Cloudy with a Chance of Love (23 page)

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.

‘Killjoys!' shouted a deep voice. ‘I only wanted a bit of chocolate.' There was a burst of male laughter and the letterbox crashed shut again with a clatter.

‘Wankers!' shouted another voice, of even more combative timbre, then we heard the stomp of heavy, disappointed feet lumbering up Will's drive and finally, a call of ‘I need Dairy Milk and I need it now!' in the near distance.

We burst out laughing in the way you do when you've had to hold it in for a while. Gabby and I always did it in lifts, when we couldn't dare catch each other's eye for risk of exploding, but this time I wasn't standing in a lift with Gabby… I was kneeling in a small, darkened hallway on a scratchy coir mat, with my very hunky next door neighbour sat on his haunches and wearing a very tight and muscle-exposing superhero suit.

Suddenly we stopped laughing. Suddenly, everything went serious. It was like one of those tumbleweed moments you see on TV, except there was no dusty ball of hay bouncing down a Western
street, but a kind of charged silence. There were no wispy bits of straw tumbling around on a whippy summer's breeze at the O.K. Corral; instead we were frozen in the eye of an electric storm. My heart was thumping. Will's face looked weird. I saw a swallow go down his throat. His eyes underneath the Batman mask were dark and intense. The moment seemed to last forever. I realised I was good at this staring into the eyes lark after all. I felt I could look into Will's eyes for days. At the same time, I was waiting. Waiting for him to do something. Oh god, it looked like he was going to kiss me. Was he going to kiss me? I really wanted him to kiss me. His lips looked delicious; they were more pronounced because of the mask. They were quite full, and warm with laughter and fun. Kissable. Really kissable. Oh god.

He leaned forward and kissed me.

I could feel the heat of his lips before they even got to me. And when they did… oh god, it was amazing. It wasn't the lacklustre pecking and dry, beer-and-brandy-tinged kissing of Ben. It wasn't the face-chewing and blatant sexual probing of Dex. It was sweet and soft, but warm and intense and the feel of Will's lips on mine was incredible. I wanted to place my hand on the back of his head but I didn't dare, but then he surprised me by cupping my face with his hand. Oh god! It was absolutely fantastic… He had such lovely lips… I began to really kiss him back, my heart thumping… Oh lord, this was my neighbour…

Suddenly, and without warning, he pulled away.

‘We shouldn't be doing this.'

‘No?' My heart was thudding in my chest. My lips were tingling and ready for him again. Where was he? Why had he gone? Our faces were inches away and we were both breathing heavily. ‘No. I know,' I said. ‘I'm so sorry.' That was what I was saying, but I wasn't sorry at all. I was far from sorry, at this moment. I wanted him to kiss me again.

‘This is wrong. You're my neighbour. We've only just met. I…'

‘I know, I know. This is
so
wrong.' But it felt so bloody right! It really did. God, that kiss, those lips. Why weren't we still kissing?
Why
? ‘We're neighbours,' I agreed, reluctantly. ‘I've only known you about a week. Well, it's a week and a half now, isn't it… I…'

‘And you're seeing someone, too… I'm not the sort of man who…'

‘I'm actually not,' I said quickly. I knew we shouldn't have been kissing, but I hadn't wanted him to stop. Why did he stop?
Please don't stop, Will!

He withdrew his face further from mine, looking confused. ‘You're not seeing anyone? What about your date on Tuesday, with the guy you met on Monday? And you saw him again last night, didn't you? I saw you go out, all dressed up…'

‘Oh,' I said, embarrassed, I hadn't wanted to admit to him that I was out at another singles thing last night, like a complete saddo. I still didn't. ‘Well, yes, but we've broken up now.' God, I sounded like a teenager – where was my zombie apocalypse costume? ‘I won't be seeing him again. But you're right, we shouldn't be doing this. We really shouldn't.'

‘No.' He nodded. He ran his fingers though hair. ‘I'm sorry, Daryl. I shouldn't have kissed you. It was wrong, we're…'

‘Look, it's fine. I totally agree with you. We're neighbours, this would be utterly stupid.'

‘This is wrong.' All right, he didn't need to
keep
saying it. It was wrong, I got it.

Oh. I
got
it. This wasn't just about us being neighbours. This wasn't just about Ben, the man I was no longer seeing. It was also about Angie. He couldn't kiss me because of Angie. He'd never got over her. He still loved her. That's why there weren't lots of pictures of her around the place; he couldn't
bear to be reminded of her and her loveliness and her beauty. That's why he was so grumpy about his summerhouse, and why it was in such a state, because she'd loved it and now he couldn't bear to use it except for a dumping ground… And he certainly didn't want to be kissing some woman who was undoubtedly so utterly and completely ridiculous in comparison to her. Some woman who passed out on drives and stuffed cake in her gob and got paint all over her and couldn't cook and looked terrible in a dressing gown and had an enormous bottom… He wasn't ready to move on, and he certainly wasn't ready to move on with
me
.

I was an idiot; he'd been kissing an idiot.

‘I think we'll leave it there,' he said. ‘I'm sorry.'

I felt crushed. He didn't want to kiss me. I was an awful and embarrassing person. It had all gone horribly wrong.

‘Just so you know,' I said, remembering all the bum-perving I'd done, ‘I wasn't expecting you to do anything. Tonight.' My voice came out all husky. I cleared my throat.

He just looked at me. His face was impassive, stony almost. Why did I
say
that? What a stupid thing to say. I sounded all sulky and defensive, never great, even coming from a sulky and defensive teenager; it was definitely not great coming from a middle-aged divorcee. It was true though; I certainly hadn't been expecting
that
. Had the way I'd said it sounded like I
had
?