It is muggy and warm and humid with little to no breeze and I am fed up. I sit up from the reclined garden chair, throat parched, hand shielding dry eyes from the sun’s glare as I peer down at my legs and arms. Not an inch of skin has tanned in the two hours I’ve been sat here. What’s good about a bought of weekend sun if you can’t even tan? The air is thick with the silence that accompanies a hot day like this; the feeling that you’re swimming through viscous liquid that’s been poured all over you.

A buzz by my left ear. I swat at the passing fly, agitated with both the weather and my inability to kill such a simple organism. My skin sucks at the chair as I sit up to reach for my now lukewarm glass of gin and tonic and I swirl the straw, taking a little less than quenching sip. I’m done with summer. I would go inside but it’s even warmer because the AC’s broken.

I settle back down into the chair resignedly and pick up my book. It’s frightfully dull, and I can barely finish a page before a chatter of voice floats over the fence on my right and catches my full attention. The voices are hushed and barely permeate the thick liquid atmosphere, but their tone is hasty and I can just make out the words. The first distinctly male, the second and higher-pitched female.

“We _have_ to bury it deeper this time. Last time a bit of the head was sticking out and my mother nearly saw!”

Then—“Well _you_ dig it then—my back’s still wrecked from the last one. Just hurry up before she comes back.”

“I won’t be able to hurry up cause this damn spade’s too small!”

“Well then use the shovel!”

I freeze in place, my muscles locking as I don’t dare to breathe. All heat drains from my body, leaving a singular bead of cold sweat to trickle down my back. The book falls to my lap with a slight thud. Was I hallucinating? Hearing things? Perhaps I needed to start medications again. The neighbours were new next door. I’d never met them before, only seen them briefly crossing the road to visit the welcome party at the house opposite theirs. Naturally I hadn’t attended as the whole—aching cheeks from fake smiles, pointless conversation, family recipes—isn’t really my thing. _Probably saved my life by the sound of it._

“Just go grab the bag whilst I deal with… this. And don’t forget the gloves this time, it was a nightmare getting the stains off.”

Sounds like they don’t know how to bury something. Intrigued, I slowly regain my ability to move and creep towards the part of the fence I know has a small gap in the wood where a knot used to be. I press my eye to it, focus on the scene in front of me. A man, his back to me, bent over with a shovel in his grasp, digging in the flower bed that was so prisitinely kept the last time I had looked through the hole (I wasn’t being nosey, just curious). He stood up to run a hand over his forehead (I’m guessing because I couldn’t quite see his face) and sighed. The female voice returned. The man’s back was still in my line of sight.

“It’s in the bag.”

There is the rubber wobble of gardening gloves being pulled on, and then the rustle of plastic.

“God, it’s disgusting. No wonder she didn’t want it in the front garden.” The man audibly gagged.

“Can we just hurry up before she gets back?” I imagine the woman looking over her shoulder back up towards the house in a sudden wave of paranoia. _Ha, _I thought, _wrong way to be looking. I’m right here._

“I dug the hole a lot deeper this time.” There was a thud.

“Happy to see the back of it. Let’s hope we won’t have to do this again.”

“Uncle Rick and his bloody gnomes. Why he had to buy one that looked exactly like her is anyone’s guess.”

“I wouldn’t say that in front of her.” The man warns.

Gnomes_, of course_. They’re burying a garden gnome.

I relax and step away from the fence, retreating to my sun lounger which is now baking hot. I gaze at the new rose bush I have planted recently as a gravestone for my own mother, who had died herself merely weeks ago. Roses for their beauty, but ultimate pain when you get to close. Can’t say I miss her. Daft old bat had her time. They don’t all get memorials, but I wanted to know where she was buried so I can whisper all the reasons she is in that dark dank dirt.

On the sun lounger, which is now roasting hot, I think; thank god it was a gnome and not a body or something.

Because surely there couldn’t be _two _murderers living on the same street… especially not as next door neighbours. That would have made the summer barbeque I was planning awfully tense!