Carmel Harrington - The Woman at 72 Derry Lane - A gripping, emotional page turner that will make you laugh and cry

At first, despite herself, the woman made Rea want to scream. She should speak up, stand up for herself. Why did she let him get away with his crap time and time again? She thought of Elise again and her conscience pricked her. That woman next door was someone’s daughter too. Who was she to judge, when she knew, better than anyone, that nothing was ever as simple as it appeared?

Terrified, no doubt. Trapped. She looked at the walls, the windows, the door. If anyone knew what it felt like to be trapped, it was her.

She walked down to the hallway, peering through the peephole of her front door. Derry Lane was quiet. Cars parked on either side of their road, under leafy oak trees. The street lights were on, casting shadows. Her house, number 72, was right in the middle of the cul-de-sac. She noticed a light on, across the way, in Louis’s house. She wondered if he was still awake. Probably on his iPhone; he was never off that yoke. But then she copped a strange car parked out front. Ha! A sure sign that his mother had a new man visiting. Linda might as well put a red light above the door and be done with it, the amount of traffic that went in and out of there.

Maybe she should call her all the same and tell her about the goings-on next door. Ask her to help. But no sooner had the thought struck her than she discounted it immediately. Linda Flynn was a silly, vacuous woman, who only had one thing on her mind – men. Maybe she was right. But at any rate, she’d be no use nor ornament to the plight of Mrs Dickhead next door. This was going to be on her shoulders, no one else’s.

At least the smell of the bins had eased, escaping through her opened windows. There again, she may have just gotten used to its stench. That was the thing with bad smells, eventually you didn’t notice them any more. Is that what it was like next door? The woman didn’t notice any more?

Rea felt powerless. She fantasised about running out of her home, jumping over the fence between their houses and pounding on his front door, demanding to see the woman. She’d bring a weapon. She looked around her and her eyes settled on the black poker sitting beside her fire. That would sort the boyo out good and proper. She’d land that up his arse and he wouldn’t sit down for months afterwards. Ha!

But thinking and doing are two entirely different creatures altogether. And Rea hadn’t stepped outside her house now for near on two years.

Her hand hovered over the phone. The last time she’d rang 112 they made her sound like an interfering old busybody. Someone who enjoyed the drama. They couldn’t be more wrong. She’d had enough dealings with the Gardaí to last her two lifetimes. She had no want nor will for any of this.

Rea wished her family were here. Luca would be out that door, George right by his side, ready to fight for that young girl.

Suck it up Rea, you’re on your own.

Turning to her phone, Rea asked the closest thing to a friend she had these days.

‘Siri, should I call 112?’

‘Calling emergency services in 5 seconds.’

‘Righto Siri, there’s no messing with you, my robot pal.’ In truth she was relieved that she took that decision from her. Rea gave the operator the details quickly and then waited. It was now as quiet as a graveyard next door. The walls of the Victorian semi-detached they lived in were thick, which made it difficult to hear anything unless a racket was being made. But when the windows were open in both houses, sounds would drift over. They snuck their way through the crevices of the houses, telling tales on what went on behind closed doors.

The saying ‘if walls could talk’ had never felt so apt.

Rea had been trying to distract herself by watching one of her favourite programmes, Suits , when she finally heard a car pulling up outside. She rushed to look through the peephole. There they were, the boys in blue. Although she didn’t believe in any God, she still found herself praying that the woman was okay. Rea didn’t even know her name. Wasn’t that the craziest thing? They’d moved in next door nearly a year ago and managed to avoid any real interactions with her or anyone else on the road. Okay, she wasn’t that sociable herself these days, but still. It was strange that nobody knew anything about them.

She used the banisters to help pull herself upstairs and peered out of her bedroom window to get a better view of the street below. There were two officers standing side by side in front of number 70. They pounded loudly on the front door and she held her breath, waiting.

The porch light flicked on and someone opened the door. Rea strained her neck, her head pressed close to the window pane. The cold glass was a welcome relief to her hot forehead. Someone moved forward out of the shadows, towards the Gardaí. She held her breath once more and crossed her fingers behind her back. Let the girl be okay.

Dickhead stood there in all his glory, holding his two hands up, gesturing wildly, to match the wild tale he was no doubt spinning. She couldn’t see if anyone was beside him, no matter how far she leaned over the windowsill. Maybe if she opened the window wider, she could see it all.

No big deal, you can do this, she thought. Her heart started to hammer in her chest so fast that her head buzzed. A vision of an exploding head popped into her mind. Only the head looked a bit like a big watermelon. That’s it, she’d officially lost it.

Her hands shook and her stomach began to flip as she pushed the window open wide. The boundaries of her prison were closing in on her day by day. She could open the windows downstairs, but found it difficult to do so up here. There was no rhyme nor reason to it.

She looked around her bedroom in panic and thoughts crashed in on top of her. I’m getting worse. Soon, I’ll not be able to leave my bedroom, never mind the house. An image of her lying dead on her floor, becoming cat food for an imaginary pet, made her gasp out loud. ‘I never liked cats,’ she said to the listening walls.

As she backed away from the open window, with every step her breath slackened. Finally she was at a distance that she could manage, that she felt comfortable with. With every foot she moved away, her levels of anxiety dropped tenfold. Calm again, she closed her eyes to concentrate and listened to the voices that were drifting upwards. It was better, she wasn’t noticed hanging out of the window anyhow. She didn’t want the neighbours to see her; a silent witness, rubbernecking their lives.

One of the Gardaí spoke first of all. He sounded like Daniel O’Donnell, with a lovely soft Donegal accent. ‘Good evening, sir, we received a call that there was a disturbance coming from your house. May we come in?’

She couldn’t hear the response. ‘He’ll be feeding you a line of bullshit,’ she whispered to his unhearing ears. ‘Arrest the dickhead, wee Daniel, there’s only one place fit for the likes of him.’

‘Even so, we’d still like to come in, see for ourselves, that everything is in order,’ the guard replied, firmly. Good man, Daniel. You might have a lovely soft voice, but you are no fool. There was no nonsense with this one. She appreciated that. Then they all disappeared from her sight and it went quiet once more. They must have gone inside. The soft click of the door closing confirmed that. She pointed to her head and said, ‘Up there for dancing, Siri, up there.’

‘Let me check on that. Okay, I found this on the web, options for dinner and dancing,’ Siri replied in an instant.

She was puzzled for a moment. Then she realised that Siri, of course, wasn’t privy to the inside joke she and her husband George had shared for decades.

When was it they’d turned the popular phrase, up there for thinking, down there for dancing , around for the first time? Before the kids, anyhow. Whenever one of them would get something right, they’d point to their heads and say, ‘up there for dancing’ and the other would finish it off and say ‘down there for thinking’. Comedy gold. Well, it always made them laugh leastways.