The Woman Next Door

Abigail started the day the same way she always did. She got out of bed, right foot first, and went immediately over to the window-sill. Each day she would look out over the neighbourhood. Usually, afterwards, she would walk over to her mirror, brush her hair, before tying it back into a tight, slick ponytail in an effort to look professional for her job as a receptionist in the local, failing, law firm. Abigail had always been one to stick to routines. She’d had the same thing for breakfast every day since she was seventeen, now aged twenty-eight, a glass of orange juice and a bowl of fruit n’ fibre cereal, because she had read that it was a good source of vitamin C.

During her lunch-break, which she took every day at exactly 12:58pm to ensure that she got two extra minutes, as her manager would usually round up the time to 1pm, Abigail would walk exactly one thousand steps to the corner shop to buy a bottle of water and a pre-made falafel sandwich. She would make small-talk with the show owner, Gareth, who had seen her almost every day for the past five years. He’d always found her a little strange, although he never said it. They would switch between certain fixed topics, established by Abigail on her first few visits; the weather, and just how weird things are these days, although this was only used by Abigail when she could find nothing else to say and usually consisted of her complaining about any changes to her routine, due to the shortcomings of others, of course.

Once she got off work at 5pm, Abigail’s evenings consisted of walking home. She would always arrive back at her door at 5:27pm. Last September she was even able to get it down to the second, arriving at her front door exactly twenty-seven minutes and eleven seconds past five. Afterwards, she would go on an evening jog. She’d run exactly 5km, before walking back up the road, the aim always being to reach 10,000 steps. At 7pm she would put food out for her cat, a fluffy white thing named Wilde who provided Abigail’s only source of company outside of work, before getting started on her own dinner. And, though she’d never admit it, around 9pm everyday she was plagued with a feeling that she could never quite describe. It wasn’t sadness so-to-say, or at least she didn’t think it was. It was more a sense that something was missing; there was something that just didn’t feel quite right.  Usually, she’d try to fill this time by reading a book, her current favourite being The Picture of Dorian Gray, or trying to take up a new hobby. In the last few months, she had tried to learn how to draw, but quickly gave up due to her frustration at the circle shape. Next, she tried crochet, and that did seem to be going well at first until Wilde decided that he rather liked wool. Then there was baking, and cooking, and an attempt at roller-skating. Nothing had ever stuck for too long. Her most recent endeavour was an attempt at writing poetry:

Her light warms up

Even the coldest of hearts.

She gave up after those lines.

Today, however, when Abigail looked out over the neighbourhood she saw a woman in the window opposite, sat cross-legged on top of a table, eating toast. The sight of this woman, who must have been around the same age as Abigail, confused her. Although, she wasn’t entirely sure why. It was not like the cobbled house had always been empty. Families had come and gone throughout the years. There had been the Hughes’, who had a loud seven-year-old who always tried to get Abigail to play tag, which she would always refuse out of a fear that she, a twenty-one-year-old at the time, would lose to a child.

Her favourite had been the Jones’, an old married couple who had lived in the house just a few years ago. They were some of the few people in the town that actually seemed to understand Abigail- or at the very least tried to understand and empathised with her routines. They’d invite her over every Thursday evening for tea and some cake, followed by a gossip, where Mrs Jones would complain about a woman called Sue who stole all her knitting ideas.

When Mr Jones passed away, the house became too painful for Mrs Jones to live in, the shadow of his laughter permanently echoing through the hall. She decided to move back into the city to be closer to her children. She still wrote to Abigail occasionally, and seemed genuinely happy; her children were doing well, and she even had a grandchild on the way, though it was bittersweet that they would never meet Mr Jones. Abigail had felt lonely for a brief period after they left, before once again becoming adjusted to the empty cobbled house, uninhabited, unaltered, permanent.

This new woman, however, seemed out of place here. Her head was shaven, and dyed a bright blue. Her clothes were mismatched, as she wore a tattered yellow shirt, with the ugliest floral pattern that Abigail had even seen, underneath some green dungarees. Not one for judging too harshly usually, Abigail couldn’t stop herself from thinking that this was the appearance of someone completely detached from society.

Used only to seeing her own reflection in the morning, instead of going immediately to her mirror, today Abigail thought of going to introduce herself. She got dressed in a white satin blouse, and tied her hair up. As she walked through the house, she counted the stairs like she always did- one all the way through to twelve- as if to check that nothing had changed overnight. Rather than her usual focus, however, her mind was racing with what she would say when she reached the door of number ten. “Hi! I’m Abigail from number nine, I thought I’d pop round just to introduce myself. I hope your move was good and if you ever need anything I am only across the road” she repeated to herself.

She walked across the road, “Hi! I’m Abigail!”

She found herself at the bricked driveway. She had always hated the red bricks in contrast to the cobbled stone house- it looked too out of place. “Hi! I’m Abigail!”

The door came next, the faded green wood that she used to frequent regularly. The door-knocker, a golden circle looped through the mouth of a lion felt warm to the touch, as if it was welcoming her home, and she knocked it three times. The door opened, and Abigail found herself face-to-face with the most peculiar woman she had ever seen. “Hi!” Abigail began, going through her well-prepared introduction. Before she finished, however, the woman interrupted:

“Hey! You must be the eccentric girl I’ve heard so much about”, she backtracked quickly, “in a good way I promise! Number nine, right?”

Abigail, seemingly in a state of shock, as her well-prepared introduction quickly fell apart and was unable to do anything but nod.

“Nice to meet you! I’m Faye, your new neighbour. I’m about to walk into town if you’d like to come and grab a coffee?”

At first Abigail thought about protesting, after all, she did have to start with her weekend self-care routine which consisted of deep-cleaning her entire house before sitting in the bath for two hours. But she had never thought herself to be weird. In fact, she had always considered herself the most normal person in the town. Who else was as organised as she? “Okay” she answered a bit flatly, with the hope of finding out more about her reputation.

“Great! Well, you’re the local: what’s the best place to get coffee around here?”

Abigail stopped to think about this for just a moment too long, unknowingly causing a moment of awkward silence. Her eyes appeared to flick through a range of places before arriving on the answer: “Probably Sally’s. They do the best bagels and cakes”

“I’m a big fan of a good cream cheese bagel- lead the way” exclaimed Faye, as if overcompensating for the awkwardness unknowingly imposed by Abigail.

The pair walked through the village of cobbled bricks, Faye often tripping on the lopsided pavement, trying to trace Abigail’s steps. Abigail, rarely one for small talk, asked the question that had been on her mind since she first saw the blue-headed girl: “Why did you move here?”

“My parents used to live here and…”

Before Faye could continue, Abigail interrupted out of shock. She could hardly comprehend what had just been said. “You’re the Jones’s daughter? You look… well you look so different to them; I never would’ve guessed.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot”

“I still don’t understand why you chose to move back here though? It’s not as though there’s loads going on, and you look…” Abigail trailed off.

“What?”

“I guess you just look like a lot.”

Faye smiled, “I have a weird past, and I guess I’m just trying to tie up loose ends”. There was a distance in her eyes when she spoke, but Abigail sensed that she wouldn’t be able to get any more information out of Faye and would have to accept the secrecy, at least for the meanwhile.

They arrived at the café, and Faye excitedly looked at every single bagel and coffee option they had, before settling on an iced oat latte and a cream cheese bagel. Abigail remembered thinking that these two choices were a bit of a contradiction.

“So,” Faye said when she sat down, “why do you have such an eccentric reputation in this town, do you think?”

“Are you supposed to be my therapist or something?”, Abigail half-joked, half-snapped.  

Faye looked slightly confused at the turn in the conversation, and sat in silence for a few moments as if to comprehend what had been said.

At the same time Abigail was becoming increasingly concerned that her ‘joke’ hadn’t landed, wanting to get as far from the “weird” reputation that had been established for her, as possible. “It was a joke” she muttered.

Faye smiled, “I know! But I suppose I am in a way. At least I hope I can be. When was the last time you spoke to someone, Abby?”

Abigail was confused by this, “What do you mean, I spoke to Gareth just yesterday about the binmen, about how they always arrive at five minutes past 8, when the website promises that they should be here by 8am sharp”

“No, I mean when was the last time you truly spoke to someone? Think about this carefully Abby: do you know who you really are?”

“Are you about to tell me that I’m some superhero, programmed by the government to save the world when they need me the most?”

Faye laughed. “You’re funny, you know that?

Abigail looked at Faye, and truly saw her beauty for the first time. Her distinctive fashion taste, and smooth head, they weren’t signs of someone trying to hide from society- they were the marks of someone who embraced the world without a care.

“Faye…”

“Abigail… do you remember me?” There was sincerity in Faye’s eyes for the first time since they started talking.

Abigail did remember, it was a far-off distant memory whose very presence shocked her- but it was there. “I think I loved you, once many years ago…”

The fragments of voices came back to her first, not much at first other than the muffled sounds of shouting. The remembrance of hiding under the bed for hours, counting the wooden panels that held up her mattress, one through to twelve. The understanding that she had to choose her words carefully, only entering a room if she had something prepared to say to avoid starting an argument, usually choosing to talk about the weather.

“I think I’ve spent my whole life hiding”

“Do you remember where they sent you?”

Abigail didn’t want to remember. She felt small. Like she was sixteen all over again. Her parents, they were so angry. She was so stupid; she shouldn’t have left her diary out in plain sight. It was just an innocent school-girl crush, there was nothing more to it. The problem was that everyone expected her to like Jackson, the captain of the rugby team, when she couldn’t help but think about the quiet girl Felicity who sat at the back of the class. It was only a slight appreciation at first, but then she couldn’t stop thinking about how soft her skin was, and how beautiful she was when she smiled. She only wrote the line “Felicity is the most beautiful person I have ever met. Every time I’m with her I feel seen for the first time”, but it was enough. Her parents were furious. She remembered the burn of the words, “You’re going to hell Abigail. You’re disgusting. You’re a shame to this family”. They sent her away after that.

“They sent me away, they wanted me to get better,” Abigail told Faye.

She tried to remember. There was the awkward silence of the car ride, her parents too angry and disappointed to say anything. The threat of not being allowed home if she didn’t change was whispered in her ear, and before she knew it, she was now in the company of someone entirely new. Every morning she’d wake up at exactly 7am, walk over to the mirror, in the little dirty dorm room where she slept, that never seemed to reach the sun, and tie up her hair to ensure that nothing about her would stand out. She was told she was wrong, she was disgusting, she had to hide herself so many times that eventually she had started to believe that this was who she was. When came home, she was someone entirely new.

“They said it was to help me get better” Abigail whispered.

“Abby”, Fay murmured softly, “there was never anything wrong with you.” She stopped for a few moments. “I never stopped thinking about you. Everyday you were gone… well.” Her voice was coming out as a high-pitched squeak now, and she had to pause for a moment to prevent sobbing. “I had to leave; everything became too painful. I’m so sorry.”

Abigail didn’t understand why she was apologising, so tried to offer a small, but awkward, smile as a source of comfort. Then, she realised, “You’re Felicity.”

Faye gave a weak smile in return. “Come with me to the city Abby, you can have a fresh start.”

“I barely know you anymore…” replied Abigail.

“I know but please, you deserve a chance to actually be yourself, to escape the confines that they built for you.”

“Where did you hear I was eccentric”, asked Abigail, thinking back to their very first interaction which, despite occurring only two hours ago, felt a lifetime away.

 “My parents were worried about you. They came back to see if you were okay. My mum misses you in the city, and I know my dad loved you so much. They told me so much about how you were doing, who you were becoming, and who you deserved to be.”

Abigail took and deep breath and finally realised how tired she had grown of hiding. “I’ll come,” she said. Faye grabbed her and pulled her in for a hug.

The next day, Abigail woke up and went immediately over to her window-sill and looked out over the neighbourhood. Today, however, her hair would remain down, sliding down past her shoulders, unbrushed, because today Abigail saw the truth. She was hiding, she had spent her entire life hiding. The permanent, unaltering solitary cobbled stone building. The grey of the sky. She had not seen the sun since she was sixteen. She had been the cause of her own captivity for years now. The only chance she had now was to finally step outside.