Helen Peters stood at the window, watching her neighbour Zoe Mitchell hang washing on the line. The woman moved slowly, as if every action took great effort. Helen turned away, but the heavy feeling in her chest stayed. For six months she hadn’t been able to look calmly at her neighbour, all because of that incident at the residents’ meeting.
“Mum, you’re at the window again?” Her daughter Rebecca entered the room with a cup of tea. “What’s so interesting?”
“Nothing special,” Helen dismissed, but her voice betrayed her. Her daughter grew wary.
“Mum, you sound odd. What’s wrong? Is it that neighbour again?”
Helen sat in an armchair, taking the cup with trembling hands. How could she explain to her daughter what churned inside? How to confess what she’d done?
“Becky, do you remember what I was like before?” she asked instead of answering.
“Well, of course I do! You’re my mum. Why?”
“No, I mean my character. Was I nasty? Envious?”
Rebecca perched on the arm of the chair, wrapping an arm around her mother’s shoulders. “Mum, what? You were always kind, fair. I remember you helping neighbours when they were ill. You fed Auntie Claire from flat five for a whole month when she broke her leg. What happened? Why are you asking this?”
Helen closed her eyes. Yes, she’d truly tried to be good her whole life. Worked as a librarian, raised children with honesty, never refused neighbours. And now, in her later years, she’d committed an act gnawing at her like a worm in an apple.
It began last autumn when a new letting agency took over their building. Young people came with ambitious plans: fix the roof, paint the stairwell, install entry phones. But it needed a hefty sum. Residents met for a general meeting.
“It’s a fair amount, true,” the manager, Ian Wilson, said, tapping his calculator. “But then you’ll have peace for ten years. A new roof, warm and dry. An entry phone is essential, with all the thefts lately!”
Most residents agreed. Some grumbled about the cost, but understood the repairs were necessary. The building was old, council patching did little good.
Then Zoe Mitchell stood up. “I’m against,” she stated loudly. “I haven’t got that sort of money. My pension’s small, my grandson visits, I need to help him. We’ll manage somehow without the repairs.”
“Mrs Mitchell, but it’s in our interests,” Ian tried to persuade. “We can arrange a payment plan.”
“I won’t pay anything!” Zoe flared up. “Twenty years I’ve lived in this building, bothering no one. Are you forcing me now?”
The meeting dragged on. Without full agreement, the work couldn’t begin. Residents grew restless, murmuring. Someone offered to pay Zoe’s share, but she wouldn’t hear of it.
“I don’t need your help! Managed without it all these years, and I’ll carry on!” Then she added the words that cut Helen deep: “Especially from neighbours who only know how to live at others’ expense!”
Everyone turned. Zoe stared directly at Helen. Something unpleasant, almost contemptuous, was in her eyes.
“Who do you mean?” Helen asked coldly.
“You know who. Got divorced, moved into someone else’s flat, and now you start renovations at our expense.”
A ringing silence filled the room. Helen felt her face flush. Everyone knew her history: after the divorce, she had moved into her sister’s flat while she worked abroad. But the flat wasn’t someone else’s, her sister owned it! And she had money for repairs, she wasn’t begging!
“How dare you?” Helen stood, feeling everything boil inside. “What right have you to speak like that?”
“I have every right. I’m a local, born and bred, not some blow-in.”
Something cracked inside Helen then. Hurt, shame, and anger twisted into a knot. She’d worked honestly all her life, never cheated anyone, put her children through school. And here was this neighbour saying such things!
After the meeting, Helen couldn’t settle. Rebecca called, urged her to ignore it.
“Mum, why fret? You know what people can be like. She spoke in anger, probably forgot it already.”
But Helen didn’t forget. Or forgive. Crucially, she knew something about Zoe Mitchell that could badly hurt her.
Helen had worked in Central Library for over thirty years. Once, a young man sought help researching local history for his dissertation. Helen helped him sort through old archives, finding a list of residents evicted from their building in the early eighties for unpaid council tax.
Zoe Mitchell’s name was on that list.
Helen hadn’t thought much of it then. People had hard times. But now, after the public humiliation, the memory surfaced. Helen realised she could strike back painfully.
Zoe always boasted about being a long-time resident, twenty years in the building. But actually, she’d been evicted once, then somehow returned later. Surely it wasn’t above board.
Helen wrestled with herself. It seemed ugly, unethical. But the hurt burned, giving her no rest. One evening, chatting with neighbours in the courtyard, she snapped.
“Listen, girls,” she said casually, “I learnt something interesting recently. Turns out our Mrs Mitchell isn’t quite the pillar of the community she makes out.”
“Really!” gasped Auntie Margaret from the north block. “But she’s always on about her twenty years?”
“Twenty years she might have lived here. But not continuously. She was evicted in the eighties for council tax arrears. Documents in the archive.”
The neighbours exchanged glances. This was explosive. Everyone knew how Zoe flaunted her supposed superiority over newcomers.
“Are you sure?” asked Auntie Lillian.
“Absolutely. Saw the documents myself, helping a student. Name, address – it all matched.”
The news spread like wildfire. By evening it reached every resident. Some were shocked, others spitefully pleased. Zoe’s sharp tongue had hurt many.
A few days later came the unexpected blow. Zoe came to Helen’s door. A timid knock. Helen opened it to a different person. Not the proud, prickly neighbour, but a broken, aged woman.
“Helen Peters, may I speak to you?” Zoe asked, voice trembling.
They sat in the kitchen. Zoe was silent a long time, then spoke: “I know what you’ve been saying about me. And I know you spoke the truth. But not the whole truth.”
Helen felt a pang but stayed quiet. “Yes, I was evicted,” Zoe continued. “My husband drank badly then, lost his job. I was left alone with our small son; we had nothing. Couldn’t pay the council tax. We were evicted. Lived with relatives, moved from pillar to post. My son got ill from that life, was in hospital.” Her voice shook harder. “Then my husband died. Drunk, stepped in front of a car. I got council housing as a widow with a child. Back here, this building. I was so happy! Thought we’d start anew. Son would get better, start school.”
Zoe wiped her eyes with a handkerchief. “But people remembered. Remembered the eviction. Whispered behind my back, pointed. My son heard it at school: ‘Your mum’s a drunk, you got kicked out.’ He wasn’t to blame!” Helen listened, feeling something clench inside. “I decided never to tell anyone the truth. Said we’d lived here ages, that
Helen sighed as she watched Zoe peg out the washing, the sight a daily reminder of how bitterness could linger like damp on old stone, but she found purpose now in the careful, quiet stitches of her knitting, accepting that some mistakes leave threads you can’t unpick, only weave around with greater care.