**Basement Summer**
At first, there was a crash—deafening, like a lorry ploughing into the side of the house on Ashford Lane. Emily dropped the bowl of mincemeat, glass shattering across the tiled floor, the cat darting under the table like a startled bird. Then came silence—not the usual kind, alive with street noise and neighbours’ footsteps, but heavy, suffocating. Like the quiet of wartime shelters. Even the fridge hummed to nothing. Even the clock on the wall seemed to hold its breath.
Emily froze, arms slick to the elbows with raw meat, forgetting how to breathe for a split second. Only when her heart stopped clawing at her throat did she realise—not an earthquake, not an explosion. Just Mr. William Cunningham from the seventh floor again. The old man, alone, odd. She’d noticed it for weeks—the way he wobbled like an empty vase teetering on a shelf.
Without thinking, she bit her lip hard enough to taste copper and bolted up the stairs, pulse hammering. The seventh floor, right above her. He’d lived here for decades, since the nineties. After his wife died, he became a ghost—moving slow, barely speaking. Only the crackle of old vinyl spinning in his flat at dawn, and the scent of something medicinal—ointment or balm—lingering in the hall. Sometimes he sat on the balcony in his dressing gown, staring down as though waiting for someone to climb the steps.
They never spoke much. She out of indifference; he as if he barely saw her. In their building, no one knew each other by name—just by creaking doors, by the smell of cooking, by footsteps echoing in the stairwell.
The door was ajar. She knew it would be—William always left it like that. Just in case. She burst inside, and there he was, exactly as she’d feared.
He lay in the hallway. Wrinkled blue flannel shirt, faded sweatpants. His cane and a shattered teacup beside him. Face grey, lips pressed into a thin line, forehead dotted with sweat.
“Mr. Cunningham!” Emily dropped to her knees. “Can you hear me?”
His eyelids fluttered. His breath came laboured, like he’d been climbing.
“It’s me—Emily. From downstairs. I’ll call an ambulance—”
“No.” The word rasped out. “Just… help me up.”
“Are you hurt? Your arm, your leg—?”
“No. Just weak. Fetch the chair. The white one. In the loo.”
“At least let me call a doctor—”
His gaze sharpened suddenly. “No. Enough shame already. Spare me the neighbours gawping at an old man on the floor.”
She brought the chair. He leaned on her, on the cane, hauling himself up inch by inch. When he finally sat, he exhaled as though expelling every last scrap of pride.
“Ta… You didn’t have to—”
“I know,” she said after a pause. “But I’ll stay. For a bit.”
He didn’t argue.
So she stayed.
A day. Then a week. Then the whole summer.
She mopped floors, boiled porridge, took out the bins. He hardly spoke. Just stared out the window sometimes, as if waiting for someone long gone. Other times, he napped in his armchair, cane propped against his knees like a sentinel guarding the past.
Emily moved through his flat on tiptoe, as though it were a museum. Returning to her own flat felt empty—like she’d already moved upstairs without realising. As if she’d let her own life slip through her fingers.
She’d been sacked in spring. Downsizing. The accounting department dissolved. Pointless to hunt for work in their small town. Her husband? Vanished fifteen years ago—drunk himself into oblivion, then disappeared. Her son? Army, miles away. Wrote rarely. And no one, truly, needed her. She’d grown used to it—to being quiet, to loneliness like old furniture: creaky, but impossible to throw out.
And then—him.
William. His flat. His records. His slow, steady breath.
After a week, he started talking. First about music. Then about the war. About his wife—Margaret. Met her in Manchester. She sang in a choir. He was in uniform.
“Said I looked like a moth with epaulets. I was offended. Then I couldn’t let go after that. Years together—kids, holidays, paycheques. Then her heart gave out. And I stayed.”
He talked. She listened. Sometimes he’d snap—wrenching the spoon from her hand:
“That’s not how she did it!”—then fall silent. She’d storm off. But she always came back.
Because she felt it—he was waiting.
Maybe she was too.
One evening, he said, “Your voice shakes when you’re cross. Right at the end—like you’re running out of air. Margaret was the same. Always played tough. Inside, she was crumbling.”
She didn’t reply. Because it was true.
By August, he faded. Ate barely anything. Sipped water in tiny gulps. Sat wrapped in a blanket, staring at the corner of the room as if expecting someone to step out of the shadows.
He asked, “Fetch the album. Behind the books. Find the page with the rose.”
She did. Tucked between photos—an old postcard. A woman’s looping handwriting, faded.
*Billy, don’t forget the geraniums. And take the batteries out of the remote, they’ll die.*
He listened—not to the words, but to her voice. Not closing his eyes, but his soul.
He slept. And didn’t wake.
His son arrived in September. Emily met him at the door. Simple T-shirt, face worn but calm.
“You were with him?” he asked.
“All summer,” she said.
He hugged her. Wordlessly. Tight.
“You… what were you to him?”
She meant to say “neighbour.” Or “just helped out.”
But what came out was:
“I was there.”
He nodded.
And that was enough.
