I was just going to say

She looked at me with so much suspicion that I nearly wrote and signed a confession on the spot. Not that I was guilty, far from it. I was only leaving my sister's flat nothing wroing in that. But my face wasn't recognised and the rumour mill hadn't spread the word that I was staying for a few days so the neighbour obviously thought that I had just completed a break in or maybe there was something even more juicy to report. She had me banged to rights for just being a stranger.

My  sister lived on the kind of estate that you wouldn't want to run over a child on. I mean, I know you'd never actively want to hit a child anywhere but there are some places where the stakes are higher, where punishment would be swift, local and violent. Being a stranger raised more eyebrows on this urban estate than in the rural pub my mum and dad frequented.

Her suspicious looks convinced me I needed to say something, otherwise the police would have been picking me up before I'd reached the train station.

‘I'm Sarah's brother’ I said, ‘just stopping over for a few days.’

‘Well, I was going to say,’ she replied.

Were you? Were you really? I thought to myself, cos it didn’t look like it. It didn’t look like you were going to say anything; it looked liked you were just going to stare at me, your eyes filled with suspicion, your mind racing with gossip. Hiding your nosey parker mind behind your neighbourhood watch exterior. Desperate to get down the shops to share the latest titbits of scandal with the other busy bodies.

She was obviously disappointed, my revelation had derailed her, turned rumour into mundane, taken away the tabloid headlines she was planning to deliver. Her face changed, enthusiasm drained, frustrated to find that I was a brother not a lover, a relative not a fugitive.