Meet The Neighbours! — a short story for English reading and speaking

Sarah knocked on the door.

A loud, confident rapping that said she meant business.

Who did these people think they were anyway?

It was fine with the last neighbours — a family of three. But then the woman got pregnant again, and they moved away. Said they needed a bigger house.

But these new people were something else. They didn’t talk to anyone.

Sarah had gone round the day they moved in to introduce herself and they opened the door a tiny fraction and peered out at her like she was a thief.

She tried a couple of other times, and that was it. She made the decision they were just rude and anti-social.

But then the lights. And the camera. And then the drone.

The lights she could kind of understand. Everyone needed security — and these people looked terrified of the world, so it made even more sense.

But they were unbearably bright. The slightest movement outside — a cat just mooching around — and the lights flooded through her curtains.

They woke her up in the middle of the night.

Then the camera. What was that all about?

Having a security camera, she could also understand. But this thing was high up — and it moved around. It followed her every time she stepped outside her front door.

The woman in the house opposite said the camera was always focused on her front room window. It got to a point where she closed the blinds because she thought she was always being spied upon.

The lights and the weird camera were bad enough. But then the drone.

Sarah first heard it as she was in her kitchen cooking dinner for herself one night. She thought it was someone mowing their lawn. It had the same sound.

But then she looked out and noticed something up in the air. And there it was — a drone with a camera attached, a lens pointing straight at her.

That was enough.

She called the police, and they said they would send someone round to look at it. But then the officer mumbled something about it being out in public and it not being an offence.

She knew she had to take action in her own hands. So here she was.

She banged on the door again. But nothing.

The curtains of the front room were closed. She leaned over to the window and tried to peer in, but the curtains were pulled together in such a way that they did not allow one fragment of light inside.

Why would they do that in the middle of the day? These people were an odd bunch.

Sarah tapped on the glass of the window and called out.

“Hello? Anyone there?”

She had never done anything like this before. Never intruded on someone so much. But she had never felt so intruded upon herself. Their behaviour was unacceptable. She had to talk to them about it.

She tapped again, a little louder this time.

“Hello. I need to talk to you.”

To the side of the house, a small pathway ran to the back of the house. She could go back there. It was not as if she were sneaking around. And she was being so loud about it, they couldn’t possibly accuse her of trying to break in.

If the police wanted to talk to her about it, she could ask them why they had not done anything about it.

Why had they left it all to her?

She walked down the little path and came to the back of the house. The garden had been abandoned. The old neighbours maintained the garden — cut the grass and tended to the plants.

But now it had been left. There were even discarded pieces of trash blowing around.

Sarah came to the back door and knocked loudly on it. Best to make her presence known to them. No skulking about or trying to hide.

As she tapped her knuckles on the door, it moved ajar a little. They had left it open.

What a strange thing to do for people who seemed so preoccupied with security.

She waited, imagining one of them to come to the door with a look of suspicion on their face. She was ready for them.

But no one came.

She pushed the door open a little more.

“Hello?” she called out. This time in a smaller voice.

The interior was in total darkness.

Without another thought, Sarah stepped inside the house. Was this breaking and entering? She had not broken the door.

It was open, and she just went in.

She got inside and saw pictures on the walls of the hallway. To the side of her was the kitchen — it looked like a total mess.

Piles of trash and flies buzzing around.

Her eyes adjusted to the darkness, and she looked at the pictures.

They were of someone walking down the street in front. Her street.

She gazed more at the pictures and then noticed who the person was in the photographs.

It was her.

Her mouth fell open, and she stepped further down the hallway. Every picture was of her.

Some of the pictures had markings on them — times and dates when the pictures were taken. A small comment like Seems in a hurry or Smiling to herself.

She came to a room at the front of the house and gently pushed the door open. Peering inside, she saw it was empty.

No furniture, no decorations — nothing.

But the walls were covered in photographs of her. Some small, some very large — like A5 size. All of them stuck to the walls and most of them with red marks and comments.

Dates, times and comments about where she was going, who she met, the clothes she was wearing.

Sarah’s heart was thumping out a steady rhythm in her throat.

Who were these people?

And why were they taking so many photographs of her?

Then she felt a presence at the doorway.

A voice: Sarah?

She turned to see who was there.