Isolation by Dan Coxon

Author:Dan Coxon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags:  
Publisher: Titan

2

One thing she missed was that noise, the clack clack clack of Baptiste’s little paws on the wooden floor. But that was all. An advantage of Julian’s unexpected desertion was that the house without him was silent. She had no idea where he was, or what he might be doing. It was comforting. For too long she had been secretary, organiser, maid, and everything else in between. Without Julian prancing around, she could go out into the garden, kept secluded by the overgrown sumac, walk to the birch tree, and have a sneaky cigarette—he would certainly not approve. Later on, she could sit in front of the computer and check the early twentieth-century Japanese edition of Alice that was going, incredibly cheap, to the highest bidder. It was a little life of sorts, only her, the acrid cigarette, the pacing up and down to the tree.

The birch tree. She knew she would have to do something about it, plant some bulbs, perhaps in the spring. The turned earth looked terrible, brought horrid thoughts. The smell was much more powerful than she had expected. She put out the cigarette and walked the stone path back to the conservatory door, all the time wondering if her neighbour was following her progress on the other side of the fence. So quiet, so still… But a stillness that had some dense purpose within it. What purpose, exactly? The unanswered question. Alison opened the door, went back inside, closed the door; only then she noticed it, her heart quietly racing inside her ribcage.

The thing is, the neighbour’s dead cat had hit them hard, for back then Baptiste was still alive. Baptiste, their fat slow house cat, who had thankfully never been let out. Whenever Alison looked from her bedroom window, Baptiste would come and sit on the windowsill and purr, looking to the outer world. Alison knew what he wanted, for her to open the window so he could smell the outside. She was wary of doing this, as once, in the old neighbourhood, he had fallen asleep on the windowsill, and dropped three storeys from their rented apartment. She had another reason not to want to open the window. She was scared of letting something else in. The cat followed, with his old, watery eyes, the progress of some birds strutting around the messy garden.

And there she was. Very straight, unmoving. From her vantage point, Alison glimpsed a faded pink fleece through the green and the branches. What was she doing? That was the first time she had seen her like this, staring at the fence without moving, like a child who had been punished. There was some oddness in her position. The old lady was shorter than her, with a stocky upper body and short legs, strong and lean arms for her age. She had hardly any neck, and her head was too big for her body. She reminded Alison of a puppet, the way she stood. Her head was covered by a mane of white hair that she cut over her shoulder and in a lopsided fringe, and never put up.

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