“Are you sure she’s buying the house and not Dave?”
“Who’s buying a house?” I heard. Paul had returned to place Joe’s wine on the table and wait for our order. Joe and I had spoken at the exact same time.
“Saucy Sally.”
“Pete the husband snatcher.”
“Oh! Awkward,” Paul replied. “Now, lunch?”
I ordered a pasta dish; Joe opted for pizza. I’d never known anyone who could eat as much as he did and stay as thin. I looked at food and the weight piled on.
“How much is this house?” I asked.
“One point five, but I think the owner will take one and a quarter.”
“She can’t afford that!” I shouted, then choked on the mouthful of bread I’d taken to soak up some of the alcohol. I noticed other diners looking our way. “So I’m guessing Harry is buying it. Why not look himself?” I whispered, not wishing my dirty laundry to be aired so publically.
“He’s hardly going to ring me and arrange a viewing, is he? Dave said he was viewing on behalf of his brother, and then dropped the name in a later conversation.”
I sat back and took a large gulp of wine. “What a wanker.” The eavesdroppers on the next table sniggered.
Harry had argued over every penny I’d won in our divorce. I hadn’t even wanted half of everything, just enough to start life again at fifty bloody years old. I’d given him my life; we’d been together since I was sixteen (that was a lie, I was fifteen, but I buried the first year for the sake of legality). I deserved what I was after, and if he could afford a million and whatnot pound property, he hadn’t suffered that much.
I swallowed another gulp of wine to wash away the anger. “Do you think they’ll buy it?” I asked as Paul placed our dishes on the table.
“I don’t know to be honest. I get agents looking at property on behalf of clients all the time, but they’re usually the investment types or an Arab wanting a holiday home near Harrods. I guess if we see them for a viewing themselves, they’re serious.”
“Well, I don’t want to know,” I said, knowing full well that I did.
We ate and chatted about some of Joe’s other wealthy clients and their unbelievable demands where property was concerned. After Joe drank his coffee and I finished my tea, he checked his watch, blew me a kiss, and rushed off for his fortnightly waxing. I gathered my gym bag and headed back to my flat.
I’d accompanied Joe to some of his properties; we’d pranced around pretending we owned them, and I specifically remember one time where we spent the day using the pool and spa. I’m sure he would have lost that client had they realised, but most lived abroad and trusted their investment portfolio with him.
As I put the key in the lock and opened the flat door, I chuckled over how unprofessional he’d been. I bent to pick up the post, wincing at a twinge in my lower back before placing my hand over my heart to…I wasn’t sure why my hand was there; it should have been over my mouth to stem the belch from lunch.
I heard a laugh and before I could turn, the vacant flat door that was opposite mine closed and obviously not vacant anymore. With cheeks flushed, I quickly closed my door, thanking the Lord I hadn’t farted.
I’d just about placed my gym bag in front of the washing machine and the post on the kitchen table when there was a knock on the door. I walked and pulled it open.
“I thought I’d introduce myself. I’m your new neighbour and wondered if you needed these,” he said, holding out a packet of Rennie.
I opened my mouth to speak but closed it again and reached out for the Rennie even though I didn’t need them, and eventually looked up and smiled. Standing at my front door was a man, probably about my age, greying at the temples with dark hair and startling blue eyes.
“I’m not really in need of them, but who knows? I might keep them for when I do. Lizzie,” I said, offering my name.
“Danny, I moved in yesterday.”
“Well, if you ever need a cup of sugar, I’m probably not the one to ask. I’m crap at food shopping,” I said.
He laughed, and the sound brought another smile to my lips. He had a lovely laugh, a genuine laugh, if there ever was such a thing.
“It’s nice to meet you, Lizzie. I’m new to the area so, if you don’t mind, I might be asking your advice since you're the first person I’ve spoken to since I got here.”
I stepped back at little. “Well, come on in for a cuppa, and you can ask away.”
Danny told me that he worked for an engineering company that was relocating; the precise details went over my head. He was newly single after a long-term relationship had broken down. He liked cats over dogs, and was fond of the cinema and dining out.
“That’s your Tinder profile sorted,” I said, raising my cup of tea as a salute.
“I can’t be bothered with all that. I mean, I want to date, but all this online crap isn’t for me,” he said. We clinked cups in solidarity at that.
I told him, “Once I tried an online site, something to do with aquatic life, it was about the funniest, and worst experience of my life.” I laughed, reminding myself that I hadn’t checked in a while. I stood and rinsed our mugs under the tap.
As I showed him to the door, he said, “Well, it was nice to chat to you, maybe we can do it again.”
“Sure. I’d like that.” I closed the door behind me and sighed.
Nice guy, way too much baggage, scary eyes—I got in all the reasons I didn’t like him in that way as a defence, ready for when he said he’d just like to be friends because I was sure that’s what he’d say at some point.
The slightly sour smell reminded me I needed to wash the items in my gym bag. I debated on another shower, although it wasn’t like I’d actually worked out at all, but it gave me something to do.
Chapter Three
Gone were the friends that like to lunch, although the term ‘friend’ was probably an overstatement. They really were just the wives of his colleagues that I was forced to entertain. It was as if there was something contagious about separations. And there was clearly something distasteful about a single woman. I’d watch them clutch at their husband’s arm as if I was going to swipe him away from under their beady, careful watch. Once the gossip was extracted—I mean, it wasn’t often a high earning member of the London brokerage club ran off with a drag queen—I never heard from them again. Although some of the women were more than interested in what divorce settlement I’d agreed on, of course.
I was bored. I didn’t do single. I had no clothes to iron or washing to collect from the dry cleaners. I had no diary to coordinate with dinners and events. I had no meals to prepare, and table plans to worry over. I didn’t miss all that; I missed doing something; being busy, albeit, when I sat and thought, it was a pretty shallow life that I’d led.
Pilates. I remembered that I was going to take up Pilates. I’d put on some weight since my break-up, not that I worried about my roundness; I just didn’t feel healthy. I picked up the gym booklet from the bottom of the now-clean bag and flicked through.
There were several classes, so I circled an intermediate one. It couldn’t be that hard to do, I’d seen a couple of DVD’s, and it was all about stretching and tying one’s self in knots.
I repacked my gym bag in anticipation of my new Pilates class.
“You have to come and view this house with me. Lizzie, it's in Knightsbridge and has a wine cellar accessed through a glass trap door.” Joe oozed enthusiasm as I answered my phone. I hadn’t even wished him a good morning.
“Okay, when?”
“Now, come now! Jump on the tube, and I’ll text you the address.”
“I can’t come now. I’m going to Pilates.”
He snorted. “Pilates? Have you ever done that shit before? I dated a Pilates teacher once. Boy, could he get to places I'd never imagined,” he said, dreamily.
“I’d rather not know where he got, thank you. Anyway, I watched a DVD, and it’s not that hard. I don’t think so, anyway.”
“Well, when you’re done with Pilates, call me. I doubt I’ll be here but come round and I’ll show you the pictures.”
We said goodbye, and I left the flat at the same time as Danny left his. He was suited and booted, and I had to admit to a slight fluttering in the nether regions. He looked rather hot, a little like the model on the cover of a book I was reading.
“Hi, where are you off to?” I asked as we walked to the stairwell together.
“I have a meeting in town, nothing exciting. Another new office block to be built and they want my input,” he said, as he opened the door.
The building we lived in was listed and had been a very exclusive private school back in Victorian times, I believed. It was now plush apartments. Joe would scowl every time I called it a flat. Flats were high-rise, and for council tenants, he’d say, and then I’d remind him he was once a council tenant, and his mum still lived in one of those high-rises because she refused to leave her mates in Bethnal Green. No amount of, ‘let me buy you a nice bungalow,’ from Joe would persuade her to move, and I loved her for it.
“If it was good enough for your farva (as she’d pronounce it), and it was good enough for the Krays, then it’s good enough for me,” she’d say before reminiscing about the good old days when the Krays ruled the streets, and everything was just lovely. She’d hold up her hand as if to dismiss the words: gangsters, bloodshed, murder, and fights when Joe would remind her of the good old days.
Danny and I parted at the front door; he went left, and I turned right, then doubled back because I was meant to go left as well.
“Lost already?” he asked, noticing me behind him.
“No, forgot where I was going for a moment. I’m off to Pilates,” I said, with an air of someone who did that on a regular basis.
“Pilates, huh? Well, have fun,” he said as he crossed the road towards the underground.
I carried on to the gym. That time I had my card ready, in fact, I waved it at the smirker behind the counter who was so rude to me the last time I visited. I waltzed through the turnstile with my nose in the air and my eyelids half shut.
As before, I inserted my fifty pence into the mechanism to extract my key and locked away my bag, then I walked, gently that time, up the stairs to the gym and crossed the floor. I saw a small group of women waiting, and I held back. Whereas I wore my usual leggings and a baggy t-shirt, these women had matching top and bottoms that wouldn’t have looked out of place on an Olympic athlete. In fact, I was sure I remembered whatshername Ennis wearing the same outfit.
It was the foot coverings that stood out the most. They weren’t wearing the latest fashion trainers but things that looked like slip-ons, something between a ballerina shoe and socks. One woman turned to me I gave her a smile.
Thankfully, she smiled back. “First time?” she asked.
“To this class, yes,” I replied.
I was saved from a full-on conversation when the doors opened and what resembled a hippy-ballerina-come-extra-from-Fame stood there. He was tall and very skinny, with a cropped top, tight Lycra pants that left absolutely nothing to the imagination, not a hair on his legs, and the same slipper type shoes.
He introduced himself as I walked in. “Ah, you’re new. I’m Casper like the ghost,” he said, with a laugh. I looked blankly at him. “Never mind, come on in.”
I walked into the middle of a very blue room and came to an abrupt halt. The walls were painted one shade of blue, the floor was another, but it was the contraption in the corner that had me stunned.
“Oh. My. If it isn’t the Christian Grey of Pilates.” I laughed. The woman I’d met outside laughed with me, a fellow reader I assumed.
In front of me was a large bed, for want of a better word. It had four metal poles rising from each corner creating a frame from which hooks, pulleys, and God knows what, hung. I spied what could have well been fluffy handcuffs at one end.
It wasn’t quite the introduction to Pilates I was expecting. In fact, Pilates wasn’t quite what I was expecting full stop, and bore no resemblance to the old DVD I’d found and watched.
We were shown to mats, and I was expected to contort my body into positions it hadn’t been in since I was a rampant teenager with a penchant for experimental sex positions. It was the slight leakage from a weak bladder and the pain from holding in a fart that had me pretending to remember a very important appointment and leaving the class early.
I hobbled from the room with a chorus of, “See you next week!” from Casper and his blue room of torture playmates following me. I raised my hand in a wave.
Yeah, like fuck you will, I thought with a smile. Although the bed with the trapeze type contraptions made me smile, so maybe I’d return for a one-on-one session.
As I stood under the shower—not because I needed to wash from exertion but to see if I could ease the muscle cramps—I thought back. Harry had always been quite adventurous in the bedroom, but when I remembered, penetrative sex wasn't often something we did. I never thought too much about it at the time, now though, it was obvious. He liked a little anal…he did, not me. He liked a little tying up and blindfolding, and we had a range of toys to play with. I thought it was all quite exciting at first and how cool we were; women were only just reading about that, and we’d been doing it for years. I stepped out of the shower and wished I hadn’t. I felt a tear as it rolled down my cheek. The shower could have masked that; instead, I raised my towel, pretending to wipe away a droplet of water.
I walked briskly back to the flat, I mean apartment, and managed an even brisker walk up the stairs. Although it felt like the crepitus in my knee was echoing up the stairwell, I pushed on. I laughed as that held in fart decided to creep out in time with my climbing the last three steps. Three little toots that bounced off the bare white walls and rolled down the stairwell. Secret farting was a pleasure of mine, and I guessed it went back to the days of not feeling like I should do it in front of Harry. For years, I’d held all bodily functions in check—not that he had reciprocated, of course. Perhaps it was a woman thing. At just over fifty and newly single, it was fast becoming a favourite pastime.
I waved my hand around to disperse the smell before opening the hallway door and trying to slam the door closed quickly. Danny stood there with his arm outstretched as if he was about to open it from his side. I saw him through the small glass window and smiled, while I frantically—and out of sight obviously—waving my arms around.
Eventually, he pushed the door gently towards me. “Everything okay?” he asked.
“Yes, sorry. I dropped my bag just as I was pulling the door open. I didn’t want the door to drag against it,” I lied, raising said bag as evidence of its existence.
The gym bag had once been cream, I think. It was now cracked and a light brown colour from age, being dragged or kicked around on the floor, and living most of the past two years unused on top of a wardrobe.
“Yeah, looks brand new, I can imagine you wouldn’t want to scuff it up,” he said, laughing as he walked through the door and down the stairs.
Cheeky sod. I began to walk through into the hallway.
“Oh, Lizzie? You stink,” he said, and followed the statement with more laughter.
“Oh…fuck off,” I whispered, as my cheeks bloomed with embarrassment.
I decided that I didn’t particularly like Danny after all. I might have, when we shared a cuppa and he was polite, but then I thought about our interactions. He had heard me belch and decided to mention it with a packet of Rennie’s. Any decent fella would have ignored that to save my shame. He had heard me fart and decided to mention it. Like I said, any decent…I didn’t even know him, but I’d made my mind up; he was rude.
“Did you know I had a neighbour? He’s very rude,” I said, after hearing Joe answer my call.
“I did, and is he?”
“Have you met him?” I asked.
“No, a colleague interviewed him for the apartment.”
“You don’
t own that flat, do you?”
“No, but I manage it for the owner. He’s a Saudi, owns most of that block and the next-door one, too,” Joe answered.
“Anyway, he’s rude. He was rude to me twice.”
“Didn’t you say you thought he was nice when you invited him in for tea?”
“I don’t recall saying that, but he might have been then; now I think he’s rude. I went to Pilates today; you have got to let me tell you about this bed,” I said, excitedly.
I then proceeded to tell Joe all about my day.
“Do you want to come to a new bar with me tonight?” he asked.
“Sure, why not. But will you do me a favour? Make sure you look super gay. I don’t want any nice single men thinking we’re an item.”
“Sure, I’ll wear my ‘I find pussy repulsive’ t-shirt, and you can have a neon sign with the word, ‘desperate’ on it.”
“I’m not desperate at all!” I replied, feeling indignant.
Joe laughed. “You are, and seriously, a friend is opening the bar. I only intend to stay for a couple of drinks then leave. I have a very early start tomorrow. I doubt you’ll get an opportunity to ensnare your next victim.” He added a manic laugh as if it would soften his words, but I frowned.
Joe often took the piss out of me; I did the same to him. We had been friends since school days and had the kind of relationship where we could rib each other, but his words stung a little. Maybe I wasn’t as hard and tough and ‘over it’ as I led everyone to believe. Instead of telling him that, I laughed.
“I’ll see you later, call for me when you’re ready,” I said.
Joe lived a few doors up from the block in a beautiful townhouse. Instead of selling property, he should have been either an architect or an interior designer. His eye for detail was like nothing I’d seen before. We would take a walk, and he’d point out the minute details on the façade of a building that would have otherwise gone unnoticed. His talent was wasted with simply selling the properties. But then, his love of buildings and architecture was what made him as successful. He didn’t sell the interior alone; he sold the bricks, the mortar, the idea, and the dream of a building, not just a home.
Limp Dicks & Saggy Tits Page 2
