Panic button

Someone’s life is in danger when a widow becomes fearful of a young salesman she’s invited into her flat

The strangest thing has happened. One minute I was having a polite conversation and now there is a boy on the floor, outside the room I’m in. I’m locked in the bathroom, sitting on the roll-top, with my fingers touching the red plastic of the panic button, wondering whether to dig them in.

I can hear him breathing out there. He’s very low, that’s where the breathing sounds seem to be coming from, like he is trying to push air right under the door. Imagine, such a thing happening to a woman like me, a respectable widower of West London, comfortably past retirement age.

I could never have envisaged any of this when I heard the buzzer go…

I could see him on the monitor outside, quite handsome, a young man in a purple shirt with a lanyard around his neck saying he used to be in the Army and wanted to talk about it.

I said through the intercom, “That’s all very well, but I don’t quite know what you mean.”

He took a breath, like he hadn’t expected a response, and then, looking right into the camera, he said he was selling cleaning products at a reasonable price and would only take a moment of my time. He sounded Northern and that was a cause for concern.

In a last-ditch effort, he held a feather duster up to the camera, limply, hopefully, and I was quite out of those, so in the end I just buzzed him up. Even though there is a sign at the gate that says no hawkers.

What else could I do? I took one of my pills for my nerves, tightened my robe and let the boy up. I answered with the chain on, looking him up and down.

He looked too skinny for the Army and short, and I told him so. He just laughed and said he had come back off some tour (I forget the country and I forget where we’re currently occupying anyway, so it would’ve been no use). Then he said he was having a hard time given some of the things he had seen and was having trouble finding a real job due to his dispositions, so, if I didn’t mind, he would like to show me some sponges, an array of different polishes and one of those long pipes for cleaning out drains.

Then he heard the sudden noise of a door slamming from the other flat on my floor and he almost leapt out of his skin. He apologised, saying sudden noises still get to him.

“I suppose you had better come in,” I said. I really did feel quite sorry for him then.

Once he was in, he started looking around, could barely hold my gaze at all.

His hands quivered as his eyes ran along the pattern of the pink marble hallway floor and the tall bookshelves that rose above us.

“People don’t usually try their luck with this sort of thing in Chelsea,” I told him, and he thanked me for the opportunity.

There was a sadness in his eye as he ran his hand through his hair. He was shyer than I had expected.

He just kept staring in wonder at the place. I said, “So…?” And only then did he seem to remember what he was there for.

He started reading out price lists of certain items. “Five dusters, £10. Bleach is 10 too, the full set of polishes is 20, rubber gloves are six and if you buy five items I get a bonus,” he said.

It was all going a little fast for my taste. I invited him into the living room.

He was quite a handsome fellow (have I mentioned?), vulnerable and strong enough. I put him in the large white linen chair, as I lay back on the daybed.

“My name is Stephen,” he said. But he didn’t look like a Stephen.

“I’m Miranda,” I said. And after a nervous laugh he began to send a text on his phone. That was when

I excused myself.

I left him there, went into the hallway and paused before the kitchen to try to type out what was happening to me into Google:

“Man at the door Northern. Boy with cleaning products. Handsome boys hawking.” And as I did, I could hear him talking quietly on his phone, a little giddy.

You hear about this sort of thing. Glamorous retiree bound up, left for days with only a bottle of water, while her apartment is ransacked and emptied.

When he finally went quiet, my Google results came through. I wandered towards the kitchen looking at them. “DON’T ANSWER THE DOOR TO THESE PEOPLE,” my screen told me, with a blurred picture of a man holding a bag of cleaning products, just like his.

He was silent out there as I rifled through my drawers: all sorts of liquids, unguents and syringes in there from various diagnoses and days gone by.

I just needed something to hold him off with. I heard the footsteps coming towards me. That was when I realised I was better off in the bathroom – it locked at least, and the panic button was in there too. His feet quickened, I was sure they did, tapping along the marble.

“Miranda?” he said, quite high and innocent. And then he found my syringe in his neck.

And now, you see, I am holed up in the bathroom and the boy on the floor has just stopped breathing. I remove my fingers from under the panic button, quivering. Best not to touch that, people would only come and ask questions.

It’s the strangest thing.

When this happens.

I do hate pushing the serum in. Their little eyes going dead, all winsome and confused.

He looked just like the boy from the British Heart Foundation did, when he slid down the bookcase, displacing half the books and leaving the place so untidy, only last month.

I just needed something to hold him off with