Brigitte stood looking out of her bedroom window; she could see most of the main square from there.
It was a warm, spring morning; the first nice day of the year and already children were out in the park playing games and riding their bikes, young couples and groups of friends were soaking up the sun. Brigitte felt a pang of jealousy. It was so easy for them to be out there, they wouldn’t even give it a second thought. What was so scary about it? It was just a patch of grass that lay across the road from her. The most threatening thing out there was the possibility that a bee might fly past, or a child’s football might be accidentally kicked in your direction. So why couldn’t she go out? She could sit in her garden, and she quite often did sit out there with a glass of wine and a book. The park was just like that, only it was out the front of the house... except Brigitte knew she was kidding herself. She wasn’t a normal person; she couldn’t just nip to the shops for a pint of milk or a loaf of bread. She couldn’t go to the cinema to see the new blockbuster film. She couldn’t go and sit out in the park with her book because every time she tried that awful feeling would come crashing over her in waves and would totally and utterly consume her. She had tried going out but she would get that feeling every single time, no matter how many times she went out, no matter where she went out, and in the end it was just easier for her not to go out at all. So here she was. Two years, three months since she had last left the confines of her house. Two years and four months since the attack that had rendered her housebound.