Chapter 13
The walk back took longer than the walk in.
I had to keep stopping every few feet to readjust my grip on the rug.
Despite being the smallest one, it was still that awkward size that was just too big to be carried under one arm.
It always needed an extra hand to keep it from slipping down.
I had to keep switching positions—over my shoulder, under my armpit, pressed against my hip—all the way back to the cottage.
By the time I got in I was a sweating mess.
At least I’d figured out the hot water so I could wash my pits.
I sank onto my living room floor and listened out for my neighbour. Back to silence again. Good. I wiped the sweat off my face. I should probably stop thinking about her. Maybe that would make the noises, when they occurred, less annoying.
I stood up and pondered the fireplace between the two houses. I wondered again if she was nocturnal. Maybe that explained why she was always so noisy during the night and never in the day. I remembered how she hung back in the doorway to her home. Maybe she was sensitive to daylight.
You were going to stop thinking about her.
Ugh. I shook out my hands. I needed to focus on making this house my home.
I returned to the rolled-up rug I’d dumped by the entrance.
I wrestled with the plastic ties for a few minutes before I admitted defeat.
I needed a pair of scissors or a knife. Neither of which I’d thought to bring with me.
I rummaged again through the drawers in the kitchen finding only musty liners and dried-out woodlouse carcasses.
All the cutlery I’d found so far—both forks and the spoon—lay in the sink. How was I going to open up the rug?
I looked to the ceiling.
Of course. The axe.
I recovered the axe from the bed, still tangled up in my dressing gown, and brought it downstairs.
Carefully, I nicked the plastic ties with its shining, still-new edge.
The ties popped off one by one, and the rug sluggishly relaxed out of its tight curl.
Okay, maybe this would be good. Maybe this would be cozy and cute and everything I’d been dreaming of for my cottage.
With growing excitement, I took a hold of the fluffy edges and flicked the rug all the way open.
It flopped onto the floor with an anti-climactic fwap.
I leant back on my heels. The rug wasn’t just small, it was tiny!
Barely a metre long. It looked ludicrous in the middle of the living room.
Like a doormat. A coaster. A postage stamp.
I didn’t know a rug could make a room look simultaneously too big and too small.
I tried stretching it a little, but there was next to no give.
That was as big as the rug was going to get.
I sat back down, defeated.
I should have taken the receipt.
Stupid, stubborn…
Maybe it would look better if I moved it in front of the fireplace. I wished I could ask someone for a second opinion. Now would be a great time to have some girlfriends over to share a bottle of wine and laugh at my stupidity.
You’d need to make some friends first.
I lay my head down on the rug. The cottage felt so still and empty. I turned my head to the fireplace. I wondered if my neighbour was lonely, living out here on her own like this. Or did she prefer life this way?
Maybe I should invite her out tonight, I thought. Learn her name. Make up for the awkwardness of yesterday.
Yes, that was a good idea. Perhaps I could help her out of her shell.
Perhaps she’d be grateful someone finally saw her.
Perhaps, thanks to me, she’d make friends, start dating, find her future partner.
I imagined myself sat at the top table on her wedding day, all of her smiling friends around her as she gave a speech.
‘Of course,’ she’d say, ‘none of this would have happened if my good friend Tamsin hadn’t managed to drag me out of the house!
’ We’d laugh. We’d toast each other. We’d dance to some cheesy pop songs, coloured disco lights catching in our hair.
By the time I was imagining myself keeping an eye on her children in the back garden, I was running late.
I checked my phone, swore, pulled myself up off the floor and quickly made some pasta. I ran up to the bedroom to change, saucepan in hand, picking at penne with my fingers.
I spent longer than I should have selecting an outfit.
I’d donated most of my nicer clothes in my rush to be gone, the waxed black trousers and the white blouse among them.
I’d figured I wouldn’t need them where I was going.
I’d prioritized practicality and warmth, but I was missing my impractical dresses now.
I picked out a clean pair of jeans and one of my less creased tops: a pine green long-sleeve made of lighter fabric.
I hated being stuck with ‘jeans and a nice top’, but it was the only good option I had.
Then I thought, if I was just going with jeans and a nice top, I might as well crack out the Aran jumper.
I fished it out of my suitcase. It was a lovely cream woollen jumper, beautifully made with intricate cabling.
I’d been saving it for a ‘nice’ occasion, but all of my occasions back in Edinburgh had either been too posh for just a jumper or not quite ‘nice’ enough to warrant it.
So, it had lived on a shelf, untouched for years.
It even still had its tags. Not anymore.
I bit the tags off and pulled the jumper on over my head.
There, now I looked the part. A proper countryside person.
Once dressed, I rushed out of 1b and hopped over to the door of 1a.
On her doorstep, I raised my fist to knock and…
were those hanging baskets trailing pretty little flowers?
I was sure they hadn’t been there earlier.
I stalled for a moment, arrested by the sudden appearance of those flowers.
Then I remembered the dark expanse inside, the barely seen face, the lank hair, the single watery eye.
I started to reconsider the idea I’d spent so much time congratulating myself for.
What if she was left alone out here for a reason?
I retracted my fist and backed away from the door, hoping she couldn’t see me from her living room window.
Then I left for the village on my own.