She went to work thinking about her, thinking it odd that she already knew the routine of someone she’d never met, and felt concern when that routine should be broken. In her head she rationalised it, a vacation, a visitor, a cold she might have woken up with that very morning. Still none of the rational answers did much to ease the unsettling feeling the strange woman left her with.

~

“Hey Bette!” Alice clicked her fingers in Bette’s direction at lunch, “Oi … Shane asked you how’s the new place?”

Bette snapped out of it and smiled, “Hey,” she looked to Shane, “it’s great thanks, you guys should come over this weekend and check it out?”

Shane nodded agreeably, “Might just do that?”

“What are you neighbours like?” Dana asked, as she stirred something green and frothy in a glass with her straw, something Bette suspected was meant to be healthier than it looked for the budding tennis pro,

“They’re nice,” Bette replied, aware that she didn’t have much to say about them,

“What about the quiet mouse opposite?” Alice asked, “spoken to her yet?”

Bette shook her head, “No …” she paused, adding an air of drama or suspense to the tale, looking at Alice more than the other two as she continued, “she still comes out and goes swimming, goes back in, returns for a cigarette and then stays hidden for the rest of the day,”

Alice frowned, “Huh …”

“Maybe she’s deaf?” Dana offered, having heard how Bette’s mysterious neighbour had declined to make Alice’s acquaintance,

“I don’t think so,” Bette mumbled,

Though they hadn’t in fact spoken there’d be times she found some reason to slip outside, catching just the end of the other woman’s smoking time. She knew she saw her there, heard her there and made a conscious decision not to speak to her, which in turn Bette chose to respect.

“Weird,” Shane agreed, as they went back to sipping their coffees in relative silence just as before.

~

That night they hit a bar in Bette’s new neighbourhood called The Planet, going under Shane’s instruction that it was a great place to meet girls on a Friday since, of course, she’d already been everywhere.