All Very Hush Hush

Heather Barnes is absolutely certain that her neighbours are spying on her. She imagines them with their ears pinned to drinking glasses pressed against the party walls. It would be totally fruitless if it were true, which it is not, for she is as quiet as a heart-beat.

True, the party walls of the Birch Street maisonettes are not the thickest, and the building was constructed without much thought about sound proofing. But her neighbours on both sides have better things to do than listen in to Heather. They have lived alongside her for many years now, but know the postman and milkman better.

Quite a few years ago, the Collards, at 23, had some sort of altercation with Heather about parking spaces. On the other side, Shirley Eastway, at No 19, does not remember ever speaking to Heather about much at all and she has been living there since her husband died in 2001. Perhaps a brief nod when they bump into each other near the carefully numbered bins.

Nevertheless, Heather’s visitors, are greeted silently at the door by the occupant with one finger to her pursed lips, inviting them to share in her conspiracy. Once inside they are asked to speak in a low voice, and a radio is turned on so that any would-be listener would fail to decipher live conversation.

Actually, it means that visitors are few and far between which, to be honest, suits Heather. She is a private person who would rather talk about the weather or Wimbledon than let slip any personal information. Favourite callers are offered milky coffee served in square khaki cups which she inherited and were all the rage in the 1960s. Demerara sugar is in a matching bowl. Those who know her best may sometimes bring a gift of a small china owl, to add her collection, carefully arranged in groups on every shelf. Although there are well over a hundred, Heather can remember, without notes, who donated which and precisely when. No one can tell you why Heather likes owls so much for that would mean that she had imparted more personal information than is ever the case.

She works in an obscure role at Remicks Engineering. If she has colleagues, they are never mentioned. All she will tell you is that her firm makes parts for aviation, and that it is all very hush-hush. She drives to and from work in a spotless five-year-old Volkswagen Golf, which is changed every couple of years for another of a similar age. Remicks is three miles away, so her business miles are all of thirty a week, and even with personal journeys, she will be hard pressed to notch up as many as a few thousand miles a year. Once a week to the supermarket, where she also tops up the tank with fuel if it is not still too full. Hers is a careful life.

Now in her early fifties, she has never had lovers of either sex. She was brought up as an only child to adoptive parents, the Reverend and Mrs Barnes. They filled her childhood with their own type of love, and she became a diligent and able scholar, going on to the local university where she graduated with ease with a qualification admirably suited to one destined for some type of administrative role. She has no memories of her very early childhood and has never tried to find whom her natural parents were.

Mrs Barnes died while Heather was still studying and the Reverend retired shortly after. Heather does not speak of them now. Nor, it seems, has she inherited any religious conviction for she is not a churchgoer. What she does probably bring from her childhood is a liking for religious music. Along with her owls, the cupboards in her home are full of vinyl and CD recordings which she plays, quietly of course, on none-too-modern equipment. She is a paid-up member of the region’s concert hall, and attends every performance of church music, but eschews even classical concerts of a different nature. If the programme does happen to suit, she will sit in row G, seat 20; she gets priority booking from her membership.

Once a year, on or near her birthday, she will dine at Hudsons with Julian Ogilvy, a nephew of Mrs Barnes. She will choose the fish in parsley sauce and a then a single scoop of vanilla ice. They will exchange pleasantries but little else and of late she has asked Julian to lower his voice “for people will otherwise be listening”. Chance would be a fine thing!

Once, in 2006, she was invited to spend Christmas with Julian and his wife. It did not go well and has never been repeated, to the satisfaction of both parties. Now she spends Christmas day on her own, listening to broadcasts and recordings of religious music, more plentiful at that time of year. The volume is turned down so that the neighbours cannot hear what she is listening to. She does not entertain the idea of headphones or, still less, ear buds.

Depending on the calendar, she will be invited to the Russell’s on one of the festive days. It is a tradition she feels obliged to maintain although of late she finds it rather too raucous. Ben Russell was her first manager when she joined Remicks from university and he was sensitive to the fragile nature of his new recruit. Now retired, Ben and his wife, Caroline, have been steadfast in their acceptance of Heather with her ever-so-careful life and her almost obsessional need for privacy. She will be one of the first to arrive and to leave, after partaking of a single glass of something non-alcoholic and perhaps a warm mince pie.

Although she gets a normal holiday allowance, she rarely takes more than a single week, always in the early summer, when she will walk the Northumberland coast path from Cresswell north to Berwick-on-Tweed. It was a route she first took with Rev and Mrs Barnes as a teenager, and she has repeated the sixty-mile trek almost every year since. But this year she is considering a slightly less demanding itinerary, after experiencing discomfort in one hip.

Rather out of character, walking is Heather’s one form of regular exercise, and she is out in most weathers on one or both days at weekends. The paths she chooses are local and of a similar length. Seven miles is what she aims to complete. Five is too short, ten too far. She has not explored a new route in more than a decade. She’s a solo walker, with no desire to go with others or join in group activities. No-one would ever refer to her as an ‘outdoorsy type’. Her activities are, like everything else about her, quiet, private and undemonstrative. One might even describe them as relatively joyless, for it is hard to find what really makes her tick.

A while back, Terry, in finance, seemed to know that Heather was a weekend walker and asked her, as a favour, if she might take his dog out. He had damaged his knee playing football for Remicks Rovers. She declined, explaining that she was allergic to dog’s hair. Just possibly true; true to type, anyway.

At around nine pm each evening Heather gets ready for bed. Never still up after ten; often asleep well before then, she slumbers like an innocent child, waking only when her owl shaped, no-tick alarm clock gently to-wit-to-whoos in her ear at seven am.

It is many years since she had anything for breakfast but one slice of medium-sliced white bread, lightly toasted and then thinly smeared with pseudo-butter and fine-cut supermarket marmalade. Cut diagonally. Our Heather is no foodie. And, of course, a cup of milky coffee.

She prepares a packed lunch, for she does not like Remicks’ canteen food, nor the noise as a bevvy of unknown fellow employees explode into mid-day relaxation. A banana, a muesli bar, and another slice of the white bread, this time smeared with meat paste and cut horizontally, not diagonally, then folded in two. Her flask, a treasure since it has an owl motif on the barrel, is filled with the same milky instant coffee, although the vending machine at work does a reasonable job of replicating that flavour, too, but is less milky of course.

Every move, every item is completed in almost complete silence and with a precision that comes from years of repetition. There is no room for experimentation or variation in her life. There was one time when the water tank in the airing cupboard made a humming, vibrating sound as it replenished. A puzzled plumber was very soon called to fix that.

Evenings also follow a fixed pattern, only varied by the cycle of BBC programming - so rarely any other channel. And her television, to her annoyance now with both a flat screen and a remote control, is turned down so low that even she cannot always hear it. However, recently she has discovered that so much of what is on offer can be accessed with subtitles, intended for the hard of hearing but equally applicable to church mice! At seven pm she will take her evening meal, which like TV scheduling, has a reliable cycle. Seasonal variations are allowed to account for the changing climate and the availability of fresh vegetables.

And so, Heather’s careful, regulated life unfolds. No surprises, thank you.

But tonight, the owl door-chime hoots unexpectedly at 6.45pm and she uses her spyhole to see a man and woman in dark clothing standing close to the door. She opens it as far as the safety chain will allow.

The pair, both officers from MI5, produce identification and require her to open the door and let them in. Without further explanation, she is asked to accompany them to GCHQ. All they will say at this stage is that she has been overheard.

Footnote: Just because you are paranoid does not mean that they are not listening…