room, as I realised that my quelling-the-nasty-side thing obviously wasn’t permanent. It didn’t seem to matter how well we’d been getting along, talking about slash persons. All it took was this one little comment and a tiny smirk from Jasper to bring the past weekends rushing back at me, pushing me over the edge into shrew territory. I put my hands on my hips then and let it rip.
‘You know, I like it here. It’s a bloody great apartment for the price, and the people here are really nice. So what if they’re old? They care about each other, and that’s more than I can say for any of the apartments I’ve lived in before this.’ I paused for a breath. ‘God, I could have died in one of those places and no one would have known until the smell wafted out or someone’s cat coughed up my eyeballs. If you had any guts you’d come downstairs with me and actually have some lavender shortbread and maybe play a game of croquet. It wouldn’t kill you.’
Jasper just smiled an amused smile. He leaned back on the balcony, calm and composed. As if he owned it, really. ‘No idea what you’re talking about. Just never heard of lavender shortbread before, that’s all.’
I took my hands off my hips, uncertain. ‘Oh.’
‘I’ll play a game of croquet. Have some of that lavender shortbread too, if you’re offering.’
There was a pause. I cleared my throat. Cleared it again. ‘OK, then. Let’s, um, go.’ And I grabbed the tin out of the kitchen, trying to avoid his gaze as I passed by. Then, together, we trundled off downstairs.
Down in the garden, Mr Nelson was setting up the trestle table and the ladies of the Lodge were hovering around him, waiting to put their darling little china plates of miniature sandwiches and butterfly cakes onto it.
‘Here, I’ll give you a hand with that.’
Jasper, to my surprise, went straight over to help Mr Nelson out. When he was done, he introduced himself. I put my tin of shortbread on the now erected table and introduced him round to everyone else. Mrs Holland, who made the best cucumber sandwiches—buttered, without crusts, the secret was to use real butter, not the low fat, olive oil, canola-based stuff that seemed to be all you could get in the shops nowadays—Mrs Kennedy, who made the best iced tea, Mr Hughes, who made the best Victoria sandwich, and the two Miss Tenningtons—identical twin sisters—who weren’t the greatest cooks, but were always able to provide the best gossip in the whole building. We overlooked the fact that they made half of it up. It was still good gossip.
Introductions over, Jasper and I made ourselves comfortable in two low-slung deckchairs to watch the first game of croquet. We had to have those chairs—everyone else claimed their bones were too old to get out of them. When Jasper had watched long enough to work out what was going on, we played a game ourselves, highly unsuccessfully—the two Miss Tenningtons creamed us with their years of experience—but we had a great time anyway.
As we played, I got to have a better look at Jasper. I hadn’t really had a good chance before, during the tour of the apartment. And then, of course, after the lavender shortbread incident there’d been a lot of deliberate non-eye contact. But now I saw he was taller than I’d first thought. Very tall. Maybe six-foot-four? Thin too—but not in the too-skinny ‘my mother never fed me’ way—and very dark, with almost black hair and equally dark eyes.
The one thing I really noticed, however, was his manner. My God, but he was lovely. He was charming, in that fifties kind of fashion which you see only infrequently these days, in women or men. Not the kind of fake ‘let me open the door for you, my dear’ sleazy charm that makes hard-core feminists want to pull their armpit hair out in frustration and leaves the rest of us wishing we’d had the good sense to grow some so we could do the same, but the kind of charm that makes everyone around the person who exudes it feel good about themselves.
It’s a gift, that kind of charm. And it was a gift that Jasper was using in full force that day. He was laying it on thick—flirting shamelessly with the Miss Tenningtons, who tittered around coquettishly, loving every minute of it and vying against each other in the way only identical twins probably can for his attention. It occurred to me that with his looks and his manner he should have been Irish. Or a film star. One of the old ones. The proper ones, like Jimmy Stewart.
I stopped myself then, realising I was letting my imagination get the better of me. What was I going on about?
When the game was finished, Jasper and I sank back into our deckchairs with some iced tea and a plate heaped full of tiny cucumber sandwiches, a few butterfly cakes and some of the lavender shortbread, which was proving to be quite a hit.
‘So?’ I eventually said to him, mouth full of butterfly cake. ‘What do you think?’
‘They’re the best.’ He held up half of the butterfly cake he was eating. ‘This place, though, it’s a bit strange.’
‘What do you mean, exactly?’
‘Er, croquet on the lawn? Butterfly cakes? Cucumber sandwiches? Bit like being in the middle of a Miss Marple film, isn’t it?’
I understood what he meant then. All too well. I’d had the same thoughts myself for the first few weeks after I’d moved in. ‘Don’t worry, sooner or later you’ll hear Mr and Mrs Ruben in apartment 21 screaming at each other and throwing the crystal around and you’ll take the Miss Marple thing back. I did.’
‘Ah. So these are just the civilised people?’
I nodded and laughed as I dusted some icing sugar off one side of my mouth. ‘Pretty much. They’ve all got their secrets, though, just like everyone.’ I leaned in towards him then. ‘Mr Hughes, for example, has been having a rendezvous or two with Hilda Tennington. I’ve caught her sneaking out of his apartment a few times now.’
‘Really? Hilda? Sly old dog.’
‘Apparently he needs his eye drops put in for him.’ I nodded as conspiratorially as I could before I leaned back out and started talking normally again. ‘What I really meant to ask you about was the room.’
‘Oh. The room. I’ll take it, if that’s all right. Long as you can promise me I won’t be the one who’s murdered at the start of the midday movie.’
‘I think I can promise that.’
‘My piano? That’ll be OK too?’
‘It’s fine with me. It’ll be nice.’
‘What about everyone else? They mind?’
I looked around at them all. Somehow, I didn’t think so. ‘Jasper, if I know them as well as I think I do, they’ll probably be knocking down the door to have sing-alongs. You’d better learn how to play “A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square” before you move in. It’s their collective favourite.’
‘Easy enough. Then I’ll take it.’ He stuck out his hand for me to shake to seal the deal. ‘But only if you call me Jas.’
Chapter Two
So, Jas it was.
And after the ladies had made him polish off the few leftovers on the table we waddled back upstairs. I made sure we were out of earshot of anyone else before I told him the one and only condition of his moving in.
He could only stay till the end of the year.
I
