TRUE-LIFE
One minute I was cooking breakfast, the next I was on the menu...
Danielle Ascroft, 44, Gateshead
Sipping my coffee in the kitchen, I heard my husband Miles, then 45, call from our bedroom across the hall. ‘Who’s that shouting outside?’ he groaned.
It was 9.30am on a Sunday morning in August 2022.
I loved relaxing Sundays, and on this one Miles was enjoying a lie-in, while I made us a fry-up.
My daughter, then 14, was asleep in her room.
Sure enough, I could hear a woman’s voice coming from the front of our block of flats. She sounded drunk.
I frowned.
We’d moved into our two-bedroom, ground-floor flat seven years earlier.
I was good mates with a few neighbours, including Debbie, who lived nearby.
We’d sit and chat in her front garden.
Most of the neighbours looked out for each other.
Stop to chat, pass the time in the communal gardens on a sunny day.
It wasn’t all roses, though.
Some people from the flats across the street could make trouble, drinking, arguing and shouting.
Police were often called down to sort it out.
Me and Miles kept our heads down, however.
‘Best off staying out of it,’ I’d tell Miles.
Only, now, as I heard the woman’s voice getting louder, irritation bubbled.
‘It’s a Sunday,’ I muttered, rolling my eyes.
Miles plodded into the kitchen in his dressing gown. ‘Sounds like Debbie?’ he said, as the woman wailed on. It did a bit.
‘I hope she’s OK,’ I worried. She wasn’t usually a troublemaker, so I decided I’d better pop out and check what was going on.
‘Now you’re up, get the bacon on, I’ll be back in a sec,’ I told Miles, grabbing my jacket.
As I stepped out onto the street, the woman’s cries sounded more desperate.
I rang Debbie’s buzzer, but there was no reply.
Next thing I knew, Kerry grabbed a chunk of my hair
Then I realised the howls were coming from a front door a few flats down.
Walking over, I suddenly saw a woman in a frenzy, waving a bottle of wine above her head.
I recognised her.
She was called Kerry and had lived in a flat opposite until a few years earlier.
I didn’t really know her, but knew who she was.
She was careering towards me, brandishing the half-full bottle of wine as if to swing it at my head My heart dropped.
‘Don’t do it,’ I heard another woman shout, a neighbour from down the street, as Kerry stormed over.
Kerry snarled, her face twisted in rage.
I could see she was angry and drunk, but it made no sense.
I’d barely said two words to her in my life.
Had she mistaken me for someone
