**Diary Entry – 8th March**
*It had been a long, ugly night.*
The knock at the door came just past nine. “Evening, folks,” said the constable on the doorstep. “Had a complaint about noise from your flat. Mind if I come in?”
“Of course,” Emily replied, voice trembling—not from the officer’s visit, but because her husband had just finished laying into her. Again. This time, for pouring his whiskey down the sink. When James found out, he’d exploded.
“I work my fingers to the bone on-site! And you sit at home on maternity leave like it’s a bloody holiday! Go get me another bottle!”
“No,” Emily had said, holding little Noah closer. “You’re drunk every night. He’s barely two and already terrified of you. Enough, James!”
What followed was shouting, fists, and their son’s terrified cries. Next-door Doris heard it all. Doris bloody Pritchett—busybody of the building, dialling 999 at the slightest rustle of trouble.
To be fair, Doris was a piece of work. Everyone on the block loathed her. If you so much as sneezed wrong, Doris had a complaint filed—council, housing authority, even social services.
“Susan from Number 12, that boy of hers is skin and bones! Proper neglect, I tell you,” she’d say, ringing up social workers. Turned out the boy was diabetic, on a strict diet. But Doris didn’t bother with facts.
Years back, a break-in shattered her trust in people. Burglars, tipped off (she was convinced) by neighbours, ransacked her place after she and her late husband withdrew savings for a secondhand Ford. He’d fought them, got badly hurt, and never recovered. Doris never remarried. The young tenants didn’t know—or care.
“Clean up after your bloody dog!” she’d shout at the lads walking their mastiff.
“Piss off, you old boot,” one sneered back. The dog lunged, Doris flinched. Revenge came next morning—a steaming mess left outside his door. He cursed, chucked his ruined trainers in the bin. Doris watched, smirking, from behind her lace curtains.
Now, the constable scanned the room. Noah wailed in his cot.
“Just the football match,” James lied. “Got a bit loud, that’s all.”
Emily swallowed. She knew the drill—back him up or suffer later. The officer glanced at her, saw the fear, but without her testimony, his hands were tied.
“A warning this time,” he said. “Next, it’s a fine. And apologise to your neighbour—least she cares. Rare, these days.”
James glowered. The moment the door shut, he hissed, “Next time, I’ll shut you up proper.”
Emily clutched Noah, hating herself for ever marrying him.
*”He’s trouble,”* her mates had warned. *”You’re sunshine; he’s a storm.”* But she’d been charmed by his bravado—the way he’d “stood up for her” once. Turned out, that was just possessiveness. Now, he nitpicked everything—her cooking, her mothering, even the ironing.
“Call this pressed? Useless!”
“I tried! Noah’s teething—I haven’t eaten all day!”
“Women used to birth in fields and keep working. Stop whinging.”
She’d thought it was stress. Then realised—she was just convenient. A girl with a flat and a decent job.
Fate intervened when her old colleagues visited for Women’s Day. Their laughter filled the flat. Noah giggled at the stuffed bear they’d brought. For once, Emily felt alive.
“Don’t stay off work too long,” her boss said. “We’ll help with nursery. Everything alright at home?”
Emily forced a smile.
James returned, ignored her friends. “Keep that lot away,” he spat. “Especially that grinning tosser, Liam.”
“He’s just a friend!”
“Yeah? Why’d he hold MY son?”
“Are you mad? His wife just had a baby!”
“‘Just’? So Noah’s HIS?!” James snatched a knife. “Get OUT!”
Emily fled—barefoot, in her dressing gown—into the freezing hallway. Doris found her there.
“Come on, before the bairn freezes,” she snapped, ushering them inside.
Her flat was immaculate, walls lined with photos of her late husband, Tom. “We were happy,” Doris muttered. “Not like you lot.”
Upstairs, James pounded doors, screaming. He skipped Doris’s. No one expected *her* to help.
Two days later, the constable returned. James was in custody—attacked Liam in a jealous rage.
“Good riddance,” Doris said.
A locksmith changed the bolts. Emily stepped into her flat—and her new life.
“Right, girl,” Doris said. “Do what you must. I’ll mind the lad.”
Emily divorced James, returned to work. Noah learned to call her “Nana Doris.”
The neighbours stopped calling her a nuisance.
Now, it’s *”Our Doris.”*
*Sometimes, the people you least expect turn out to be the ones you need most.*
