s not right… I told you… No…” as the man walks past.
He glances at me, but the look is disinterested. I’m just someone who’s pulled over randomly to take a phone call. Not someone who’s spying on the woman in the house over the road.
When he’s gone far enough, I drop my phone and turn back to Imani’s house. She dashes into the kitchen and shoves open the window with a grimace, then wafts a tea towel. The toast must’ve burnt.
Her head jerks, and she picks up her phone. She drops the tea towel and wafts her hand in front of her face as she leaves the room again, talking on her phone. For a long while, nothing happens. No other lights come on at the front of the house.
She must be in a room at the back. Perhaps she’s getting ready for bed. What’s my plan now? Stay here all night? Or head home?
I look at my location on my GPS app and drop a pin so I can find this place again should I need to.
As I’m looking at my phone, the light in the kitchen clicks off. She’s heading to bed, she must be. I might as well go home.
But the front door opens.
Shit. I slouch right down in my seat. Has she seen me? Does she know I’ve followed her all the way from work? She’s peeped out of a dark window and seen me in my Mini outside her house like a crazy woman.
What the hell am I going to say? Should I speed off or confront this? My sweats from the car park return with a vengeance, and I can feel my brow breaking out with perspiration. It balls up and streams down the sides of my face. My armpits are sodden, and the creases in my stomach fill with an uncomfortable dampness.
She’s got changed into a different outfit: oversized hoodie, joggers, and trainers. She steps off her front porch and closes the door, heading down her driveway. If I’m going to go, it has to be now.
But she opens the back door of her car, tosses in a large overnight bag, then gets in the driver’s side and starts the engine, the headlights popping on.
She’s going out? At almost 10.30 p.m. on a Wednesday? I’d be getting ready for bed right about now, if not tucked up already. I can’t keep my eyes open any later on weeknights. But she’s fourteen years younger than me and clearly doesn’t need the sleep.
She reverses off her driveway and accelerates away, thankfully in the opposite direction to where I’m parked and not passing me. I watch her taillights and then look back to her house.
I haven’t been rumbled. Thank god for that. I breathe a sigh of relief so huge it fogs the windowpane briefly. As it dissipates, I notice something.
Her kitchen window is still wide open. She’s gone out and forgotten to close it.
I’m torn. Follow or… break in? I gulp at the thought.
And decide to follow her.
She drives for about fifteen minutes to a smart townhouse closer to the centre of Wilmslow. She pulls up outside, and I pull over up the road, on a slight hill. She grabs her overnight bag off the back seat, then heads to the front door. She doesn’t once look in my direction. Cars zip past. It’s a much busier road to the one her house is on.
I watch as the door is opened by a man, and Imani jumps into his arms. They kiss and hug on the front doorstep for quite some time. Her boyfriend? Is this the man she was with when I called on Monday morning? She’s never mentioned a boyfriend at work, but that doesn’t mean anything. This could just be a booty call, not anything serious. Eventually they pull apart, he takes her bag, and she heads inside. He closes the door behind her.
A light pings on from an upstairs room, and I see the man come to draw the curtains. As his arms are spread, a hand on each curtain, Imani puts her arms around his waist and nuzzles his neck, putting one hand up his jumper, the other edging under the waistband of his jeans. He yanks the curtains shut.
She’s obviously going to be there a while. And, judging by the bag, more than likely she’ll be there overnight.
I have a choice to make.
19
As I drive back to Imani’s house, my conscience attempts to convince me this is a VERY BAD IDEA.
But I’m on it. This is an opportunity I can’t afford to miss. When else will I get a chance to look in Imani’s house? To find proof that she’s behind this attack on me?
It has to be now.
I park up the road, not directly outside her house. Just in case someone sees me, or happens to spot my car, or something goes horribly wrong. I unstick my fingers from the steering wheel, which are holding on for dear life, and take three deep breaths. I place my phone in my coat pocket and stuff my handbag under the passenger seat. I unwind my chunky scarf and leave it in the passenger footwell, knowing full well it’s only going to get in my way…
… when I break into my account executive’s house.
Eek. The thought of what I’m about to do stalls me once again. But I can’t delay. It’s now or never.
I check my mirrors and look around. The road is quiet. No more dogwalkers. I jump out of the car, shut the door and lock it, dropping the keys in the other coat pocket. I run to Imani’s house, keeping to the shadows of fences, bushes, and the occasional tree along the pavement.
I turn up her driveway, edge past her front door, and stand by the open window. It’s higher up than I thought it would be, the front garden sloping down to the house. The bottom of the window is about level with my chest. I put my hands on the inside of the window frame, rally my courage, and then haul myself up. It reminds me of attempting to get out of a swimming pool along the sides when the steps are busy. Except I don’t have the water to kick in for a boost.
I let out a grunt with the effort and immediately go silent. Did anyone hear that? Oh god, this is not me at all. Hurry up, hurry up, hurry up. I manage to get my body up and balance on my waist.
Beneath the window is the kitchen sink. I readjust my arms and lift one knee up and wedge it on the window frame, then the other, and then I’m through. I spill into the sink and knock over the washing-up liquid and soap, and a mug on the draining board clatters over but, thank heavens, doesn’t shatter. I can set those right on the way out.
I untangle my limbs – which I know will bruise up a treat with all the knocks – and jump to the floor, immediately spinning around to see if there are any bystanders in the street disapprovingly watching this performance and already on the phone to the police. But there’s no one. Everything is still and silent outside. And everything is still and silent inside.
Now I’m here, where do I start? What am I even looking for?
A dog barks nearby. I drop down under the countertop, out of sight. My breath comes in short pants. Has another dogwalker spotted me? Or has a neighbour clocked the open window and come to investigate?
I huddle against the cupboard door so anyone coming closer to peer through the window won’t see me. But the barking quietens until it sounds far away.
A car drives past, and it reminds me that Imani could be coming home at any minute. She might decide not to stay over. I need to get a move on.
Her laptop. Let’s start there.
I spring up and scan the kitchen, the hallway and the lounge. There’s another room downstairs, which is full of gym equipment. Not there. I take the stairs two at a time and go into the first door. The bathroom. I scan what looks like a spare room slash overflow closet with clothes, handbags, and shoes tossed everywhere and then the master bedroom, which is the complete opposite and is surprisingly tidy. I open the final door, and it’s an office. A laptop sits on the desk, lid closed. It’s an Apple and brand new, so not her work one.
Bingo. I fling it open, h
oping beyond hope it might be unlocked and on. It isn’t. A black screen stares indignantly back at me. I press the power button. There’s a chance Imani doesn’t use a password. As it whirs to life, I look around the room. It’s pretty bare, with a beanbag in one corner and a floor-to-ceiling shelving unit filled with books and folders. There’s a pile of papers and letters on the desk.
The screen comes to life with a prompt to enter a password. Dammit. There’s no chance I can guess her password. I switch it off again and close the lid.
There must be something… perhaps the burner phone she used to text me those dirty messages? Long shot, but worth a look.
I rummage through the desk drawers, careful not to move anything too far out of place. Then I flick through the paperwork pile and the folders on the shelves. It’s all official documents from a mortgage company and letters from her solicitor about the house purchase. Just the usual correspondence. She has a folder full of old university coursework, books, and leaflets.
I head into the master bedroom and straight to the bedside cabinet. There’s what looks like a journal buried under other odds and sods. I hesitate. Breaking in is one thing, but reading a private journal? That’s something else entirely. I’m crossing a line here, and there’s no going back. But she might’ve written something in there about me, about what she’s doing to me. I have to know.
I pull it out and mouth sorry to the sky. I can feel my mother’s disapproving eyes on me from up there. She was very strict on boundaries and privacy when I was growing up. Prying was very much frowned upon. Sorry, Mum, but this is necessary.
Gritting my teeth, I flick through the handwritten pages to the last entry, dated three weeks ago. I skim read, and it’s some trivial crap about an argument Imani had with her father. I find the entry before, dated two years earlier. Clearly not an avid diarist, then. And that doesn’t help me. I’ve only known Imani for a year.
Still, I open at random and skim read the contents just in case I see my name. I do this twice more, coming across Imani’s graphic description of her seduction and conquest of a married man – a friend of her father’s, no less. I gag at the image it conjures. Clearly not going to find anything to do with me in these pages.
I slip the journal back and continue the search. In Imani’s chest of drawers is one drawer dedicated to lingerie. I grimace, pout my lips, and push aside the disgust at what I’m about to do. The idea of the reverse – of Imani going through my underwear drawer – makes me shudder. But she could be hiding something in there. I tentatively lift and move items with my fingertip and hold my head away as if whatever I might find is going to slither and hiss.
A flash of red catches my eye, and I pull out a slinky babydoll. It looks exactly the same as the one that arrived for me with the sex toy. I check the label. Trudy’s. It’s the same lingerie brand.
Imani has exactly the same lingerie as was sent to me – is that proof of anything? Or simply a coincidence? Did she buy this at the same time as she purchased one for me?
I stare at it for a while until a bang from outside startles me, and I drop the underwear back in the drawer and push it shut. I stand very still. I hear distant chatter. Male and female voices. And car doors slam.
Is that Imani come home? What would I say if she found me in her house? What would she think? That I’ve completely gone off the rails. I called her, rambling, and now I’m in her house. She’d call me a stalker, a freak. And say there was something very wrong with me. The last thing I need is for everyone to think I’ve now got an unhealthy fixation on my account executive. Would she call the police?
I should’ve brought my scarf with me to wrap around my head as a disguise. I could hide and then charge out of her house when her back’s turned. As I’m looking around for a scarf or something of Imani’s that I could use to cover my head, I realise something: the front door remains closed. I’m still the only one in the house.
It must’ve been her neighbours. I need to hurry up and get the fuck out of here. I check my watch; I’ve been thirty minutes already. I get a rocket up my bum and lift up her mattress, scan under her bed, flick through the clothes in her wardrobe, look in a few shoeboxes, and riffle through the make-up, wigs, and hair products on her vanity table.
I peek in the spare room, decide against fighting my way through the mounds of clothes-shoes-handbags, and hurry downstairs. In the lounge I look through drawers. But there’s nothing. I head into the kitchen and do a quick scan in the top drawers and cupboards. Aargh. There has to be something else.
A cool breeze ruffles my hair, and I stare at the open window. I need to get out of here. I’ve already been here too long. I see my car up the road, and it seems to say to me: C’mon, Lauren! I shouldn’t be here. We shouldn’t be here. This isn’t our neighbourhood. That’s not your house.
But the lingerie isn’t enough. I can’t leave with nothing. Just one more sweep. I must’ve missed some vital clue. I’ll be fast.
And I should take a photo of the babydoll. I curse myself for not thinking of that earlier.
I turn to leave the kitchen and pull my phone out of my coat pocket. It’s still on silent, and a notification pops up on the screen. I’ve had sixteen missed calls. Sixteen! As I frown at my phone, it lights up with another call. An unknown local number. Someone really wants to speak to me.
“Hello?” I answer quietly, stiffly.
“Hello, Lauren?” a female voice asks.
“Er, yes.”
“Sorry to wake you. It’s Mrs Simpson, Judy’s neighbour.”
“Oh, hi, Mrs Simpson…” I reply, baffled, realising my whispering must sound as if I’ve just been woken from sleep, and am not creeping around someone else’s home while they’re out. “Everything okay?”
“Well, no, love, it’s not. I’ve been trying to get hold of you for a while.”
A bubble of alarm rises in my chest and pops. All I can think about is why my mum’s neighbour, who came to the funeral on Monday, is calling me. Suddenly I don’t care where I am. No longer whispering, I say in a rush, “Has something happened?”
“I’m sorry to say this, but there’s been a fire.”
“A fire?”
“Yes, at your mum’s flat. I think you should come here…”
“I’m coming right now,” I say and hang up.
20
As I pull into the quiet Salford cul-de-sac, I’m faced with an almost apocalyptic scene of four fire engines and two police cars, flashing lights, and people everywhere. Neighbours stand in the street and stare while firefighters come and go and the police prevent people getting too close.
I stop the car in the middle of the road and jump out, leaving the door open and the engine running. I run towards the two-storey detached building that once housed my mother’s ground-floor flat and another flat owned by a young couple on the first floor.
Wispy smoke and what looks like steam trickles out from the melted window frames, the glass jagged and shattered or missing completely. The red-brick walls and just-about-intact roof are blackened with soot.
“Ma’am,” a police officer says and catches me before I can go any further.
Although I see no flames, the heat and smoke stench coming off the building is palpable. Firefighters haul a water jet out of a downstairs bay window, the last few drops of water dripping out of the tip. Mum’s bedroom window, I know.
Mrs Simpson comes running over. “Lauren!”
I nod, not able to form any words.
Together, Mrs Simpson and the police officer lead me a few steps away from the burnt-out building and try to stand me so I face away, but I turn back.
Mrs Simpson talks, but it doesn’t register. The police officer heads over to one of the firefighters and points back at me.
I can’t tear my eyes away from the torched wreck in front of me. My mum lived in that ground-floor apartment for nearly fifteen years. It has a small garden out the back. When she moved in, she had a dog called Alfie. The sweetest Staffordshir
e bull terrier from a nearby dog shelter. When Alfie died, we buried him in that garden.
Fifteen years’ worth of memories are in that place. Were in that place.
All her photos, trinkets, clothes, jewellery, books, stuff. Her presence still lingered there, her smell. Everything I had left of her that wasn’t my own memories was within those four walls. I thought I had all the time in the world to sort through it. To cherish the things that weren’t worth anything money-wise, but were worth everything to Mum, and so, to me.
But no. It’s gone. All gone.
A gigantic crack emanates from inside the building as a beam or some piece of wood succumbs. For a moment I think it’s my devastated heart wrenching apart, damaged beyond repair.
How could this have happened?
Mrs Simpson is still talking, clearly on a high from all the drama, and I tune in. “Thank goodness the couple who live in the flat upstairs are on holiday. We’re feeding their cat, you see. Flossy likes to do the rounds, and she was in with us for some fuss and ham when I noticed the smell.” She nods towards her house, next to my mum’s building, and I see Mr Simpson in the front window, holding a cat. He waves at me.
Mrs Simpson continues, “I called the fire service immediately, and they arrived in under ten minutes. I told them that the building was empty, and they contained the fire pretty quickly, and it didn’t spread to any other houses, thank the lord. You should’ve seen the flames – thick, black, and yellow. And the smell, what a pong. Apparently, that’s the plastic going up. And not long after the fire engines arrived, the front window blew out. A huge bang! So dramatic. They asked me to call you, and then we couldn’t find the darn address book where I’d written your number. By the time we found it – in the cupboard under the stairs of all places! Both of us are getting so forgetful these days – they’d pretty much put the fire out. Very efficient.”