Cloudy with a Chance of Love

by Fiona Collins

  ‘So,’ I continued. ‘We’re going out. And I got him to make it nine o’clock so I’d have time to do the decorating first.’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t give us too long, then,’ said Will, still with that bright smile. ‘Time flies when you’re decorating. We’d better crack on.’ He looked around the hall again. ‘Have you got any dust sheets?’

  ‘Dust sheets? We won’t be creating any dust, will we?’

  ‘No – they’re for covering the floor. You’ve got these lovely wooden boards – looks like oak – you don’t want paint on them, do you?’

  ‘As I said, I thought I’d just be really careful,’ I replied.

  Will shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t risk it. Even Michelangelo needed dust sheets.’

  ‘Did he?’ I asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Will laughed. ‘I don’t think so.’ Oh dear, I sounded like a fool. Will would think I was someone who had no sense of humour and took everything literally. ‘What about a stepladder? You’ll need one to reach the top of the walls.’

  ‘I was planning to stand on one of my kitchen chairs,’ I said.

  ‘So unprofessional,’ said Will, shaking his head again. ‘Come with me. I’ve got both of those essential items in my summerhouse. You’ll need to help me carry them.’

  I grabbed my keys from their hook by the front door and followed Will out through it. We crossed his drive and walked along the front of his house to his little gate, virtually identical to mine, which led to his back garden. I exclaimed when I saw how pretty his garden was. The grass, although a little overgrown, what with it being autumn and permanently wet at the moment and everything, was lush and green, unlike my patchy, muddy excuse for a lawn next door. He had wide flower beds which were stuffed with greenery and pretty winter plants. And down the middle of his lovely lawn was a cute little path that led, at the end, to an even cuter vintage-y summerhouse, painted in the palest of pale greens. It was hexagonal, I guessed, and had gorgeous (if somewhat dirty), small paned windows and weather-boarded sides and a dinky little ornate spike on the top, with a weather vane.

  ‘Oh, how cute,’ I said. ‘That’s a gorgeous summerhouse.’

  Will pulled a bit of a face.

  ‘It’s not so cute inside, I’m afraid. It’s in a bit of a state, these days. I really need to give it a good clear out.’ We walked down the path – I had to resist the urge to skip – and Will fished a key out from under a nearby paint pot. After three somewhat rusty attempts, he opened the door.

  It looked like it had been lovely in here, once, but it certainly wasn’t now. My first impression was how incredibly dirty and dusty it was, with that really dusty, musty smell that old garages have. My second impression was: spiders! There were cobwebs everywhere – draping from each corner, slung from the edges of the piles and piles of stuff heaped up and rammed into this compact space – and spiders galore. Big ones perched and poised to scuttle; little ones merrily suspended on their trickling, silvery threads; and ones that had obviously died and gone to spider heaven many moons ago – rigor-mortised and desiccated in decaying webs. Luckily I wasn’t scared of them. I’m thankfully not the sort of woman to start shrieking and carrying on when she sees a spider and I haven’t been since Freya told me to ‘get a grip, Mum,’ one September, at age six.

  ‘Sorry about all the spiders,’ said Will.

  ‘It’s okay. I don’t mind them.’

  He looked surprised.

  ‘And sorry about all the junk,

  ‘It’s your junk – don’t be sorry.’

  He shrugged and went over to one corner of the summerhouse where he started unearthing what could be a stepladder, from behind some random panels of old wood. It was all a bit random in there, full stop. The Jenga pile of miscellaneous items piled to the roof included boxes, a rusty looking lawn-mower, some golf clubs, spades and garden tools. An old suitcase. An old antique-looking sewing machine. A box of old vinyl records. I spotted Cool and the Gang and Carly Simon. A toaster and a cat basket. To one side was what looked like a filthy table and chairs, all piled up.

  I had a hoarder next door.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Will, yanking the stepladder free and leaning it against the set of golf clubs. ‘Hoarder next door.’

  I giggled. ‘I was, actually. Is your house the same?’

  ‘No! Of course it’s not! I’m not one of those people that can’t get into their own sitting room!’ I knew it probably wasn’t. I could sort of see into his kitchen, from the drive and I had the impression it was always clean and tidy. ‘No, only here. I’ve just been dumping random stuff in here,’ said Will.

  ‘I can see that,’ I said. ‘It would be gorgeous, you know, with a bit of a tidy up. The junk cleared out… that little table and chairs dusted down and put in the middle… you could even put some pictures up. It needs a Calamity Jane make-over.’

  ‘I have no idea what that means,’ he said.

  ‘Girls’ film, Doris Day,’ I replied.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he said, a slight flicker of something passing across his face. ‘I remember. And it used to be great in here,’ he added, ‘but it’s not any more. Right, let’s get this stepladder outside.’ He picked it up and propped it up outside, against one flank of the summerhouse. ‘And here…’ he grabbed the corner of something thick and blanket-y. ‘… are the dust sheets.’ He unearthed two enormous, folded woolly sheets from underneath a tinder box and an old cassette recorder. ‘We used old blankets. You’ll need to help me shake them.’

  ‘No problem.’

  We. He said ‘We.’ Did he used to be married? Was he divorced, like me?

  We went into the garden, stood opposite each other and gave the first blanket a big shake. The wind was blowing in the wrong direction and a cloud of dust hit me in the face.

  ‘Oops, sorry,’ said Will.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I said, brushing it off my face with my hand. ‘I’ll probably have paint all over my face in a minute anyway.’

  We shook the other one, then folded them both by doing that thing where two people keep stepping towards each other, closer each time, to make a new fold.

  ‘It’s like doing some kind of Elizabethan dance,’ I said.

  Will laughed. ‘Hold your arms out,’ he ordered. I held them out straight in front of me and he placed both folded dust sheets on top. Then he picked up the stepladder, hooked it under his arm and strode off ahead of me whilst I platonically checked out his bum. We carried everything back to my house, laid the dust sheets over my hall’s wooden floor and set up the stepladder.

  ‘Much better,’ said Will. ‘We don’t have to worry now. So, do you want to cut in, or shall I?’

  I put my foot up on the bottom rung on the ladder, like I’d seen tradespeople do.

  ‘I could tell you if I knew what on earth that meant,’ I said, in a slightly amusing cowboy-type voice.

  ‘Hand me your thinnest paint brush.’

  I’d bought a set of five and went to open the pack, which was in the kitchen. After wrestling with the bullet-proof plastic with a pair of kitchen scissors for ten minutes – accompanied by a lot of whispered swearing and Will calling out, ‘When you’re ready! – I came back to the hall and gave the smallest paintbrush to him.

  ‘Sorry. Even Houdini wouldn’t have broken into that. I’m exhausted now.’ He’d opened one of my tins of paint and was stirring it with the special paint stirrer I was proud I’d thought to buy. ‘Shall we down tools for the day?’

  ‘Ha, no.’ He took the paintbrush and the pot of paint, climbed to the top of the ladder and promptly started painting a perfect, straight line between the wall and the ceiling.

  ‘You’ve done this before,’ I called up.

  ‘Just a couple of times. We did up our old house ourselves….’

  ‘We’ again. Who was this ‘we’? I was too shy to ask, and what do you say? ‘So… tell me…. is there a Mrs Hamilton?’ like they do in cheesy sitcoms, or a straight-to-it, ‘Are y
ou married or have you got a girlfriend?’ which was, frankly, just a bit rude. So I just let his comment hang in the air, until I could think of a subtle way of asking him.

  ‘I feel a bit redundant,’ I said as Will continued expertly cutting in. ‘Shall I make us a coffee?’

  ‘Yes please. Three sugars.’

  ‘Three. You’ve got a sweet tooth?’

  ‘You could say that,’ he said, concentrating on the corner of the wall. ‘I’m a bit of a sugar fiend – cakes, biscuits, whatever – I’m hooked, I’m afraid. They say sugar is the new crack cocaine, don’t they? Well I’d be classed as an addict.’ He didn’t look like one – he looked lovely and healthy to me – and he certainly wasn’t overweight. I had another amazing view of his bum, from where I was standing and his whole body looked, well, fit. If anyone looked like a sugar addict, it was me.

  ‘I put my fingers in my ears when they say that,’ I said. ‘I simply refuse to believe it.’ He laughed. He really didn’t look like a sugar addict. He must exercise strict portion control. Not like me. My portions knew no limits. ‘You made that lemon drizzle, didn’t you?’ I said.

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘It was amazing. When do you find the time? In between being a busy doctor consultant type making a difference to people’s lives each and every day, and everything..?’

  ‘I’m an insomniac baker,’ he said, coming down the ladder to shift it to a new position. ‘Sometimes I can’t sleep so I get up in the middle of the night and make cakes.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ This image, as lovely as it was, made me feel a little sad and (oh, the horror!) somewhat turned on (oh dear, oh dear…). I imagined him, all lonely and with a pinny on over his pjs (and that was a conservative image, believe me), whipping up a batter and listening to Radio 4 whilst his sponges rose… I shook my head. This was not right. I had to dispel this image from my brain immediately. A recent divorcee having a crush on her ever-so-helpful and hunky neighbour was definitely too much of a cliché. Next I’d be donning a baby doll nightie and fluffy mules and hovering outside on the doorstep all the time, whilst leaning over to pick up bottles of full-fat milk left by the milkman… Not that we had a milkman; we barely had a postman, if his current standard of service was anything to go by…

  ‘Are you okay? You’re miles away.’

  Sorry, I was in the fluffy mules shop, browsing.

  ‘Sorry! Coffee.’

  I made and brought the coffees and we sipped them sitting crossed legged on the floor like a couple of workmen.

  ‘All we need now are doorstep corned beef butties and some Wotsits.’ said Will.

  ‘And you need a pencil behind your ear.’

  ‘I can oblige,’ said Will, pretending to extract one from his jeans pocket.

  We sat in silence for a moment, sipping. I felt calm and content; this was nice.

  ‘So, a date tonight.’

  ‘Yep,’ I said. Not that I really felt like going now. I couldn’t really be bothered. I was quite happy just sitting here with Will and could easily do so all night. He was good, easy company. But I couldn’t back out of the date now; Ben would be waiting for me at that pub in Richmond at nine. ‘Well, I thought it was time to get back in the saddle again, you know. Although it’s been so long I’m not sure if I can locate the saddle. It’s probably in your summerhouse, under a load of junk.’

  ‘Ha, ha. Good one.’

  ‘So I’m single and ready to mingle,’ I sighed. ‘I think. Well, I’m not entirely sure but I’ll give it a go. Single and ready to mingle… That’s an awful expression, if ever there was one.’

  ‘It sure is. It should be banned.’

  I grinned. ‘A better phrase in my case would be “I’m sort of willing to put my toe back in the water but only if it’s warm enough, otherwise I’m going to run off screaming”’

  ‘Yes, that sounds more like it.’ I looked at him. Did it? Did he think that too? What was his relationship status? Was he single? Was he scared of dating, just like me?

  I had no clue, but I felt I could tell him stuff so I kept on talking.

  ‘That post you had of mine, it was my divorce papers. I’m now divorced. As of Sunday, I am a free woman.’

  ‘Ah, I see.’

  ‘This house is a new start for me.’

  ‘I get you.’ He nodded and smiled at me. ‘That’s fantastic. Well, I wish you many happy times in your new house.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Okay, I was biting the bullet; I was going to ask him something. He knew quite a bit about me now; I knew nothing about him. It was time to do some neighbourly prying.

  ‘So, the insomnia,’ I braved. ‘I don’t want to be nosey,’ – I so did – ‘… but is there a reason for it… or just one of those things?’

  Will just sat for a moment, sipping his coffee. Then he took a deep breath.

  ‘I’ve had insomnia since my wife died, five years ago.’

  You know when you get a kind of clang in your heart and everything stops? That’s how I felt. I felt awful.

  ‘Oh Will, I’m so, so sorry.’ I meant it; I was really, really sorry.

  ‘Me too. She was wonderful.’ He gave a great big sigh. ‘Bloody breast cancer.’

  There was nothing to say to that. We sat in silence for a while, until our coffees were drunk, the ticking of my clock in the kitchen counting down the minutes.

  ‘Right,’ said Will, hauling himself up onto his feet and holding out his hand for my empty mug. ‘Let’s get back to it.’

  He started cutting in along the skirtings and instructed me to start painting one of the walls. I was bit nervous but I decided just to go for it and after a while I got into a nice rhythm of dipping my paintbrush, wiping it gently on the side of the tin to get rid of excess paint and then doing long, languid strokes up and down the walls. Oh dear, I was thinking kinky. I had a sudden image of Will coming up behind me and holding my hand with both of his as I painted, making us a seductive, decorating version of Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore in Ghost.

  Stop that, I thought, almost laughing to myself. Think instead of the satisfying transformation of grubby magnolia wall to rich duck egg. There, that was better. And time really did start to fly. We worked well as a team, Will and I. We painted in unison: Will on one wall, me on the opposite wall. We bumped bums a few times as I kept stepping back to admire my dubious handiwork, which was also quite satisfying, but I pretended it wasn’t.

  We painted; my kitchen clock ticked on, and before I knew it, it was eight o’clock and we were almost done.

  ‘We’re almost done,’ I said proudly.

  ‘Well, not really,’ said Will. ‘What about the second coat?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, taking a few steps backwards and surveying our handiwork. ‘Do we have to do that?’

  ‘Yes, we do.’

  ‘All right.’ I stepped forward again and peered closely at the walls. Yes, I conceded, they did need more coverage; there were patchy bits where you could see feathery lines from the brushes. ‘We’ll have to do that another day.’

  ‘We’ll? Are you assuming I’ll provide my services again?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It was the Royal We. I meant me. I’ll do it another day.’ I wouldn’t be – I was rather bored of decorating already, however nice the company had been. I would get a man in soon. The Royal We would be a bloke from Tradespeople.com.

  ‘So,’ Will said, leaning on the stepladder. ‘The Cinderella of Decorating has to be all scrubbed up and ready by nine?’

  ‘Well, twenty-five to – the taxi’s coming then. And it could be a tall order,’ I quipped, looking down at myself. I was covered in both huge blobs and millions of speckles of duck egg blue. ‘You may have to dip me in white spirit.’ I immediately regretted saying that, as it sounded a bit naughty. Will just laughed and didn’t seem to have thought anything untoward, then he picked up his paintbrush again.

  ‘As it’s drying so quickly,’ he said… I liked the heating on high in my house, as I feel the cold. I k
now Will was glad he was just in a t-shirt and he was definitely too polite to ask me to turn it down… Jeff was forever casually knocking down the thermostat, in our old house, as he walked past… ‘Why don’t I just carry on? You just go and get ready.’

  ‘What? Really? No, I can’t let you do that!’

  ‘I can do. I’m happy to.’

  ‘Wow, are you sure you don’t mind? Really?’

  ‘No, I don’t mind. I’ll finish it off. You go and get ready,’ he smiled, looking up from his haunches and a tricky corner bit. ‘I don’t mind carrying on being your slave.’

  ‘If you’re sure…’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Well, thank you, slave. Thank you very much.’

  I went upstairs to shower and get ready while Will continued to paint downstairs. I felt bad; I really did feel I had a slave, that I had a servant doing my dirty work for me. I felt like some dreadful Lady of the Manor. Still, it was amazingly nice of him. What a lovely guy…

  Right, what to wear? I really had to switch my thoughts off the slave downstairs and onto Ben and the date. I rifled through my wardrobe. I hadn’t been on a date for a hundred years and I wanted to look right. Not too try hard, not too couldn’t-care-less. I rifled back through my wardrobe, in the other direction. It was a shame I couldn’t just wear last night’s outfit again as I knew it was a winner. Finally I went for skinny jeans that didn’t make my bum look too much like a bowling ball, some high-heeled ankle boots and a grey drape-y jersey top that I hadn’t worn for about five years; if I hadn’t moved I probably would never have seen it again, as it was stuffed right at the back of the wardrobe in my old house, and I’d forgotten how much it suited me. I’d top it with my fluffy, faux-fur jacket and quickly send Freya a highly unflattering selfie which gave me six chins…

  Just as I was about to head downstairs, feeling tremendously self-conscious that I was going down to Will dressed in all my dating finery, I impulsively grabbed a black skinny tie I’d once bought at Camden Market and tied it round my neck. I’d seen a similar look in a magazine and it looked all right on me. So did my make-up. I’d gone for pink-y peachy tones with a little bit of shimmer on the eyelids and cheekbones (what I had left of them). I’d do.