by Suzie Twine
Lois hurried back to the coffee shop as fast as her pregnant body could carry her. By the time she got there, flushed with worry, exhaustion and embarrassment, the terrace seating had been cleared away, the bag had gone and the shop was closed. “Oh my God!” she murmured aloud, as tears welled in her eyes.
Lois knocked desperately on the locked door with one hand, whilst cupping the other over her eyes as she peered through the tinted glass. To her relief, she could see staff inside. The teenage girl mopping the floor glanced up. Lois heard her shout to the manager, “Nathan, tha’ dippy bird ‘oo left ‘er bag aatside’s cott’ned on. Shall we give it back to ‘er?” The feeling of nausea, which had accompanied Lois back to the shop, subsided slightly. The bag was there, that was a start. Nathan gave her a wave and went behind the till, reappearing with the bag. He unlocked the door and handed it to Lois, who quickly unzipped it. To her enormous relief she saw four large envelopes, clearly untouched. She gave Nathan a huge hug and rummaged through her bag to retrieve her purse, from which she took a twenty-pound note and stuffed it into his hand.
Lois felt increasingly paranoid as she hurried to the car. Had she been too grateful for the return of the bag? Some unscrupulous mugger might have been watching her with Nathan. She’d been too grateful. They’d know. Know the bag was valuable. Extremely valuable. They’d push her over and snatch it at any moment. She glanced behind her to the left, then the right. The feeling of nausea returned to her throat as she realised that her anxiety in itself was probably attracting attention. “Oh for God’s sake Lois,” she mumbled, “pull yourself together! Act normal, act normal, act normal.” She suddenly became conscious that she was speaking out loud. She closed her mouth, stared ahead and marched as fast as she could to the car.
The feeling of relief as her beloved MG came into view, was short lived as she spotted a plastic bag under the windscreen wiper, waving in the breeze. She snatched the parking ticket from under the wiper blade, unlocked the car and climbed in with a heavy sigh, locking the door behind her. Glancing from the sixty pound parking ticket to the bag containing forty thousand pounds Lois decided that things could be considerably worse.
4
Annie and Dave Nutter lived in the house adjoining Honeysuckle. Both in their mid-forties, they had moved to Harewood Park from the centre of the village five years ago. They loved living in “The Park”. It had been a perfect place for their children, Gemma and Stephen, to spend the latter parts of their childhood. Lilac Cottage was sold to them with a paddock that ran behind the pair of cottages. Gemma had loved riding and was able to have a pony during her teens. Now she was at university in York. Stephen was in his first year of GCSEs and had the potential to follow in his sister’s footsteps and make it to a good university. Provided, as his dad would frequently say, he cut down on the three Fs, Facebook, football and flirting and took his homework a little more seriously.
Dave owned a main-dealer franchise for a company specializing in four-wheel drives. Unfortunately, due to the combination of increased road tax for such vehicles, higher fuel prices and a country that had plummeted into recession, his once successful business was now struggling to the point that he was talking to accountants about taking it into liquidation. He had tried to discuss his financial worries with Annie, but she always just shrugged them off. “We’ve a long way to go before we’re on the bread line!” was her general response.
Feeling that he needed to take steps to stop them becoming destitute, Dave had decided to get the house valued. Annie was right; they did have assets after all. The house was bigger than necessary now that Gemma was at university. The pony had been sold last year, so they didn’t need the paddock, which was rapidly filling with weeds. Three years ago they had built a large detached garage with a spacious loft, that Dave had christened the “Coach House”, which must have added considerably to the value of the property. Gradually Dave talked himself around to the idea that it would actually be very sensible for them to move, he just hadn’t quite plucked up the courage to discuss it with Annie.
Meanwhile, Annie had, in fact, been giving a great deal of thought to their financial situation. She hadn’t wanted to stress Dave by showing too much concern about the way his business was heading. She worried about his mental stability in a crisis. He’d experienced some problems with anxiety in the past and clearly suffered with an obsessive-compulsive disorder. She had indeed also been considering the assets they could sell.
In Annie’s opinion, it was obvious their boat should be the first thing to go. That would free up at least thirty thousand, provided they could find a buyer. The mooring on the Thames cost a small fortune and they hardly ever used it. She knew Dave had always dreamed of owning a cruiser, but if their financial situation picked up, they could buy another one. She would sell the idea to him as, “they could always buy a bigger one.”
Then there was the paddock at the back of the house. Annie was sure that there were several sets of neighbours who would jump at the chance of becoming landowners. Annie had dreamed of hosting Gemma’s wedding there, in a beautiful marquee, but it had been harder to imagine recently with the paddock being in the state it was. A brief Internet search of land prices gave Annie the impression that the paddock was worth at least seventy-five thousand. Now that would keep the wolves from the door for a bit. They had no mortgage on the house; fortunately they had paid that off when Dave’s business was booming.
The other asset was the loft space over the garage. Now, if they spent a bit of money converting that into a studio flat, they could let it long-term. Annie had spent some time researching the various possibilities on the ‘net’ during a particularly quiet two days temping the previous week. She had decided that if they did the work themselves, Dave being quite handy at DIY, and bought relatively cheap fittings and second-hand furniture, they could probably do the whole thing for about fifteen hundred pounds. They should be able to get a hundred pounds a week in rent, which would soon put them into profit. Annie also wondered about the more lucrative option of using it as a ‘holiday let’ but she needed to do some more research into that.
The day that Lois and Mel picked up the keys and fell over the threshold of Honeysuckle was the day that Annie had planned to sit Dave down over a nice glass of Shiraz and talk through her plans.
Annie drove into the Park on autopilot. She had just met with an old friend who was a financial advisor and they had concluded that, with the sale of the boat and paddock, the renting of the new garage-flat and Annie’s temping, they could stay in Lilac Cottage for several years. This would allow Dave time to get back on his feet again, relatively stress free.
Annie felt increasingly anxious as she passed the hotel and the cottages came into view. She suddenly felt unsure about some of the figures she’d worked out and wanted to have them clear in her head before chatting to Dave. She started riffling through the papers on the passenger seat, searching for the information. Annie glanced back to the road just in time to swerve around ‘Old Man Black’. He waved his arms around wildly, shouting at her, his face turning a dark purple with rage. At which point she wished she’d mown him down. “Miserable old bugger!” she said under her breath as she drove away, glancing in her rear view mirror to see his hunched figure shuffling angrily down the road.
Her eyes saw Lois, Mel and what looked like part of a door, sitting in the front garden of Honeysuckle, but her brain didn’t register the spectacle. She was feeling quite shaken after her brush with manslaughter, adding to her anxiety over how Dave would respond to her proposals.
Annie noticed Dave’s car parked at the front of the house. There was another car, a silver Mercedes, which she didn’t recognise. She assumed it must belong to one of Dave’s work colleagues. “Oh well, I’ll just have to wait,” Annie grumbled to herself, as she drove around to their second entrance and parked in front of the coach house. She walked up the external wooden staircase of the garage that led to the loft space, struggling momentarily to find the r
ight key on her over-laden key ring, and then with the stiff lock. Once in, she found it smelt a bit musty, but not too bad considering it had barely been touched since it was built. It was full of junk, most of which should have been dumped years ago.
Annie started thinking through the layout for the flat that she’d been considering. She took a notebook out of her handbag and jotted down a few possibilities for the conversion. She was convinced, as she stood there in the slightly dark, very cluttered space, that it would be possible to transform it into very pleasant place to live.
Just as Annie was contemplating the best position for a shower room, to her surprise she heard voices and footsteps coming up the stairs. It was Dave, looking somewhat taken aback to see Annie there, followed by a woman. Annie’s immediate thought was, “Oh my God he’s having an affair!” and her next was, “in the loft space!” Then she took in the appearance of the woman, who looked at least ten years older than Dave, despite having a thick layer of very obvious make-up and quickly concluded that she really wasn’t his type. However, Dave had gone as white as a sheet and his forehead and bald patch were sweating profusely. “Ah, Annie,” he stammered, “um, may I introduce, Beryl Thomas-Clarke, uh, she’s a, um,” Dave’s knew that Annie would be furious that he had gone behind her back in organising a valuation of the house. His gaze dropped from Annie’s expectant face to his shoes, like an awkward schoolboy, caught-in-the-act.
“I’m an estate agent,” Beryl butted in, in a ridiculously pompous accent. She stood with a broad, toothy, somewhat arrogant smile. “Delighted Mrs. Nutter, please, just call me Beryl, I’m from BTC Estates, I’m sure you’ve heard of us, we sold the house next door. We’ll have no trouble selling this delightful property, in fact I know of several customers straight off the top of my head who would simply adore it. I must say, I would quite like it my…”
“Get out!” Annie screamed. “Get out of here right now!”
Beryl looked only slightly affronted. “Annie it’s not her fault!” Dave called, as Annie stomped out of the door, tears welling up in her eyes. With the combination of rushing and tear-blurred vision, Annie missed her footing on the staircase and fell down the last three steps. She hauled herself up by the stair rail and, ignoring the fact that her ankle was really hurting, hobbled to the back door of the house, trying desperately to retain any remaining dignity. She took off her heeled work shoes, threw them into the utility room in disgust and limped over to the table, on which she leaned, taking some deep breaths. Then, feeling very slightly calmer, she made her way to the loo. As she sat there, she could hear Dave saying goodbye to Beryl, making apologies for his wife and saying he would be in touch soon regarding when the house was to be put on the market.
Well this was too much for Annie, she yanked up her undies, sadly with the back of her skirt stuck in the top of her tights, slammed the toilet door and stormed into the kitchen, just as Dave walked in through the back door. At which point Annie lost it, properly, for the first time in her life.
“You bastard how could you? How the hell could you think of trying to sell our beautiful house without asking me, without even talking to me about it?” She felt the anger tightening across her chest, down her arms and into her fingers. Almost before she knew what was happening, she started picking up objects near to her and hurling them at Dave’s head. With each throw she yelled an obscenity starting with, “You bastard!” and deteriorating from there.
The first thing she threw was a floppy chicken dog toy, which Stephen must have left on the kitchen worktop. As Annie took aim, Reaver, one of their two spaniels, prepared herself for the chase. As the toy flew she skidded across the kitchen floor tiles in hot pursuit. Dave, with the lightening reactions of a karate brown belt, was able to catch the chicken, before it hit the welsh dresser, and before Reaver could make a jump for it. He glanced up at Annie with a “you’ll have to do better than that” look in his eye. She yelled, she swore, she threw. First an empty cup, which smashed against the wall, just missing the clock, this time the master of self-defence was not quick enough to catch it as it whizzed past his ear. Then a medium sized Le Creuset casserole lid, which she wielded like a discus thrower. Dave crouched down with his arms over his head. The lid hit the wall and the edge of the dresser simultaneously, very hard, leaving considerable dents and causing three plates and Dave’s recently used coffee cup to topple off the dresser and smash. She then grabbed the casserole dish itself, containing the remains of a chicken Madras. Dave had been about to dispose of the slightly furry curry when Beryl had arrived; it had spent at least a week in the fridge. Having picked it up, Annie realised it was so heavy she would need clever tactics if she was not to lose face. She did a fast turn around where she stood, launching the casserole towards Dave, who had just stood up. The dish flew in slow motion. He decided as a damage limitation strategy, to try and catch it. But with Annie tiring, the weight of the dish and Dave’s anxiety about his shoeless feet, the casserole fell well short of his reach and crashed, bottom down to the floor. Cold, mouldering curry, splattering over the vicinity, and Dave.
There was a slam of the front door and Stephen walked in and greeted his mum matter-of-factly with a, “Hi Mum, your skirt’s tucked in your knickers.” He walked past Annie and said to Dave, “Dad, why’ve you got curry dripping down your face?” Dave stood, open-mouthed, the casserole dish and pieces of broken floor tiles in his hands.
Dave glanced at Annie, who was bright red and shaking, tugging at her skirt to free it. He grabbed a tea towel to wipe his face. “There’s some on your bald patch,” said Stephen, reaching up, removing a piece of slimy chicken from his Dad’s head and popping it in his mouth. “Jesus, that’s disgusting!” He spat it into his hand and threw it to Reaver.
“Don’t give it to the dog Stephen, it’ll make her ill.” said Dave. He looked at Annie again, hoping for a glint of a smile, but there was nothing. Dave was not entirely sure that her outburst was over, so he walked out of the back doorsayingin a low voice “Come on Stephen, your mother’s gone berserk, lets lie low in the garage for a while.”
5
Adam had moved into Harewood Park six years ago, with his wife and two very young boys. He now lived alone. Tessa had left him, moved in with a work colleague, and taken the boys with her. Sam and Olli came to see him every other weekend, when she allowed it. A year on, he was unattached and his anger over Tessa’s behaviour continued to smoulder.
Adam had been out running for about an hour, the last mile being along the bridleway that emerged onto Harewood Park, adjacent to Honeysuckle Cottage. At the beginning of his run he’d picked up a text message from Tessa saying the boys couldn’t come to him this weekend because she was taking them to her mother’s. He was fuming. Why did she always organise things for his weekend? As usual, she was ignoring his calls. He felt he couldn’t say what he wanted to say in a text because Sam had developed a habit of practicing his reading on in-coming text messages. So Adam’s pent-up anger had fuelled his run. He checked his watch as he emerged onto the road, to see that he had run fifty percent faster than normal. “Every cloud, blah blah blah,” he said sarcastically, out loud. As he looked up from his watch, movement on the left caught his eye. Two women were standing in the front garden of Honeysuckle, contemplating what looked like the majority of the front door lying on the path. They both looked up at him and probably wondered to whom he was talking. He felt mildly embarrassed and was in two minds whether to run straight past. But one of the women looked very upset and presuming that they must be the new neighbours, he decided to stop and introduce himself. “Mmm, a lesbian couple,” he thought, “now that would spice-up the road even more; if it were possible?”
Adam, being over six foot, lean, fit, tanned, with clean-cut features and a mop of dark curly hair, lay well within the spectrum of men of Mel’s dreams. As he walked up the garden path to introduce himself and ask if he could be of any assistance, spaniel obediently at his heels, Mel’s tongue was, figuratively speaking
, lolling out.
“Hi, I’m Adam,” he said, holding out his hand and grinning broadly, “I live at Primrose cottage, next door but one. You must be the new neighbours.” Tears welled up in Lois’s eyes as she shook his hand, overcome by the sight of a friendly face.
Adam, noticing that one of the women was pregnant, was just thinking that the lesbian angle was becoming even more interesting, when Mel laughed, “No, no, no. No, this is Lois, she’s moving in with her boyfriend. You’ll have to excuse her, she’s in a bit of a state.”
Lois glared at Mel, “I’m quite capable of introducing myself thanks. Hi Adam, I’m Lois, this is Mel, Tom’s in hospital and…” she looked at the gap in the house where there should have been a door, “…..and this house is a bloody disaster!”
Lois crouched down to make a fuss of the dog to hide the fact that tears were once again oozing onto her cheeks. It responded with an enthusiastic wiggling of the tail. “She’s a Springer isn’t she or is it a he?”
“No, you were right first time, she’s a she. Her name’s Larch.”
“Well, she’s lovely.” Lois eased herself back up to her full five foot three. “It’s nice to see some friendly faces, isn’t it Mel?”