Oxford Shift

She knew there was something wrong as soon as she turned the key in the lock and pushed the door open.  She was not an imaginative woman, but she felt the tremor of tension in the air.  She stood on the doormat looking down the hall at the closed doors, wondering which rooms were empty, which one held her new friend, Ruth.

There was something about the quality of the silence in the flat that told her she wasn’t alone.  Someone else was here, but if it was Ruth, why hadn’t she come to greet her with her big smile and her customary call of ‘Kettle’s on!’?  She had been looking forward to a cup of tea all the way home from the shops.

‘It’s only me.’ The words came out from her dry throat as a hoarse whisper. ‘Are you there?’

She started to walk towards the kitchen, but paused after a few steps. She put her shopping bag down and eased her aching arm.  She heard, or maybe she only imagined it, faint sounds from the other end of the flat.  Ruth must be there.  At any moment she would say, ‘Come into the kitchen, Joyce.  We’ll have a cuppa.’

But Ruth didn’t emerge from her room, although the force of her personality, like an electric field, kept Joyce rooted to the spot, a third of the way into the flat.

It seemed as if she had been standing there for an hour, although it was probably only a minute or so, and then Joyce saw that one of the doors was open, as though by magic, as though no human agency had turned a handle, or pushed it ajar.  She blinked.  It had certainly been closed just a few seconds before.