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The boy with the tricycle a flinch away from the tree.
A gasp in my throat, held back, like the air in the pinched neck of a balloon.
And it all seemed wrong somehow, unreal, unconnected to the sort of day it had been.
An uneventful day, slow and warm and quiet, people talking on their front steps, children playing, music, a barbecue.
I’d been woken when it first got light by the slamming of taxi doors, people I knew at number seventeen coming back from a long night out and trailing slowly down the street.
I hadn’t been able to get back to sleep, I’d stayed in bed and watched the sun brightening into the room, listened to the kids running outside, the familiar rattle of the boy’s tricycle.
Later, I’d got up and had breakfast and tried to start packing, I’d sat on the front step and drank tea and read magazines.
I’d gone to the shop and talked briefly to the boy at number eighteen, he was awkward and shy and it didn’t make sense that he would be the one to move so instantly across the street.
It rained, towards the end of the afternoon, suddenly and heavily, but that was all, there was nothing else unusual or unexpected about the day.
And somehow it seems wrong that there wasn’t a buildup, a feeling in the air, a premonition or a warning or a clue.
I wonder if there was, actually, if there was something I missed because I wasn’t paying attention.
The silence didn’t last long, people started rushing out into the street, shouting, flinging open windows and doors.
A woman from down the road ran out towards them and stopped halfway, turning back, shaking her hands in front of her face.
The man up the ladder made a call on his mobile before climbing down and leaving the last frame half-painted.
There were people I didn’t even recognise coming out of their
houses to join the others.
But me and the other girl, Sarah, we just sat there, staring, holding our mouths open.
If we’d been closer, or younger, we might have held hands, tightly, but we didn’t.
I think she picked up her beer and drank a little more, and I think I drank as well.
I can’t remember, all I can remember is staring at the curtain of legs in the street, trying to see through.
Trying not to see through.
After a few minutes, the noise in the street seemed to quieten again.
The knot of people in the street loosened, turned aside.
People were looking to the main road, looking at their watches, waiting.
I remember noticing that there was still music coming out of half a dozen windows along the street, and then noticing that the songs were being silenced, one by one, like the lights going out at the end of The Waltons.
I remember a smell of burning, and seeing that the boys opposite had left their meat on the barbecue.
I could see the smoke starting to twist upwards.
I could see faces at windows.
I could see people glancing up, looking at the one door which was still closed.
Waiting for it to open, hoping that it might not.
