Authors: Cathy Kelly
In the kitchen, she put away her cleaning equipment and put some cheese on a couple of water crackers. She poured herself a glass of crisp Sancerre and sat down on the couch again, this time content. As the strains of Mozart echoed softly around the apartment, Sam finally felt herself relax. She willed herself to forget about work and the job losses. Then, the noise started. It was strange, because at first she wasn’t sure where it was coming from. Surely not upstairs? Even Mad Malcolm wasn’t mad enough to be playing loud rock music at ten o’clock at night. And then the penny dropped. Next door. Still clutching her glass of wine, Sam stared out the front window at the adjoining house and saw two young women lugging a crate of beer up the path. Standing beside the window, the music seemed louder. A taxi pulled up and disgorged more people, all happy and clearly party-bound, judging by the number of off-licence bags they were carrying. Sam felt the veins in her head throb. This was not wild party land. This was a wildly expensive neighbourhood where the notion of a wild party was one where the caterers served too much Bollinger or where guests tripped on their Manolos while staggering out to the chauffeur-driven Mercedes. Whoever had bought the house couldn’t, wouldn’t, dream of ruining the discreet peace of Holland Park with a party? Or if they thought they could, they’d soon discover the error of their ways, Sam snarled. Just as abruptly as it had started, the music stopped and Sam felt some of the anger leave her body. Good. Some other resident had complained; therefore she didn’t have to go in and do so. In her current mood of pent-up tension, who knew what she’d have said. The police would have been called sooner rather than later. She curled up on the couch again, sipping her wine and letting the Mozart soothe her. With a loud bass thump, the music next door cranked up even louder this time, sounding as if Black Sabbath had turned up and were playing a live gig.
As the music reached a crescendo, so did Sam’s temper. Downing half her wine in one gulp, she grabbed her keys, slid her feet into the espadrilles she used as slippers and rampaged downstairs and out into the street. ‘Oh no, a party,’ sighed one of the nice couple from the basement flat, who were just coming in after an evening out. ‘Have you rung the police, Sam?’ he asked. ‘No,’ snarled Sam. ‘But phone for an ambulance because whoever’s having this party will need it when I’m finished with them.’ With giant strides, she raced up to the other door and pushed. It wasn’t locked and opened easily. From here, the music was eardrum-splitting. The house, which was just a shell with stripped walls and bare, elderly floorboards, had excellent acoustics. Sound reverberated through it. Sam stepped over a rolled up rug and a crate of beer. The place was a disgusting mess. She could just imagine the thought process of whoever had bought it: have the party now, before the wallpaper was up and the carpets down. Or rather, Sam thought grimly, the spoiled teenage children of whoever had bought the house had thought it was a good idea to have the party now and their stupid parents had agreed, not caring about their new neighbours. Big mistake. In a huge airy room, fairy lights were strung from the high ceiling and a gang of people stood around, smoking furiously and drinking beer from bottles. The scent of marijuana was heady. Nobody took any notice of Sam. In her jeans, she fitted right in. All she needed was a beer and she’d have looked like the rest of them, except for the fact that she had to be up at six a.m. and needed to get some rest, Sam thought furiously as she searched through the throng for her quarry. The noise was coming from another room. Sam pushed through into what was obviously the nerve centre of the party. It was barely recognizable as a kitchen because most of the units had, been ripped out by builders but there was still an island unit piled high with bottles of booze, six
packs of Coke and a half eaten loaf of tomato bread. Sam ignored the people in the kitchen and headed for the dining room. There, behind a bespectacled youth with a pile of CDs she found it. The stereo system. ‘Is there anything you want me to play?’ yelled the disc jockey eagerly. ‘Yes,’ hissed Sam. ‘Cards.’ With one expert movement, she wrenched the plug from the socket and all was quiet. ‘Why did you do that?’ asked the DJ in shock. Everyone stared at Sam, bottles of beer held at half mast. They saw a small, slim woman with a blonde ponytail who wore ragged jeans and worn espadrilles and had what looked like newspaper smudges on one cheek. ‘I live next door and I don’t want to listen to this sort of crap late at night, do you understand?’ she yelled, not in the least perturbed to have at least twenty curious thirty-somethings staring at her. Sam had bawled people out in public before. ‘Sorry…’ said the DJ politely. ‘We just thought it wouldn’t matter because nobody was living here yet…’ ‘Nobody may have been living here but there are eight people living in the house next door, an adjoining house,’ Sam pointed out, ‘where you can hear every bass thump.’ ‘So you thought you’d come in here and pull the plug instead of calmly asking us to turn the volume down, did you?’ said an amused, low voice. Wearing jeans that were astonishingly more torn and faded than hers, jeans that clung to a long, lean body, and a white creased shirt with most of the buttons undone to reveal a hard, muscled chest, was a man who made Sam’s breath suddenly catch. He wasn’t handsome and he wasn’t a mere twenty-something either. His face was too long, his eyes too narrow and his nose was too hooked to be model material, yet he was somehow the most incredible looking man she’d ever seen. Around her age, she guessed. Sam, who spent hours
looking at pictures of male singers who sent other women to paroxysms of joy and left her utterly unmoved, could only stare. If he could sing, she’d bet her bonus she could sell millions of albums with his face and body on the cover. Even if he couldn’t sing, come to that. Still smiling, the corners of that fabulous mobile mouth twisted up into an ironic little smile, he ambled towards her. The tawny rumpled hair and the barely buttoned shirt made it look as if he’d just dragged himself out of some bed or other. Narrowed, treacly eyes surveyed her lazily as though he was eyeing her up with the intention of dragging her back to bed with him. Sam objected to being surveyed. She was not some bimbo: she was a managing director, a woman who made subordinates flatten themselves against the walls in fear when she was angry. She drew herself up to her full five foot four inches and prepared for battle. ‘I live next door -‘ she began fiercely in her killer boardroom voice. ‘Do you?’ he interrupted, still unhurried and unperturbed. ‘Is it a nice neighbourhood?’ He stopped right in front of her. Even though he was barefoot, he still towered above her. Sam hated that. It was why she liked wearing perilously high shoes for important meetings so only the tallest people ever got to look down on her. it used to be,’ she hissed. Talk about invading her personal space, his body was only a few inches away from hers. Normally, she’d have slayed him with an icy word but feeling strangely vulnerable out of her normal habitat, Sam took a step back. The wall was behind her, she couldn’t go any further. Retreating was a mistake in business, it was now too. She stuck her chin out defiantly and the hand clenching the stereo plug tightened. Is this your house?’ she said, trying to stay fearsome in the face of this Adonis invasion. He ignored the question. ‘You have something of mine,’
he said, his voice almost a drawl. He reached long arms around her, and for a second Sam’s breath stilled. He wouldn’t, he couldn’t. The charismatic, mocking face was close to hers as he reached down and she felt her stomach contract. His mouth was laughing and it was getting close to hers, so close she could feel the heat of his breath and smell a sharp citrusy tang from his warm body. Without knowing why, she closed her eyes. Then she felt the plug being pulled from her hand. ‘Mine, I think,’ said the man. With one graceful movement, he reached down, brushing against her leg, and plugged the stereo in again. He flicked a switch and loud music pumped into the room. ‘You bastard!’ screeched Sam, shocked and embarrassed. ‘You absolute bastard.’ She had to really yell now to make sure he heard her. ‘How dare you …’ ‘I think you’re the one who dared,’ he said, faintly amused. ‘If you wanted us to turn the noise down, you should have asked me. I wouldn’t have refused you.’ Impotent rage surged through her and for one terrible moment, Sam forgot all about good business, about how revenge was a dish best served cold and how any corporate raider needed a cool, calm mind. He was using his physical presence to intimidate her and she reacted in the age-old, instinctive way of a woman confronted by a larger predator. She kicked him. In the shin as hard as she could, the blunt end of her espadrille connecting with hard bone and sinew. ‘Ouch!’ His yelp of pain could only be heard by her as the current song was at an eardrum-splitting decibel level. That got rid of the mocking smile. Sam smirked. It had hurt her toe too, mind you, but now was no time to think of her own personal pain. Those years of ballet meant she had tough little feet. ‘Who the hell do you think you are shoving your face in my personal space, you asshole!’ At that precise moment, the DJ unaccountably turned
the music down. Sam’s roar reached the entire room and provoked some giggles. What the hell was the sound down for? Sam wondered blindly before she spotted the one soberly-dressed person on the premises. The policeman stood in the doorway and hovering behind were the couple from the basement apartment in Sam’s building, who were watching the proceedings anxiously. ‘We’ve had a complaint about a party and loud noise,’ said the policeman in a calm voice. Sam shot her opponent a triumphant look and was enraged when, instead of looking worried or ashamed, he smiled lazily back at her. ‘Yes officer, I’m afraid we turned the music up a bit high, I’m sorry,’ he said and led the way into the kitchen. Sam sniffed and held her head high as she marched out of the house and back into her own, followed by her downstairs neighbours. That bloody man. How dare he make so much noise. How dare he humiliate her like that. And her foot hurt … ouch. ‘Are you OK, Sam?’ asked the wife from downstairs as Sam hobbled up the stairs. ‘Fine,’ she said breezily. In the hall mirror, she caught sight of her face. She looked as if she’d been slapped. Both cheeks were as rosy as bramley apples. As she thought of the scene next door, her cheeks blazed some more in sheer embarrassment. She grabbed the wine from the fridge and poured more into the glass. You moron. Imagine turning into some cretinous, violent bimbo just because some he-man sticks his hairy chest in your face? Anyway, you’re hardly a bimbo, she groaned inwardly. You’re staring into the abyss of forty. Sam took a large gulp of wine. How could she have let herself down like that? She should have fixed him with a steely glare and told him exactly what forces of the law she’d use to make him stop his horrible party. When she’d suitably reprimanded herself, Sam went to bed. But sleep evaded her.
It was like being fifteen again, fifteen and horribly embarrassed because the boy in chemistry class had overheard her saying she fancied him like mad. Even twenty-four years later, that memory could still make her burn with shame. Now she’d done it again. Finally, Sam got up and took one of the sleeping tablets she kept for emergencies. This certainly qualified. She slept eventually but her hot fevered dreams were full of a tall, laughing man in a soft, loose white shirt, a man who laughed at her for behaving like a petulant, hormonal fifteen year old. When Sam left for work the next morning, she waited to check her mobile for messages until she was outside. She wanted to be doing something when she passed the house next door, she didn’t want to be vulnerable and on her own in case she met him. ‘You have no messages,’ taunted the impersonal voice on her phone almost before she’d got to the front gate. Instead of hanging up, Sam was forced to listen to all her old, undeleted messages in order to keep up the pretence of being a busy, high-octane career woman who wasn’t interested in men. Suddenly she noticed the dilapidated house’s front door swinging open. Quickly averting her eyes in case she saw him again, she began talking into the phone. ‘I’ll be there soon, we’ll have the meeting if you’ve got all the documents lined up from New York,’ she blathered. A taxi sailed up the road and Sam stuck out her hand to hail it. ‘Bye, talk soon,’ called a female voice behind her. Sam automatically turned to see a beautiful dark-haired girl leaving the house, smiling at the man in denims and bare feet who was holding the door. Bare chested too, Sam noticed with a jolt, and blowing kisses at the girl who looked around twenty-two at most, a stunning doe-eyed twenty-two who’d clearly stayed away from home all night if the silvery dress she was wearing under a big, man’s coat was anything to go by.
‘Take care,’ the man said in that caressing voice, but he was looking mockingly at Sam who stood there, mobile in hand and her mouth open. ‘Do you want a taxi or not, love?’ demanded the taxi driver. ‘Oh, er yes,’ stammered Sam, pulling open the door and half falling in, with her raincoat trailing after her. ‘Late night?’ inquired the driver with a smirk. ‘No,’ hissed Sam, reasserting herself. ‘Covent Garden please.’ What an asshole, she thought. Loud parties, having flings with women half his age. I mean, that girl was twenty and he has to be late thirties at least. Bloody playboy. Probably some trust fund moron who’d never had a job in his life but lived off inherited cash. Sam stared grimly out the cab window and simmered. She hated men like that.
CHAPTER THREE
‘I can’t believe you’re moving in a little over two weeks. I can see it now,’ sighed Betsey dreamily. ‘A summery little cottage in a beech glade, with a thatched roof and pretty sun-bleached rooms, gorgeous home grown food and quaint little pubs where you can sit outside and eat oysters and watch the world go by with the Riverdance music in the background.’ Hope glared at her over a plate of fisherman’s pie. ‘It’ll be November, not summer.’ ‘I think that’s Hollywood’s version of rural Ireland,’ laughed Dan from his position beside three-year-old Opal where he was attempting to clean up the mess she’d made squelching the insides out of several packets of brown sauce. Despite his efforts, Opal managed to fling a few opened packets on the floor before he could tidy them all away. ‘No,’ joined in Matt, ‘it’s the tour operator’s version of Ireland when they’re trying to sell you a time share. You know, Dan, maidens at the crossroads, sheep in the middle of the road and a friendly local with no teeth, a pipe and a tweed cap welded to his head waving at you!’ ‘Haven’t we made an ad like that already?’ Dan asked. ‘Don’t think so. But we will, we will. I love the originality of advertising,’ Matt joked. Matt, Betsey and Dan all laughed merrily. Hope stabbed her fish pie. Hilarious. Trust them all to make a joke about it all. It was her life they were talking about, not a location shoot for a bloody commercial. She was the one who’d be transported into another country, away from her friends and