9

Robert stared at the office window for interminable seconds, before turning his attention to the downstairs window and then giving up entirely. He resumed what he had been doing, much to Abi’s relief.

She picked up her phone, making sure she didn’t so much as brush the window, and then backed away. Enough was enough. Almost at the exact moment that she had dropped her phone and potentially alerted her neighbor to her presence via what must have sounded like a knock on the window, she had seen what he had been dragging. It was a large black bag, bigger than the others. Potentially big enough to fit a human body.

Abi returned to her bedroom and spent the next half hour staring at her phone and debating whether to call the police or not. Her neighbor was lugging suspicious bags from his car into his home in the early hours of the morning. He clearly didn’t want anyone to see what he was doing, which meant he was up to no good. Her early encounters with Robert also fired warning signals in her mind.

He was somewhat of a contradiction. He seemed anxious, weak, pathetic even. He was a bumbling idiot, mixed with a sweaty creep. But that seemed contrived. There was an intelligence behind his eyes, a confidence in his gait. It was like he was trying to be something he was not, trying to hide something that he was.

Isn’t that what psychopaths and sociopaths do? Abi thought. Is he trying to play the bumbling Hugh Grant role and failing miserably?

The idea scared her more than the thought that he was just a weird, awkward, and possibly perverted creep.

She thought back to her phone call with the emergency services. She had made a mistake and had been made to look like a fool. They implied that she was the weird one, not him.

Abi reasoned that if she did contact the police and they did investigate, Robert would know she had phoned them. If it turned out that he wasn’t doing anything illegal or that he was really good at hiding it, she would become a target. The idea of living next to one of her failed online dates was terrifying enough without having to worry about being murdered in her driveway.

She told herself that she would sleep on it, although she doubted that she would actually get any sleep.

—

“The police are fucking useless, dear. My sharts are more useful.”

“Well, I don’t know about that.”

“Trust me, dear. I dated a pig for three years. He was racist, homophobic, sexist. He saw himself as the embodiment of the human race, even though he was built like a Weeble and had a tiny penis. He used to tell me that anything more than a mouthful was a waste.”

“Ah, Gran. I don’t need that mental image at ten in the morning.”

“It was hairy too and covered in spots. It was like a fun-sized Mounds after someone had nibbled the chocolate off.”

“I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Imagine how I felt,” Martha said, the grin on her face belying her words.

“And you dated him for three years?”

Martha shrugged. “It was the eighties. I had nothing better to do.”

Abi sighed, deflated, slunk back into her chair, and shrugged her shoulders. “So, what do I do?”

“Stop worrying, that’s what you should do,” Martha instructed. “He was dragging some heavy bags into his house in the early hours of the morning, so what? This is the twenty-first century, dear, people lead busy lives and do crazy things at all hours of the day. He’s also just moved to a new house—maybe he was just unloading some books or clothes. They could have been kinky sex toys for all you know—point is, it’s probably nothing illegal. You’re only having those thoughts because he was a little weird during a date and then happened to move next door.”

“Happened to move next door? Big coincidence.”

“Also not something that can be arranged in a few hours, and that’s all he had after your date. Think about it, dear.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

Abi had spent most of the night willing herself to sleep—counting her breaths, calming her mind. But every time she felt like she was making progress, every time her mind cleared just enough for her to ignore the rampant thoughts that clawed at her conscience, she found herself being dragged back.

Images of Robert had flashed across her mind, as if seared into her eyelids.

What was he up to?

Had he seen me?

Should I call the police?

One minute she was cursing herself for overreacting, the next she was picturing him standing over her bed, his fingers around her throat, that familiar expression of witless solicitude on his face.

Maybe she had him all wrong. Maybe he was doing something harmless, like moving more possessions into his new house after a busy day at work. He was shy and awkward, that much was obvious, so maybe he just preferred to move possessions when everyone else was asleep. He could even be an insomniac. He could have spent the night tossing and turning, before deciding to run a few errands that he had initially planned for the morning.

Or maybe he really was creepy. Maybe he was up to no good and those bags contained stolen items or body parts. Maybe, just maybe, they were the remains of the last woman who had allowed him to get too close, a woman who had seen all the warning signs but hadn’t acted on them quickly enough. Maybe he was bringing her into the house to bury her under his floorboards, turn her flesh into home decor, or knit himself a fleshy tuxedo.

Abi had never been a good sleeper, and thoughts like that didn’t help.

As blackness turned to gray and the silence of the night was punctuated by bird song and the distant roar of traffic, Abi gave up and reached for her phone. She had spent the rest of the morning stalking Robert online, delving deeper than she had before their first date, scouring forums, stalking his friends, Googling old usernames.

She expected to encounter deranged rants, the ramblings of an unquiet mind. What she actually found was rather plain, boring, and sparse.

It wasn’t political, it wasn’t dark. If there was an archetypical serial killer profile, this wasn’t it. As she flicked through short, carefully considered posts declaring his love for the latest comedy films, fantasy TV shows, and video games, Abi found herself feeling guilty for suspecting that Robert could do something so horrible.

He was as dull as it was possible for a person to be. It was as if his entire online life had been constructed by an algorithm programmed to “normal” and “boring.” There was nothing worrying, nothing scary, nothing exciting.

One of the posts was a meme of Dexter brandishing a knife in the House of Commons and promising to make the country great again as he glared menacingly at the members of parliament. It caused Abi to do a double take, but she knew it was harmless political satire. If you could judge a person’s intentions by how much shit they posted on social media, her grandmother would be on the Most Wanted list.

There was something deeply pitiful about Robert’s presence online. His profile was not of a socially active, positive, fun-loving thirtysomething, but a recently widowed seventy-something who had just discovered the internet. His Twitter account was populated by people whose sole purpose was to exchange followers and who rarely paid any attention to what any of those followers said; his Facebook friends were private, but judging by the scant activity in the comments of his posts, he had only a few friends and none of them seemed local. No one tagged him in pictures or mentioned him in posts; everything had a lonely vibe—one man’s words repeatedly falling on deaf ears.

Abi gave up after an hour or so, feeling a little better about herself and a little less convinced that her neighbor was going to sneak into her bedroom and violently murder her. She eventually drifted off to sleep around seven or eight in the morning, only to be woken up two hours later by a notification on her phone.

“Are you with me, dear?”

Abi realized she had been asleep, her grandmother’s words filtering to her as if through water. “Sorry?” she muttered.

“I lost you for a minute there, dear. You’re slipping away like a junkie. Maybe you should go back to bed.”

Abi shook her head and reached for her coffee cup, taking a long and satisfying gulp, draining what was left in the cup. “I’ll be fine. I just need a walk, and some more caffeine. Lots more caffeine.” She stood, stretched, and then paused, waiting for the stars to stop dancing in front of her eyes and her world to stop spinning.

When her vision cleared, she saw that her grandmother was glaring at her knowingly and gently shaking her head.

“What?” Abi said, half smiling.

“You need to start taking care of yourself, Abi. You don’t sleep at the right time; you barely leave the house—”

“I’ll be fine.”

“—And God knows how long it’s been since you last had sex.”

“Gran!”

“God gave you a vagina for a reason, Abi, it’s about time you showed him some appreciation.”

Abi ignored her grandmother’s comments and focused her attention on a mirror above the kitchen sink. She was a mess. But she was too tired to do anything about it. She quickly tied her hair back in a ponytail and splashed some water on her face.

“You’re not going out looking like that, are you?” Martha commented as her granddaughter left the room.

Abi sighed and quickly grabbed a baseball cap and pair of sunglasses from the bedroom, hearing her gran’s muffled words from the kitchen—“your poor, poor vagina.” She checked her appearance one more time, happy that while she didn’t look great, she also didn’t look like herself, so it didn’t matter. Even if she did, it still wouldn’t matter. She could walk down the street naked but for a length of toilet paper nipped between her ass cheeks and no one would care.

Abi planted a kiss on her grandmother’s head. “I’m going out for a proper cup of coffee and some fresh air, you want anything?”

“Oh,” she beamed, “get me some of those flapjacks, would you? The chocolate chip ones.”

“You realize they’re basically all butter and sugar, right?”

“Of course, that’s why they taste so good. Oh, and pick me up a Mounds.”