Jayne: I knock at the door. It’s not even eight but she comes out and looks at me with the permanent frown that her face seems to have grown into. I’ve never seen her face otherwise. I wonder what would happen if the frown disappeared. Would there be anything to hold her face together? I can only hear the gurgling of the radiator in her hallway. I tell her I’ve run out of flour and the children are crying, and I can’t put them to bed. They want lemon drizzle and they want it now. I ask if she minds giving me some. She doesn’t say or do anything. I try to read the answer in her eyes, but they are grey and distant. I think of how we’ve lived door to door for what is now a decade. How even though a thin wall is what separates us, it took her years to get my name right. ‘All right, Jen? Oh, Jayne. Jayne,’ she’d say, the thin darkness of the staircase between us. It’s funny how we know nothing of what goes on behind the wall. I start fidgeting, stepping from one foot to the other. I put the key in my other hand, then in my pocket, then I take it out again and cup it in my hand. She stares at me and I can feel a flush of red running into my cheeks. I wonder if she can tell I’ve been crying. Probably not with the amount of foundation I put on. I wish she asked. ‘Of course, that’s not a problem at all,’ she says. She knows Barry left. She knows I’m a mother of three. She must hear the screaming in the morning when at least one of them doesn’t want to go to school today or can’t find their backpack or can’t do their shoelaces or wants to watch Paw Patrol. She knows I leave Kelly earlier at breakfast club so then I can drive Malcom to school and take Francis to nursery by nine. She knows that then I go to work, and she knows how last month I went through red lights because I was late and worried and half asleep and just didn’t see the bloody traffic lights. She saw me sobbing at my doorstep when I was signed off from work that day and got my name right for the first time: ‘All right, Jayne?’ She knows all of this and still says nothing. She leaves the door ajar so I can see a slice from the inside. I hear her feet shuffling into the kitchen and the opening of a squeaky cupboard. She comes back with a flour bag, nearly full. She says that I can keep it. I don’t know what to say so I look down. Her feet snuggled in her burgundy slippers with a fleece lining. ‘Oh, okay, are you sure?’ I say. She says it’s totally fine and that she has more. She doesn’t bake often, she tells me. I know I should thank her and turn back and go back into my flat. Make the lemon drizzle the kids have been waiting for. But my feet feel like lead. I stay and look at her, waiting for something she can’t give me, something I can’t name.
Anne: She knocks at the door. It’s nearly nine. I can see her through the peephole, her body slender, tall, hair flowing like a wild river down her shoulders. I open the door and smile. ‘Jayne!’ I say her name probably just to make up for all the times I got it wrong. Her eyes are red and puffy. I can’t tell if she’s been crying or if it’s lack of sleep. She stares at me saying nothing, so I smile some more to prompt her. She needs flour, the kids wouldn’t go to bed, she wants to make them a chocolate cake. I can hear them shout, the walls are not thick enough to hold their voices. I feel like opening my arms and giving her a hug. But, of course, this would be ridiculous, and not something I would do. I tell her to hang on and I turn to go back into the kitchen. Then, I stop and turn back facing her, but I don’t think she notices. I wonder whether I should invite her in. She might need company. She might need someone to talk to. I guess she wouldn’t leave the kids alone for long though and it’s too late anyway. I trudge back inside. How is she managing with the three of them? I see them often running up and down the staircase, shirts out, undone laces, messy hair, dribble slipping down the chin of the youngest. I hand her the flour. ‘Oh, thank you, that’s so kind of you,’ she says. There’s still time to ask if she’d like a cup of tea. I think of what biscuits I have and remember the Patterson’s nearly gone. Perhaps next time. She looks at me as if waiting for something. She must be tired, maybe she forgot I already gave her the flour. I look at her hands to remind her. Are they shivering? Perhaps it’s the draft coming from the staircase. ‘Don’t even mention it. Good night,’ I say and shut the door but stay there until I no longer hear her footsteps.
Rayna Haralambieva loves thinking about words and how powerful they can be. She uses them to write stage plays, short stories and poetry. Her fiction features in online literary magazines and print anthologies such as Flash Frontier, Reflex Fiction and Bath Flash Fiction Award. She finds stories fascinating for their power to heal and charm. She lives in Brighton where she works with children, the best storytellers of all.
This story is so real and so beautifully written, I love it!