Читать книгу The Doris Day Vintage Film Club - Фиона Харпер - Страница 12

Claire woke with a start and immediately flipped herself over to look at her alarm clock. Sunlight was streaming through her thin floral curtains. Her heart was racing and she pressed a palm against her chest to calm it.

It was okay. It was still only just past seven. She wasn’t late for work. She yawned and collapsed back down into the mattress.

She’d crawled back into bed not long after delivering her note to her neighbour, thinking she might as well be comfortable as she whiled the hours away until she needed to get up, but she must have dropped off to sleep almost immediately. Hmm. It seemed she’d been right – her plan of getting all of those churning thoughts out of her head and onto paper had worked. She actually felt quite refreshed. Even that image of her father in his armchair was receding, getting fuzzier and less insistent.

She stared at the ceiling, her mind drifting, and it inevitably flowed until she was thinking of the letter. She replayed what she’d written inside her head, listening to herself as she read it aloud. After a moment, she pushed herself halfway to sitting, rubbed a hand over her face then through her hair. She’d thought the wording had sounded formal and firm last night. Now, in the mellow sunshine of a May morning, it seemed a little … well … snotty.

It would have been a better idea to just write the stupid thing so she could get some rest, but leave it on her kitchen counter instead of delivering it straight away. She smiled to herself. That was the beauty of actual pen and paper as opposed to electronic forms of communication. It wasn’t permanent, irrevocable, until it was in the hands of its intended recipient. With email that took a split second, but she’d bet her letter was still sitting on the bicycle saddle downstairs. She really didn’t think Dominic Arden was much of a morning person.

Maybe she should just go down and fetch it, have a little read … She could always seal it up in a new envelope if she still thought it was fine, although it did seem a bit of a waste to use two such fine bits of stationery on one such unappreciative man.

She flicked the switch of the kettle on as she passed by the kitchen and headed for her front door. Quietly, still in her love-heart PJs, she crept down the stairs and headed for the bike.

Ah.

Too late.

Damn that man’s nocturnal wanderings. Not only was her lovely envelope gone, but the bike had disappeared too. He’d definitely found it.

Oh, well. The tone might have been a bit sharp, but she stood by what she’d said. She stared at his front door. There was no movement behind the glazed top panels, no sound from inside. She let out a breath of relief. The confrontation would come eventually, but she was kind of glad it wasn’t about to happen right now.

Before heading back upstairs, she turned and crossed the hall to open the front door, but when she stared down at where her glass bottle of milk should have been all she found was a plastic two-pinter with a scruffy note taped to it.

Huh? Since when had the milkman been buying his supplies at Tesco? And why was he sending her notes? She paid her bill online these days.

Frowning, she ripped the note off then hooked the plastic carton over a finger and used her free hand to unfold the piece of paper as she trudged back upstairs.

When Claire was halfway up, she stopped.

Of all the …

Dear Ms Bixby, it started. Thank you so much for your very informative note.

Claire’s stomach dropped. The tone matched that of her letter perfectly, and she’d been right – it did sound snotty.

I’m sure we can all agree … it continued. Claire swallowed and started walking up the stairs to her flat again.

It was written perfectly reasonably and neatly – surprisingly neatly, actually, given that Mr Arden seemed such a pig the rest of the time – but somehow the words oozed sarcasm. Was that how her note had come across? She really hadn’t intended it to. She closed her front door, deposited the milk on her kitchen counter and carried on reading, picking up at the beginning of the paragraph again.

I’m sure we can all agree that you probably don’t need to have your nose quite so far into my business. What I do with my post and what I eat really is no concern of yours.

I will, however, concede that I shouldn’t have left my bike parked where it was last night, but I must admit I (wrongly) assumed that you would be safely indoors and watching Countdown with your cocoa by the time I came home, so I didn’t think it would be a problem. I apologise for that.

Claire bristled. This man didn’t even know her! How dare he start making assumptions about her like that, as if she was a hopeless spinster who had nothing better to do with her life? The fact that some nights she really was home quite early, often curled up watching trashy TV while she did travel research on her laptop was neither here nor there.

He might have hit the nail on the head – accidentally, of course; she couldn’t believe he had a perceptive bone in his body – but he didn’t have to make her sound like a dried-up old prune. She’d get around to dating and romance sometime soon; it wasn’t totally off the agenda, just not anything she was planning for in the immediate future. Besides, there was more to life than men, that was for sure. She didn’t need one to make her complete, as her mother had. If she did find someone she thought she could spend her life with it would be an enrichment, not a necessity.

She shook her head and returned to reading the letter.

So I apologise for leaving my bike in the hallway and for any inconvenience it might have caused you. I will try to keep it in my flat as much as possible. I have to say that I didn’t appreciate the little prank you pulled. I honestly thought you’d be above something like that.

Claire felt a blush creep up her neck. He was right. She was better than that. Most of the time. And there was she, just thinking he didn’t know anything about her. How odd. Maybe he wasn’t quite as much of a pig as she’d thought.

She sighed and shook her head. She didn’t know what had come over her last night. She’d just been so … so … after Maggs had given her the letter from her father. Just thinking about it caused that itchy warm feeling come back, tingling in her fingertips, swirling in her head. She clapped a lid on it and tried to ignore it as she went back to reading the letter.

I have to admit to ‘borrowing’ your milk this morning. However, I replaced it immediately and I shan’t be repeating this act of felony.

I have already dealt with the light bulb in the hallway, so that should cause no further problem. However, if you have any future concerns relating to our shared space, feel free to contact me. If you don’t, then please could you kindly butt out of my life? Perhaps I can suggest a hobby? Knitting or bingo. A social life. In any event, something to keep you entertained enough so that the urge to meddle doesn’t become all-consuming.

Yours very sincerely,

Mr D. Arden Esq.

Any goodwill her neighbour had created during his mostly reasonable letter evaporated. Not a pig? She was right about that! This guy was a fully blown warthog.

Mr D Arden Esquire? He was mocking her, just with those three little letters. It made her insides burn and her head spin. Before she had a chance to think it through, she ripped the little green cap off the plastic carton of milk and poured the whole lot down the sink. She didn’t want any of his milk! She’d go out and buy her own. She didn’t want to have any connection to him at all.

There were a few moments of satisfaction as she watched the last of it gurgle down the drain, but then she realised she’d run out of bread and the only thing she had left in the cupboard was cereal. She squashed the empty plastic container to put in the recycling with slightly more force than necessary. There was no way she was going to attempt Weetabix now. It would be like eating hamster bedding. There was only one thing for it.

She threw the carton in her recycling bin and stomped off towards her bedroom. She was going to have to go out for breakfast but, to be honest, the further away she got from here right now the better, otherwise there’d be blue lights and sirens and a puzzled Scenes of Crime Officer wondering how a man could drown in a pint-sized puddle of milk!