LITMIR.BIZ

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am trying to look like a casual occupant of the park bench.

      Day by day I am claiming this bench as mine.

      It is the perfect place to watch Alex’s house from.

      He usually leaves the house at 8.20 to walk the boy to a holiday club. I followed them the first day I’d come here early, but I can’t follow them every day because it will be too obvious. He holds the girl’s hand but the boy keeps a little distant and tucks his thumbs inside the shoulder straps of his backpack denying any chance of contact with his father.

      Alex returns at 8.50, with his daughter. They go back inside the house and then at 9.00 the door opens again, and he comes out with keys rattling in his hand as he either walks off down the street or goes to a large Range Rover.

      I do not know what time he comes home after work. It is too late for me to stay and watch.

      The door opens now, following the same routine.

      I put the cup up against my lip and hold up my phone as though I am looking at the screen and look beyond it.

      The curls in Alex’s hair are disordered, untidy in a way that suggests his hair has not seen a comb or had a cut for weeks. He’s not shaven either and the growth of blond hair on his chin denies any thought of grooming. The shirt he’s wearing is rumpled.

      Watching him is fascinating, like studying an animal. I hear David Attenborough narrating the family’s movements in my head.

      I need to understand Alex’s life if I’m going to work out a way to become a part of the children’s lives. I need to spot a weakness – a door that’s been accidentally left open, that I’ll be able to push my way through.

      The girl holds onto his hand, which hangs loose. Alex looks back into the house and calls for the boy, who squeezes past his dad and sister and runs ahead.

      Louise’s heart pulses with a rush of emotion every day when I see them come out through the door.

      ‘Wait for us!’ Alex’s call stretches across the park that contains me and two people with their dogs.

      His aura’s strange. I have never seen anything so dark before; it is greys, black in places, like a terrible storm wrapping about him.

      Alex and the children disappear around a corner.

      I drink the cooling coffee and look through Robert Dowling’s pictures on Facebook while I wait.

      My life is now paused and played on Alex’s command.

      It’s cold today; my free hand slides into the pocket of my coat. There are several used train tickets and the one I need to get home in my pocket. The price of a ticket is extortionate at this time of day.

      I have savings: a lump sum put away when Dan told me to get out of the flat; a pay-off for all the jointly purchased white goods and furniture I left behind, and the half of the deposit I lost. But I can’t afford to travel backwards and forwards to Bath every day for long.

      You are getting obsessed, Simon’s voice whispers through my head.

      I can become an addict of anything, because of bipolar. It is like a gambling addiction, or drug abuse – I can’t stop once I have started believing something. My mind becomes fixated.

      This is strange, Chloe’s voice tells me.

      It is strange. I know it is. But being given someone else’s heart is strange, especially when that woman steps into your body and tells you to find her family. But this is real. And the house is the jigsaw puzzle that’s waiting for me to step into place and complete it.

      I owe this to Louise and I want it for me.

      The distant sound of conversation pulls my attention back to the corner that Alex and his daughter appear from. She is half running, taking four or five steps with her short legs compared to his two strides. He’s rushing today.

      He opens the front door of his house with the key, but doesn’t close the door after he’s taken the girl inside. Then after a moment of some sort of exchange behind the half-closed door he reappears.

      When he walks away from the door the headlights of the Range Rover flash as the car doors unlock.

      I wait until he’s in the car and pulling away from the kerb, then stand.

      Once he’s gone I usually go somewhere to eat breakfast. Then I come back.

      There’s the rattle of a doorknocker that has a looser sound than anyone else’s. I look back to see the front wheels of a pushchair appear from Alex’s house.

      The third child will be in that pushchair.

      I have only seen the youngest child in a few of Robert Dowling’s pictures.

      The nanny steers the pushchair over the threshold, then looks back and says something to the girl who follows.

      I think the girl is three years old. She captures my attention more than the others. She’s so small and pretty. I have always wanted a girl and she’s my dream child. My hands want to reach out for her every time I see her. That’s Louise’s desire too, but I know my own feelings are the same, not just hers.

      I feel as if Louise would simply pick the children up and run.

      I can’t do that; I would not be able to keep them. And I want to keep them. I want to make them mine.

      The girl holds onto the pushchair as the nanny locks the door.

      The nanny turns the pushchair in my direction, to cross the street.

      For the second time, someone is looking at me looking at them.

      Perhaps she’s come out of the house to investigate me – the strange woman who has started sitting in the park every day, staring at their windows.

      The little girl speaks and the nanny looks down.

      A dummy rolls across the tarmac. The little girl picks it up and holds it out. They are in the middle of the street. The noise of the traffic on the busy road behind me feels like a threat but they are in a street with a dead end; the traffic is not near her.

      The nanny takes the dummy, wipes it on her top then gives the dummy back to the child.

      I am not OCD about cleanliness but I am qualified to look after children and the five-second rule doesn’t apply to children who have barely started developing their immunity.

      I start walking as the nanny tips the buggy back so it can get over the kerb on this side of the street. Called into action by her ineptitude.

      Louise and I are on the same page. I may not want to take the children, but I want to get rid of that nanny. The children need me; Louise and I know that.

      People who do not look after children properly do not deserve to have them.

      They walk along the path on the other side of the park’s railing.

      I walk in the same direction, towards the park’s exit.

      The woman looks to be in her late teens or early twenties. Too young.

      The small girl is on the far side of the pushchair so I can’t see her.

      I want to see her.

      I walk quicker to get ahead of them. I can see the girl’s expression is compliant as she looks at the pavement, silent.

      The colours in her aura have faded, as sadness dances around her. Children often have splashes of colour, not layers. She has a cloud that is blended to a point it is hard to pick out the different shades.

      The girl’s sadness lances through me, cutting into the flesh of my heart with a quick thrust. Things are not right in that house.

      I want to help the children. I know what it is like to grow up without a mother. They must be feeling broken. Black holes will be forming, stealing all their happiness.

      They need

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