If it hadn’t been for a disruptive hamster and three nights of insomnia, Emma might not have found herself crouched in her under-stairs cupboard that night. She might not have heard the fear-pinched voice from overhead.
What had possessed her to buy the hamster in the first place? Rodents were for eight-year-olds who begged their parents for a pet, not broke, blue-haired women in their thirties. Had she really thought this ice-white creature with ink-spot eyes would offer comfort? During the day he submerged himself inside a nest of shredded paper, but when Emma went to bed he burst into life, rumbling on his wheel, flooding her small flat with relentless noise.
It felt like the soundtrack to her thoughts. Trundling around and around. Last night she’d shifted the cage into the living room, but back in bed she’d still been haunted by the cycling. She’d moved it into the kitchen. Still audible. So Gilbert’s new home was this gloomy cupboard under the stairs, among dog-eared design books and unsold vintage hats.
It was six p.m. now—almost breakfast time for her nocturnal tyrant. Emma’s flat had begun the various clicks and hums it always made as it warmed up and settled in for the night. It felt cold for mid-March, winter still clinging on, so she’d drawn her curtains and pulled on her pajamas extra early, even by her recent standards. She was tipping sunflower seeds into Gilbert’s bowl when a voice made her freeze. It was so clear and close that it seemed to be in the cupboard with her, as if Gilbert was acting as ventriloquist.
“Where are you?” it said.
Emma straightened where she knelt, bumping the sloped ceiling. She knew the well-spoken voice—knew it better, actually, than she knew its owner. It was her upstairs neighbor, Steph Harlow. She and her family owned the top two floors of the converted Georgian house, while Emma rented the little ground-floor space, squished in next to their shared hallway. There was a basement flat underneath, too, owned by a married couple, Chris and Vicky, but it had a separate entrance and Emma didn’t hear or see much of them. She was often acutely aware of the buzz of life from above, though: the Harlows’ footsteps and the flush of their toilet; the vibrant pitch of raised voices in the morning—FREYA, time to go, love!; MUM, where have you tidied literally all of my belongings to? And now Steph’s voice felt right on top of her, as if there was no partition between them. Maybe there was something about the way sound parachuted down the staircase between their two flats, into this cubbyhole.
“Why’s your phone off?” Steph said. “I’m getting worried, Freya. Call me as soon as you get this.”
Emma’s heart kicked in sympathy, recognizing the gut twist of not being able to contact someone. She pictured Steph with her phone clamped to her ear, head dipped so her highlighted hair fell across her face, other hand absentmindedly smoothing her dove-gray suit. For that was how Emma would sometimes come across her in the hallway of their building, absorbed in checking her mail or reading a text. Steph would spring out of her trance as soon as she noticed she wasn’t alone, finding a warm smile and a compliment for Emma’s latest combination of experimental hair/handmade earrings/pimped-up secondhand shoes. Something like I could never pull that off!
Emma would babble in response: You don’t need to! You’ve got the classic-elegance thing down to a tee!
And it was enviably true. Steph didn’t need a fanfare of accessories to make a statement: Her height, cheekbones, and general aura did the job without fuss. But Steph would dismiss any attempt to compliment her in return, then whisk off to work or back up to her family before the conversation could progress. Emma would be left with the drift of her perfume in the empty hall, and a lingering curiosity about the woman she’d shared a front door with for nearly ten months. She didn’t know what Steph did for a living, but assumed she was successful; didn’t know how old she was, but guessed at early forties, and wondered whether forty was the point at which you stopped doing ridiculous things, like buying antisocial hamsters or generally making a mess of your life.
Steph had fallen quiet now. A drumming vibrated the dusty air, and Emma imagined her neighbor’s hundred-quid heel tapping the floor above. She reached up as if to feel the beat in the low ceiling, jerked away at Steph’s returning voice: “Paul, pick up! Have you heard from Frey?”
Now it was Paul Harlow’s image that filled her mind. Tall and athletic, maybe mid-fifties, his sandy hair a touch darker than his wife’s creamy highlights and his daughter’s white-blonde ponytail. Most mornings he rocketed past Emma when they were both out jogging by the Thames, his bulky headphones like a vise around his serious, determined face. He’d nod a brief greeting as he lapped her coming back the other way, and Emma would draw herself upright, trying not to look as exhausted as she felt.
Then there was Freya. The teenage daughter who apparently hadn’t come home at her usual time, who’d upset the family routine that played out upstairs each evening. When Emma glimpsed Freya it was usually in full flight: running on deer-like legs for the bus, or sometimes racing her dad along the river path, overtaking Emma with matching ease. The girl oozed energy with her swinging, sun-catching ponytail, her Fred Perry rucksack bouncing on her shoulders. Emma had come to recognize her gait up or down their stairs: She’d take them in leaps or descend at a gallop, one of her parents trailing behind with a fond shout, “Don’t worry, Freya, I can manage all the stuff . . .”
Emma had to admit she’d taken to peeking out of the window when she heard the Harlows leaving or arriving. Had started noticing the various combinations in which they went out or came home: Freya-Paul, Steph-Freya, Paul-Steph, all three together. With or without Waitrose bags, or takeaway cartons (Friday treat), or fresh bread that would infuse the building with its smell.
Clearly Emma didn’t have enough to occupy her. Her once-busy days yawned empty and the Harlows’ seemed endlessly, beguilingly full.
Was that why her pulse was soaring now? Why she was listening for Steph’s next words, experiencing her neighbor’s anxiety as a charge in the air? With a rustle of paper, Gilbert’s pink nose emerged from his nest, as though he’d woken and sensed it too. Emma wondered whether she should run upstairs and offer to help. Her cheeks burned as she imagined explaining that she’d been crouched in a cupboard eavesdropping on Steph’s phone calls.
She hunched into her dressing gown. There was nothing but receding footsteps now, and a soft thud, as if Steph had walked to the other end of the flat and closed a door.