Read the book: «Cloudy with a Chance of Love: The unmissable laugh-out-loud read»

Contents

Cover

Blurb

Book List

Title Page

Author Bio

Dedication

Acknowledgement

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Excerpt

Prologue

Chapter One: Imogen

Chapter Two: Frankie

Chapter Three: Grace

Endpages

Copyright

Chapter One

Sunday

I have a large bottom. If I had to quantify it, I would say it was somewhere between the size of a space hopper and a meteorite. It’s pretty big, and it needs quite a bit of upholstery to keep it in check. Big knickers. Spanx. Industrial scaffolding like you might see on buildings in major cities. But I like it. I’m used to it. It has always been behind me.

It’s a relief to find that it’s very fashionable to have a big bum these days. It never used to be. Women used to spend hours in the gym trying to whittle the damn thing down to nothing; now they’re trying to build it up. Make it round and firm and sticky-outy. Women have operations where things are stuffed into it: fat from other parts of their body, cotton wool, sandwiches… A big behind has recently become an asset and I finally find it’s something to be quite proud of. I could definitely give Kim Kardashian a run for her money, in the backside stakes, although I’m not sure I could ‘break’ the internet (unless I sat on it, of course) – I’m in my mid-forties for god’s sake. I no longer resemble the mildly sexy goddess I once was. But I do have a fashionably big bum.

My big bottom is currently coming in very handy. I’m sitting on it, on the cold ground, in Trafalgar Square, and laughing my head off. The denseness of my large behind means I probably won’t feel the cold for another – ooh – three minutes and I’m laughing because I’ve just chucked my wedding ring in one of the fountains. Yes, it’s gone, just like that. I stood up, on the edge of the fountain and, without fuss or war cry, just lobbed it in. I thought it might land with a satisfying clunk, but it didn’t. I couldn’t hear anything, which was a bit of a disappointment. It just sank to the bottom, without ceremony, and now it sits there, rather forlornly, with all the pennies and the euros and the ring pulls from cans of Coke. Still, it feels wonderful, getting rid of it like that. It’s gone. I feel light, I feel free. I also feel slightly drunk; I may have had three or more cocktails in a bar off The Strand.

I’d struggled to get it off. Well, it has been on my left hand for fifteen years. Sam had to lend me her little blue tin of Vaseline, so I could lubricate my finger.

‘Rub it all around the knuckle, that’s it, then wriggle,’ she’d said.

‘It’s bloody stuck!’

‘Wriggle it a bit more. Keep trying. You can do it, Daryl.’

I kept trying. I smeared on a bit more Vaseline and wriggled it a bit more and finally the damn ring was free of my knuckle and off my finger and at the bottom of the fountain. Thank goodness for that. Let a Portuguese language student have it, for all I care. Let it fund some eagled-eyed teenager’s first Nissan Micra. Let it languish there for ever. It was nothing to do with me any more.

‘Well done,’ said Sam. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Oh god, Sam,’ I said. ‘I feel giddy and bloody wonderful!’ She hugged me and we did a little Fagin-ish jig, right there and then, in front of a group of Japanese tourists who were huddled together offering the peace sign to the world and taking selfies.

I’ve been wonderfully giddy since this morning, to be honest, when I received my divorce papers.

People don’t normally receive notice of the end of their marriages on a Sunday. Divorce papers come in the post, usually, along with everything else and if mine had arrived with Saturday’s post, they would have just plopped on my mat in the same yellow envelope as all the other boring solicitors’ missives I’ve received over the last year. I wouldn’t have noticed anything special about this particular envelope. Nothing would have alerted me to the fact that its contents were anything much different to all the others – no klaxon would have gone off; the envelope wouldn’t have flashed red, like the Batphone; there would have been no thunderbolt from the sky with accompanying, dramatic timpani music. But this particular envelope didn’t even land on my mat. My neighbour – my new neighbour, I’ve only lived in my new house for a week – smilingly handed me my decree absolute over the doorstep this morning.

‘Your hunky new neighbour’ said Sam, when I told her. He is quite hunky, which is not quite what I need when I’m embarking on a new start and don’t need any distractions – especially in the male form – but what can you do?

Will, my hunky new neighbour, said there was a relief postman on at the moment obviously making all sorts of rookie errors and sorry he hadn’t noticed it yesterday, but he had some post for me. I thanked him in the embarrassingly gauche way I seem to have adopted with him (he is very good looking) and opened the envelope in my kitchen, expecting another drily-worded, highly expensive and baby-step advance in the slow-grinding cog of torture that was the dismantling of my marriage… It should have been simple – our daughter Freya is twenty-one and has left home, so there hasn’t been need for disputes over child maintenance or anything like that – but I don’t think it ever is simple, is it? The whole process was dreadfully and soul-crushingly slow.

It had been so slow that I was really surprised to discover, via the ponderous words of my bumbling and rotund solicitor (too many cakes, not enough time), that the deed was done; Jeff and I were divorced.

I did a little whoop, then had a little cry, then gave another whoop. It was done, it was over. I was divorced – Jeff and I were no longer married and he and my very-much-former best friend, Gabby, were free to do whatever the hell they liked.

I immediately called Sam; we got the Tube up to central London from Wimbledon, where we both live, and we’ve been here since half eleven, in a bar since quarter to twelve and it’s not yet three o’clock and we’re really rather tiddly and my ring is at the bottom of a fountain in Trafalgar Square.

‘So let’s have it, Daryl,’ Sam says, stretching out her legs in front of her and admiring her new boots (dark tan, riding in style; something a Jilly Cooper character would be proud of), ‘What are your plans for the future? What do you want to do?’

I’m full of daiquiri so I can only think of four things.

‘Date but not fall in love.’ I start counting them off, on my fingers. ‘Enjoy my freedom. Make it up to Freya, who’s had to mother me for the past twelve months, when it should be the other way round. And decorate my new house.’ I stretch out my legs, too, which only reach to about Sam’s knees. I’ve got my favourite ankle boots on, the black suede ones with the glittery bits on the toes – I might make it into a Jilly Cooper novel too, as a dumpy, blinged-up stable hand. ‘Apart from that, who the hell knows?’

‘Sounds like a plan to me,’ says Sam. ‘But it’ll all be written in the stars, anyway.’ I look at her and shake my head. I’m not into mumbo jumbo and pie-in-the-sky pseudo-psychic jiggery-pokery, but Sam is. She’s into it all: horoscopes – Virgo with Sagittarius rising in a lunar coulis or whatever – tarot cards, Feng Shui, reiki, cosmic ordering, crystals and tea-leaf reading. She adores all that stuff. She pulls those long legs up to her chest, slaps both knees with her manicured hands and says, ‘Let’s do your fortune!’

‘What? How? Are you going to read my palm?’

‘No. Online fortune teller. Let’s stand up, though. My bum’s gone numb.’ We haul ourselves to our feet. I really am about four foot shorter than Sam, and with a much larger bottom, so it takes me a bit longer. ‘We just go on my phone and use my new app.’

‘Online fortune teller…’ I groan. ‘As it’s you, I’ll indulge you, but I bet it’s a right load of rubbish.’

It’s not!’ says Sam, flicking her glossy brown ponytail from side to side. ‘You know my friend from Pilates, Jan?’

‘Jan with the thighs? The one who’s been on a hundred dates and is still single?’

‘The very same. Except she’s not single any more. She went on the same app two weeks ago – Madame L’Oracle’s Love Fortunes, it’s called – and Madame L’Oracle told her she was going to meet a man that night and she did! She met a guy from DelightfulDates.com that very night and now they’re engaged!’

I dust down my backside. It has a leaflet explaining the Tower of London stuck to it. ‘After only two weeks? Come on! He’s a conman or a nutter, he has to be.’ From what I’ve heard, the only people who are ‘successful’ on DelightfulDates.com are men who manage to achieve sex with a stranger two hours after messaging them. It’s not for finding long-term love. Not that I’m looking for that, ever again. It’s going to be fun, flirting and frivolity for me, all the way now. I’ve done all my moping and my crying; it’s high time for me to be fabulous.

‘No, he’s a proper bloke! A nice bloke. One of the few. He’s turned out to be amazing. That’s what Jan said.’

‘But I don’t want a bloke, do I? All I want now is to go on a few dates and have some fun.’

‘It’s just a laugh,’ says Sam. ‘We’ll do mine first.’

I suspect Sam hopes it’s a little more than that. She always does. She’s definitely on the lookout for a man and love. She’s been divorced for five years now, from Graham who she met at school; they consciously uncoupled when they realised they didn’t really like each other any more and hadn’t noticed each other’s haircuts for over three years…

‘How much is this nonsense?’ I enquire.

‘It’s free, but Madame L’Oracle, the Psychic Queen, guarantees she’ll be uncannily specific.’ There’s a picture of Madame Oracle on the app. Sam shows me. She’s in pink fur and pearls, her hair bigger than RuPaul’s.

‘Just give me a second…’ says Sam. I wait as she taps away at her phone. ‘Right. Now we wait two minutes. Accurate predictions take time, it says.’ I poke her playfully in the ribs and try not to roll my eyes as I focus on the screen. It’s all pink and white. On a jacquard background a picture of a crystal ball is oscillating whilst white cloudy stuff swirls in it, and an old-fashioned clock counts down the minutes. What laughable hocus pocus. Still, Sam’s one of my best friends; I’m going with it because I always do.

One of the Japanese tourist peers over Sam’s shoulder.

‘Oi, nosey! Bog off! Right. Here we are. Ooh, okay, this is mine: You have an eighty percent chance of heat bringing you love.’

‘That’s it?’

‘Yes! Heat will bring me love! Simples!’

‘But that could mean anything! I thought it was supposed to be specific! That’s totally vague and really random,’ I laugh.

‘It could be specific. I just have to focus. Heat, heat…what could it mean? Should I book another trip to Lanzarote?’ She pulls her wool coat more tightly round her. It’s really cold for the end of October and the skies are darkening already. Rain is due in about an hour, I know. ‘Right, your turn.’

‘If I must.’

‘You must.’

We both stare at the phone again. Finally the shifting white fog in the crystal ball shifts and a pink heart flashes up. Inside, in black scroll-y writing, are the words, ‘You have a 99% chance of falling in love by Friday.’ Sam raises her eyebrows at me and grins. I burst out laughing.

‘How exciting!’ she exclaims.

Now I do roll my eyes. ‘Ooh, Friday,’ I say. ‘I think I’m busy that day. Let me check my diary…’ Actually, I am busy that day. It’s Freya’s graduation. Jeff and I are both going. It’ll be okay… I hope. We’ll be a civilized divorced couple… I hope.

Sam grabs my arm and looks all bog-eyed. Her dark hair is whipping all over her face in the wind. ‘Daryl, it might happen!’

‘Nah,’ I say. ‘And I don’t want it to. Love is for mugs. From now on I’m all about friends and a bit of flirting. That’s it.’

‘You say that,’ she says, ‘but if love came along…’

‘It won’t come along!’ I insist. ‘Look, it’s a giggle, all this stuff, but it’s a load of old guff. Let’s go and get another drink.’

‘Don’t mock,’ pouts Sam. ‘And you’d better be careful. What if this means you’re going to fall in love with the first man you see, or something…?’

‘Yeah right,’ I say. We look ahead of us and both catch sight of a skinny man in a cycle helmet and bicycle clips, with no bicycle in sight, walking past us wearing an ‘I’m With Stupid’ sweatshirt. ‘There you go, there’s the first man I’ve seen. What’s the probability of me getting it on with him?’ We start giggling.

‘Whatever,’ insists Sam, ‘you can’t leave these things completely to chance. I would suggest a date a night until Friday, just to keep your options open.’

‘A date a night? Who the hell with?’

‘I dunno. People.’

‘People. And where would I find these people?’ This was the part of my four-point plan I hadn’t really grappled with yet. Where the hell to find men to date. Everyone seemed to meet people via online dating these days, but it wasn’t for me. The whole thing terrified me. And as for Tinder, I couldn’t bear the thought of it. All those predatory men swiping left, over and over again…

‘Who knows! Just look around you, my friend.’

We look around us. Five hundred tourists and a man selling hot dogs, but not a hottie amongst them. We shrug at each other and grin, then I looked up at the clouds which are ominously black and in the mood for rain.

‘Come on,’ I say. ‘We’ve got more celebrating to do. Let’s hit another bar.’

Chapter Two

Monday

Oh god. I was on the ground again, wasn’t I? A very cold ground, that was also very wet and quite stony. A ground that was far too close to my face. And I wasn’t sitting on my bottom this time. No, that would have been respectable and acceptable, especially if I’d still been in Trafalgar Square. People often sit around the tourist bits of London, eating stuff, chatting and taking photos; it’s expected, they do it all the time. What nobody does is lie on their fronts, with their coat twisted all round them like a straitjacket and one boot off, face down on the drive they share with their next door neighbour in a quiet residential street in Wimbledon. In the middle of the night.

Yes, the hunky neighbour. Yes, the neighbour who’d given me my divorce papers yesterday morning. Yes, the neighbour who was currently standing over me and looking concerned.

Oh god. My mind flashed through how I got here. London. Trafalgar Square. Drinking cocktails with Sam. Dancing on the table in that Vietnamese restaurant which inexplicably turned into a disco at ten o’clock. Squealing home on the District Line. Inviting Sam in for vodka and cranberry and one hopeless, spilt-all-over-the-kitchen-worktop coffee – a vain attempt to sober us up before I sent her home in a taxi. Trotting out to put a bulging black sack in the bin – mostly full of empty bottles I couldn’t be bothered to recycle – and tripping coming back up the drive… Oh bloody god. I grimaced, as far as I could grimace with my face planted on the drive… Giggling and thinking it was really funny and that I’d just lie here for a while and have a little sleep…

‘Are you all right down there?’

‘Yes, thank you, I’m okay.’ I was a hundred percent sure I was not a pretty sight, but I wasn’t hurt – booze and my curves meant I had bounced, probably, like a baby, before landing in my prone and highly compromising position. ‘I’ve been up to London,’ I said, like a female, inebriated Dick Whittington. ‘I’ve had a few too many. Sorry. I’m on your half of the drive.’

‘That’s okay. Do you need a hand up?’

‘Yes, please. That would be really kind.’ Oh, the English politeness. It never fails, even at moments of extreme humiliation. Will held out his arms and heaved me up; no mean feat, considering I was carrying approximately four litres of booze and a Burger King Whopper meal about my person. When he was assured I could stand without collapsing to the ground again, he bent down and retrieved the lost half of my footwear.

‘Your boot,’ he said, holding it out.

‘Right. Thanks.’

He stood smiling at me; I stood, trying not to fall over.

‘Have you got work in the morning? Rather, this morning?

‘Yes. Yes, I have.’

‘And have you got your keys?’

‘I think so.’ My keys had been in the pocket of my thick, padded coat, out for duty early this year as it had been a very chilly October. I rummaged in both pockets. When my left hand (without wedding ring – it felt weird) located them, on their fluffy pink, feathery, glittery key-chain thingy, I pulled them out and shook them in the air to prove I’d really got them.

‘There you go,’ he smiled. ‘Fantastic.’

He saw me to the door, which must have banged shut in the night, and watched me open it and step inside.

‘Thanks, Will,’ I said.

‘Any time, although I don’t mean any time. I don’t know you very well, but I presume you won’t be doing this too often…’

‘I don’t think so,’ I said meekly. ‘As it is rather embarrassing.’

He smiled again. ‘Good night, Daryl.’

‘Good night, Will. Thank you so much.’

I staggered upstairs. The horror. Oh, the absolute horror. I couldn’t bear to think about it. I decided I couldn’t think about it. Not now. I could be mortified and apologetic in the morning. Now, I had to sleep.

I woke up feeling like death warmed up in a petri dish. The radio alarm, set to Eighties FM, woke me at seven and I was furious at it. How dare Madonna and her ‘Material Girl’ aspirations interrupt my comatose slumber? I needed eight hours more sleep. I needed carbs and painkillers. I needed a new liver… I staggered to the bathroom and was horrified by what I saw. Blonde, short hair sticking up all over the place – all pretence of perky Marilyn Monroe coquettishness gone. A pasty face with make-up smears down it. And panda eyes that wouldn’t look out of place at London Zoo. Gone were the days when a hangover made me look dishevelled-ly pretty and enigmatic; I just looked a wreck.

I flopped back into bed. Just fifteen more minutes. Just to get my brain in gear. Oh god. I remembered everything. But mostly waking up on the drive and Will discovering me lying there. What on earth must he think of me? He already thought I was a bit of a nut job. I’d moved in just over a week ago, last Saturday to be exact, and he’d already caught me admiring his bum, taking a giant stuffed whale out to someone’s skip and stuffing lemon drizzle cake in my face at two a.m.

He’d made the lemon drizzle. Well, I presume he had; I’d have to ask him. The morning I’d moved in, laden with boxes and giant Ikea shopping bags packed with all my stuff, he’d knocked at my new front door offering a smile and a polka dot cake tin.

‘Hello,’ he’d said. ‘I’m Will Hamilton. I live next door. Did you know your doorbell doesn’t work?’

‘Yes, I know,’ I said. ‘I need to get that sorted. I’m Daryl Williams.’

‘It’s very nice to meet you, Daryl Williams. I’ve brought you a cake.’

‘A cake? Wow!’ I’d replied. ‘That’s a lovely thing to do. I didn’t think neighbours did that stuff any more. I thought it was all lawnmowers at dawn and curt nods on the driveway.’ He laughed. He was nice; I could see that immediately. He had a dark-brown-with-grey-bits quiff that had collapsed and was flopping in his eyes, a wide smile and brown eyes. He looked about the same age as me – mid-forties, perhaps late forties? Very, very good looking. The sort of face you wouldn’t mind peeking over the top of a newspaper at, at the breakfast table, for years and years. Not that I was in the market for that ever again. I was over marriage. I was over my marriage. I didn’t need another hero; they just let you down and went off with your best friend.

‘Come in,’ I said and he’d stepped into my hall. He was wearing dark, almost black, blue jeans and a brushed cotton checked shirt. Plus grey desert boots – I hadn’t seen those since my days at Brighton Poly – in 1991. ‘Excuse the décor.’

I’d bought a mid-street house in a Victorian strip of smallish semis in Wimbledon, not far from the station. My new house looked lovely from the outside, matching all the others with their red bricks and white porches; it even had a nicely tended patch of garden at the front which I already feared for – I was not known for my gardening prowess. Inside, the other semis were probably the height of character period charm coupled with sleek modernity; mine was not. It was extremely dated. Think striped wallpaper below yellowing dado rail; sponge paint affect circa Changing Rooms 1998 above… Swagged yellow curtains with tie backs – the previous owner clearly couldn’t be bothered to take them down and I don’t blame her; I wouldn’t have dragged such mustard monstrosities to my new house either… Artexed ceilings… A bath with carpet up the side… Will had laughed when I’d showed him that and so had I. He didn’t look like a serial killer so I’d showed him round the whole house.

‘It’s not exactly Homes and Gardens, is it?’ he said after we’d done the tour and were back in the hall. ‘Needs a little bit of work.’

‘A lot of work,’ I quantified, again thinking how good looking he was. ‘I know.’ It was in pretty bad shape, my new house. That’s how I’d managed to knock ten grand off the price, giving me a bit of money to play with. I’d already got a decent amount, from my ‘proceeds of marriage’ or whatever they called it (blood money? Tears money?), but the extra cash would come in handy for renovations. I was really lucky. I hadn’t wanted to leave Wimbledon – it had been my home since my twenties – and I hadn’t had to.

‘I’m quite handy, with a paint brush, you know,’ said Will, as I was seeing him out. ‘Just give me a shout if you need any help.’

‘I might take you up on that,’ I said, then hoped I hadn’t said it in a flirty manner. The plan was to flirt and have fun with men from now on – now I was over the horror of my break-up and divorce – but that couldn’t include any neighbours. I wanted to be happy living here, in my new start, not getting tangled in potentially mortifying situations with anyone I shared bin men with.

‘Actually, can I help you bring any boxes in?’

We were both looking towards my car, on the drive. The boot was open. There was a large box sitting in it that I’d foolishly packed in situ and now I didn’t think I could pick it up. His words were music to my ears.

‘Well, there’s only the one box. The removal firm’s bringing up the big stuff tomorrow. It’s just me and a few bits and bobs today. My friend was supposed to be helping me, but she’s on an emergency date. She’s coming later, hopefully, as long as the date doesn’t go too well, for chips and dips. Low carb and low cal, of course. And I’ll have to hide the chocolate. She’s one of those who counts everything. Her body is a temple.’

Too much random information? Probably.

He looked at me. Amused, I guessed. Or maybe horrified – that a mad, rambling lady had moved in next door.

‘No, I don’t mind at all. Happy to.’

We walked over to the car. There was the box, loosely masking-taped at the top, as well as loads of carrier bags and paper bags and a few plastic baskets. I was not the most organised, but I was going to try and be, from here on in. He heaved up the box and carried it in through the front door. I trooped behind him.

‘Where’s it going?’ he called over his shoulder.

‘Upstairs?’ I ventured. ‘Sorry, is that okay?’

‘That’s fine. I could do with losing a few pounds.’

That was so not true. He had a lovely body. I had a good look at it as it was going up the stairs.

‘Be careful,’ I shouted. The staircase was quite narrow and I wasn’t sure how secure that box was. It had been a bit damp when I’d found it at the back of my old garage, under Jeff’s golf clubs. He hadn’t bothered taking them when he’d moved to Gabby’s – he probably wouldn’t have time to play, what with all the shagging.

Will had to take very slow, measured steps. Goodness, he had a nice bum, I thought. He was wearing 501’s, I could tell, by the label, and his bottom was very round and very firm. Probably one of the nicest I’d seen. Jeff’s was always a bit scrawny.

Will had two more steps to go. He huffed the box to the top step, then turned his head to look at me a little quicker than I was expecting, as I was still checking out his lovely bottom. I was caught red-handed, wasn’t I? I flicked my eyes back up to his face. He knew exactly what I’d been looking at.

‘Where do you want it?’

‘Oh,’ I said, squirming. ‘Just leave it on the landing. I’ll unpack it from there.’

‘Okay.’ He came back down, smiling. I made sure my eyes stayed on his face. I didn’t want them wandering downwards again. Especially as he was now facing me. Well, he would be, wouldn’t he? He was hardly going to come down the stairs backwards on his hands and knees – although it wasn’t a disagreeable image… Oh dear. I was becoming a bit of a nuisance in my own brain. I appeared to be a slightly pervy, out of control divorcee and I hadn’t even received my absolute yet…

‘Well, nice to meet you, Daryl,’ he’d said, on the doorstep, and shook my hand.

‘You too, Will.’ His handshake was warm and firm. He really was very good looking. Was I blushing slightly? God, I hoped not. I watched him as he disappeared into his front door, giving a cheery wave to the back of his head in case he turned round, like the nutter that I was.

So. It was an auspicious start. Friendly neighbour helps new neighbour move in while new neighbour pervs at friendly neighbour’s bum. Fabulous. Then he’d seen me illegally disposing of Freya’s stuffed, cuddly whale. I’d moved it with me, just in case, but she’d told me by text ‘just to get rid of the enormous, embarrassing thing’ and I couldn’t face going to the tip with all those jolly people that go there for fun, at the weekends. So, last Sunday morning, I sought opportunity in the form of a skip that had appeared over the road for someone’s building work and went and chucked it in there, before running back home, feeling a mixture of pleased-with-myself and terrified. Unfortunately Will had spotted me darting back across the road looking left and right like a fugitive and had waved at me jauntily from his kitchen window. He’d seen everything, hadn’t he? I knew he had because last Wednesday a poster temporarily appeared in the window of his front porch saying ‘Save the Whale.’

‘Very funny,’ I’d told him, on the Thursday, when I’d popped over to return the polka dot cake tin.

‘Couldn’t resist it,’ he said. ‘I had that old poster in my summerhouse.’

‘Very good,’ I’d replied drily, ‘as was the lemon drizzle.’ (Which was so not dry.)

I raised my eyebrows at him. He raised his back.

He’d spotted me eating it. Last Tuesday night, really late. In fact it was about two a.m., as I’d been up till then attempting to unload boxes, in between dancing to songs on my new digital radio. I’d been happily stuffing my face with lemon drizzle in front of the telly in a very unladylike fashion, whilst watching old repeats of Sex and the City, when he’d clocked me. Both our houses have a ‘side return’ and my sitting room is in mine; I’d taken down the tragic curtains from the window in there and hadn’t yet made plans to replace them. God knows what he was doing up at that time, but he’d seen me at it. I’d caught a very brief glimpse of his face at his window before he quickly pulled the blind down.