Quiet Neighbors Read Online Free PDF

teacher at her primary school wearing one of those long cotton skirts with tassels of silk along the hem and tiny mirrors stitched on like patches, could remember the cheap green dye rubbing off on their homework as Miss Pol-something sat with worksheets on her lap and told the children how well they’d done, how pleased she was. The blouses made Jude think of Miss Pol-whatsit too. They were loose and smocked with bell sleeves and drawstrings through the necks, the strings bound at the ends with gold thread or finished off with bells. There was a shop in Camden where you could still buy it all, this and incense sticks and cheap brass elephants, but it wasn’t real. It wasn’t from the seventies, and some of it wasn’t even Indian. Jude pulled at the neck of one of the blouses: 100% viscose, made in Korea.
    She took a dress exactly the shade of green she remembered from Miss Pol … perran? kennan? … and a quilted waistcoat and turned to the dressing table. The top drawer was a tangle of beads, sunglasses, and hair bands, sitting in a rubble of cheap outsized earrings and loose change from before the Euro. Jude saw some pesetas and francs and got as far as smiling at the memories they loosened before the guillotine fell.
    She opened the next drawer. It had bras tucked into dome shapes and pants folded in squares, and she knew their owner washed everything together—cheap Korean tie-dye and white cotton undies—because everything in the drawer was a uniform murky grey. But if the choice was a fourth day in her own or someone else’s clean, no matter how halfheartedly clean, she didn’t have to think for long. She lifted a pair of the thickest socks and a pair of paler (and so perhaps newer) knickers, decided not to trouble with a bra because they all looked enormous, and ventured to the bathroom.
    Twenty minutes later, she followed the smell of coffee downstairs and through a door beside the passage she had flitted along the night before.
    Lowell was standing with his back to her, bent over a toaster with a pair of wooden tongs in his hand. Jude cleared her throat and he turned.
    The flare in his eyes came and went too swiftly for her to give it a name.
    â€œAh,” he said. “Excellent. That’s better. Sorry I don’t run to a hair dryer.” He gestured vaguely towards his neck as though apologising for Jude’s wet hair on hers. “You could perhaps wrap it up in a towel.”
    â€œIt won’t take long,” Jude said. “I’m not blessed with luxuriant tresses.” She could feel her mouth twisting up and could hear the bitterness in her voice. She saw a sheet of shining black spread out on a wooden floor and then, thank God, the blade came down again.
    â€œMarmalade, honey, jam,” said Lowell, ferrying jars from an open cupboard to the kitchen table. “Or, dear me, perhaps not.” He squinted into the jam jar, then opened a bin with his foot and dropped it in. “Marmite,” he said. “And Nutella, my guilty pleasure.”
    Jude sidled into a seat as he put a plate of toast and a cup of coffee, dark as treacle, down in front of her and pushed a butter dish forward.
    â€œThank you,” she said.
    â€œI’ll just nip up and … ” said Lowell, waving his hand around again to display his stubble and messy hair. “I don’t suppose you left the water in?” And then, at her look, “No. No, of course not. I can’t think why I said that. I … ”
    â€œDo you have sisters?” said Jude, taking pity on him.
    â€œThat’s it!” he said. “Exactly. Thank you.”
    She looked around the kitchen while he was gone. She was fine. She had decided in the bathroom that she needed to get out of here, decided as soon as she saw the towels, the soap scum on his razor, the plughole. The kitchen was one last thing to be endured, and then she would leave.
    It must have been impressive