I'VE been spying on my Goth neighbours, the ones who used to annoy me with their noises, but who now intrigue me with their silences as well as wafts of half conversations I get through the bathroom window.

I wasn't that interested in them until I was lying in the bath one day with the window open and realised I could nearly hear what they were saying. My ears pricked up immediately and I started straining for more every time I was in the bath.

Initially, I think all was going well with their relationship, judging by her hyena laugh and his loud guffaws, but now things seem frostier. They have stopped having their TV nights together and I see the light on in the bedroom where she sits alone while he sits in the living room, doing something very quietly.

I now know their daily patterns and it comforts me when I come in from work and peer into their flat, just to make sure they're doing what they normally do.

They get up far earlier than I do - around 7am - and are as quiet as church mice. They get home about seven-ish and tip-toe around until about 8pm when he becomes very animated and starts talking loudly.

They used to laugh loudly together at what was on TV but things have changed. They don't have their loud nights and friends don't seem to visit.

The activity usually stops at around 10.30pm when the bathroom light comes on and they're in bed by 11.15pm at the latest.

But the frostiness between them was dispelled a few nights ago when they partied until about 2am - a very rare occurrence There was a lot of Doris Day playing - not their usual musical fare. They normally listen to gloomy Marilyn Manson, not 1950s squeaky clean singing starlets.

Perhaps they'd got engaged and were celebrating, I imagined.

I don't know why I've become so intrigued but it's getting a bit like Rear Window, without the murder. Yet.

I heard her listening to the last two episodes of Desperate Housewives and I heard her switch off the TV after the first episode, obviously not realising it was a double bill. She switched on the bathroom light and went to bed just as the mysteries were being revealed. I felt like knocking on her door, telling her to get out of bed and watch the finale, but that would have given the game away.

She sometimes plays games on her computer in the nude, and he does the vacuuming.

Once I woke up and began my morning nose into their windows when I caught the shadow of a figure looming behind their bedroom curtain, peering into my window! I realised it was the male Goth taking a peek into my own bedroom. A case of one voyeur being outwitted by another.

I was being watched as much as I was doing the watching. Serves me right.

Published: 13/06/2005