The bedroom waited around me. Still bare. Grey light pooled in from the skylights.
I put a hand out behind me. There was the wall that split the cottage in two, quiet now after all the rustling and commotion from last night.
I flopped back down onto the naked mattress, towel twisted around my legs. The air was thick and the sky through the skylight was mottled with cloud. An old, unwashed duvet thrown over the world. I got up and looked out of my bedroom windows.
1a’s side of the front lawn was now neatly mown.
I stood staring at it, brain breaking a little at the sight. It was now perfectly green with those alternating rows I’d sometimes see in pictures of stately homes. Each corner was a tight ninety degrees. Not a weed or a thistle or a bare patch in sight. I rubbed the top of my chest. It definitely wasn’t mown yesterday. I remembered that. I remembered specifically thinking about how my side had been mown and 1a’s had not. It was unnerving in a way I was convinced I’d never be able to relate to another human being.
What’s wrong, Tamsin?
My neighbour’s lawn has been mown.
Okay, what’s strange about that?
It wasn’t yesterday.
Isn’t that a good thing?
I don’t know. It doesn’t feel like a good thing.
Girl, you need to get out more.
I checked my phone. Ten o’clock in the morning. Maybe that’s what all the noise had been about last night. Maybe they’d felt embarrassed by the state of their lawn yesterday. Maybe they’d never been bothered by it before until I, another person, had arrived to pass judgement on their unruly yard. Maybe they’d been enjoying a quiet solitude in the country, uninterrupted for years and years, until I’d shown up.
I pressed my lips together. It was time I said hello.
I ate the last of my crisps and grapes, plaited my greasy hair as neatly as I could, then stepped out to make my first new acquaintance. Maybe they’d know how to turn on the electricity in the house. And perhaps I could convince them to keep it down after eight.
No, nine.
No, definitely eight.
The curtains were still drawn across 1a Sgàthan Sìth, despite the clean manicured lawn.
I knocked on the door and mentally prepared for what I would say.
Hello. Hi. Too boring. Hi there. Morning! No, that sounds deranged. Hey there? No, hi. Hi will do. Boring is fine. After all, you are boring. Hi is fine. Hi, I’m Tamsin. Hi, I’m Tamsin, your new neighbour. Of course, they’d know you’re their neighbour, stupid. After all the noise you made yesterday. And that absolutely batshit thing of throwing the clotheshorse. Probably thinks you’re a headcase, headcase. Hi, I’m Tamsin, you probably saw me move in yesterday. Why say that? You probably saw me. Is that implying something? Like, are you saying you know they saw you and they should have come out to meet you? They’re not your maid. Do you hear how entitled you sound? Hi, I’m Tamsin, you might have heard me move in yesterday. Sorry about all the noise. Sorry for the disruption. Yeah, that’s good. Sorry about that. Anyway…
The door opened before I was ready, a dark crack into the house.
“Sorry,” I blurted into it.
In the darkness inside, I could just make out half a face. It peered round the door at me, partly masked by lank shoulder-length hair. Faintly, I could see a single eye staring at me, round and watery, unblinking. And a slanted eyebrow, slightly pleading. I shuffled my feet uneasily, hoping my eyes would adjust or perhaps my neighbour would realise I couldn’t see them properly. Even so, there was something about them that plucked a tripwire in my brain. Something about the shape of their face, the way they held themselves. Something oddly familiar. I waited but they did not move into the light. I recovered my senses and smiled gormlessly.
“Hi, I’m Tamsin. I’m your new neighbour.”
“Oh.” Her voice, I assumed ‘her’ by the pitch, was small and muffled by the door. “Um. Hello.”
She reached out a limp hand. From the look of it I guessed she must be about my age. I hesitated shaking it. It hung there, stuck out in the light, waiting for me.
Just a hand.
Feeling rude, I took it, tucking away that odd thought about her face.
It was a normal handshake. A little damp, maybe. A little cold. But no sudden yank into the dark. No teeth collapsing like a mousetrap around my wrist.
Paranoid. You have to stop being so paranoid.
