by A. E. Radley
On more than one occasion when they had finally managed to catch up face to face, Harriet had been stunned to find out how long it had been since their last meeting. She’d assumed it had been a month, maybe two. Often it had been more like six.
Verity used to be the same until she got out of the rat race. Now she was aware of the time passing by.
Timothy looked over his shoulder and rolled his eyes good-naturedly. He’d drawn the short straw and been designated the driver for the evening. Now he had to listen to Harriet and Robert arguing.
Verity smiled at him and watched as he helped them both into the car.
A few minutes later, with a flurry of final waves, they were gone.
She let out a relieved breath. She’d done it. She’d successfully gotten her friends in and out of the house without them seeing the unsightly motorbike.
As if on cue, a bike rounded the corner, bounced up the kerb onto the pavement, and drove into the garden.
Verity glared at Katie.
Katie shut off the bike engine and wheeled the vehicle onto her side of the garden. She pulled off her bike helmet and ringlets of red curls fell around her shoulders.
“Must you park that there?” Verity asked.
“Yes, I must,” Katie replied unapologetically.
“The road is just there.” Verity gestured to just beyond the wall.
“It’s safer here. Do you know how many of these get stolen in London every year?”
Verity watched silently as Katie removed some kind of technical apparatus from the bike.
“Nine thousand,” Katie said when Verity didn’t answer.
Verity’s eyebrows rose. “That’s ridiculous. That’s… one hundred and seventy-three a week. Twenty-four a day.”
Katie looked up in surprise. “You calculated that in your head? Like, just now?”
Verity didn’t reply. She didn’t want the conversation to run away in the wrong direction.
“Anyway, it’s not ridiculous, it’s figures. From the police. And I can’t afford to lose this bike, so it stays here. On my half of the garden, which isn’t bothering your half at all.”
“You slammed your door earlier this evening,” Verity pointed out.
“Yes. I did it out of spite, because you’re annoying,” Katie told her.
Verity couldn’t believe the cheek of the woman.
Katie approached, and Verity took a couple of steps back. Katie hopped up onto the step.
“Annoying?” Verity asked, astounded that a complete stranger had the gall to say such a thing to her.
“Yes. Extremely,” Katie said.
Katie plucked out the front door key and unlocked her door. She turned to look at Verity. “Are we done? Is there something else you’d like to complain about?”
“Not yet,” Verity said.
She hurried to her own door, eager to be the first to slam the door and win the argument.
Both slammed shut at the same time. Verity leaned against the frame and stared up at the ceiling. This wasn’t going to end well.
7
A Spot of Gardening
It had been four weeks since Katie had moved into the new apartment, and, aside from the initial issues, things had been quiet. She’d not seen nor heard Verity in all that time—save for some muffled piano practice, though that had thankfully changed to the early evening and never the early morning.
The weather was improving every day, and spring was causing the garden to bloom. Katie knew that it would start to get out of control if she didn’t get out there and deal with it soon.
The last thing she needed was Verity demanding that she trim her side of the hedge and tidy the flowerbeds. They’d been doing so well lately. Mainly because they’d not seen each other, but still.
It was Tuesday afternoon, and Katie had managed to pick up quite a few well-paying, short articles. She decided she would reward herself with some time outside working on the garden. If she finished quickly, maybe she’d take a quick snooze in the sun.
A poke about in the small shed at the bottom of the garden a few days before had revealed some basic gardening tools, as well as a Strimmer and a hedge trimmer—everything she needed to get it into shape.
Katie didn’t really have gardening clothes, nor did she own any clothes she was willing to sacrifice to gardening. She put on her oldest pair of jeans and her least favourite T-shirt. Hopefully she wouldn’t ruin them, and if she did, then at least they were almost disposable.
She didn’t have many clothes, never wanting to spend money on such things nor to have more things than she needed. Shoes were the same situation: she had a pair of heavy-duty working boots that she wore on the bike and a pair of trainers.
It was too hot for the boots, so she slipped the trainers on.
She opened the back door, and right on cue, Kitty ran into her house.
Kitty was a white, fluffy ninja. She was always around and could sneak through the smallest gap at great speed. Katie had given up trying to chase her out. If Verity was aware of Kitty’s constant breaking and entering, she didn’t mention it.
Katie ignored Kitty and went out into the garden. She walked down the path to the shed and opened it up. The last time she’d been there, a spider the size of a small car had been hanging right in front of the door. Katie hadn’t screamed, but only because she’d almost passed out with fright. She paused and peered around the shed from a safe distance.
She heard a tiny chink of china and turned around. Verity sat on a balcony Katie hadn’t noticed before. She was reading the newspaper and drinking what was most likely tea from a cup and saucer. The balcony was positioned in the middle of the house, which meant that Verity had a bird’s-eye view of both her own garden and Katie’s.
Katie rolled her eyes and turned back to the shed. There wasn’t a lot she could do about that. The design of the house was sometimes inconvenient, but there was no changing it. Katie didn’t like having to walk in an enormous U-shape in order to get from her living room to the front door. She didn’t like that she resided in the bottom half of the house yet maintained the right-hand side of both gardens. There was a strange imbalance. Her second bedroom window looked right out into Verity’s side of the back garden; her lounge window viewed Verity’s side of the front. Verity’s upper-floor apartment allowed her to survey everything, and Katie was certain she did.
But it wasn’t worth worrying about. Stressing about it would be completely unproductive.
Katie was used to cramped London living. If you didn’t want your neighbours to be able to look at you, then you shouldn’t live in a city.
Katie braved the shed and removed everything she thought she might need in three quick bursts. She set to work, snagging her phone and headphones to listen to music while she was inside the apartment to plug in the hedge trimmers.
Over the course of the next hour, she trimmed up the hedge and put all the clippings into the garden waste wheelie bin. She used the Strimmer to mow the lawn—a terrible waste of time, but she wasn’t going to buy a lawn mower for the small patch of grass. She trimmed up the various bushes and the tree at the bottom of the garden, and weeded the flowerbeds.
It was hard work but so rewarding; before long she could see a wonderful space emerging. It was an established garden with a variety of plants and bushes. Someone in the past had a real eye for design when they’d planted, and it had grown into a lovely space. There was room to move, but things grew everywhere, creating a patchwork of colour and shade.
Ivy climbed up the back of the house, a lavender bush obscured some of the brick wall at the back of the garden, and the tree cast a beautiful shadow. Everything worked, and Katie wondered if she should invest in a small table and chair to allow her to enjoy the garden some more.
When she was putting things back in the shed, she noticed a small, folding sun lounger propped up at the back. She ventured in, hoping to not meet the enormous spider, and pulled the summer furniture out. It looked to be in reasonabl
e condition, nothing that a quick wipe down with a damp sponge wouldn’t fix.
She looked at the time on her phone; it was four o’clock. She still had some time before she would head out on the bike, and she had worked hard that day. Decision made, she put the gardening equipment away, cleaned up the lounger, and fetched an orange juice.
She’d never been that good at relaxing; there was always work to do and she felt as if she should be doing it. She tried to push the thought of writing jobs being snatched away by other writers out of her head.
You’ve done your work today, she reminded herself. And you cleaned the garden.
She closed her eyes and felt the sun on her. It wasn’t exactly hot, but it was pleasant.
After a few minutes, she realised she could hear something that wasn’t the background beat of her music. She reached up and pressed the button on her earphones to pause the music.
She waited, eyes still closed.
A soft, sharp sound followed by a giggle had her smiling. There was no mistaking the sound of a small foot on a football. But not a proper football, a child’s one. She assumed Callum was playing in Verity’s garden beyond the high, wide hedge.
She listened for a while, hearing a ball being kicked around and Callum panting for breath.
“Uh-oh.”
She chuckled softly. Children were adorable, with no filter. She sat up and saw the ball had rolled into her part of the garden through the gap. A moment later Callum peeked around the corner, cheeks bright red and hair askew.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her. “Can I get my ball, please?”
“Sure.” She gestured for him to go ahead, remembering how terrified she’d been as a child when she’d kicked her ball over the fence into Mr Wheeler’s garden.
“I’m not very good,” he explained, picking up the ball.
“That’s why people practice things,” Katie told him.
He nodded. “Can you play football?”
Katie opened her mouth to answer and then stopped. She didn’t actually know. She knew the rules, was probably fit enough, and had played as a child. So, she technically could play.
“I rarely have time,” she eventually replied.
“Mummy doesn’t let me play at home in case I break something,” Callum said. “Auntie Vere got me this.” He proudly held up his ball; it was indeed a child’s ball with some cartoon characters Katie was too old to recognise on it.
“That’s very nice of her,” she said.
Kitty chose that moment to walk out of the open back door and into the garden. Callum bent down and stroked her.
“Why was Kitty in your house?”
Katie hoped that Verity wasn’t on the other side other side of the hedge, listening to everything and bubbling over with rage. Katie was enjoying the peace.
“I don’t know,” she said honestly. “Kitty seems to do whatever she likes.”
Callum looked at her and nodded. “Do you like living here?”
“I do.”
“Where did you live before?”
“North London.”
“Where’s that?” Callum sat on the edge of her sun lounger, presumably deciding to take a load off now that they were somehow engaged in conversation.
“Up,” Katie answered.
Callum nodded again, happy with the directions. “Why did you move?”
“It’s warmer in the south,” Katie said. There was no need to tell a young child about broken promises, relationships gone bad.
“Do you like parrots?”
Katie pulled the earbuds out of her ears. It was obvious that Callum wasn’t going anywhere, so she might as well give him her full attention. She sat up a little, giving him more room. Kitty jumped up and took the cleared space. Callum didn’t mind and started petting Kitty while looking at Katie and awaiting her answer.
“Parrots… hmm…” Katie made a show of giving the question some deep thought. “Yes, I think they are very nice. Especially the ones that can talk.”
“My neighbour has a parrot. It says ‘shit,’” Callum explained seriously.
Katie did her best not to laugh. “Well, that’s a very naughty parrot.”
Callum nodded sagely. “Yes, it is.”
8
I Was a Dolphin
Verity stood just inside her apartment, close enough to the open balcony door that she could hear the conversation going on below. She was a couple of steps away from being able to actually see Katie and Callum speaking, but, for the moment, she was content with just listening.
She’d been pleasantly surprised to notice Katie cleaning her half of the garden earlier that afternoon. When she’d first seen her, Verity had felt the urge to grab her tea and her paper and rush inside.
It had been weeks since they’d seen each other.
Of course, Verity knew that Katie was still there because the hideous bike was still there. Aside from that, things had been quiet.
Seeing Katie after such a lovely period of quiet had been a surprise. Her knee-jerk reaction to run away was hard to ignore, but she reminded herself that she was perfectly within her rights to sit on her own balcony. It wasn’t her fault that it partially overlooked Katie’s garden.
It was only when she noticed it was time to pick Callum up from school that she realised she’d been actively watching Katie work. It was rather easy to look down without being noticed; Katie would have to crane her neck up to see her. Verity could appear to be reading her paper and also keep a watchful eye on her neighbour.
At first, she’d wanted to assure herself that Katie was trimming the hedge properly; after all, she owned the other half of it. She didn’t want Katie to go at it too harshly and cause damage to the shared foliage.
After that she watched Katie cut the lawn with entirely the wrong equipment. And then watched her clear everything up. She’d been so distracted that she’d very nearly been late in picking Callum up.
Verity didn’t put too much thought into why that was. Simple distraction, she told herself. Nothing more.
“I’m going to be a dolphin when I grow up,” Callum announced.
Verity winced. She loved her great-nephew, but the contents of his imagination seemed to be complete wonderment and nonsense.
“I was a dolphin for a couple of weeks,” Katie replied. “Then my skin got so wrinkly. I thought I’d never be smooth again.”
Verity shook her head. Callum didn’t need the encouragement.
“I think you’d be an excellent accountant,” Katie continued.
“An accountant?” Callum asked, surprise clear in his tone.
“Yes, you’re good at making things up.”
Verity snorted a laugh, glad she was far enough back that she wouldn’t be heard.
“My mummy says I have a good imagination,” Callum agreed.
“You do.”
“Kitty bit me last week,” Callum said.
“It’s because you have little sausage fingers,” Katie told him. “She probably thought they’d be delicious.”
“I don’t!”
“You do, she told me.”
“Kitty talks to you?”
Verity rolled her eyes. She took a slight step forward and looked over the balcony.
Katie now had a sun lounger, although she was only sitting on half of it. The rest was taken up by Callum sitting cross-legged, and Kitty sat in between them.
Jealousy spiked through her.
Her cat and her nephew. With that woman.
She knew it was childish, but she couldn’t help herself. She didn’t want Callum socialising with Katie, not when he was supposed to be spending time with her.
Yes, she’d allowed him to go into the garden and play with the football she’d bought him, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to talk with the neighbour.
The park, she thought to herself. The perfect place to kick a ball around. Large, open space.
No Katie Ross.
She stepped back into the apartment and then quic
kly stepped out, trying to look like she hadn’t been there all along. “Callum! Let’s go to the park!”
She heard Callum’s excited squeal followed a few moments later by the sound of him hammering up the metal staircase.
He burst onto the balcony, his face flushed with the exertion and the excitement.
“Really?”
“Absolutely, you need space to kick your ball around,” she told him. “Go and get your coat on.”
He rushed into the apartment, and she followed, closing the balcony doors behind her.
“Can Katie come?” he asked.
She paused, sucked in a deep breath, and then slowly let it out.
“No, darling, just you and I.” She turned around, expecting an argument.
Thankfully, Callum shrugged and ran to the shoe rack.
The elation that she had won was short-lived, while the realisation that she now had to stand around in the park for at least an hour was just setting in.
9
Here’s My Number
Being a bike driver new to the area meant that it didn’t take long to meet a lot of people and get to know the new surroundings. Katie had been in the area for less than a week when she felt she had a good understanding of the various parts of town and the neighbouring towns.
Everything overlapped in Greater London; a fifteen-minute drive could easily take her through three different towns, all butted up against each other, each one indistinguishable from the previous.
All kinds of people had food delivered and for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it was a mother who was busy with the children; sometimes it was a student who was deep in study. Sometimes it was a gathering of people; sometimes it was just the one.
When she told people what she did for a living, some were judgemental and shook their head at the laziness of society. Katie didn’t see it that way. Sometimes people just couldn’t get out or just didn’t want to. If the service was there, why not use it?