Free The Way Out by Vicki Jarrett

on one foot, trying to grab the handle without setting my other foot down. That way I wasn’t really inside, wasn’t crossing their threshold, not all of me. But then, without knowing quite how it happened, I was.
    â€˜Hello?’ I called out, but the house was quiet. Not a dead silence, more tranquil than empty. I continued along the hall: solid wood floors, a gilt-framed mirror, a shoe rack crammed with a jumble of trainers and boots. My heels sank into the soft pile of the patterned rug. I called again, projecting my voice up the stairs. ‘Hello-oh? Anyone home?’ I’d already decided that I wouldn’t attempt to deliver my pitch although, in some ways, it was a tailor-made opportunity to demonstrate the benefits of greater home security. I could’ve been anyone.
    Still no answer.
    I peered into the first room. Comfy looking sofas, walls lined with bookshelves, an upright piano in the corner. Two empty wine glasses together on the coffee table, dregs pooled into red dots.
    There were photographs, professional studio shots of a couple and one child, a little boy, posed on an entirely white background, a safe well-lit place where nothing but their happiness could exist and no other realities could intrude.
    I looked at the spines of the books. Mostly fiction, some good stuff, some trash, bulky hardbacks on architecture and gardening. A ladies’ watch lay on the shelf, thin gold strap, small oval face. I picked it up and listened to it tick with calm precision. Time seemed to pass slightly slower and in a more orderly fashion for the owner of this watch than it did for me. Each of her seconds was measured and delivered to plan, forming an unbroken chain of identical seconds stretching inboth directions without interruption or flaw. Perfect.
    I could take this watch. The thought made my pulse skip and speed up. It’d be worth a bit. I could sell it. I glanced around the room, trying to think like a burglar. What else would I take?
    My eyes rested again on the family photos. The man had his arm around the woman’s shoulders and was leaning in towards her. She sat with her hands in her lap, not even trying. Not having to. The boy, he looked about six, was dangling around the man’s neck like a monkey, grinning. One child. All the care and attention this couple had to offer lavished on this one lucky kid. Would they take something from him by giving him so much love and security? Perhaps he would grow with a sense of entitlement that robbed his own achievements of meaning. Or maybe it would all be peachy perfect. Could it ever be?
    The peaceful atmosphere of the house was making me sleepy. I hadn’t slept properly for weeks. The leather sofa looked too soft, too enveloping. The dining chairs had tall wooden backs and hessian covered bases and looked deliberately uncomfortable. I sat in an old armchair. And it was just right. Supportive, yielding, but not too much. Perhaps this was how a good man should be. Perhaps this was the way the man in the photographs was.
    I could take the watch. I wasn’t going to get anywhere with the referral business so perhaps I deserved to come out of today with something in my pocket. What would it be to the woman that lived here but a minor inconvenience?
    But I couldn’t. This fact annoyed me. I should’ve been able to. I should’ve been harder. What good were morals doing me exactly? Couldn’t eat them. Couldn’t burn them and warm my hands on the glow.
    I put the watch back on the shelf and left the sitting room. I should’ve left the house altogether.
    In the kitchen, glass bottles of different shapes and colours were arranged along the windowsill. The sun shone through them scattering patches of coloured light around the room, like pieces of a luminous jigsaw. Recipe books were bookended by herbs growing in terracotta pots.
    There was a knife block in blonde wood, with protruding handles of brushed satiny metal. I