A sisterhood of night watchers

Insomnia can be a very strange thing. The world feels different if you are awake when all around you sleep. Like you have slipped time, into a slightly dislocated or even different world rather than your own. Every familiar thing looks different, smells different, sounds different. In Silent Street this was especially so. 

The street was a good example of English architectural evolution, houses of every shape, size and age all crammed close, with faded regency mansions almost tripping over badly built narrow little cottages. There was no master plan, just a jumble of people brought together in a street that had been entirely cut off at one end, so light was swallowed into shadows and sound bounced off walls to disorientate the unfortunate stranger to get lost in its trap. 

Peg was perched inside one of the deep windows of the house - a shuttered window seat with flakes of paint that scratched her through the cloth of her summer nightdress. This place, this hour - it was hers alone. Each night she woke up full of worry, around 2 or 3 in the morning. Staying in bed to toss and turn was pointless, so instead she had taken to sittig here, watching the moon rise and wane until sleep returned. 

Tonight there was a full moon, and even the darkest corners of Silent Street were cast in an unnatural silvery light. The cats and rats played out their own dramas and amused Peg, who recognised each local mog. But there was something else - a movement just at the corner of her eye.  A woman! A woman walking slowly but deliberately down the street, in a nightdress not unlike her own. Peg thought at first the poor thing might be lost, mad, old - one of those unfortunates she passed in London streets but tried to ignore. But no, this was a woman who was strong, detrmined, and very much awake. She had a familiar face - someone from this street maybe? Peg had not yet learned the names and faces of the people who lived around this strange old house. 

'Curious' she said. But she didn't venture out, not yet. Just watched, and waited - could this fellow insomniac become a friend?