The Woman Next Door

by Liz Byrski

  *

  Polly, sitting up in bed in her white towelling dressing gown, her laptop perched on a pillow in front of her, is re-reading the chapter she finished earlier today. She scrolls slowly to the bottom of the final page; it’s been a particularly troublesome section of the book but now, she thinks, it’s reading quite well. Thankfully she closes the file, rests her head against the bedhead and shuts her eyes. It’s only just after nine but she’s been working all day and most of the evening and is ready for sleep. But a sudden beep from the computer interrupts her thoughts and the Skype icon with Leo’s face in it appears on her screen. As she clicks on the image to accept the call she feels the same little twitch of pleasure she felt as a teenager when she got a call from a boyfriend. Leo is there, looking at her face on the screen, rather than into her eyes through the camera lens.

  ‘Oh, you’re in bed,’ he says. ‘Did I wake you? What time is it there?’

  ‘You didn’t wake me,’ she says. ‘I’ve been working on my laptop in bed. It’s almost nine o’clock. Look at me, Leo.’

  ‘I am,’ he says. ‘You look lovely in that white towelling thing, very cuddly.’

  ‘No, look into my eyes,’ she says. ‘I told you, remember, the little green light at the top of the screen? That’s how you make eye contact.’ He raises his eyes and meets hers. ‘That’s better,’ she says.

  ‘But I can’t see you,’ he protests. ‘I want to see your face, not just look at the green light.’

  She laughs. ‘It’s off-putting to have a conversation with someone who’s not making eye contact,’ she says.

  ‘It looks fine to me,’ he says.

  ‘That’s because I’m looking at the camera not the screen,’ she says. ‘Have you really never used Skype before this week?’

  ‘Never,’ he says, ‘and I can’t say that my life has been any less rich for the lack of it. However, now that you’ve got me on it I very much like looking at you.’

  Polly rolls her eyes. ‘For someone so engaged with everything that’s happening and so attuned to the Zeitgeist, you are actually something of a dinosaur,’ she says.

  He tilts his head to one side, grinning, looking back again at the screen. ‘But dinosaurs are interesting and loveable, aren’t they?’

  She dissolves into laughter. ‘I suppose they are.’

  He raises his eyes to look into hers. ‘Polly,’ he says firmly, ‘you promised to look at your diary.’

  ‘I did,’ she says, reaching out for the desk diary which is on the bedside table. ‘I did, but I just had to work out when I can afford to take a break. I don’t want to be working the whole time you’re here. Anyway, I sorted that out today.’ She flips through the pages. ‘The last week in September,’ she says.

  ‘Okay! Three weeks?’

  ‘Three weeks it is.’

  ‘Write it down,’ he says. ‘Pick up your pen and write it down. I have to plan around it, and I need to know you’re not going to change your mind.’

  ‘I am not going to change my mind,’ she says, touched by his insistence. ‘Look, I’m writing it now.’ And she picks up her pen and draws a series of lines through the dates, writes LEO in big letters across the pages and holds it up for him to see.

  ‘Good,’ he says, looking into her eyes at last. ‘It will be wonderful, I’ll book the flights. You’re allowed to go to sleep now.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she says. ‘I love you.’

  ‘Yes, good,’ he says, and the screen goes blank.

  Polly stares at the laptop and shakes her head. ‘Hopeless,’ she says aloud to the blank screen, ‘sometimes you are really hopeless.’ If she didn’t have that wonderful trail of warm and affectionate emails she would probably be really distressed by what are, apparently, black holes in his emotional intelligence. Is this characteristic of very smart, very successful men?, she wonders. Do the women in their lives constantly have to make allowances for their emotional shortcomings? Sighing, she puts the computer on the bedside table, wriggles out of her dressing gown, chucks it down to the end of the bed and snuggles under the duvet enjoying the warmth and the feeling of being really tired. Closing her eyes she thinks of Leo, imagines him here beside her in her own bed, the two of them curled together like spoons as they had been in the hotel. She wants to talk to Stella about it in the way she would have done in the past, but Stella seems to have forgotten that she’d even been to Hong Kong, let alone why. The threatened grilling hasn’t happened and Polly’s not sure whether she is hurt by this, or relieved at having escaped it. Stella’s concentration is now focused on forays into the past through her photographs, old correspondence and her collection of theatre programs.

  She closes her eyes thinking again of Leo, his confusion about the position of the camera, the way he drops his eyes constantly back to the screen. She is on the verge of sleep when she is shaken from it by her phone. She reaches automatically for it in the dark and struggles quickly into an upright position when the caller identifies himself as Constable Tony Welch at Fremantle Police Station.

  Polly snaps the light back on. ‘Is something wrong?’ she asks, her heart pounding.

  ‘Well, Miss Griffin,’ the officer says, ‘I have a lady here – a Miss Barwell, Essie Barwell – who has given us your name as her next of kin, and she wants to report a missing person. I’m sorry if this sounds rather muddled, madam, but Miss Barwell does seem a little confused and . . .’

  ‘It’s okay, officer,’ Polly says, swinging her legs out of the bed, ‘I understand, I’m her de facto next of kin . . . is she all right?’

  ‘Apart from being rather confused she seems fine,’ the officer says. ‘She’s sitting having a cup of tea with us, and is eating her way through our supply of Tim Tams.’

  ‘That’s her,’ Polly says, ‘the Tim Tam queen, and what’s this about a missing person?’

  ‘Ah . . . a lady called Annie. Says she’s been looking for her for a long time. Do you know about this?’

  ‘I do. Annie is an old friend who died some time ago. Look, I’ll come and pick her up, I can be there in ten minutes, fifteen at the most.’

  ‘Thank you, madam, and you’re sure the lady’s name is Essie Barwell? It’s just that both my sergeant and I think she might be Stella Lamont, the actress who used to be in Cross Currents and a . . .’

  ‘You’re absolutely right,’ Polly cuts in. ‘She is legally Stella Lamont but she was born Estelle Barwell, Essie. It was changed for the theatre. She’s been having a few problems with her memory. So could you tell her I’m on my way?’

  And she hangs up, gets out of bed, throws off her pyjamas, fumbles for underwear, pulls on her tracksuit and hurries through to the bathroom. Slow down, she tells herself as she drags a brush through her hair. And she stops and stands there, staring at herself in the bathroom mirror, wondering how Stella got to the police station. Did she drive? Surely she didn’t walk all that way in the dark? ‘Oh dear,’ she says aloud, ‘poor dear Stella,’ and with a horrible sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach Polly picks up her keys and goes out to her car.

  *

  ‘I was worried about Annie,’ Stella says as she fastens her seatbelt in the front seat of Polly’s car. ‘I went to the house over the road, and someone else came to the door. A tall thin man with a beard, and he said I’d gone to the wrong house. And the thing was, Polly, he knew my name, and he said, “I don’t know who you mean, Stella, but I’m Bill, Jennifer’s husband, and you know there’s just the two of us live here.” So you see, Polly, this Bill and Jennifer have moved into Annie’s house and . . .’

  Polly switches on the engine and reaches out a hand to take Stella’s. ‘Stella, it’s all right. You went to the wrong house; Annie never lived there. You went to Bill and Jennifer’s place, further up the street on the other side.’

  Stella shakes her head. ‘No, I’ve never seen that man before. I’m worried
about Annie.’

  Polly takes a deep breath. ‘Annie died a long time ago, Stella,’ she says, ‘about fifteen years ago.’

  Stella turns to her in surprise. ‘Died? Nobody told me that. Why didn’t they tell me?’

  ‘I think you must have had a little blank spot, Stella. You and I went to Annie’s funeral at the cemetery, and there were so many flowers. Do you remember? You made a lovely speech about her and about your friendship.’

  Stella is silent, then, ‘I remember that. Annie’s dead. I miss her, Polly, I miss her very much.’

  Polly leans across and pats her hand. ‘I know you do. But at least you know now that she’s safe.’

  ‘So do you remember Bill and Jennifer, our neighbours across the road?’

  Stella shakes her head. ‘I’ve never seen that man before.’

  ‘Okay, but do you remember what you did when you left that house, Stella?’

  Stella is silent for a moment, as Polly backs out of the car park and turns into the street. ‘Well I went to the police. I walked quite a long way, I knew where the police station was but couldn’t quite remember how to get there. But I kept walking and then I saw Hungry Jacks and I went in and got a double cheeseburger with fries. I do love a burger, although they give me terrible indigestion. And I had such a nice chat with a young man in there, he bought me a cup of tea because I spent all I had on the cheeseburger. He offered to drive me home and then I remembered that I was supposed to go to the police station, and tell them about Annie, and the man in her house. So he said he’d walk there with me so I wouldn’t get lost. Wasn’t that kind? So we walked down past the Sail and Anchor and the car park near the markets, and there we were. And I realised I knew the way after all.’

  Almost an hour later, when she is sure Stella is asleep, Polly goes next door and turns off the lights and the heater in her own house, locks the doors and goes back to Stella’s spare bedroom. She kicks off her shoes and, still in her tracksuit, wraps herself in the duvet on the spare bed and lies there, wondering what to do: wondering what Stella will remember in the morning.

  *

  It’s just after seven-thirty when Polly wakes, daylight is beginning to creep between the blinds and she gets up, straightens the pillows and the duvet and tiptoes through to Stella’s room to find her still fast asleep. She pulls on her shoes and slips quietly out, down the steps and through the gate back to her own house and straight into the shower. Adjusting the hot water so that it is just short of scalding, she stands there trying to decide what to do. Really she should take Stella to the doctor, but it seems important to get her through to the last few days of her work on Cross Currents, so that she can retire with dignity. Once that’s done she’ll have to get her to the doctor. Out in the kitchen she makes toast and coffee and sits at the table listening to the news. Suddenly everything seems too hard – the responsibility of Stella, the steps she’s taking with Leo, juggling it all with work, and she pushes her chair back from the desk and picks up the phone.

  ‘I’m still in bed,’ Alistair says, ‘just lying here looking out at the frangipanis by the pool waiting for Steve to come back from the market.’

  Polly wishes she were there, floating in the pool, knowing that he was nearby. She wants him to hug her and hold her quietly, just for a while, to feel his love which, despite their many arguments and tantrums over the years, she knows is absolutely solid.

  ‘I’ve rung for a hug,’ she says. ‘A psychic hug and a bit of advice.’

  Alistair laughs. ‘I’m sending the hug right now,’ he says and he makes a humming noise. ‘Can you hear it? It’s humming to you across land and sea.’

  ‘I can hear it,’ she says, ‘and I can feel it.’

  ‘Is it your love life, Poll?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So what’s happened to the sisterhood?’ Alistair asks. ‘Stella and Joyce and what’s-her-name – oh Helen – no, perhaps not Helen, but the other two?’

  ‘Well, Joyce is incommunicado on an intensive language course and Stella . . . well I’ll tell you more about that another time.’

  ‘So is Mr Croft proving difficult?’

  ‘Not exactly difficult,’ Polly says, pausing for a moment, ‘but he can be hard work, he sometimes seems quite remote emotionally, sort of clueless.’

  Alistair clears his throat. ‘I had another look at him on Google images the other night,’ he says. ‘His eyes seem a bit cold, a bit . . . well, as you say, remote. But that could just be the camera.’

  She sighs. ‘His emails are really warm,’ she says, ‘short but warm, just like at the beginning. Oh, maybe it’s just me, wrong sort of expectations. Perhaps I’m expecting the whole romantic thing and that’s probably not how it is at our age.’

  ‘I think it can be that way,’ Alistair says. ‘But that may not be his thing.’

  ‘I suppose I want it all to be easy and risk free,’ she says. ‘I’ve made myself a life that’s safe and predictable, that protects me emotionally.’

  ‘And you’re scared of risking that?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Well you’ve come to the right person, I am a mine of useless information and advice on things I know nothing about, but I do know this. Growing old alone is unlikely to be loads of fun, well at least it wouldn’t be for me.’

  ‘You say that in the light of your own situation, you and Steve, and how he cares for you.’

  ‘True, but I never wanted to be alone, never liked it when I was.’

  ‘So the difference is that I have never minded it,’ she says. ‘And then someone comes along and makes waves and I don’t know what I want anymore. And whether I’ll end up with a broken heart.’

  ‘Perhaps you have to hold back a little bit of your heart as insurance,’ Alistair says.

  Polly is silent.

  ‘Polly,’ he says, ‘do you really want to spend the rest of your life, twenty years, maybe more, avoiding getting hurt, or are you going to have a rich and rewarding old age that involves a few risks? I know what my choice would be, but then I don’t have as long as you do.’

  Half an hour later Polly slips through the side-gate and taps on Stella’s back door.

  ‘Polly,’ Stella says, glancing up at the kitchen clock. ‘I thought you must have got caught up in something. Weren’t we supposed to start at eight-thirty?’

  ‘We were, so sorry, I was chatting with Alistair and I forgot about the time.’

  ‘No worries, I was late waking up anyway,’ Stella says, and she gestures to Polly to come inside. ‘I slept so well, and I had this weird dream about walking down to Hungry Jacks, goodness I can almost taste it now. But of course I don’t eat them these days, they give me terrible indigestion and I can’t get to sleep.’

  Polly stands just inside the kitchen, watching as Stella puts the kettle on to boil.

  ‘Shall we stay in here?’ Stella continues. ‘It’s such a chilly morning and it’s warmer in the kitchen. I’ve gone through the lines again while I was eating my breakfast so I’m all ready to go. Coffee or tea?’

  ‘Coffee please,’ Polly says, and she watches as Stella spoons coffee into the plunger.

  ‘And before we start,’ Stella continues, ‘I need to hear about Hong Kong. I can’t believe a whole week has gone by and I haven’t grilled you about Leo yet.’ She pushes a plate towards her. ‘Sit down, have a Tim Tam or four and tell me all about it. You’re allowed to talk with your mouth full.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  The sun is extraordinarily hot, hotter even, Helen thinks, than at the height of a Perth summer. Nine o’clock in the morning and it’s already thirty-eight degrees and expected to climb to the mid-forties during the morning. For Helen, who has always considered herself a sun lover, the oppressiveness of the heat has come as a shock and that, combined with the headaches which seem to be getting worse, is making her irritabl
e. She’s restless too, unable to settle to anything for long before her energy pushes her out of her chair to do something physical. Right now she is lying on a recliner in the shade by the pool, with some iced tea, and her restlessness is apparent to her in the way she keeps tapping one of her feet on the end slat of the recliner. She has her Kindle open in front of her but can’t concentrate on what she’s reading, can’t even concentrate on trying to hear what’s going on inside the house. She’s been here almost two weeks and although she and Damian had got off to an awkward start they are, she thinks, over it now.

  By the time she’d arrived here Dennis had, as they’d agreed, talked to Damian and explained what was happening. And when he met her at the airport it was clear to Helen that he was pretty upset and for him, as for his father, upset meant a brooding or surly reticence. The drive back to the house was tense and awkward.

  ‘So, you’ve talked to Dad and now you’ve heard my side of it,’ Helen had said, having tried to ameliorate the silence by explaining things her own way. ‘Are you going to tell me how you feel about all this?’

  ‘I don’t really think you want to know,’ Damian replied, slowing down to drive in through the automatic gates of the complex where they lived.

  ‘Of course I want to know,’ Helen said. ‘We’re family, it affects all of us, we need to be honest with each other.’

  ‘Have you talked to Nick?’

  ‘Yes, we both have.’

  ‘And what does he have to say about it?’

  Helen sighs. ‘Well, you know Nick, he’s not super talkative but he seemed okay with it. He said of course it was up to us and he wouldn’t take sides, and I told him there are no sides to take, we’ve agreed this between us. There’s no unpleasantness, no hard feelings, we’ve come to the end of the road, that’s all.’

  By now they were in the car park underneath the house and Damian had switched off the engine, and turned to look at her. ‘That is utter bullshit, Mum. Dad is leaving you because you’ve made his life a misery. So to say there’s no unpleasantness is just a lie.’