Penny Joelson - Girl in the Window

‘Kasia! What are you doing?’ Mum appears at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me with concern.

My legs give way and I sit down on the top step. ‘I was calling you. You didn’t hear. I thought I’d come down . . .’

Mum’s up beside me now, tutting and holding out her arm. ‘You look very pale, mój aniele . Come on, time for bed. How many times do I have to tell you to take it slowly, not do too much too quickly? Just getting out of bed is a big achievement. You’re clearly not up to trying the stairs. You should text me if I don’t hear you.’

I’m too tired to argue, but I want to prove her wrong. I’m so fed up with being in my bedroom all the time. Tomorrow, I think to myself. Maybe I’ll try tomorrow. But I still want to tell her what just happened.

Mum helps me into bed and sits on the edge as I tell her all about what I saw. She’s really shocked.

‘Kasia, how awful! Are you sure?’

‘I think so . . .’

Mum touches my hand gently. ‘You did the right thing to phone the police. Now settle down and get some sleep. You look exhausted.’

She goes back down and I lie in my bed, staring at the same four walls. It’s ten weeks since I’ve been downstairs.

2

I’m sitting by my bedroom window, waiting for Ellie to come round after school like she promised. She’s the only one of my friends that still does. The street is busy with cars on the school run and kids walking home. It looks so normal, it’s hard to believe what I saw last night actually happened. I’ve been playing it over in my mind all day. It feels like a bad dream, not something real. Where is that woman now – what happened to her? I wonder if someone has reported her missing.

I glance at the house across the road. Have the police spoken to them yet? Was someone looking out last night, or did I just imagine I saw the curtain move?

At the bus stop, groups in school uniform stand chatting. A toddler in a buggy has pulled off one shoe and is chewing it. I watch as she takes the shoe out of her mouth and flings it under the bench. Her mother is sitting staring at her phone and hasn’t noticed. The bus comes, blocking my view, and when it pulls out the people, including the woman and the buggy have gone, but I can still see the purple shoe sticking out sadly from under the bench.

A man in his twenties with dark hair and glasses arrives at the bus stop and kicks at the shoe curiously. I start making up a kind of Cinderella story, where the man takes the shoe and puts a photo of it on a Facebook group, and the woman comes forward gratefully to claim it. Turns out they’re both single and when they meet to hand over the shoe, it’s love at first sight.

I see a police car coming along the road and it pulls into a parking bay further down the road. Is this to do with last night? At first I think they want to ask me more questions but the police officer walks quickly up to the door of number forty-eight. I watch eagerly and see the front door open. The policeman talks to the woman and I can see her shaking her head.

Once the door closes, the policeman knocks on the doors of the houses on either side, but no one is home. Then he crosses the road. He’s coming here! The doorbell rings. I wish I could run down and answer it but I have to wait for Mum to do it. I hear her talking to the policeman and I wonder if she’ll bring him upstairs, but she says goodbye after only a minute and then comes up.

‘What did he say?’ I ask eagerly.

‘They haven’t found out anything about an abduction, Kasia,’ Mum tells me. ‘No one has been reported missing and no one else contacted them about it. He said the people at forty-eight saw nothing. They were both downstairs watching television.’

‘I thought someone was there, watching,’ I say, ‘upstairs – in the room opposite mine. I saw the curtain move, like someone was peeping out.’

Mum shrugs. ‘The police are looking into it. If there’s anything to discover, I’m sure they’ll find it.’

Mum goes back down and I’m still waiting for Ellie. Where is she? I’m suddenly worried she won’t turn up. I’m dying to tell her what I saw. Maybe I should have texted her, so she’d know I had something to talk about for once.

Just when I think she’s really not coming, I finally spot her, hurrying along the pavement, her ponytail bobbing up and down. I can see she’s trying to be quick but it feels like a hundred years before she turns into our gate and rings the doorbell. I hear Mum’s footsteps on the hall floor as she goes to let Ellie in, and then more, lighter steps as Ellie pads up the stairs.

She comes into my bedroom with a beaming smile and two plates of Mum’s apple cake. I take a deep sniff of the lovely cinnamon smell that has been drifting through the house, making my mouth water.

‘Sorry I’m a bit late – it’s all been happening today!’ she says, plonking herself on the edge of my bed and handing me a plate.

‘Tell me!’ I say. I like hearing what’s going on at school. It makes me feel more part of it, although it also sometimes makes me sad.

‘At lunchtime Serene got into a fight with Bethany,’ Ellie tells me. ‘A proper punch-up – Bethany pulled Serene’s hair and a whole clump came out! I saw it in her hand! It was over some boy. I don’t even know who.’

I feel a pang. I hope it wasn’t Josh. He’s a boy I like in the year above – a boy with ocean-blue eyes and a husky voice. I can’t imagine him with Bethany or Serene, though.

‘Then,’ Ellie continues, ‘Dimitri and Rafi were messing about in maths and Mr Treaker completely lost it and slammed a ruler on the desk so hard it flipped in the air and hit Serene in the face! She had to go to the medical room and now she’s got a massive black eye, too!’

‘Ohhh, poor Serene!’ I exclaim, though I can’t help laughing.

‘We shouldn’t laugh,’ says Ellie, giggling too, ‘but she’s always so obsessed with how she looks – and I’m sure she started that fight!’

‘Anyway, listen,’ she says, when we’ve both finally stopped laughing. ‘I have news you’re going to want to hear!’

I want to say, ‘So do I!’ but she’s made me curious. Her eyes are shining, her smile even broader. It must be something good, really good.

‘What?’ I ask. I take a bite of cake and lean forwards. ‘What is it?’

‘Guess,’ she says. ‘It’s about you . . .’

I hesitate. For one crazy moment I wonder if it’s something to do with Josh. Maybe he asked after me . . .

‘I can see your dreamy eyes!’ she teases. ‘No, it isn’t about Josh , Kasia!’

‘OK.’ I feel myself blushing. Ellie knows me too well. ‘I can’t guess – you’ll have to tell me.’

‘You’re going to love this!’ she insists, stuffing rather too much cake into her mouth. ‘Ooh, your mum makes the best cake!’

‘Tell,’ I demand, rolling my eyes because now she can’t speak. She swallows and grins at me.

‘Remember that story you wrote – that one that was like a mash-up of Hunger Games and Titanic ?’

‘Sort of. That was ages ago – before I was ill. What about it?’

‘It was sooooo good – Miss Giles said she might enter it for a competition. Do you remember?’

It’s weird thinking back. I was first ill in June so it must have been May when I wrote that story. I remember the bustle of our English class and the way the room went silent as I started to read my story aloud. I remember even Rafi and Dimitri had their eyes fixed on me as I read. They clapped too at the end, along with everyone else. Miss Giles was full of praise, saying I could be an author one day.

But that was six months ago, when we were all in Year 9. Now the class have moved up – they are Year 10s, with a different English teacher, working for their GCSEs. I don’t even know which classroom they are in or what time the lesson is.