can I help you bring any boxes in?’
We were both looking towards my car, on the drive. The boot was open. There was a large box sitting in it that I’d foolishly packed in situ and now I didn’t think I could pick it up. His words were music to my ears.
‘Well, there’s only the one box. The removal firm’s bringing up the big stuff tomorrow. It’s just me and a few bits and bobs today. My friend was supposed to be helping me, but she’s on an emergency date. She’s coming later, hopefully, as long as the date doesn’t go too well, for chips and dips. Low carb and low cal, of course. And I’ll have to hide the chocolate. She’s one of those who counts everything. Her body is a temple.’
Too much random information? Probably.
He looked at me. Amused, I guessed. Or maybe horrified – that a mad, rambling lady had moved in next door.
‘No, I don’t mind at all. Happy to.’
We walked over to the car. There was the box, loosely masking-taped at the top, as well as loads of carrier bags and paper bags and a few plastic baskets. I was not the most organised, but I was going to try and be, from here on in. He heaved up the box and carried it in through the front door. I trooped behind him.
‘Where’s it going?’ he called over his shoulder.
‘Upstairs?’ I ventured. ‘Sorry, is that okay?’
‘That’s fine. I could do with losing a few pounds.’
That was so not true. He had a lovely body. I had a good look at it as it was going up the stairs.
‘Be careful,’ I shouted. The staircase was quite narrow and I wasn’t sure how secure that box was. It had been a bit damp when I’d found it at the back of my old garage, under Jeff’s golf clubs. He hadn’t bothered taking them when he’d moved to Gabby’s – he probably wouldn’t have time to play, what with all the shagging.
Will had to take very slow, measured steps. Goodness, he had a nice bum, I thought. He was wearing 501’s, I could tell, by the label, and his bottom was very round and very firm. Probably one of the nicest I’d seen. Jeff’s was always a bit scrawny.
Will had two more steps to go. He huffed the box to the top step, then turned his head to look at me a little quicker than I was expecting, as I was still checking out his lovely bottom. I was caught red-handed, wasn’t I? I flicked my eyes back up to his face. He knew exactly what I’d been looking at.
‘Where do you want it?’
‘Oh,’ I said, squirming. ‘Just leave it on the landing. I’ll unpack it from there.’
‘Okay.’ He came back down, smiling. I made sure my eyes stayed on his face. I didn’t want them wandering downwards again. Especially as he was now facing me. Well, he would be, wouldn’t he? He was hardly going to come down the stairs backwards on his hands and knees – although it wasn’t a disagreeable image… Oh dear. I was becoming a bit of a nuisance in my own brain. I appeared to be a slightly pervy, out of control divorcee and I hadn’t even received my absolute yet…
‘Well, nice to meet you, Daryl,’ he’d said, on the doorstep, and shook my hand.
‘You too, Will.’ His handshake was warm and firm. He really was very good looking. Was I blushing slightly? God, I hoped not. I watched him as he disappeared into his front door, giving a cheery wave to the back of his head in case he turned round, like the nutter that I was.
So. It was an auspicious start. Friendly neighbour helps new neighbour move in while new neighbour pervs at friendly neighbour’s bum. Fabulous. Then he’d seen me illegally disposing of Freya’s stuffed, cuddly whale. I’d moved it with me, just in case, but she’d told me by text ‘just to get rid of the enormous, embarrassing thing’ and I couldn’t face going to the tip with all those jolly people that go there for fun, at the weekends. So, last Sunday morning, I sought opportunity in the form of a skip that had appeared over the road for someone’s building work and went and chucked it in there, before running back home, feeling a mixture of pleased-with-myself and terrified. Unfortunately Will had spotted me darting back across the road looking left and right like a fugitive and had waved at me jauntily from his kitchen window. He’d seen everything, hadn’t he? I knew he had because last Wednesday a poster temporarily appeared in the window of his front porch saying ‘Save the Whale.’
‘Very funny,’ I’d told him, on the Thursday, when I’d popped over to return the polka dot cake tin.
‘Couldn’t resist it,’ he said. ‘I had that old poster in my summerhouse.’
‘Very good,’ I’d replied drily, ‘as was the lemon drizzle.’ (Which was so not dry.)
I raised my eyebrows at him. He raised his back.
He’d spotted me eating it. Last Tuesday night, really late. In fact it was about two a.m., as I’d been up till then attempting to unload boxes, in between dancing to songs on my new digital radio. I’d been happily stuffing my face with lemon drizzle in front of the telly in a very unladylike fashion, whilst watching old repeats of Sex and the City, when he’d clocked me. Both our houses have a ‘side return’ and my sitting room is in mine; I’d taken down the tragic curtains from the window in there and hadn’t yet made plans to replace them. God knows what he was doing up at that time, but he’d seen me at it. I’d caught a very brief glimpse of his face at his window before he quickly pulled the blind down.
Oh dear. The secret middle-of-the-night cake eater foiled again.
‘I’m really sorry about that,’ confessed Will. ‘I’m really not a stalker or anything. I was awake and just having a potter around. It was only a split second.’ A split second, but he’d seen enough; me being an absolute pig. I needed to invest in a blind for that window, pronto.
So he was a bit of a joker, an insomniac, a very nice, helpful guy and extremely good looking. This is what I knew about Will. And he knew that I was a glutton, a secret bottom-watcher and someone who dumps things in other people’s skips.
And now he’d seen me face down, drunk on our drive.
Oh dear bloody god.
I felt absolutely terrible but I had to go into work. There’s never anyone to cover for me. Well, there’s Elaine, on reception, but her voice is a bit whiny and she always takes a huge breath at the end of every line, which I think puts listeners off. I work in local radio. I’m a weather presenter. Seven times a day I read the weather at Court FM, in the centre of Wimbledon, and I have done for eighteen years. I don’t mean to show off, but I am really good at it. I’ve got a nice voice (it’s cheery, not too soft, not at all abrasive), I know my stuff and I can ad lib a bit, too. This means if a presenter wants to chat to me a bit after my weather bulletin, I can hold my own. I can sometimes be quite funny. Last week, when I was in the studio with Rob Wright, morning presenter (specialist subjects: local town planning and tennis – he’s ever so good when Wimbledon is on… he can talk about retractable roofs and pitch quality for hours), there was a lovely guy in there with a guide dog, waiting to be interviewed about current funding and footpaths. I finished my report with ‘… So expect light rain, spells of sunshine and the odd thundery shower and there’s a dog currently licking my knee, which is lovely.’ The listeners love that sort of thing. They text in and say so.
It’s a big, buzzy office buzzing
