WINDFALL | TOM BLYTH

Graduating from Julliard School on the verge of a worldwide pandemic, Tom catches one of the last flights out of JFK back to England and spends the next twelve months at his mother's Nottingham home. Throughout this time, the apartment across the hall sits quietly empty. No one has been seen or heard heading in or out, and their letterbox brims with advertisement pamplets and pizza vouchers. Tom knew that their neighbour Ms. White passed on not long after he left for New York City. His mother reported that Ms. White's daughter, who was living with her boyfriend at the time, no longer appeared in the vicinity soon after.

Although his mother claims that movers were never spotted, Tom has little reason not to believe that his childhood sitter has long since moved on. He doesn't harbour high hopes of seeing her again, until he returns from a grocery run to sunlight spilling into his corridor through an opened door that isn't his own. Surprise and curiosity lengthen his already longer-than-normal strides, but when he gets to the threshold, he is compelled into something he has never done before: pause.

Tom used to run in and out of this place as free as the wind when he was a boy. He spent so much time in 5A that it was as though he lived here instead of next door. He knows the flat like the back of his hand, and nothing seems to have changed. A golden mantel clock bearing a rotating pendulum still sits atop the foyer console; daisy-printed curtains still hang before the windows. He feels sixteen all of a sudden, faced with the familiar decor and staring at what he is certain is the back of Lottie's head. The only difference between now and when he was sixteen? She's not on her feet. She can no longer be on her feet.

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𝐚 𝐭𝐨𝐦 𝐛𝐥𝐲𝐭𝐡 𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲
𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐬𝐨𝐨𝐧: 𝐦𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡 𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟓