Frisky Business

by Clodagh Murphy

  ‘I said do you like Star Wars.’

  ‘Sure,’ he said, shrugging. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’

  ‘Who’s your favourite character?’

  Christ, did she think he was five or something? Granted, he had just fallen out of a tree wearing a Hallowe’en mask, but even so … and why was she still standing out here engaging him in conversation anyway? Shouldn’t she be inside ringing the police or something? He just wanted to get away, as quickly as possible. ‘I can’t say I’ve ever given it much thought. I guess R2D2 is pretty cool.’

  ‘Oh.’ Her face fell, and he got the impression his answer disappointed her somehow. He must be imagining it. Why would she care who he liked out of Star Wars?

  ‘Disappointed, you seem.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You know, Yoda,’ he said, pointing to his mask again in explanation. ‘Says everything backwards, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Oh. Yeah.’

  ‘I mean, obviously I like him too. But y’know, they’re all good,’ he said, hoping to cheer her up. Stop babbling about Star Wars and get out of here, he chided himself.

  Romy was looking up at the tree where he had been sitting and across at her windows, clearly putting two and two together. ‘Were you watching my house?’ she asked.

  Jesus, why was she standing here confronting him about it? Didn’t she have any self-preservation instincts? If he really was a mad stalker, she could be in serious danger right now.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘Really?’ She regarded him sceptically.

  ‘Look, it’s not what you think—’ Before he had a chance to say any more, they were interrupted by a herd of children in Hallowe’en costumes swarming down the path and bursting between them like a loud, debris-strewn river, leaving Kit and Romy on opposite banks. Romy stepped back to her gate to let them pass, but while the rest of them streamed away, one child stopped dead in front of Kit.

  ‘Stranger danger!’ He heard a breathy gasp and looked down to see his nemesis gazing up at him – the little witch with the spider’s web face. ‘Scream, kick, run,’ she was muttering under her breath, as if coaching herself, before doing just that. She shrieked loudly, administered a sharp kick to Kit’s shin, then sprinted off down the road like a firework rocketing into the night, emitting a high-pitched squeal the whole way.

  ‘Fu-uck!’ Kit puffed, reaching down to rub his shin. ‘Bloody hell! What do they teach kids in school these days?’ He looked up at Romy, who had backed into the gate and was opening it behind her without taking her eyes off him.

  ‘They teach them, “Scream, kick, run.” I’d say she’s a credit to her teacher,’ she said, looking after the little girl, who had now disappeared.

  ‘Jesus, Romy,’ he gasped, still winded from the pain in his shin, ‘I’m not—’

  ‘How do you know my name?’

  ‘What?’ Oh fuck! ‘Look, I’m not a perv—’

  ‘You were watching my house and you know my name. Who are you?’

  There was nothing else for it. He was just going to have to take off his mask and reveal himself as the idiot he was. He stepped out of the shadow of the tree so she could see him better.

  ‘Don’t come any closer,’ she breathed, her glance shifting nervously between the end of the road and him.

  He stood still where he was and pulled the mask off over his head.

  ‘Kit!’ she gasped.

  Chapter Five

  ‘Hi, Romy.’ He smiled at her sheepishly.

  She just stood staring at him, dumbstruck. What on earth? Kit glanced nervously to the end of the road. ‘Do you think she’s coming back?’ he asked her.

  ‘Oh, most definitely,’ she said, a smile tugging at her lips.

  ‘With townsfolk.’

  ‘Oh!’

  ‘Yeah. Pitchforks, flaming torches, the whole shebang.’

  ‘Right.’

  Still she didn’t move. She stood there watching him, just letting him sweat. They both turned when they heard voices at the end of the road and he saw the little girl coming back, this time with a couple of adults in tow. ‘He was pretending to be someone’s dad,’ she was saying as they drew closer, ‘but I knew he wasn’t—’

  ‘Come on, you’d better come in before the lynch mob gets here,’ Romy said, grabbing Kit’s hand and pulling him through the gate and up the garden path. They jogged up the steps to the house and she opened the door quickly, hustling him inside. Bumble snaked between their legs and slid through the door at the same time and took off down the hall.

  ‘Thanks!’ Kit puffed once the door closed behind them.

  ‘No problem. Anyway, I still want to hear your explanation.’

  Kit opened his mouth to speak, but she shushed him. ‘Later,’ she said. ‘I have guests.’

  ‘Oh, sorry – I thought all the guests had gone.’ He realised his mistake as soon as the words were out of his mouth.

  ‘So you were watching the house.’ She gave him a stern look.

  ‘I can explain—’

  ‘Later,’ she said again, leading him through an inner door and into a large cosy living room.

  There were only a few stragglers left – a pair of crumblies were wrapped around each other on the sofa and a huge guy stood by the buffet shovelling food into his mouth. A young couple sat at the other end of the sofa, their heads bent in conversation. They all looked up at the sight of fresh meat.

  ‘Look who I found outside!’ Romy said, pulling him over to the sofa. The old pair broke out of their embrace to look up at him. ‘This is Kit,’ she told them. ‘He’s an old friend. Kit, this is May and Frank. They live upstairs.’

  ‘Very nice to meet you, Kit,’ the woman said, shaking his hand. He got the feeling he was being thoroughly inspected.

  Romy introduced him to the rest of the people in the room – Colm and Sarah from the basement, and Stefan, who lived upstairs – and he gave them an awkward wave.

  ‘Right, come on, you lot,’ May said, getting up from the sofa. ‘Let’s leave Romy and her friend in peace. Thank you for a lovely party, dear,’ she said, kissing Romy’s cheek on her way out. The others followed her lead and trooped out after her.

  ‘Would you like something to drink?’ Romy asked Kit when

  she had closed the door behind them. ‘Wine? Coffee? Tea?’ ‘I’d love a coffee.’ He still felt the chill of outside.

  ‘Sure! Coming right up,’ she said, gathering some empty plates from the buffet table.

  ‘Can I help you clear up?’ he asked.

  ‘Thanks. You could help me bring this stuff out to the kitchen,’ she said as she began to gather up plates and glasses. ‘Would you like something to eat?’

  Now that he thought about it, Kit realised he was ravenous. He glanced at the ravaged buffet as he collected cutlery and crumpled napkins. ‘I don’t want you to go to any trouble.’

  ‘Hungry?’

  ‘Starving!’ Kit admitted with a guilty smile. ‘I sort of missed dinner.’

  ‘Well, that’s what you get for spending the night up a tree.’ Kit laughed. ‘Yeah, unfortunately, you need an address to get a takeaway delivered.’

  ‘There’s not much left,’ Romy said, biting her lip, ‘but there’s still some cake. Or I could make you a sandwich.’

  ‘A sandwich would be great,’ Kit said as he followed Romy to the kitchen.

  Romy deposited the stuff on the worktop and indicated to Kit to do the same. ‘Cheese toastie?’ she asked as she loaded the dishwasher.

  ‘Perfect!’

  ‘Okay, have a seat.’ She nodded towards the little table.

  ‘It’s very nice of you to invite all your neighbours to your party,’ Kit said, sitting down while Romy busied herself with the coffee machine.

  ‘Oh, they’re not just neighbours,’ she said as she spooned

  coffee into the filter and switched on the machine. ‘They’re

  my tenants.’

  ‘Really? So you own this who
le house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Wow! It’s a great house.’

  ‘It is, isn’t it?’ Romy said as she sliced cheese and cut bread. ‘I fell in love with it the minute I saw it.’ She made a sandwich and buttered the outsides, then slid it into a pan. The smell of hot butter filled the air. ‘Of course, I’d originally intended to have sold it on by now, but then the property market went into freefall. But I’m kind of glad now the way things turned out. It means I get to live in it – and own it for a bit longer.’

  ‘Well, it’s very impressive. Mom told me you’d done really well for yourself.’

  ‘Not as well as you by all accounts,’ she said, flipping the

  sandwich over and pressing it down so it hissed. ‘I’ve heard you’re taking Wall Street by storm.’

  ‘Not anymore.’

  ‘Oh, sorry to hear that.’ She slid the sandwich onto a plate and handed it to him with a mug of steaming coffee.

  Kit shrugged, biting into his sandwich hungrily as Romy sat down opposite him with a coffee.

  ‘So what happened?’ she asked, looking at him over the rim of her mug, which she cupped in both hands.

  ‘Recession. The company I worked for went under.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I should have thought. I hate this bloody recession.’

  ‘Me too.’ Kit sighed. ‘I lost everything – my job, my apartment in Manhattan, the lot. I had some savings, but I was burning through them so fast, it was scary. Eventually, I had no choice but to move back.’

  ‘So you’ve come back here to live?’

  ‘For the time being anyway,’ he nodded. ‘I’ve moved back in with my parents.’

  ‘I can see that.’ She smiled, nodding at his shirt, which was a pale washed-out pink.

  ‘Yeah. Mom still hasn’t got the hang of the laundry.’

  Kit’s mother was a domestic goddess of sorts – a goddess of destruction. Kit’s regulation white school shirts had always ended up pale shades of pink, blue and green, depending on what colour had run in the wash that week.

  ‘I used to think it was cool the way your whole family always dressed in the same colours – like a team uniform or something.’

  Kit looked balefully down at his shirt. ‘I wouldn’t mind, but this is Armani.’

  ‘So what are you going to do now?’

  ‘Well … that’s kind of why I came to see you.’

  ‘By coming to see me, you mean hiding in a tree outside my house and spying on me?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He gave a nervous laugh. ‘Sorry about that.’ ‘And in a mask too!’

  ‘Yeah, well, I had planned to surprise you. I was going to call to the door and say, “Trick or treat?”’

  ‘That would have been cute.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Cuter than the whole Peeping Tom routine anyway.’

  ‘Right.’ He looked at her warily. ‘Anyway, when I got here and saw that you were having a party, I kind of lost my nerve. So I decided to hide out until I got up the courage to call, but I didn’t want to loiter around the street like a weirdo, so—’

  ‘Yeah, you avoided that pitfall,’ she said dryly.

  ‘I know, dumb move. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I’d have got away with it, though, if I hadn’t been rumbled by your bloody cat.’

  Romy smirked. ‘He’s not my cat. I’m just minding him for my tenant across the hall while she’s away.’

  ‘Just my luck!’ Kit pouted.

  ‘So there was some particular reason you wanted to see me?’ she prompted. ‘You weren’t just suddenly overcome by nostalgia?’

  ‘Well, that too. Being back in my old bedroom at home … there are so many reminders of you. I really wanted to see you again.’ He smiled at her fondly. ‘I’m sorry we lost touch.’

  ‘Me too.’ She smiled back at him. ‘So what was the other thing that made you come here?’

  ‘It was what Mom said, about you being a property developer. It gave me an idea, and I wanted to ask your opinion on something.’

  ‘Okay,’ Romy said warily, her heart sinking a little. She knew all too well that property developing was something everyone seemed to think they could turn their hand to when they wanted to make some quick money. During the property-buying frenzy of the Celtic Tiger she had lost count of the number of people who had asked her for help with projects, expecting her to act as consultant, site manager and interior decorator as a favour and getting very put out when she explained as nicely as she could that property development was how she earned a living and she couldn’t afford to put the time and effort into doing freebies. She really hoped Kit hadn’t come here after all this time to ask her for that.

  ‘I was hoping you could advise me,’ Kit said, pulling some papers from his jacket on the back of his chair. ‘I have this house that I inherited years ago from my aunt and I never did anything with it. I was thinking maybe I could renovate it now – as a way to make some money. I don’t have a clue about this stuff, so I thought maybe you’d be able to tell me whether it’d be worth doing, or if I’d just be wasting my time and money.’

  Romy sighed. ‘You know, developing’s not as easy as it looks.’ She began the speech she had made countless times to hopeful amateurs.

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘And the property market is abysmal right now.’

  ‘Tell me about it. But you seem to be doing okay,’ he said hopefully.

  ‘I did well in the boom,’ she said. ‘And I was careful.’ She had been told she was too careful, that she should get more mortgages, buy more properties, take on more debt, do whatever it took to capitalise on the opportunity of an out-of-control property market. It was like they were all in this glorious casino where no one ever lost. It didn’t matter where you placed your bet – as long as it was on the table, you would win. The only losers were those who were too afraid to put their chips down. ‘You can’t lose,’ everyone had told her. Sometimes she had thought they were right. She knew there had been times when she could have made more money, and she had turned her back on some potentially lucrative opportunities, but she had never regretted it because she had always known her limits. There was only a certain level of debt that she could cope with, and she was not prepared to go beyond that. She preferred to sleep at night.

  ‘And what about now?’ Kit broke into her thoughts.

  ‘I’m okay. I own this house, I have no mortgage.’ She sighed. ‘I’m lucky. I can ride it out, live on rental income until things pick up again. But I’m not doing any new projects because the market’s so bad. It’s just not worth it.’

  ‘I know things are bad, and it would be hard to get a return on your investment. But the thing is, I own this house outright. So it would only cost whatever it would take to renovate it – after that, the rest would be pure profit.’

  ‘If you managed to sell it.’

  Kit’s face fell a little at this, but she knew she had to be brutally honest. There was no point in giving him unrealistic hopes.

  ‘Well, yeah – that’s why I need your advice. It does need a hell of a lot of work. I still have some savings, but I have no idea if I can afford to do it – or even if it’d be worth doing. I might end up spending more than I could possibly get for it.’

  ‘How bad is it exactly?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t been down there in years – not since we were kids and Aunt Lillian lived there, and it wasn’t great even then. I have a photo,’ he said, pulling it from the papers and pushing it across the table to her along with the estate agent’s details.

  ‘It looks pretty neglected,’ Romy said, staring down at the photo.

  ‘Yeah, and that was taken about eight years ago, so it’s probably a lot worse now. It’s been empty since Aunt Lillian died.’

  ‘Well, on the surface it looks like a classic money pit and my instinct would be to tell you to stay well away from it. But it’s hard to tell much from a photo. I’d need to see it in person to properly assess what kind of conditi
on it’s in and what sort of money you’d need to spend.’

  ‘Would you do that?’ Kit said, brightening. ‘Come down and have a look at it?’

  ‘Sure.’ What had she got to lose? She loved looking around houses, imagining what she could do with them. She already knew from what Kit had told her about the house and what she knew of the current market that her instinct to advise him not to touch it was unlikely to change. But there was no harm in looking – and she could at least give him a realistic assessment of what it would cost to renovate, so he could make his own decision. It was a beautiful house, though … ‘Where is it?’

  ‘In Wicklow. A stunning location in the arsehole of nowhere,’ he said, laughing wryly.

  ‘It’s big, isn’t it?’ she said thoughtfully, looking at the spec.

  ‘Huge.’

  ‘And it’s got a lot of land around it, which is a good thing.’

  ‘If you did think it was worth doing, would you be able to … help?’

  Here it comes, she thought. ‘Help how?’

  ‘I’m completely clueless about developing. I don’t even know where to start. And it’d be so obvious I didn’t know what I was doing, I’d probably get fleeced. Plus you’d have all the contacts with builders and so on. I thought maybe you could project manage it for me.’

  ‘I don’t know, Kit—’

  ‘You said you don’t have any projects on the go at the moment.’

  ‘I don’t, but—’

  ‘And I can’t imagine being a landlady takes up a lot of your time.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t.’ That was an understatement. She was so bored of sitting on her arse collecting rent. She really missed developing.

  ‘Well, think about it anyway,’ Kit said. ‘And factor in your fees when you’re calculating what I’d need to spend. If you’re not doing it, I’d need to get someone to manage it anyway – someone who knew what they were doing.’

  She smiled, relieved that he wouldn’t expect her to project manage the renovation as a favour. She looked at the photo again and started to feel the stirrings of the old excitement. It had been a long time, and it would be lovely to have the challenge of a new project. ‘I don’t need to think about it. If I think it’s viable, I’ll be your project manager,’ she told him.