Margaret had been at number ten for 31 years, and in her view the young lady who moved into number twelve in March had absolutely no manners.
She’d be off at seven every morning and back after dark. Never a wave. Never once did she say good morning. Margaret would just watch her from behind the front room curtain, the woman hurrying down the path with her head down and her keys in her hand.
‘Would it kill her to say hello?’ Margaret asked her sister on the phone. ‘Some people just can’t be bothered.’
“Have you said hello to her?”
“It’s not my place, Jean. I was here first.”
Jean didn’t answer, and Margaret changed the subject. The question, though, was still with her when she put the phone down.
Mind Your Manners
She thought about her son and the fact that she’d wait for him to ring because she didn’t like to bother him. Then she thought about the church coffee mornings which she’d stopped attending as no one had ever asked where she’d been. She thought about the six weeks she and Frank hadn’t spoken at all back in those days, each of them waiting for the other to go first.
She’d always called it manners. Sitting by the window, she wasn’t at all sure about that any more.
The next morning she was at her gate at 7.00 sharp, in her coat, with no reason to be there.
The door to 12 opened. The young woman came out, head down, keys in hand and stopped when she saw her.
“Good morning,” said Margaret. “I’m Margaret. I should have said that in March.”
The young woman just looked at her for a couple of moments, and then her face crumpled slightly.
“I’m Becca,” she said. “I thought you didn’t like me.”
The story is fiction. The point of it isn’t.
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