Hazard could hazard a guess.
All my life I’ve had plans. I’ve been in control. I write lists, I set objectives and milestones, I make things happen. But I’m thirty-seven years old and running out of time.
Thirty-seven. Hazard mulled the number over in his addled brain. He’d definitely swipe left at that one, despite the fact that he himself was thirty-eight. He remembered explaining to a mate on his desk at the bank that when you were buying fruit at the supermarket (not that he ever did buy fruit, or go to a supermarket), you didn’t pick the peaches that were the closest to turning rotten. In his experience, older women were trouble. They had expectations. Agendas. You knew that, within a matter of weeks, you’d be having the conversation. You’d have to discuss where your “relationship” was going, as if you were on the number 22 bus, trundling down Piccadilly. He shuddered.
Whenever a friend posts a picture of their baby scan on Facebook, I click on “like” and call them up and gush down the phone about how excited I am for them, but, honestly, I just want to howl and say why not me? Then I have to go and shop in the haberdashery department of Peter Jones, because no one can feel stressed in a haberdashery, surrounded by skeins of wool, crochet hooks, and assorted buttons, can they?
Skein? Was that even a word? And a haberdashery? Did they still exist? Surely people just bought everything ready-made in Primark? And what a strange way to de-stress. Much less efficient than simply downing a double vodka. Oh God, why did he have to start thinking about vodka?
My biological clock is ticking so loudly that it’s keeping me awake at night. I lie there cursing the fact that my hormones are turning me into a cliché.
So, there it is. I’ve done what Julian asked. I do hope I don’t live to regret it.
As for Julian, well, I have a plan.
Of course she has a plan, thought Hazard. He knew her type. It was probably divided into subsections, each with an allocated key performance indicator. She reminded him of an ex-girlfriend of his who had, one memorable evening, presented him with a PowerPoint presentation on their relationship—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. He’d wrapped that one up pretty smartish.
I know exactly how to get him out and about again. I’ve designed an advertisement, for a local artist to teach a weekly evening class at the café. I’ve posted it in the window, so now all I have to do is wait for him to apply. And I’m going to leave this book on a table in the wine bar over the road. If you’re the person who picked it up, then what happens next is in your hands.
Hazard looked down at his hands, the antithesis of a safe pair. They hadn’t stopped trembling since the end of his last big bender twenty-four hours ago, the day he’d found the book. Bugger. Why him? Apart from anything else, he was leaving the country tomorrow. He’d have to pass Monica’s on his way to the tube station. He could pop in for a coffee, check her out, and give her the book back so she could hand it over to someone more suitable.
Just as Hazard was closing the book, he noticed that Monica had written something else on the next page.
P.S. I’ve covered this book in clear sticky-backed plastic to give it a bit of protection, but please try not to leave it in the rain, in any case.
Somewhat to his surprise, Hazard found he was smiling.
SEVEN
Julian
Julian peeled the handwritten note off his front door as he went in. He didn’t stop to read it. He knew what it said and, besides, it was all written in capital letters, which he thought a bit rude and shouty, undeserving of attention.
Julian made himself a cup of tea, sat down in an armchair, untied his shoelaces, slipped off his shoes, and rested his feet in the foot-shaped dents in the threadbare, tapestry-covered ottoman in front of him. He picked up his latest glossy magazine—Bazaar—which he’d been carefully rationing so it would last until the end of the week, and was just starting to lose himself in its pages when he was rudely interrupted by a knocking on the window. He sunk lower into the armchair, so his head wouldn’t be visible from behind. He’d become rather adept over the last fifteen years at ignoring visitors. He was aided by the fact that his windows hadn’t been washed in much of that time, their opacity a happy unintended consequence of his slovenliness.
Julian’s neighbors were becoming increasingly intrusive in their attempts to attract his attention. With a sigh, he put the magazine down and picked up the note he’d been left. He read it, wincing at the exclamation point following his name.
MR. JESSOP!
WE NEED TO TALK!
WE (YOUR NEIGHBORS) WISH TO ACCEPT
THE FREEHOLDER’S OFFER.
WE NEED YOUR APPROVAL,
WITHOUT WHICH WE CAN’T PROCEED.
PLEASE CONTACT PATRICIA ARBUCKLE, NO. 4
WITH THE UTMOST URGENCY!
Julian had bought his cottage in 1961 when the lease had sixty-seven years left to run. That had felt like an eternity, from the vantage point of his twenties, and certainly nothing to be concerned about. Now there were only ten years left on the lease, and the freeholder was refusing to extend, as he wanted to use the land on which the studios stood to build a “corporate entertaining complex,” whatever that might be, for the Stamford Bridge stadium. The stadium had grown and modernized around Julian over the years he’d lived in its shadow, while Julian himself had become smaller and increasingly unmodern. Now it was threatening to explode, like a monstrous carbuncle, sweeping them all away in a river of pus.
Julian knew that the logical thing to do was say yes. If they let the lease run out, their properties would be worthless. The leaseholder was prepared to buy them out now at close to the market rate. But he wasn’t interested in buying out all Julian’s neighbors if he was still left with the problem of Julian’s little cottage squatting in the middle of his proposed building site.
Julian knew that his neighbors were becoming increasingly desperate at the prospect of their life’s savings, which were—like most Londoners—bound up in bricks and mortar, disappearing, but, however hard he tried, he simply couldn’t picture living anywhere else. Surely it wasn’t too much to ask, to be allowed to see out his final years in the home he’d lived in for most of his life? A decade should easily suffice. And what use would the cash offer from the freeholder be to him? He had a decent enough income from his investments, he hardly lived an extravagant lifestyle, and what little family he had left he hadn’t seen for years. He had no qualms about their inheritance disappearing in a puff of legal paperwork and expired deadlines.
He knew, however, that refusing the offer was selfish. Julian had spent many years being unutterably selfish, and he’d been paying for that behavior for some time. He really wanted to think that he was a changed man—repentant, humble even. So he hadn’t said no. But he couldn’t say yes, either; instead, he was sticking his metaphorical fingers in his metaphorical ears and ignoring the problem, despite knowing that it wasn’t going away.