by Fay Keenan
‘Can I help you?’ Sam asked, rather more gruffly than he’d intended.
‘I hope I’m not disturbing you,’ the woman replied, after a brief moment’s hesitation where she was clearly trying to curb her surprise about the fact Sam had opened the door in only his boxer shorts and a T-shirt. Sam was also sure he wasn’t imagining a sliver of irritation in her voice, though. ‘I just wanted to have a word about the noise.’
‘Noise?’ Sam repeated. His brain still felt fuzzy from being pulled away from sleep. Then he twigged. ‘The note. Did you write it?’
‘I did.’ She didn’t elaborate further.
The pause, for some reason, irritated Sam. He felt as though he was a small boy again, under the scrutiny of his form tutor for talking during registration. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve just woken up. I was on a night shift. Did someone disturb you last night?’
‘Well, if it wasn’t you, then it must be someone else who lives here,’ the woman replied, giving a tight, tense smile. ‘Is there any chance I can have a word with them?’
Sam’s heart thumped uncomfortably. ‘I’m afraid he’s not here at the moment, but I can pass on the message when I see him.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘It’s just that when you’ve got to get up for work early, being kept awake by someone playing the electric guitar until three in the morning is a bit of a problem. The walls on these houses might be thick, but they’re not quite Metallica proof!’
Sam smiled apologetically. ‘I understand, and I’m sorry. I’ll have a word with my… er… housemate and get him to plug in his headphones if he decides to give a late-night concert again.’
‘Well, as I said, it’s a bit much when you’ve got to get up for school.’
‘I get that, really,’ Sam said. Perhaps it was lack of sleep, but he was still irked by her slightly schoolmistressy tone, although at least he now knew why she sounded that way. ‘I’ll have a word,’ he repeated.
‘Thank you.’
There was an uncomfortable pause. Fleetingly, Sam wondered if he should ask her in for coffee, but he was still knackered and she, understandably, didn’t seem to be in an overly sociable mood.
‘Right. I’ll be off then. See you around,’ she continued.
‘Wait,’ he said as she turned. ‘Since we’re neighbours, shouldn’t we introduce ourselves? I’m Sam Ellis.’
‘Florence Ashton,’ she said, and, with a little hesitation, she thrust forward a hand. ‘Nice to meet you. Even if I am having a moan!’ She finally smiled, and Sam was surprised, especially in light of his irritation, to find how the smile lit up her face very attractively. Suddenly, she didn’t seem so much like a schoolmistress any more.
‘Let’s hope next time we talk it’ll be under better circumstances,’ Sam replied. ‘And I will have a word with him, don’t worry.’
‘I’d appreciate that,’ Florence replied. ‘And I’m sorry if I’ve woken you up, too. Night shifts must be rough.’
‘They take a bit of getting used to,’ Sam said. ‘Especially when you get woken up.’ Despite his words, his tone was teasing.
‘I can’t imagine what that feels like!’ Florence said, with a note of irony in her voice.
‘Fair point,’ Sam replied, but smiled anyway. After all, if they were going to be neighbours, he ought to keep her on side. Telling Aidan to keep his guitar playing down was one thing, but actually getting him to do it was quite another, after all. Aidan often used noise to block out the things he really didn’t want to hear or think about.
‘Well. See you then,’ Florence said, turning on her heel and wandering down the pathway. Sam, still standing at the door, grinned more broadly when she opened the gate and came back up her own path, which was separated from his only by a three-foot-high wall.
‘You could have just jumped over,’ he said in amusement as she put her front door key in the lock. His heart gave a lurch as she grinned back, and this time, the smile reached her eyes.
‘Maybe when we know each other better,’ she said lightly. ‘I wouldn’t want to go arse over tit in front of a stranger.’
‘Fair enough,’ Sam replied.
Pushing his own door shut, he glanced at his watch. He only had an hour and a half before he had to get down to base for his shift; it wasn’t worth trying to get any more sleep.
Sam rubbed his eyes and headed back upstairs to take a shower, trying to ignore the clunk and clank of the ancient hot water system. He knew he’d have to have a word with Aidan before he left, just in case he decided to give Florence another impromptu recital in the small hours of tomorrow morning. As much as he told himself that sometimes Aidan couldn’t be held fully responsible for his actions, it still frustrated him that he was the one taking the flak for them. Again.
If this living arrangement was going to work, he was going to have to make sure that Aidan knew exactly what he could and couldn’t do, or relations with those around them were going to get very strained indeed.
Stripping off his boxer shorts and T-shirt and shivering slightly in the chilly air of the bathroom as he waited for the water to warm up, Sam tried to get himself into the right frame of mind for this shift. It wouldn’t do to be unfocused while he was working; a lack of concentration for Sam would mean more than inconvenience; it could be the difference between life and death.
Stepping under the shower, he tried to purge all tiredness from his bones and all stress from his mind. It nearly worked.
5
Florence returned to her house feeling somewhat mollified by Sam’s response. She couldn’t help being curious about the guitar-playing anti-socialite next door. Perhaps he or she was a shift worker like Sam? After all, there was plenty of industry in Somerset that employed people all through the day and night – several large supermarket distribution centres lined the southern stretch of the M5 motorway, as well as having the nuclear power station, Hinkley Point, well within driving distance.
She found, to her surprise, that having met Sam at the door, she was far more preoccupied by him than the initial reason for going around there. His sexily dishevelled, literally just-got-out-of-bed dirty blond hair topped a face that had striking blue eyes, a strong, square jaw and a generous mouth, which had, eventually, smiled when they’d discussed the noise issue. She also hadn’t failed to notice a well-constructed torso, which had been hinted at by the slight tightness of his white T-shirt, and long legs beneath blue and white checked boxer shorts. Not a bad-looking guy, she had to admit. He certainly made the conversation easier, as well, once he’d realised why she was there.
Something else was nagging at her. Sam looked familiar, although she was sure she hadn’t met him before. Perhaps sleep deprivation was making her imagine things.
That said, it had been a while since Florence had had a steady man in her life, and apart from a couple of casual dates, she was surprised to realise that she missed having someone to go out with. Seeing Sam in his night clothes, with the subtle but warm scent of sleepiness and yesterday’s cologne emanating from his bed-warmed body, she felt a tentative attraction. Although shagging the next-door neighbour could be awkward, she conceded. Imagine having to open the front door every day and risk bumping into that person if it all went pear-shaped!
Putting those thoughts firmly from her mind, she wandered through to the kitchen at the back of the house and pondered on dinner. She was a good, plain cook, but, still keyed up after her first day at school, and feeling nervous, despite her years of experience, about meeting her new classes tomorrow, she couldn’t summon up much enthusiasm for food. She did fancy a glass of wine, though. She’d ordered a bottle of Chablis with her last online food shop, and it was sitting unopened in the fridge. One glass wouldn’t hurt, she thought.
She pulled open the top cupboard where she’d put her glasses and then poured a generous glug of the perfectly chilled wine. The day was still warm, and her south-facing back garden was accessible through French windows at the back of the kitchen, so she decide
d to drink her glass of wine on the patio and then think about what she wanted to eat.
Throwing open the doors, the late-afternoon sunlight, mellow with the promise of autumn, warmed her upturned face. Although her new home was on the edge of a reasonably busy road, she couldn’t hear much of the traffic noise from the back, which was definitely a blessing. The leaves on the mature beech trees that marked the boundary at the end of her long, generously proportioned garden rustled in the breeze.
Sooner or later, she’d need to get a lawnmower and cut the large expanse of grass that had been growing steadily since she took on the house. She’d paid a gardener to tackle it when she’d moved in, but even though she owned the house outright now, it still seemed an extravagance to employ a gardener on her part-time salary. Besides, the exercise would do her good after time in the classroom. Aunt Elsie would have been horrified at the thought of her great-niece wielding a lawnmower, but needs must.
The rest of the garden was in reasonable shape; there were long flower beds running parallel to the boundary walls on each side of the property. On the left, where her house butted up against Sam and his housemate’s, was a row of hydrangea bushes, mature and on their last flowering before the autumn frosts would get them. Alternate pink and lilac, she knew that Aunt Elsie loved the flowers, so she was determined to keep them in good check. On the other side stretched an equally impressive bed of old English roses, which again would take some upkeep, but their large, flamboyant blooms, whose scent emanated more strongly as late afternoon progressed, were louche and elegant in the golden September sun.
Making a mental note to buy herself a book on tending roses, Florence’s attention was drawn by the sound of muffled voices, both unmistakably masculine, drifting from the open window of Sam’s house. From the tone of the voices, they clearly knew each other very well, as conversation seemed to be flowing easily between them, even though she could only make out snatches of words. Her hearing, honed by years of picking up on illicit pupil conversations while teaching, was excellent. The words ‘meds’, ‘sleep’ and ‘routine’ jumped out at her, and it was then that she started to feel a bit guilty for eavesdropping, even though that thought was ridiculous, as she was, after all, sitting in her own garden. The conversation was obviously serious, though. She started to wonder what their relationship was. Were they friends? Family? A couple? An avid watcher of people, Florence was definitely curious.
A door slamming, or perhaps being caught by the breeze as it drifted through the open window, signalled the end of the conversation, and the voices ceased. Shortly after that, she heard what she assumed was the side door to the house next door being opened and the sound of a car starting up, then nothing more.
She glanced at her watch and realised that it was probably about time to start thinking about dinner. Putting what she’d just heard out of her mind for now, she finished the rest of her wine and headed back into the house.
As she was perusing the contents of her fridge, her phone pinged from the worktop where she’d put it when she’d got home. Still short on inspiration for food, she wandered across to it and swiped for the message. It was her new friend, Josie, from school.
Hey! Forgot to mention today that I’m going to be directing the town’s Christmas show. Can I count on your support, since you’re a fellow part-time slacker? Might get you out to meet some new people! Jx
Florence grimaced slightly. She loved teaching drama in her English lessons, and was a total Shakespeare fiend, but the last thing she wanted to do was to actually stand up on stage and act. Besides, she really wasn’t any good at that. She could pick apart a text to the nth degree, but when it came to performances, she was strictly a backstage girl.
But it would be nice to get out and do something in the community, rather than just going to work and coming back to Aunt Elsie’s house. Perhaps if she made it crystal clear that behind the scenes was where she was best, it would be all right.
Texting something along those lines to Josie, she wondered what the production would be about. She imagined some hokey alternative nativity was on the cards, but with Willowbury being just about as New Age as it was possible to get, perhaps it would be something entirely different. All the same, she was, she had to admit, curious to find out. And at least the thought of that, rather than facing the students on her first proper teaching day, would hopefully ensure calmer dreams tonight.
Finally deciding on a carton of fresh soup from her fridge and some crusty bread, she poured another glass of wine and settled in for the evening. Hopefully, now she’d spoken to Sam, it would be a quieter one.
6
As usual, Sam hadn’t had time to go shopping, and, as usual, Aidan hadn’t even considered that they needed to. Consequently, when Sam opened the cupboard above the cooker, looking for something to sustain him before his next night shift, all he found was a can of tomato soup and a packet of cream crackers. Sighing, he opened the can and chucked it into the only clean saucepan from the cupboard below. They really needed to sort out a more regular form of shopping than a madcap dash to the local Co-Op, topped up by random visits to the wealth of takeaway establishments that Willowbury incongruously offered., alongside all of the health and well-being, spiritual and New Age shops.
Resolving, once he’d had his soup, to get online and schedule a delivery from one of the bigger supermarkets, while he was waiting for the soup to warm through, he absent-mindedly nibbled on a cracker. He wasn’t sure what his team leader would think about his choice of sustenance before a night shift, but, he reasoned, he was pretty sure he’d left a microwaveable lasagne in the fridge of the air ambulance base’s kitchen anyway; he could always eat that, if there was enough downtime.
Once the soup was warm enough, Sam poured it into a bowl and took it to the kitchen table. Taking a spoonful, he realised too late that he’d heated it to thermonuclear temperatures as it nearly took the roof of his mouth off. He stood abruptly and grabbed the nearest glass from the draining board, downing the cold water swiftly in an attempt to stave off blisters. That was all he needed. He didn’t even like tomato soup anyway, and now the bloody stuff was leaving him with third-degree burns.
Waiting a couple of minutes for the cursed stuff to cool, he stirred the spoon in the bowl absent-mindedly, forming figures of eight in the red mixture and ruminating on the fact that, while he was quite partial to a Bloody Mary, in whose juicy, alcohol-fuelled loveliness he could imagine himself back on ship floating around the Pacific and enjoying the company of his former squadron, canned tomato soup was about as far from this dream as it was possible to be. But then, he was about as far from that old life as it was possible to be, even if he was still flying helicopters.
The ability to take off to sea and leave the land behind was something that he’d never really got over giving up, and much as he appreciated the security that living with Aidan in a house in the country now offered, he still felt incredibly landlocked by circumstances. In the air, flying to a job or back to the base in Norton Magna, he could forget it for a while, but in the downtime, it came creeping back to him; the disillusionment, the restlessness, the frustration that a promising career in a job he loved was now beyond his reach.
Dispiritedly, he finished the soup as quickly as the warmth of it would allow, and then took a couple more cream crackers from the packet.
And, to cap it all, after their next-door neighbour’s impromptu visit this afternoon, he’d have to make sure he had a word with Aidan about plugging in his headphones when he indulged in a little late-night guitar playing.
Florence, that was her name, wasn’t it? In his too-rudely awakened brain fog, it took him a second to remember. If Willowbury was anything like his parents’ place, he wouldn’t see his neighbours from one year’s end to the next anyway, even if they did share a party wall. But the memory of her blonde hair and her friendly eyes, even when she’d been complaining about the noise, had stayed with Sam and if he was in a better place emotionally, he might even
have considered asking her out. But what with the naval discharge, the move to a new place, the new job and the complications that sharing a house with Aidan entailed, there wasn’t time left over for anything else. And how awkward would that be, anyway, starting something with the next-door neighbour? When the break-up came, as it inevitably would, they’d be stuck trying to avoid each other coming and going. It was far better to put her out of his mind and focus on what was important at present; doing his job and making sure Aidan kept out of trouble.
Standing up from the kitchen table, he took his now empty bowl to the sink, where it joined the rest of the crockery that had overflowed the decrepit dishwasher. They’d run out of tablets for that, too, and washing-up liquid.
Sam glanced at his watch. Not enough time to do the washing-up before he had to leave for work but perhaps enough to put an online shopping order in. Grabbing his phone, he logged onto the supermarket’s site and started to fill his virtual basket. The one thing he wouldn’t be adding to the list, he thought, was a replacement can of tomato soup.
7
The first couple of weeks of the new term sailed by for Florence, who was too busy getting to know her classes and, in the downtime, beginning to make a start on renovating the other rooms of Bay Tree Terrace, to think of much else. Josie had turned into a friend as well as a colleague, and they’d met for coffee a couple of times on their days off in the Cosy Coffee Shop. Over a mug or three of steaming fair-trade latte, Josie had outlined her plans for the Willowbury Christmas production.
‘It’s going to be a seasonally appropriate version of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing,’ Josie said. ‘I’ve pared it down so that it’ll run for just over an hour, and thrown in a ton of Christmas references. The masked ball is going to be a Christmas party, and of course, the stage’ll be covered in mistletoe so that the two couples have good excuses to snog a lot.’