Page 117 of Read My Lips

Except, what if I was?

My chest tightened. I’d willfully walked into this much self-sabotage on the off-chance Simon gave a shit about me. As if pretending not to care was ever going to change his mind. What had I been thinking? I must have turned my brain off.

Enough.

No one was waiting to swoop in and save the day any more than they were waiting to magic all these boxes away. I forced myself to breathe.

Tearing the cardboard into long strips ready to wrangle into the bins out back was almost cathartic. Ripping down runs of over-sized staples with a string of dense, satisfyingly blunt pops felt illegally good. I went at the whole pile, until all I had left was a window-sized ragged edged, slightly bendy sheet that had wrapped the table-top.

Packing tape in hand, I dragged it through to the kitchen, and clambered onto the worktop like there weren’t half a dozen strangers peering in through the window from the pavement, trying to get a red-eyed, tail-spinning candid of me in my natural habitat. It’d be a lot easier pretending they were invisible if the front garden was more than two feet deep.

Wrestling the sticky side of an unreasonable length of brown tape, I mangled the card against the PVC frame, blocking off the glass.

No more camera flashes. No more people.

Crack-house vibes for the win.

Matt leaned against the doorframe. “And this is so much better, is it?”

“Monumentally.” At least we had daylight coming in from the back of the house. Until they figured out about the bin alley and started leering over the back fence too.

Stomping past him, I retrieved the kettle from the sitting room and plugged it into its rightful place on the empty worktop. Next to a cluster of #Thisisnotahorse mugs.

Jeeves slash Alfred and friends goggle-eyed me until I rotated them to face the wall. I’d had quite enough judgement from horse-portraits to last through to the next millennium thank you very much.

Matt loomed out of my eye line. Uncharacteristically not passing comment. Remarkably loudly.

The kettle steamed, rocking precariously on its stand as the bubbling water thrashed against the sides. I could feel him judging me. None of this would have happened if I hadn’t jumped in with both feet.

“Don’t you have better things to do with your weekend than being barricaded in here?” Cathy would have put him up in her spare room if he’d asked. He could have avoided all the drama I’d brought down on myself. Fuck knows why he was still here.

Matt wrinkled his nose. “Like I’m leaving you alone with that lot outside. You’d inadvertently confess to single-handedly causing global warming if they suggested it’d be useful.”

“That’s not—”true. Oh fuck. Was it?

Slow motion, Matt tilted his head sideways, peering around me, confusion fogging onto his face.

“I’m not being funny,” he signed, “but Mrs F from next door’s chasing a tiny, angry-looking woman with a dye job up our garden path.”

CHAPTER

THIRTY-FOUR

Sev charged up to the back door faster than I’d ever seen her run. Frantically rattling the handle, she tapped at the glass like an out of place bird trying to get in. Except, a lot more sweary.

“Ben Cooper, you shit. Open this bloody door right now!”

Behind her, half way up the path, Mrs F brandished the inner-tube of a roll of kitchen towel in one hand, and her empty recycling box in the other, yelling incomprehensibly. Exactly like she did to get the local cats out of her garden.

Neighbourly relations – trending down.

Twisting the key in the lock, I yanked the garden door open and Sev dove inside, scrabbling to get behind me.

“You alright Mrs F?”

Our neighbour’s eyes turned thunderous.

“Do you know this one, do you?” She wasn’t looking at me, so much as trying to keep Sev locked in her sights. “Caught her sneaking around by the bins. And I won’t stand for it.” She flashed me a distracted glance, hands firm on her hips. “Do you hear me?”