Her gaze strayed to the house opposite. It was much the same as theirs. Semidetached. Red-tiled roof. But less unkempt than many of the neighboring properties. The walls were pale green, a much nicer shade than their own, and the front garden was filled with floral bursts of violet and yellow and orange.

Aster wondered who lived there. More important, whether any teenage boys did.

At the top of this house across the street was an open window. She could see curtains, drifting in the lightest of evening breezes. There was something else, too. A glimpse of black and silver, sleek and elegant.

Aster pressed her palms against the glass and waited for the curtains to still. There it was again. A telescope.

Were the nights ever dark enough to pick out the stars above this unfamiliar town a million miles from the moorlands and vast, black skies of the home she had loved so much? A hotness burned behind her eyes.

She flung herself on her bed and buried her face in the pillow.

And so Aster Lockwood did not see the swivel of the telescope seeking out her bedroom or the careful adjustment of the focusing mechanism, a few turns to the right. She did not see a shadow move from behind the curtains to stand in the square of glass lit by the cool fire of moonrise.

She did not see the watcher then, or when she returned to her bedroom after an ill-tempered hour watching television with her family. She did not sense the heat of a stranger’s gaze, and if she had, she would not have understood it. All thoughts of the telescope and its owner had long since slipped from her mind by the time she undressed for bed, a blur of pale skin framed in the window of her new bedroom, the fall of the lamplight shading in her curves and hollows like a body in a crime scene photograph.

11

Sunday 29th July 2018, 9:43 P.M.

27 The Avenue

In the house next door and separated by only a brick wall, Audrina Clifton had the uncomfortable sensation that she, too, was being watched.

In the stillness of that summer’s evening, drawing her nightie over her gray curls and rubbing in face cream, she became possessed by the conviction that she was not alone.

Her ears picked up the faintest drift of laughter.

Like a child playing hide-and-seek, she pressed her liver-spotted hands to her face as if that might make her disappear from prying eyes, the callus on her thumb rasping against her skin.

Middle age was now a memory to Audrina, but she wasn’t one to worry about her advancing years, the slackening of her skin or pouching beneath her jawline, the arthritis that swelled her joints. On the few occasions she had needed to use her wheelchair, she had found herself invisible. But while she was not embarrassed about the scars that time had left upon her, she resisted exposure to a stranger’s gaze.