The Quiet Mother

62

The young woman stood at the window looking out into the evening darkness. The curtains were still open and a faint light shone from inside the flat. The woman stood there, smoking, and blew the smoke out the window. She was wearing a tracksuit, as if she’d been out jogging and decided to have a cigarette to reward herself.

In the house next door, a woman sat hunched over a laptop in the kitchen. A man in the living room was looking at a tablet computer. They weren’t talking to each other. The television was on and its bluish gleam illuminated the living room, but no one was watching it. They looked up simultaneously from their computers and the woman called something out. The man put down the tablet, stood up and walked into the master bedroom.

The young woman stubbed out her cigarette and left the window, started pulling off her tracksuit and disappeared into the bathroom. The door closed behind her.

The man in the basement flat came out of a bedroom, holding an infant who appeared to be crying. He held it closely and tried to comfort it by walking around the living room. His wife, in the kitchen, didn’t move.

The bald man with the glasses and his wife were sitting on the sofa in front of the telly, with a bowl of popcorn. The man kissed her lightly on her mouth. Then they sat and watched telly together, munching their popcorn.

The bathroom door opened and the woman who’d been smoking came out with a towel wrapped around her, then went into the living room and took something from her bag. It was a shampoo bottle. She took it back to the bathroom and shut the door behind her.

The man in the next window buried his face in his hands. He appeared to be home alone and quite upset, and then he kicked some Lego blocks lying on the living-room floor. He picked up a mobile phone, and in no time at all appeared to be shouting into it. The call ended abruptly and he went to the window and stared into the darkness. He turned round, grabbed a decorative vase from the living-room table and flung it across the room. Then he shoved aside other ornamental objects before falling onto the sofa and burying his face in his hands again.

The bathroom door was still shut.

The woman on the first floor of the block of flats was sitting alone in her living room. She had a half-empty glass of beer in front of her and shook her head as she spoke on the phone. She seemed agitated and when the call ended, she threw the phone onto the sofa and it bounced from there onto the floor.

Above her was the flat of the woman whose murder had thrown everything into turmoil. The flat was dark, as on the previous evenings, with not a soul about.

At the next stairwell, no one was home on the ground floor. On the first floor, people sat staring at the telly, but looked up every now and then and the woman nudged the man as if she wanted him to do something.

On the floor above them, young people were having a party. Some were dancing, others stood chatting, drinking straight from beer cans or downing shots. The door was opened, and the man from the floor below was standing there on the landing.

The young woman’s bathroom door opened a crack, revealing her standing naked in front of the mirror...

Someone had switched on a light in the murdered woman’s flat and was now standing in the living room. He appeared to stare straight into the lens of the spotting scope.

Then the light went out.

The bathroom door slowly closed.