Girl Next Door

I was sitting on the roof of my garage, camera in hand as I clicked, clicked, clicked at the sky above me. I remember having this notion that if I put all the photographs into a flip book, I could watch the clouds move across the sky all over again. This is how it began, really, how I knew my whole life from that point on was going to change. It was ordinary until I glanced down from my vantage point to spy the new people viewing my old neighbour’s house.

It was June, scorching hot, waves rising from the roads and pavements and my own little garage roof. I’d been daring enough to wear a summer dress my mum bought me a few years back, a little small, a little tight, but wearable all the same. Besides, no one would see me up on the roof, I was just taking photographs – and it was so hot that day.

My garage was a sun trap. I was sweating like a pig, wiping my hand across my brow for the hundredth time, when I heard car doors slam shut below. I’d crawled on my hands and knees to the edge of the roof to peer over, my camera swinging from my neck, and I watched as a family made their way up our shared garden path.

The man and woman were the same height and they wore matching jumpers of a deep shade of purple. I couldn’t get a good look at their faces, just a glimpse of high cheekbones on the woman and a prominent chin on the man, then they were gone behind the wall. After them came a slouching boy, maybe a few years older than I was, ruffled hair and pouting face, I nearly reached for my camera then to document his own set of extraordinary cheekbones but I barely moved an inch when he too disappeared from view. I thought I'd blown it, I’d been getting ready to retreat into my own house and daydreaming about a cool shower, when a girl rushed along the path to catch up. It was then that I lifted my camera, balanced firmly on my knees, squinting through the lens as the sun beat searingly down on my head.

She stopped dead when she saw me. I think it was the flash of the light on my camera that alerted her or maybe she just has the sixth sense. Whatever the reason, I was busted.

I froze too, camera still poised in the air. I watched her through the lens, saw her cock an impressively thick eyebrow at me, then a slither of pink tongue darting out her mouth. I had enough sense to snap a picture while I could, hugely embarrassed at being caught but grateful that I’d had at least one opportunity to take a photo. The girl grinned at me, shaking her head, her dark hair rippling down her back to her waist. Someone called to her and she spared one more look at me before running into the house.

Even as I climbed through the window onto my landing in the safety of my own home, even as I chugged down a glass of water I took blindly from my mother, I couldn’t get the girl out of my head. I wanted to run back to the roof, to watch as they went to their car to leave, to maybe get a photograph of the boy as well, to definitely take another one of her but I would never do that.

The problem was, I preferred photographing the unassuming, the voyeuristic. I wanted to be Martin Parr, Richard Billingham, or Stephen Shore. I wanted to be the person to force the world to look at the everyday. I couldn’t do that if they knew I was there – I bet the girl had told her family about the creepy girl on the roof with the camera.

Anyway, I was mortified. As much as I wanted to see her again, I also wanted the earth to swallow me whole so I could hopefully forget that it had even happened and she could pretend I never existed.

I thought that was the last time I would ever see the girl. I didn’t even think that her family would actually be the ones to move in next door.