The woman from number nine could set her clock by the old man across the street.
She saw him come out of his house at seven every morning, almost to the minute. He’d walk slowly down to his front gate and turn out along the street in the same direction, every weekday. It was his daily constitutional. He’d be gone for about fifteen minutes. She couldn’t help admiring his almost religious devotion to keeping himself as fit and healthy as possible. All this was true until that particular Tuesday morning. Being an early riser, she’d been sitting by her front window since soon after six, working on her needlepoint tapestry. At around seven-thirty, having seen nothing of the elderly gentleman from number eight, she began to wonder, and by a quarter to nine, she was definitely concerned.
Although she felt that it was not her place to interfere, there were good grounds for thinking that something was wrong. She considered the embarrassment that could result if she notified someone and it turned out that the old man had simply decided to have a lay in. To avoid this possibility, she thought it best if she made an anonymous call to the local police station to have someone check on him. Surely, this would be the neighbourly thing to do. By nine o’clock she could no longer ignore her anxiety and used her cell phone to look up the relevant number. She dialled and heard a friendly voice ask how he may help.
At this very moment, she saw the front door of number eight open slowly and the elderly woman from up the road at number seventeen come out.
She gently pressed the ‘end call’ button.