Chapter 4
I jumped awake, choking on a gasp that stuck in my dry throat. I pulled the hoodie off my head, coughed, rolled onto my side, leaned up on my elbow and tried to work up some spit in my cheeks.
It took me a moment to remember where I was.
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.
Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad to have a neighbour.
Maybe it would teach me to relax. Maybe we would become best friends.
Two gals living their best lives together out in the country.
Perhaps I would be the outgoing, bubbly yang to her quiet, thoughtful yin.
It would be nice to be the loud one for once.
Perhaps we’d have picnics in the trees or share a cup of tea on the front porch on sunny mornings.
Maybe the local children would think we were witches.
We’d hand out toffee apples on Halloween grown from our orchard.
Inside the apples, we’d sneak funny little fortunes and wise sayings, and the locals would wonder aloud down the pub how we did it.
Perhaps we’d even become lovers—I’m not closed to the idea, opposites attract.
And when we married, we’d knock down the walls between our two homes and Sgàthan Sìth would be one again.
“Ah,” she said, watery eye looking at our still shaking hands.
“Sorry!” I said, letting her go as if she was electrified.
I hadn’t even finished shaking her hand and we’d been married.
I hooked a thumb in the direction of my half of the cottage.
“Um, I don’t know if you could hear me through the wall at all last night.”
The face in the dark briefly looked to the wall in question, as if being aware of it for the first time. She shook her head.
“Oh, that’s good.”
I nodded my head. We were silent for a moment.
“I’m driving into the village. Do you need anything?”
What the hell? I’d just met her. Why did I say that?
“No, thank you,” she said, then added, “Thanks for asking. You’re very generous.”
“Oh.” I felt my shoulders lift. “No problem.”
“Would you like to come in?”
She pulled the door further open, which oddly did nothing to illuminate the inside. It did nothing to illuminate my neighbour either. She tucked herself behind the door, so only that corner of her face—that eye, that hair, that limp hand—could be seen.
I eyed the dark expanse within.
I should go in. I should stop prejudging people. Go in, get acquainted, and make friends like I’d imagined just moments ago.
Just around the edge of the door I caught the corner of her mouth. She was smiling.
“That’s okay.” I stepped back. “Just wanted to say hello.”
“Oh, alright. Hello,” she said.
Then she smoothly and quickly closed the door.
I stood at her doorstop for a moment, feeling a little lost, then walked away down the stone steps.
That went okay, right? I hoped I hadn’t come across too rude.
I’d definitely go in next time. There would be a next time, surely.
What had she said about me? Generous. That’s good.
I supposed I would have picked up something for her in town if she’d asked.
As long as it wasn’t too expensive. Or too out of my way.
I found myself thinking about her face again, what I’d been able to see of it in the dark.
There had been nothing unusual I could see, save the weird smile, and the fact that she could probably do with a shower, and to open her curtains once in a while.
But the sight of her had struck me so strangely.
Something about the mix of that pleading eyebrow and that smile.
My mind couldn’t stop clawing away at it.
I’d pulled open the car door before I remembered the windscreen was smashed to smithereens. Then I realised I’d forgotten to ask my neighbour how to turn on the electricity, and if she’d mind keeping things down after eight.
Fuck’s sake. Hopeless!
I went back inside 1b, grabbed my backpack, emptied it straight out onto the floor, packed my laptop and my charger cables, then headed back down the gravel drive. It would be a forty-minute walk to the nearest village.
The air was both soupy and breezy, so I was both too hot and too cold at once. It felt to me that life was full of these extremes. My porridge was always either too hot or too cold. My bed too hard or too soft. My neighbours too loud or too quiet.
I looked back at the house. All that noise last night didn’t match up with the odd quiet person I’d met at the door.
I felt embarrassed for my earlier imaginings.
My father always said I expected too much from people.
It was probably better to expect nothing of anyone and be pleasantly surprised.
But how to become like that? How do you change who you are to accept ‘the chance to be pleasantly surprised’ as enough?
The leaves on the elm tree hushed in the wind, like a small audience clapping me off stage.