I love this time of year, when it’s already dark by seven thirty. My evening walk just isn’t the same during the summer. It’s no fun sweating while you’re just walking. Running, that’s a different story. That’s strenuous exercise. You’re supposed to sweat. But it’s embarrassing to be seen walking with beads of perspiration rolling down your temple. Makes you look, at best, unfit. At worst, insane.
But it’s not just the temperature. It’s the light. The lack of it outside. The abundance of it inside. The misguided confidence that people in fancy houses have in their big windows and the security they think it provides them is just adorable.
Curtains? Nope. Blinds? Uh-uh. But yes please to the biggest television they can find. Not only do they want to watch tonight’s big football match, but they want every person passing their living room to be able to see it too, on a screen so vast they can make out the score in the top corner from way out here on the footpath. The way I can, right now, staring in through the window of this particular house that has always fascinated me.
I’d love to begrudge them, I really would. And it’s not even envy or jealousy I feel struck with as I gaze in through the triple-glazing. It’s admiration. If this was my house, this is exactly the way I would decorate it. The off-white walls, the brown leather couches and, yes, the cinema-size screen.
There’s no one in there right now, even though the football match–and I think it is a pretty important one–is in full swing. I look around. No cars, no pedestrians, no signs of life. I shouldn’t, but I feel compelled, powerless to resist. I walk slowly up the drive, down the side of their car, some new plug-in hybrid thing I quite like the look of, and approach the glass, so close that my shins touch the windowsill.
A little boy comes into the living room. He looks around, puzzled, like he expected to find someone, a parent most likely, sitting in there. He looks directly at me, but through me, his eyes focusing on some point behind.
His reflection.
Of course. In this low light, the window is the closest thing to a mirror from where he stands. The child walks out of the room, leaving the door open behind him, and turns left down the hall. I move left with him, moving to the next window, a narrow one, and see him walk down another hall, peeking in through a door at the end, which I assume is the kitchen. He enters the room and then emerges again a couple of moments later, the puzzlement on his face increasing.
He angles his head upwards and calls out. I can’t hear through the thick glazing, and I’m not much of a lip reader, but I have to imagine he’s shouting someone’s name… or a succession of names.
The little boy climbs the stairs and I lose sight of him. I’m beginning to think someone has answered him after all, or told him to come up, when I see him land back into the hall. It’s not confusion on his face now, it’s fear.
He paces back down the hall toward me at speed and enters the living room again. I head back to the window on the right, looking in on the expensive leather couch and the massive, unwatched television to find him in the middle of the room, a tear rolling down his cheek.
This isn’t what I expected to see when curiosity got the better of me tonight. All I wanted was to be a fly on the wall, practicing a little bit of harmless voyeurism. Instead I’m seeing a poor child, no more than six years of age, discovering that he has been left home alone by someone who has thought nothing of this little boy’s safety, not to mention his emotional and mental wellbeing.
I was left alone like this a lot when I was a kid, one parent heading out to work until late in a city centre theatre bar, while the other always worked overtime in a factory. Every night there was a two to three-hour window where myself and my brother would be left home alone, the pair of us not much older than the boy now shaking and rocking back and forth on his heels in clear distress. At least we knew we were being deserted. This little boy has basically been abandoned.
I can’t imagine what he’s experiencing, but I can’t stand here wondering any longer. I can’t believe I’m doing this, but I have to. I walk up to the front door and ring the bell, which is so loud its melody must be audible across the street.
I move back to the window. It’s obvious he has heard the doorbell but is not going to answer it while the parents aren’t there. They may be absent and negligent, but at least they taught him that much.
My knocking on the door again will only scare him further. So I find the gate at the side of the house is open and go through it, tracing my way to an unlocked glass door that leads into the utility room. I pass the washing machine and dryer and move out into the hall, coming face to face with the little boy who must have heard me come in.
I want to tell him he’s safe now, that he has nothing to worry about, that I was passing and saw he was scared and just thought I would come keep him company until his parents or whoever come back. But what if I’ve made a terrible mistake? What if my presence makes him even more terrified? Instead, his expression brightens. He wipes his eyes and smiles, then runs towards me with his arms outstretched.
“Daddy,” he says. “Where were you?”