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Camilla, or Cam as she liked to be known as, quite enjoyed this time of day. By now she had completed the daily chores and was at the stage of actually missing the terrible twins, her eight-year-old sons Joe and Max.
As regular as clockwork, she would arrive at the little lane along from the primary school that the twins attended and would wait for them to run excitedly up to the car at three o'clock.
The two boys felt sufficiently important leaving the school gates by themselves, and Cam felt secure in the knowledge that in her rear view mirror she could watch their every step as they drew closer to her.
This particular day she was a little dismayed to find that there were road works in her usual parking spot, and being a creature of habit, she felt a little resentful at having to search for a new place to park the family car.
Cam had arrived a few minutes earlier than usual and thought she would sit in the car and have a much deserved cigarette before strolling down to the gates to meet the boys...who would be quite disgruntled to see their mother waiting for them!
As she sat looking at the little houses opposite she noticed a movement in the last of the terrace of
three. She squinted against the winter sunshine and tried to make out the shape.
Suddenly realizing the time, Cam got out of the car and walked to meet the two rascals.
The next day, winter seemed to be really drawing in, and Cam gulped down the remains of her coffee before setting off on the school run.
For some reason, she decided to park at the same spot again. She had told the twins that she would probably be there, as the road works were bound to be ongoing anyway.
Cam pulled into the same spot as the previous day and brought the car to a complete stop.
Her eyes again drawn to the upstairs window of the little terraced house...nothing, then...yes, something or someone was at the window again. Cam smiled to herself as she realized quickly that it was a person...quite elderly, and they were waving...no, she was waving, the person was without doubt a woman.
Cam gave a little wave back. She supposed that the woman was bed ridden, and from her prime spot could watch the mothers collecting the children from the school.
A bang on the side of the car jolted her back to reality; Joe and Max were there.
"What were you looking at mummy?" asked Joe, the inquisitive one
"The little old lady at the window," she replied, looking up again, but the lady had disappeared.
Every day the same thing would happen, and the little old lady got the nick name of
Mrs. Windows. Even Paul, Cam's husband would enquire as to whether or not Mrs. Windows had acknowledged her today.
At the local store one particularly cold and icy day, Cam stopped to speak to another of the mothers whose children attended the school.
Once pleasantries had been exchanged, Cam asked her if she knew of the lady in the window. Frances the other lady frowned and said that to her knowledge one of the three houses had been empty for
years. She wasn't sure which one, and she certainly didn't know any of the occupants of that terrace anyway. Cam was still daydreaming when she arrived at the little parking spot. She craned her long slender neck as she tried to get her daily dosage of
Mrs. Windows.
Being a caring soul, she would have loved to have been able to spend five minutes with the old
lady. Obviously she wanted company, stuck in a bedroom all day only having the occasional stranger to acknowledge...Cam realized that she was being
silly; after all she knew nothing of the situation. For all she knew, the old lady could have had visitors coming and going all through the day.
The next few days she didn't have to do the school run, as the twins were suffering from heavy colds, and Cam didn't send them to school. Strangely she found herself thinking more and more about
Mrs. Windows...she was surely becoming paranoid.
The first day of a new week dawned, and the boys appeared to be fighting fit after spending the previous day building snowmen in the heavily carpeted garden with their father.
Cam drove them to school, and the noise level in the rear of the car rose uncontrollably. Cam pleaded with them to be quiet and longed for her return home to a calm and serene atmosphere...she loved her boys dearly, but they were extremely excitable today and were anticipating snow ball fights at recess.
Once firmly ensconced at school, Cam drove home and began her daily routine of returning her home from a bombsite to a normal house.
Just before she was due to collect the twins, the phone rang. It was Paul, and he was telling her to watch how she
drove. Apparently the weather was once again closing in, and driving conditions were deteriorating.
Cam heeded his warning and began her necessary journey. As she neared her spot, she noticed someone in the road...it was an old
lady...Mrs. Windows!
Cam stopped the car by the lady; she had been absolutely sure that the little lady was bed ridden and was shocked to see her standing there.
"Are you alright dear?" she asked Mrs. Windows, but the elderly lady just smiled knowingly at Cam and waved frantically at her. Cam could see that she wasn't about to move from the spot so she drove a way along the road thinking that poor
Mrs. Windows was probably suffering from a form of dementia. She was standing in the road in a thin summer dress, and it was mid-December.
Cam knew that she must lock the car and go back to the poor soul and get her firstly out of the way of on coming traffic; and then she would make a call to Social Services.
She didn't quite see what happened next, but suddenly there was the sickening sound of screeching brakes and a deafening thump.
Time seemed to stop and then...wailing and screaming ensued. Cam froze...where were her two
boys? She ran like a gazelle towards the scene...a mangled truck was up on the
curb, it's cab firmly wedged against a tree.
In a blind panic Cam looked at the scene: the truck driver seemed to be not too badly injured, and an onlooker was busy reporting the accident on a nearby public phone.
Cam screamed out the names of her precious sons, who miraculously had for once in their young lives heeded their mother's advice. They hadn't been able to see her car from the end of the road in its usual spot so had waited at the corner for Cam to come and get them.
Cam held them both tightly to her chest and thanked God... a couple of people nearby had received cuts and grazes, but apart from that a potentially fatal accident had been diverted.
"Mrs. Windows!" Cam screamed...people turned to look at her. "She was here...in this very spot...she's ill, very elderly, where is she?" Cam asked feeling very
weak now. But although she insisted that the old lady had been there, nobody else had seen anyone or anything in the road.
"But surely that's why you swerved...to avoid her" continued Cam, but the truck driver insisted that he had skidded on some black ice. Evidently that spot was well known as an accident black spot, and people had been campaigning for over twenty years to lower the speeding limit on that particular stretch of road.
Years later she was helping Max, now aged twenty-eight and his family to pack up their belongings, as they were due to move house soon.
Joe, who worked nearby in a local bookshop, had stopped by in his lunch hour to lend a hand.
He handed over a bundle of old papers that had been found at the rear of the shop's old basement and told them that they may as well use it to wrap some glassware or ornaments in.
Cam stooped to pick up the paper on top...it was dated 15th June 1981. The headline read of a fatal accident ...a seventy-five-year-old lady had been knocked down and killed the previous day whilst crossing a road to meet her
neighbor's son from school...there below was a picture of Mrs. Windows.
Cam sat down, her blood running cold, and a tingle ran down her spine. Mrs. Windows had been warning her away from
disaster. Her ghost had definitely sat at the window and waved, but it wasn't any old wave, she had been waving her away from that spot...saving her and her precious boys from almost certain death. When she had realized that Cam hadn't got the message,
Mrs. Windows had blocked the road, ensuring that Cam moved far away.
Cam looked up at her two grown sons and smiled...never would she forget that dear old lady...the apparition at window...
"Thank you Mrs. Windows," she said to herself quietly.
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