The Shared Step
The man next door was standing on his step. She saw him through the circle she wiped on the fogged bus window with her mittened fist. It had been a long, cold commute. So much traffic, the roundabouts and road arteries clogged, the inside of the bus smelling of wet wool, steamy with the collected fatigue of homeward passengers.
And there he was. Waiting for her.
This remote village had seemed so perfect. On that Saturday in late autumn, she’d signed the lease papers, felt her mood lift for the first time in more than a year. After the downward spiral of her divorce, her forced removal to a far-away place where she could afford the rents, she’d managed to find a little terraced house. Right on the main road, yes; but it backed onto farmland, had a tiny garden and – unforeseen – a good-looking, possibly-single man living next door.
A few days after moving in, after collapsing the last of the boxes for recycling, sweeping out the tracked-in yellow leaves, he’d arrived home, paper under his arm, and welcomed her. Their front steps adjoined, their two doors separated by less than a foot. They’d stood chatting. He had a nervous energy she associated with certain professions. Barrister? Medic?
Now she watched him as the bus approached her stop. How easily he held himself. Tall and slender, hands in his pockets, half-lidded eyes on the crumbling stone retaining wall opposite.
He saw her get off the bus. She turned the other way, towards the pub.
For weeks he’d been telling her. He was being watched. Intruded upon. The urgency in his voice, the confiding whisper. They are breaking into my house. I have to tell someone. You have to believe me. Nothing was ever disturbed, nothing stolen. His only clue was his mobile phone: it was never where he’d left it. It would turn up on a different table, or in some other room, its battery nearly drained. It would open onto a screen he hadn’t been using. The skillful manner of the break-ins led him to one conclusion. It’s the police, he’d told her. The police are breaking into my house when I’m not there. She’d tried reasoning with him. We all misplace things. The fire in his eyes silenced her. Left her with the one question she couldn’t ask. Why have you chosen me to tell?
He showed her the phone. Once he’d even implored her to take it, keep it in her house for the day, but she’d refused. It’s a mobile, she remembered thinking. Take it with you. As if reading her mind, he’d drawn himself up, colouring. He was too cunning to take it. They could use its signal to trace him. If they know where I am, they can pick me up anywhere that suits them. They daren’t snatch him from his own house. Snatch. This was the word he used.
He wasn’t single. His aggressive questioning of some unseen partner was a rumbling undertone to worry her evenings. She pressed a water glass to the common wall. Where did it go? What have you done with it? The woman’s replies indistinct, the man’s voice more belligerent week on week. It wasn’t spying, what she was doing; she would call 999 on the woman’s behalf if things escalated. But there was more to it than that. Her handwriting grew spidery and crabbed as she wrote down his words, the times, the dates.
One morning he caught her on the step, called her by name. He was going away for a few days; would she please check his door as she passed, morning and evening? I leave it locked. Of course I do! But it is always unlocked when I return. That’s how I know they’ve been. His manner confidential, certain that his request was so small, so reasonable. Just turn the knob, and let me know. How had she never noticed that his brown eyes were flecked with gold? She almost agreed. Then she pulled back. Behind his words she heard a courtroom echo, an effete voice asking how her fingerprints came to be on her neighbour’s door. Shaking her head, she hurried away.
The days he was gone should have been bliss, but the silence was oppressive. She couldn’t help but eye his door each time she passed. Listen for footsteps beyond their common wall. When he returned, she changed routine. Took an early bus to work. Stayed late in the city. Came home after dark. From the top deck in the evenings, she could observe their two doors on the approach, and on those evenings that he was standing there she stayed on board, went to the next stop. Sometimes she even went as far as the next village, took the bus back.
Just as she changed tactics, so did he. He took to standing in the concrete yard behind his house, looking up at her window. She saw him first over the top of her computer screen. Shock spiked through her; then uncertainty. Was he staring at her? She’d seen him there before, smoking – but looking out over the fields. Now he faced her. Her hands shook as she made a show of disinterest, of moving things about on the desk, sitting up straight to adjust her screen. She should call the police – but what would they say? Get a life, and they’d be right.
He was there mornings, evenings; by night the rising and dimming glow of his cigarette was visible. She stopped opening the curtains. Resented the loss of daylight, her view over untroubled farmland. No longer did she hang her laundry in the garden on fine days. Damp clothes on all the radiators, the house steamy, a green mold forming in the crook of the ceiling. She washed clothes less frequently. Stayed indoors. Hated him. She couldn’t afford to move. His evening yelling escalated. Was the woman even there any longer? There wasn’t any response to his ranting, hadn’t been for weeks.
Then it all stopped.
Silence. She checked her notes. Three days. Perhaps he was on holiday. She wondered where crazy people went on holiday. Saturday morning she risked a look out the back and saw his pile of cigarette stubs, sodden in the rain. She opened the curtains part way. Sunday she opened them fully, wondering what his next move would be.
On Monday morning she left in her usual rush, her key in the lock ready to pull the door shut, ready to step away, her footsteps camouflaged by road traffic, when she glanced down and saw it.
A mobile, on the step below his door. The stone wet from the morning’s rain, but the phone was dry, its onyx screen reflecting black sky. It didn’t look like his; still, something told her not to touch it. He might be watching from a window. She could pretend she hadn’t seen it.
But what if it’s not even his? Someone running for the bus, their phone bouncing from a pocket, rain on the way. She pulled her gloves on and picked it up. Turned it over. Saw a thin strip of printed paper taped to its back. An address. His address.
She dropped it on the step. Watched as its screen collected a bead of rain, then another.
She would push the thing through his mail slot; but pressing against the flap, she found it screwed shut. How did he receive mail? Then his voice, in her head.
They always leave my door unlocked.
With her gloves on, there could be no fingerprints. Cars sped past. Her bus was due any minute. The knob turned, just as he’d said it would, and the door relaxed inward on silent hinges. Two inches. Three. She retrieved the mobile from the step, was about to toss it through the opening when the door was pulled from her fingers. A curlicue of dried leaves was sucked inside, as though the house was gasping for air. The door swung wide onto a front room that was the mirror image of her own. Common wall, flagstone floor, sealed-up fireplace, mantle. But this room was completely empty. No furniture, no ornaments. Daylight through uncurtained windows showed cobwebs floating near the ceiling. The floor was covered in dust.
The phone vibrated in her hand. She threw it into the room, watched it clatter to the foot of his stairs. The doorknob was well beyond reach. The thought of entering horrified her – but she couldn’t leave the place standing open. She mounted his side of the step. Leant, the soft glow of the brass knob six inches from her straining fingers. One step inside, her foot falling into soft dust. Her hand was on the knob when somewhere near the top of the house a floorboard creaked. Lurching back, she collided with a dark form behind her, screamed.
A blue-suited commuter, hurrying along the pavement. She ducked her head, mumbled an apology as he peered over her shoulder into the empty room, and hurried away. She lunged, yanked the door shut. Its slam reverberated off the stone wall opposite like a rifle shot.
He’s gone. She stood a moment, listening. Breathing. Then relief swept her up the pavement, the wind at her back, her feet light. Gone! Each step towards the bus stop drummed the word home.
Near the top of the hill, her bus roared past. Too far away to run for it, she slowed. Took it as a sign. She needed a day off work. She’d earned it.
Turning back, her view out across the village was extraordinary. The easy downward sweep of road and roofline, the ruby burst of poppies, brave and radiant in the fields beyond, the blue ridge of distant evergreens rising against iron-grey clouds. Soft rain fell on her cheek. It felt clean and welcoming, and the simple beauty of the scene caught at her chest. She could start again. Settle in and heal herself, just as she’d imagined when she moved here, and life would be quiet and good.
Returning home, she discovered that, in the havoc of leaving, she’d forgotten to lock her door. She stepped inside. Paused in the quiet, shut her eyes. Took a deep breath and let it out slowly, exhaling the tensions of past months.
Turning, she caught sight herself in the hall mirror. Unkempt hair. Mauve rings under her eyes. She’d given up using makeup weeks ago. Her blouse and skirt, relics of her former, married life, were wrinkled and dull. How far away the divorce seemed.
She’d box up the old clothes, give them away. Make an appointment to have her hair done, and a facial. Do it now. The salon wouldn’t be open yet, but she could leave a message. She dropped her bag to the floor, rummaged for her phone – then realised. It was still upstairs, sitting on its little charger on the bedside table.
Relax. Breathe. She would take the day slowly. Make herself a cup of coffee with hot milk, biscuits on a pretty plate. Draw a bath and soak for an hour, the window open an inch, listening to birdsong. By then the salon would be open, and she would call her office too, make some excuse. She passed into the kitchen, filled the kettle, and stopped.
Her mobile wasn’t upstairs. It was face down on the windowsill. She picked it up, powered it on. Its battery was nearly dead. It opened briefly to a screen she didn’t recognise, before everything went black.
The Shared Step was first published in Mslexia Issue 86, June 2020: Other Worlds