Cloudy with a Chance of Love (2 page)

‘It's just a laugh,' says Sam. ‘We'll do mine first.'

I suspect Sam hopes it's a little more than that. She always does. She's definitely on the lookout for a man
and
love. She's been divorced for five years now, from Graham who she met at school; they consciously uncoupled when they realised they didn't really like each other any more and hadn't noticed each other's haircuts for over three years…

‘How much is this nonsense?' I enquire.

‘It's free, but Madame L'Oracle, the Psychic Queen, guarantees she'll be uncannily specific.' There's a picture of Madame Oracle on the app. Sam shows me. She's in pink fur and pearls, her hair bigger than RuPaul's.

‘Just give me a second…' says Sam. I wait as she taps away at her phone. ‘Right. Now we wait two minutes. Accurate predictions take time, it says.' I poke her playfully in the ribs and try not to roll my eyes as I focus on the screen. It's all pink and white. On a jacquard background a picture of a crystal ball is oscillating whilst white cloudy stuff swirls in it, and an old-fashioned clock counts down the minutes. What laughable hocus pocus. Still, Sam's one of my best friends; I'm going with it because I always do.

One of the Japanese tourist peers over Sam's shoulder.

‘Oi, nosey! Bog off! Right. Here we are. Ooh, okay, this is mine:
You have an
eighty percent
chance
of heat bringing you love
.'

‘That's it?'

‘Yes! Heat will bring me love! Simples!'

‘But that could mean anything! I thought it was supposed to be specific! That's totally vague and really random,' I laugh.

‘It
could
be specific. I just have to focus. Heat, heat…what could it mean? Should I book another trip to Lanzarote?' She pulls her wool coat more tightly round her. It's really cold for the end of October and the skies are darkening already. Rain is due in about an hour, I know. ‘Right, your turn.'

‘If I must.'

‘You must.'

We both stare at the phone again. Finally the shifting white fog in the crystal ball shifts and a pink heart flashes up. Inside, in black scroll-y writing, are the words, ‘
You have a
99% chance of falling in love by Friday
.' Sam raises her eyebrows at me and grins. I burst out laughing.

‘How exciting!' she exclaims.

Now I
do
roll my eyes. ‘Ooh, Friday,' I say. ‘I think I'm busy that day. Let me check my diary…' Actually, I
am
busy that day. It's Freya's graduation. Jeff and I are both going. It'll be okay… I hope. We'll be a civilized divorced couple… I hope.

Sam grabs my arm and looks all bog-eyed. Her dark hair is whipping all over her face in the wind. ‘Daryl, it might happen!'

‘Nah,' I say. ‘And I don't want it to. Love is for mugs. From now on I'm all about friends and a bit of flirting. That's it.'

‘You say that,' she says, ‘but if love came along…'

‘It won't come along!' I insist. ‘Look, it's a giggle, all this stuff, but it's a load of old guff. Let's go and get another drink.'

‘Don't mock,' pouts Sam. ‘And you'd better be careful. What if this means you're going to fall in love with the first man you see, or something…?'

‘Yeah right,' I say. We look ahead of us and both catch sight of a skinny man in a cycle helmet and bicycle clips, with no bicycle in sight, walking past us wearing an ‘I'm With Stupid' sweatshirt. ‘There you go, there's the first man I've seen. What's the probability of me getting it on with him?' We start giggling.

‘Whatever,' insists Sam, ‘you can't leave these things completely to chance. I would suggest a date a night until Friday, just to keep your options open.'

‘A date a night? Who the hell with?'

‘I dunno. People.'

‘
People
. And where would I find these people?' This was the part of my four-point plan I hadn't really grappled with yet. Where the hell to
find
men to date. Everyone seemed to meet people via online dating these days, but it wasn't for me. The whole thing terrified me. And as for Tinder, I couldn't bear the thought of it. All those predatory men swiping left, over and over again…

‘Who knows! Just look around you, my friend.'

We look around us. Five hundred tourists and a man selling hot dogs, but not a hottie amongst them. We shrug at each other and grin, then I looked up at the clouds which are ominously black and in the mood for rain.

‘Come on,' I say. ‘We've got more celebrating to do. Let's hit another bar.'

Chapter Two

Monday

Oh god. I was on the ground again, wasn't I? A very cold ground, that was also very wet and quite stony. A ground that was far too close to my face. And I wasn't sitting on my bottom this time. No, that would have been respectable and acceptable, especially if I'd still been in Trafalgar Square. People often sit around the tourist bits of London, eating stuff, chatting and taking photos; it's expected, they do it all the time. What
nobody
does is lie on their fronts, with their coat twisted all round them like a straitjacket and one boot off, face down on the drive they share with their next door neighbour in a quiet residential street in Wimbledon.
In the middle of the night.

Yes, the
hunky
neighbour. Yes, the neighbour who'd given me my divorce papers yesterday morning. Yes, the neighbour who was currently standing over me and looking concerned.

Oh god. My mind flashed through how I got here. London. Trafalgar Square. Drinking cocktails with Sam. Dancing on the table in that Vietnamese restaurant which inexplicably turned into a disco at ten o'clock. Squealing home on the District Line. Inviting Sam in for vodka and cranberry and one hopeless, spilt-all-over-the-kitchen-worktop coffee – a vain attempt to sober us up before I sent her home in a taxi. Trotting out to put a bulging black sack in the bin – mostly full of empty bottles I couldn't be bothered to recycle – and tripping coming back up the drive… Oh bloody god. I grimaced, as far as I could grimace with my face planted on the drive… Giggling and thinking it was
really
funny and that I'd just lie here for a while and have a
little
sleep…

‘Are you all right down there?'

‘Yes, thank you, I'm okay.' I was a hundred percent sure I was not a pretty sight, but I wasn't hurt – booze and my curves meant I had bounced, probably, like a baby, before landing in my prone and highly compromising position. ‘I've been up to London,' I said, like a female, inebriated Dick Whittington. ‘I've had a few too many. Sorry. I'm on your half of the drive.'

‘That's okay. Do you need a hand up?'

‘Yes, please. That would be really kind.' Oh, the English politeness. It never fails, even at moments of extreme humiliation. Will held out his arms and heaved me up; no mean feat, considering I was carrying approximately four litres of booze and a Burger King Whopper meal about my person. When he was assured I could stand without collapsing to the ground again, he bent down and retrieved the lost half of my footwear.

‘Your boot,' he said, holding it out.

‘Right. Thanks.'

He stood smiling at me; I stood, trying not to fall over.

‘Have you got work in the morning? Rather, this morning?

‘Yes. Yes, I have.'

‘And have you got your keys?'

‘I think so.' My keys had been in the pocket of my thick, padded coat, out for duty early this year as it had been a very chilly October. I rummaged in both pockets. When my left hand (without wedding ring – it felt weird) located them, on their fluffy pink, feathery, glittery key-chain thingy, I pulled them out and shook them in the air to prove I'd really got them.

‘There you go,' he smiled. ‘Fantastic.'

He saw me to the door, which must have banged shut in the night, and watched me open it and step inside.

‘Thanks, Will,' I said.

‘Any time, although I don't mean
any
time. I don't know you very well, but I presume you won't be doing this
too
often…'

‘I don't think so,' I said meekly. ‘As it
is
rather embarrassing.'

He smiled again. ‘Good night, Daryl.'

‘Good night, Will. Thank you so much.'

I staggered upstairs. The horror. Oh, the absolute horror. I couldn't bear to think about it. I decided I
couldn't
think about it. Not now. I could be mortified and apologetic in the morning. Now, I had to sleep.

I woke up feeling like death warmed up in a petri dish. The radio alarm, set to Eighties FM, woke me at seven and I was furious at it. How dare Madonna and her ‘Material Girl' aspirations interrupt my comatose slumber? I needed eight hours more sleep. I needed carbs and painkillers. I needed a new liver… I staggered to the bathroom and was horrified by what I saw. Blonde, short hair sticking up all over the place – all pretence of perky Marilyn Monroe coquettishness gone. A pasty face with make-up smears down it. And panda eyes that wouldn't look out of place at London Zoo. Gone were the days when a hangover made me look dishevelled-ly pretty and enigmatic; I just looked a wreck.

I flopped back into bed. Just fifteen more minutes. Just to get my brain in gear. Oh god. I remembered everything. But mostly waking up on the drive and Will discovering me lying there. What on earth must he think of me? He already thought I was a bit of a nut job. I'd moved in just over a week ago, last Saturday to be exact, and he'd already caught me admiring his bum, taking a giant stuffed whale out to someone's skip and stuffing lemon drizzle cake in my face at two a.m.

He'd made the lemon drizzle. Well, I presume he had; I'd have to ask him. The morning I'd moved in, laden with boxes and giant Ikea shopping bags packed with all my stuff, he'd knocked at my new front door offering a smile and a polka dot cake tin.

‘Hello,' he'd said. ‘I'm Will Hamilton. I live next door. Did you know your doorbell doesn't work?'

‘Yes, I know,' I said. ‘I need to get that sorted. I'm Daryl Williams.'

‘It's very nice to meet you, Daryl Williams. I've brought you a cake.'

‘A cake? Wow!' I'd replied. ‘That's a lovely thing to do. I didn't think neighbours did that stuff any more. I thought it was all lawnmowers at dawn and curt nods on the driveway.' He laughed. He was nice; I could see that immediately. He had a dark-brown-with-grey-bits quiff that had collapsed and was flopping in his eyes, a wide smile and brown eyes. He looked about the same age as me – mid-forties, perhaps late forties? Very, very good looking. The sort of face you wouldn't mind peeking over the top of a newspaper at, at the breakfast table, for years and years. Not that I was in the market for that ever
again. I was over marriage. I was over
my
marriage
.
I didn't need another hero; they just let you down and went off with your best friend.

‘Come in,' I said and he'd stepped into my hall. He was wearing dark, almost black, blue jeans and a brushed cotton checked shirt. Plus grey desert boots – I hadn't seen those since my days at Brighton Poly – in 1991. ‘Excuse the décor.'

I'd bought a mid-street house in a Victorian strip of smallish semis in Wimbledon, not far from the station. My new house looked lovely from the outside, matching all the others with their red bricks and white porches; it even had a nicely tended patch of garden at the front which I already feared for – I was not known for my gardening prowess. Inside, the other semis were probably the height of character period charm coupled with sleek modernity; mine was not. It was extremely dated. Think striped wallpaper below yellowing dado rail; sponge paint affect circa
Changing Rooms
1998 above… Swagged yellow curtains with tie backs – the previous owner clearly couldn't be bothered to take them down and I don't blame her; I wouldn't have dragged such mustard monstrosities to my new house either… Artexed ceilings… A bath with carpet up the side… Will had laughed when I'd showed him that and so had I. He didn't look like a serial killer so I'd showed him round the whole house.

‘It's not exactly Homes and Gardens, is it?' he said after we'd done the tour and were back in the hall. ‘Needs a little bit of work.'

‘A lot of work,' I quantified, again thinking how good looking he was. ‘I know.' It was in pretty bad shape, my new house. That's how I'd managed to knock ten grand off the price, giving me a bit of money to play with. I'd already got a decent amount, from my ‘proceeds of marriage' or whatever they called it (blood money? Tears money?), but the extra cash would come in handy for renovations. I was really lucky. I hadn't wanted to leave Wimbledon – it had been my home since my twenties – and I hadn't had to.

‘I'm quite handy, with a paint brush, you know,' said Will, as I was seeing him out. ‘Just give me a shout if you need any help.'

‘I might take you up on that,' I said, then hoped I hadn't said it in a flirty manner. The plan was to flirt and have fun with men from now on – now I was over the horror of my break-up and divorce – but that couldn't include any neighbours. I wanted to be happy living here, in my new start, not getting tangled in potentially mortifying situations with anyone I shared bin men with.

‘Actually, can I help you bring any boxes in?'

We were both looking towards my car, on the drive. The boot was open. There was a large box sitting in it that I'd foolishly packed in situ and now I didn't think I could pick it up. His words were music to my ears.

‘Well, there's only the one box. The removal firm's bringing up the big stuff tomorrow. It's just me and a few bits and bobs today. My friend was supposed to be helping me, but she's on an emergency date. She's coming later, hopefully, as long as the date doesn't go
too
well, for chips and dips. Low carb and low cal, of course. And I'll have to hide the chocolate. She's one of those who counts
everything
. Her body is a temple.'