Cloudy with a Chance of Love

by Fiona Collins

  ‘Is it too much?’ he asked, looking suddenly unsure and patting himself on his flat stomach. ‘I had it in the back of a cupboard. It’s from some fancy dress party Angie and I went to, years ago.’

  Angie… His wife that had died…

  ‘No, it’s great,’ I said. ‘It’s excellent. You… er… look fantastic.’

  I, too, had decided to dress up a bit. It still wasn’t an outfit – I was just wearing jeans, a black polo neck and a cardigan wrap thing – but I’d put on some velvet cat ears and had drawn some whiskers on my face with black eyeliner. It now seemed a pretty feeble token effort in the face of Will’s superhuman one.

  ‘Catwoman to my Batman,’ he said with a smile. ‘Cute.’ Did he mean the situation – that we were both dressed up like a couple of plonkers? – or that I looked cute? Could I even be cute, at my age? I doubted it.

  ‘Do either of us look scary, though?’ I asked.

  ‘No, not really,’ he laughed, ‘but we might surprise a few kids. Come on in.’

  I wondered, as I stepped into his hall, whether he’d have Halloween music on – ‘Monster Mash’ or some other dreadful song – but the sound of Tracy Chapman was coming from the living room. Her one about the ‘Fast Car’. I loved that song. It was a song about escaping, the wind in your hair. Just driving, with someone’s arm round your shoulder. Nice taste in music, I thought.

  ‘Would you like me to take my shoes off?’

  I’d wanted to solve the shoes-off dilemma. You know, when you go round someone’s house and you want to look nice, but then you have to take your shoes off because they’ve asked you to, and you realise you have your Simpsons socks on that you got last Christmas, and that your legs, without shoes or boots on, and in skinny jeans, look like golf clubs. I’d thought ahead and solved that tonight by wearing straight cut jeans – that with any luck hugged my ample arse and didn’t make it look like a runaway beach ball – Converse, and nice stripy socks. Shoes on or off, I’d hopefully look all right.

  I also hoped my clothes said casual chic. My black polo knit was an oldie but a goodie. Not too try-hard; cleavage contained. My pale pink wrap blanket-y cardigan was soft and pretty. Now I’m getting on a bit I have to be careful with my colours. I wouldn’t go so far as to visit a woman called Veronica in her home in Sidcup and have my colours done – where I pay ninety quid to have a rainbow of coloured scarves held up to my face – but I do make sure the colours next to my face are the right ones. If I wear black I try to layer a paler colour on top.

  ‘I’ve brought the stash,’ I said, after I’d taken my Converse off, and I handed over a bulging Tesco carrier bag full of goodies. I’d popped there on my way home. The place had been full of orange and black and purple, with plenty of Halloween-over-kill themed everything. In a couple of weeks it would be Christmas stuff everywhere, and as soon as that was swept away, on December the twenty-sixth, it would be Cadbury Creme Eggs and Easter bunnies.

  ‘Great,’ he said, taking it from me.

  Will’s house was warm, and everywhere was nicely lit with lamps. He had a lamp on the hall table and there was one on the sitting room tallboy – I could see into the room, from the hall. There were no hideous ‘big lights’. I had forever told Jeff to ‘turn the big light off’, as he’d come home from work, whack it on, and it would completely over-ride all the good work of my carefully positioned side lamps. He did it in the morning, too, in the winter. Shoved the big light on in the bedroom and I’d scream. Everything looked cold and harsh. I hoped Gabby was currently enjoying Jeff’s ‘big light’. She’d been like me – she’d loved what she called her ‘mood lighting.’ It was funny that I’d never be stepping foot in her house again and Jeff was going home there every single night. I missed her house, sometimes, and those fab getting-ready-to-go-out times, when she’d put on Britney and be wild and vivacious and funny and I’d sit on the bed and laugh as she danced in her bedroom in her bra and knickers. Showing off. Being Gabby…

  I shook her from my thoughts. Will was having a quick rummage through the carrier bag.

  ‘They had a BOGOF on Fun Size Snickers,’ I said.

  ‘Excellent! I love those. We’ll keep a few of those to one side, for us. What would you like to drink?’

  ‘Just a soft drink, please,’ I said. ‘I over-did it a bit last night.’

  ‘I won’t ask,’ he said.

  No, don’t, I thought. I was still quite happy for Will to think I was out on another date with Ben last night. There was no way I was going to tell him about the singles cooking, and Dex who was really Derek, and that awful kiss. I couldn’t bear to think about it myself.

  I followed Will into the living room. Oh lord. His bum, clad in blue-grey synthetics, was quite large, chunky, and peachy. Tight and firm. I remembered Ben’s – slim and boyish and disappointing. Will put my carrier bag on his coffee table, next to a bottle of red wine and two glasses. On the floor was a large wooden bowl, half-filled with sweets and wrapped chocolates.

  ‘I’ll swap the wine for elderflower,’ he said.

  I was glad of the low lighting. I was sure I was blushing a little bit. I was also glad of my decision not to drink tonight. Staying sober would definitely be best in this situation, I thought.

  ‘Thank you for inviting me,’ I said. ‘Last year I was still getting lanky teenagers in Scream masks at half eleven. Not that I’m saying I’ll be here that long. I mean, I might only be here a couple of hours… You might get sick of me long before then. I…’

  He didn’t look bothered. He wasn’t looking put out by my rambling. He was smiling. ‘Yep, it’s a bit intimidating when they’re taller than you. Then you realise to your horror that it’s little Jimmy Tustian, from number thirty-seven, all growed up!’

  I laughed. ‘I had a horrid Freddy Krueger last year. He kept brandishing his claw glove menacingly. Then he told me he didn’t like my selection of sweets and did I have any Smirnoff Ice.’

  ‘Funny.’

  ‘Not really, when it’s five past midnight and you have a slightly pissed, teenage serial killer on your doorstep.’

  ‘Ha, yeah, maybe not.’

  We looked at each other and grinned. We made each other laugh. That was a really nice thing. Will’s face was all animated; his eyes were all brown and luminous. I realised I’d been staring at them a little too long.

  ‘Right,’ said Will, picking up the glasses and handing me the bottle of wine to carry. ‘Let’s see about that elderflower.’

  I trotted behind him to the kitchen. It was really nice. It had wooden units, green tiles and it was clean and tidy. He also had lots of gadgets on his worktops; breadmaker, food processor, spiralizer… Sam had told me all about those – courgettes were the new spaghetti, apparently (‘forty calories instead of two hundred – result!’). Plonked next to the kitchen sink was the most enormous pumpkin I’d ever seen, with a huge, completely non-scary, grinning face carved into it and a jaunty, jagged lid as a hat.

  ‘That’s fabulous!’ I said.

  ‘I’m quite proud of it, even though I say so myself,’ said Will. ‘I’ve christened him George. He took me ages.’

  ‘I’m impressed. Clever boy,’ I said. Oh god, that sounded flirty, and I hadn’t meant it to – it was the sort of thing I used to say to Jeff, back in the early days of us living together, when he’d managed to make a bed, or put something in the bin.

  Will didn’t notice anything amiss. He turned to get a bottle of elderflower out of a cupboard. As he reached for the bottle I could see his muscles, rippling under grey-blue Lycra.

  ‘I won’t drink either. As a very serious doctor type,’ he said, in a comedy voice, ‘I shouldn’t really be drinking on a school night anyway.’ He poured half an inch of elderflower cordial into each glass, filled both with water from the tap and added a cube of ice from his freezer drawer in the fridge.

  ‘Cheers,’ he said, and touched his glass against mine.

  I giggled.

  ‘What are you giggl
ing at?’

  ‘Batman drinking elderflower cordial! It’s just struck me as incredibly funny.’

  ‘You see him more as a Scotch man? Bourbon?’

  ‘Yes, bourbon,’ I said. ‘Batman drinks bourbon.’

  ‘Another time,’ said Will. ‘Okay, let’s light George,’ he said. ‘Then we’ll eat.’

  Will had made a gorgeously hot chilli. It was all ready, in a huge pot, and he produced it from the fridge like a magician produces a rabbit from a hat.

  ‘Would you mind helping me chop some stuff for a salad?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, of course. I mean, no, of course I don’t mind.’

  ‘Would you like a pinny? I know you’re a bit of a mucky pup with getting stuff down yourself.’

  I giggled. ‘No, I’m fine.’

  We stood side by side at his kitchen worktop, Tracy Chapman now singing about ‘Words’, and chopped in companionable silence. It felt weird. It had been well over a year since I’d cooked side by side with a man. And it hadn’t happened very often. Occasionally, I’d recruited Jeff to come and help me in the kitchen and even more occasionally, he’d agreed. He hadn’t minded doing something exciting, grinding up spices in a pestle and mortar, using an electronic doo-dah to dice tomato for a salsa, thumping a tied freezer bag of ginger biscuits for the base of a cheesecake – manly jobs that made a great noise and invited lots of praise. He’d always done it with a grumble and a bluster though. Will and I were different – we just got on with it. It was soothing; it was nice. It was really nice to have a man as a friend and do companionable things with him.

  ‘I haven’t had a sous chef for a long time,’ said Will. ‘It feels… nice.’ He was thinking the same as me, and reminiscing about Angie, wasn’t he? I bet she was beautiful. I bet he longed to look left and see her standing there, assisting him. Not his dumpy next door neighbour, ham-fistedly wielding a vegetable knife over a cucumber. I wondered what she did look like; I hadn’t noticed any photos of her anywhere. I tried to sneak a look round the kitchen, without him noticing. No, nothing, though why would people have photos up in a kitchen, anyway? Then, I saw it, small square photo on the fridge. A smiling woman with long blonde hair. Wearing an apron and holding what looked like a mixing bowl. That was her; that was Angie, and she was a baker, like Will. That’s why he baked in the middle of the night; it must comfort him.

  I wasn’t concentrating. I’d just cut a piece of cucumber so thin it dissolved into nothing. I was nervous, suddenly, and my hands didn’t seem to be working properly – I was currently the Sweeney Todd of salad chopping… I remembered Will had been talking to me. About it being nice to have me as a sous chef.

  ‘Me too,’ I blushed, trying to get my chopping focused and neat, and my brain back in gear. ‘It’s normally just me, myself and I – unless Freya comes at the weekend and then she doesn’t help me – she just talks at me while I do everything, and points out my mistakes!’

  ‘Freya? Is that your daughter?’

  ‘Yes, she’s twenty-one and a genius. I’m going to her graduation tomorrow night, at St Mary’s in Kensington.’

  ‘The cathedral? That’s just up the road from St Martin’s.’

  ‘Is it? Oh, right. There’s a dinner, afterwards, in a restaurant. It should be good.’ Well, I hoped it was going to be good. As good as it could be, with Jeff and Gabby in attendance. A chill of nerves went through my body. Tomorrow night. How would I survive it?

  ‘What did she study?’

  ‘Economics. She got a first. She’s now an investment analyst.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘She’s not coming here to live with you?’

  ‘No. She’s off, into the big bad world. I’ve got a room for her though… if she ever wants it – which really needs decorating at some point.’

  ‘Hint taken,’ laughed Will, his Bat ears wobbling. We both went to reach for the tea towel on the worktop at the same time. Our fingers met over it, Will’s on top of mine. We kept them there, for a second. It felt lovely. Then I pulled my hand away and Will let me take the tea towel.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  He looked away, then wiped his hands on a dishcloth he grabbed from the sink.

  ‘Excellent chopping,’ he said, in a bright voice. ‘I think we’re done here. Shall we eat now before the little bastards turn up?’

  We were sitting on Will’s brown leather sofa. Me as Catwoman – I’d taken my pink wrap cardigan off now. Sod my colours; I was hot. Him as the sexiest Batman I’d ever seen. The mood lighting was bathing us both in a soft, golden glow.

  We smiled at each other, slightly awkwardly. I’d finished waffling on about all the funny characters from the speed dating night, even though Will hadn’t asked me anything about it; George the pumpkin was lit and on the front doorstep; the huge bowl of treats was just inside the front door, on the hall mat; and… I’m afraid I was letting my thoughts wander off in a very dangerous direction. I felt – damn it! I really couldn’t help it! – excited, to be sitting so close to Will. I couldn’t help but admire his biceps and his legs and his chest. I couldn’t help but look at his face and think how warm and smooth it looked, and that he must use moisturiser. I couldn’t stop thinking about how nice it would be if he put his arm round me and pulled me in close to him. I wished suddenly I was drinking, although it would probably make things worse. Will was the sexiest Batman I’d ever seen, even better than Clooney. Damn him, frankly, for being quite so gorgeous.

  Stop it, I thought to myself, stop it now; you’ve got children to terrorise. And we heard the first ring of the doorbell.

  ‘Brace yourself,’ said Will, getting up. ‘Here we go,’

  As always, the little ones came to the door first. They were very sweet, with their over-sized costumes and their big eyes and their high, squeaky voices. I had a flashback to Freya, dressed one year as a ladybird, one of those ones that are supposed to be evil because they have red spots on a black body. I’d made that costume: black leotard and tights, red felt dots stapled on as we tried Pritt Stick but they kept falling off. She had not been impressed and wouldn’t take her coat off.

  It was fun, being with Will and doling out the sweets, and seeing the children’s little faces, and waving to the hovering mums. We had a whole variety of characters turn up – witches and wizards and ghosts and goblins and skeletons and Harry Potters and some Minions and a little girl who’d come as a Christmas pudding and a boy who’d come as David Beckham (unless, of course, he just hadn’t wanted to get changed out of his football kit…) Will was really getting into it. He was talking in an American accent, like the real Batman, and making a big thing of complimenting all the costumes, whether they were amazing or rubbish.

  After about half an hour, and a quarter of our goodie stash gone, The Hulk turned up. He knocked on the door with a heavy bang bang bang and roared as Will opened it. His green Lycra costume was a bit too tight and he was posing just a bit too much: flexing his biceps, puffing up his chest and pulling silly faces, whilst a small child dressed in one of those skeleton suits stood at his side, rolling his eyes.

  ‘Sorry…’ said Will, after we’d given them sweets and everything but they still hadn’t left – The Hulk was now flexing his pecs and bellowing, ‘You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry!’ while his kid looked on, mortified – ‘… there appears to be a bit of queue behind you. You’ll have to move on.’

  ‘Okay, mate,’ said The Hulk, in his normal, not-so-impressive, voice ‘Come on, son.’ And they waddled off into the night, past three witches and a tiny Harry Potter, with me stifling a too-loud giggle. Will grinned and told me the same dad had turned up last year as Captain Jack Sparrow and had been posing an awful lot then, too, until one of his dreads had got caught in the door knocker.

  By half past seven, most of the little ones had gone – all to bed, but none to sleep, no doubt, as they’d be too high on sugar – and we had a long spell of slightly older children
, most not accompanied by any lurking mothers, and then, just gone half eight, the teenagers started knocking. We didn’t dare say ‘trick’, we just shoved sweets in their direction. Will said he’d actually said ‘trick’ one year, for a laugh, and half a dozen eggs had been smashed on his front window.

  ‘Scrambled eggs for breakfast the next morning,’ he said. ‘So it wasn’t all bad.’

  The teenagers had made just as much effort with their costumes. There were boys dressed as bloodied zombies, girls as sexy witches in long purple wigs and ripped tights, and a lad wrapped head-to-toe in toilet roll, made extra funny by it being the one with puppies on and that some of it got stuck to Will’s rose bush on the way up the garden, exposing the giggling boy’s low-rise, Spiderman boxer shorts. We also played host to Edward Scissorhands and his sidekick, Evil Ronald McDonald – his huge red mouth dripping with blood and a sorry-looking cheeseburger in his hand – and fed The Grim Reaper.

  By quarter to eleven, and after lots of to-ing and fro-ing from the sitting room, where we tried to sit down between knocks, we’d had enough. We agreed we’d probably seen the last of them, but if anyone else called we’d ignore them. We extinguished George’s tea light, came back into the darkened hall, barely lit now by a distant street light, and shut the door. Immediately there was a knock.

  ‘Ssh,’ said Will, putting his finger to his lips and signalling for me to crouch. I had to get down quite low so my cat ears wouldn’t be visible through the two panes of glass in the door. He crouched down too, which was quite difficult for a chunky man in a Batman costume, in a confined space. His cape flapped onto my left shoulder. His head was quite close to mine. He was grinning under his mask but still gesturing me to be quiet. And his sturdy right thigh was stroking-distance away. Down girl! I told myself. He’s not yours. The knock came again. We waited. I’d collapsed on my knees now; there was no way I could maintain a crouch for longer than a few seconds. I had my hand over my mouth and was trying not to laugh. There was another really loud knock, then suddenly a hand thrust through the letter box, forcing it open, and a pair of blackened eyes appeared in the gap.