Page 3
I had my phone in the pocket of my dry tracksuit, two cups of tea in one hand and a packet of biscuits under my arm, still managing to balance an umbrella and get his patio door open with the help of my knee and a sharp nudge of my shoe.
“Years of practice having spent my entire career working doors,” I explained. “I can hold an umbrella and numerous bags as well as kick a door open without breaking a sweat.”
I was going for humorous entertainment, trying to put the guy at ease.
He’d done as he was told, which was one good result of this little outing.
He was showered and dressed, or at least, he was wearing washed-out airline pyjamas.
I knew because Gray always brought them home for me.
I had a selection of airlines available for my nightly comfort needs.
“American?” I questioned.
“British. Born and bred,” he said, looking confused, but that wasn’t what I’d meant. With that crisp London accent, he was probably privately educated, and a high earner too, living in one of these townhouses.
“No, I mean the… What do they call them? Loungewear. It’s got the American Airlines logo on the front.”
“Oh.” He still seemed confused. I would have been too. I wasn’t the best at communicating, or making friends, but I did have some skills to fall back on.
“I brought biscuits. I’m usually a plain-digestive kind of man; I like shortbread, but days like this call for milk chocolate Hobnobs. Oaty and crumbly with that nice, sweet kick.”
Dylan still looked like he had no idea what to do with me .
I’d never been inside any other house on this road but ours.
As a private gated community, this wasn’t the kind of neighbourhood for garden parties and socialising.
We nodded politely at each other but mostly kept to ourselves.
This basement flat, though, was surprisingly similar to mine, I noticed, as I looked around for somewhere to put down the cups of tea.
Clinical. Pale walls, a TV, a bed in the middle of the room and a small kitchenette on the side.
And a table. I had one too, but Dylan’s was more like an old desk, with leather visitor chairs on either side. Too posh to put the cups on.
“Lost the coasters,” he said.
Yes, he was definitely a Brit. The kettle in the corner.
A ripped-open foil of teabags. Not a coffee maker in sight.
My kind of guy. I handed him his cup and sat, making myself comfortable.
“My son has this contraption of a coffee maker upstairs. It’s like some kind of steam engine.
Took me a long time to get the hang of making myself a simple espresso. ”
He took the seat opposite and placed his hands on his lap, like he didn’t know what to do with the tea in front of him. I nodded and gestured to the cup, a drink-it-whilst-it’s-hot motion with my hand.
“Not keen on instant coffee.” He was a quiet man. Not a conversationalist then. “I like a nice latte at times.”
“You have a family?” I opened, but the shock on his face stopped me in my tracks.
Dylan Scotland. Thin. Pale. Had probably once been a very handsome man, all cheekbones and a sharp jaw. Now he looked broken. Or maybe I only saw him as that because this was the first time I’d seen him when he wasn’t crying.
It was nicer when he wasn’t crying.
“I’m sorry,” I said gently.
“Don’t.” His voice was just a huff.
“I don’t mean to pry, and I don’t expect any answers. I have no agenda here, Dylan. Can I call you Dylan? Mr Scotland sounds too formal for a friendly cup of tea. Biscuit?”
He watched as I opened the packet and held it out to him. I watched as his slim fingers took one of my meagre offerings.
He broke the biscuit in half, letting the crumbs fall all over his lap.
Not that he seemed to notice or care. His bed was unmade, the space around him in gentle disarray.
There was rubbish on the floor, the bin in the corner had stopped overflowing a while ago, and that line of milk bottles had clearly been there so long they’d become part of this room’s charm.
I wondered what was upstairs. If he even went there. The door at the top of the stairs was closed, no line of light underneath.
The same way my home looked. Where I missed that very same light. The sounds. The laughter.
We were living in identical silence.
He gave no reply to my earlier question, so I offered up another one.
“Do you want to tell me what happened?”
An open question. Yes or no. I wasn’t prying, but something was off here. I hadn’t seen the kids in years. Perhaps there had been a divorce? People were usually open about things like that.
“I’ve lived here for almost seven years now,” I continued, grabbing myself another biscuit.
I chewed, swallowed, followed it down with a gulp of tea.
A very nice brew. “Good cuppa, this. But as I was saying, I’ve been too busy with my grandchildren, and then I was working, and I honestly never paid attention.
I haven’t been a very good neighbour, and I apologise for not having introduced myself properly before.
I briefly spoke to one of your nannies at some point, I believe. ”
“It’s just me here,” he said with a touch of panic in his voice.
“Big house for just one man.” I hoped he was following where I was going.
“I only use this downstairs space.” He took a breath, like he was struggling to talk.
“I understand, because I do too. My son and his family are temporarily living in LA. They have a few more months on this project, and then they’ll come back home. It’s far too lonely without them.”
Okay, that was apparently the wrong thing to say because now he was looking away, staring at the wall. A tear ran down his cheek. I wanted to brush it off, calm him down. Stop his ragged breathing.
He wasn’t in any medical danger. Just trying to stop himself sobbing.
“Crying is okay. You know this, don’t you?
It doesn’t make anything better in the end, but it helps your body deal with the grief in your bones.
Helps your brain process things. Whatever happened, it needs to have a start, a process, so it can stabilise to a point that is somehow manageable.
It will never go away, and anyone who says that is a liar, but it becomes a little bit easier to deal with, and we learn to live with it. Side by side.”
I was no therapist. No poet. Just a man. But he smiled under those tears.
“I’d rather not,” he said, not even bothering to wipe away that tear. “Thank you for the tea.”
“No trouble. Anytime.”
Silence.
“The gardens were desperate for this rain,” I said, trying to fill it. “Tomorrow, the lawn will look greener, and everything will seem a little brighter.”
“That’s the kind of thing you say when you’re lying through your teeth.”
Surprising. Not the delivery of a full sentence, more so that he responded at all.
“I only speak honestly,” I countered, sitting myself up straighter. “Drink your tea.”
He did as he was told. I was starting to see a pattern here. It was easier for him just to do as I said. It made sense to me because I hadn’t lied when I said I’d been here before. Rock bottom. Lonely and confused.
Back then, I had listened to one thing and one thing only. Nothing else had mattered. It had just been easier that way.
“In another lifetime, years ago, I drank three half bottles of vodka a day. Seemed normal at the time, because for me, it was the only way I could cope.”
I hadn’t planned on that confession, but sometimes, shock and awe was the way to go. Something I’d learnt throughout my career. Dealing with people took skill. Sometimes you had to be polite and gentle. Other times, you needed to poke the stick in the fire. Get a reaction.
The only reaction I got out of Dylan Scotland? A scowl, followed by a deep sigh.
“That’s what people say. Oh, I’ve been where you are. I got through it. Just keep working .”
“The mind is a great healer.” I hoped he could read the sarcasm in my voice.
“Bullshit.” He huffed. “The mind is a fucking wanker.”
That was better than the tears, but the silence resumed, and once again, I felt obliged to fill it .
“A year ago, I was called into the office at work and told I was being let go. Immediate effect. I would be paid for the remainder of the month with a redundancy payout to follow.”
He said nothing.
“Not only was I being let go, my entire department was. Which meant both myself and my son were unemployed, as well as my cousin and his daughter and a whole bunch of brilliant humans who’d worked for me for years.”
“Family business,” he commented.
“Kind of. People I trusted, and who trusted me to ensure they could pay their rent and feed their kids. Normal things.”
He nodded. Good. We were getting somewhere. Conversing. Only it was just me talking.
“People lose their jobs every day,” I said. “I was lucky. I had a place to live and money in the bank. But not everyone was that lucky, and finding another job is not easy. I’ll be fifty-eight this year. Over the hill and unemployable.”
“Nobody is unemployable.” He didn’t look so sure about that statement.
“I’ve applied for hundreds of jobs, but I’m not going to start applying to clean offices just yet. I still have some pride.”
“I wouldn’t know how to clean an office. My PA used to run the hoover around once a week.”
“And she no longer does?”
“Let her go a while back.”
“So now you do it all yourself.”
“I don’t do anything.”
And back to silence. This was exhausting. And now we were out of tea.
“Were you made redundant?” I asked.
“What’s with all the questions?”
“It’s called getting to know your neighbour.”
That made him grimace.
“Perhaps we both need someone to talk to.”
“Or perhaps not.” He sounded irritated. “Why wouldn’t you clean offices?”
Good question .
“I’m too much of a snob, I guess. I led my own department and employed a solid team. I think I’m still a pretty decent person, worthy of contributing something more to a role than my excellent hoovering skills.”
“So you do have skills.”
“Making tea and hoovering, yes, when I’m at home. At work…I don’t know. Perhaps I’m punching above my station. I have no degrees. No profession. Just the gift of talking too much.”
“I agree with that. You’re nosy and talkative. Polite, yes. I’d employ you to clean my office.”
There was a small smile there. It felt like sunshine. Like I’d managed to achieve something today.
“Mad skills, my grandson tells me. But I didn’t come here looking for a job. I might volunteer to take your trash out, though, if you need help with that.”
“Nosy and too personal. You should perhaps compliment me on my excellent housekeeping skills instead of insulting my recycling station.”
“Is that what you call it?”
“Yes. What do you call it?”
“Depression,” I said honestly. Usually did the trick.
“ Too personal ,” he half shouted. “You’ve already asked too many questions.”
“I’ll leave you to it then,” I suggested, getting out of my chair and reaching for the teacup in front of him.
“Don’t,” he said, the panic in his eyes startling me. “Please.”
I felt like the father I was, and he looked like a truant child in need of a stern talking-to.
I shook my head. Sat myself back down.
“I have all the time in the world, but I can’t be of any help here if you don’t talk to me.”
“I don’t know you. Why should I spill all my troubles over some stranger?” he spat out in a sudden spurt of vitriol. I didn’t blame him, but this was exactly what I was hoping for. Some kind of reaction.
“Because,” I said calmly, putting the teacup out of reach. I wasn’t going to risk getting one thrown in my face. “It might stop the crying.”
“Nothing will stop the crying,” he said miserably.
“So talk to me. We don’t know each other, at all, but perhaps we will one day. What I’m trying to tell you, not very eloquently, is that while I’ve not been in your shoes, I have been in mine. Same place, different leathers.”
“That’s not even a saying.”
“No.” I smiled. “But it’s a good start, isn’t it?”
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3 (Reading here)
- Page 4
- Page 5
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- Page 8
- Page 9
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- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
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- Page 16
- Page 17
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- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
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- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
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- Page 32
- Page 33
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- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41