Read Watched: When Road Rage Follows You Home for Free Online Page B

Pooley?’
    She turned to point at her car. ‘Yep.’
    He scratched his chin, re-pocketing the phone. ‘There are some serious wee shites around. Did they slash all four?’
    ‘Unfortunately – it must have happened overnight.’
    ‘Aye – that’s what happens when the schools break up. Fourteen-year-olds on the street getting lashed on cider, picking fights with each other, then going after good folks like yourselves. Kids today, eh?’
    Esther nodded in agreement, even though she didn’t think it was kids and wasn’t convinced that children nowadays were any worse than when she was young. When she was fifteen, she would hang around with her friends in the park hoping someone had managed to get hold of a bottle of booze from somewhere.
    The man whistled as he wheeled a jack across to her car and began propping it up. Esther carried the bags of rubbish to the back of the house, squeezed as much as she could into the bin, and then left the rest by the side.
    It was a little after nine in the morning and she’d been up for three hours. Where the time had gone, she wasn’t quite sure. She remembered finishing the coffee and having another, then getting dressed, but it couldn’t have taken that long to clear away the rubbish.
    When she had cleaned herself up, Esther went next door and rang the doorbell. From inside, there was the sound of a door slamming, something metallic clanging and a child screaming. A few seconds later, Liz opened the door, though she was peering over her shoulder, facing inside. ‘Gary, will you put that down. How many times have I told you?’
    She turned to face Esther with an exasperated sigh. ‘Sorry about that, love. Bloody kids.’
    ‘I was worried I’d be waking you up.’
    Liz had a dressing gown wrapped tightly around herself with fluffy pink slippers on her feet. Her hair was untied, the grey strands static and wiry. Her skin was redder than the previous day, with more white patches of wrinkled skin around her eyes intermingled with the sunburn. She stifled a yawn but didn’t look as if she’d slept.
    She waved a hand in front of her face. ‘When you’ve got a four- and a six-year-old, nine in the morning feels more like the middle of the afternoon.’
    ‘Oh, right.’
    From inside, there was another clatter, with Liz spinning around. ‘Sorry, you better come in. They’re in the kitchen and are probably trying to stuff each other into the microwave or something.’
    Liz retreated into the hall, with Esther following her into the house and closing the door. The inside gave Esther a glimpse of what their house could look like. It was a mirror image of theirs, with the living room and stairs on the other side of the front door, but looked so much better fully furnished. The colours were soft pastels, with a tall mirror in the hallway, a row of hooks for keys and a height chart with ‘Gary’ and ‘Mark’ and various numbers written next to a stack of horizontal lines.
    Esther stepped over a child gate into the kitchen, following Liz. Sitting at a dining table were two boys, crayons in hand, a rainbow of colour spread across white sheets of paper and part of the table-top. They were strikingly similar: short dark hair, wide brown eyes and a sense of mischief in their matching smirks.
    Liz stood, hands on hips, peering from one to the other. ‘What have I told you about drawing on the table?’
    The slightly shorter boy, who Esther assumed was Mark, replied: ‘It was an accident…’
    ‘Yeah, like it’ll be an accident when Santa forgets to come this year.’
    ‘Aww, Mum…’
    Liz turned to Esther. ‘This is Mrs Pooley. She’s going to be living next door with her husband. Say hello.’
    The boys peered up from the table and said ‘hi’ in unison. Esther couldn’t help but smile at how similar they were.
    ‘Call me Esther.’
    ‘That’s nice, isn’t it boys,’ Liz said. ‘Now go and play in the living room. I need to talk to Esther for a few minutes without