‘Don’t move!’ ordered the rough male voice, now close behind her. ‘Thieving bastard, I hope you’ve broken both your bloody legs. Don’t you move a muscle. Jake, GET OUT HERE!’
It was a nightmare. Everything hurt. Too appalled to cry, Claudia lay in the darkness amongst the rocks and splintered chair legs wishing she could at least have been knocked unconscious. Anything to be spared the humiliation of the next few minutes.
Above her Jake’s door opened, spilling out light.
‘What’s going on?’
‘Bloody cat burglar. Saw him from our bedroom window. It’s okay,’ the rough voice declared with satisfaction, ‘I’ve already phoned the police. They’re on their way.’
Not okay. Not okay at all. Struggling to raise her head from the ground Claudia heard herself moan pathetically, ‘Oh please, not the police.’
‘Flaming Nora,’ the rough voice exclaimed, ‘it’s a bird.’
‘Jake, it’s me. Make them go away. Not the police, please.’
‘Claudia?’ Jake leapt over the railings in amazement and appeared beside her. ‘Are you hurt? Can you move?’
‘Ouch, I think so. Oh no—’
The wail of a police siren shattered the night. Gritting her teeth—at least they were all still there—Claudia let Jake help her slowly into an upright position. Somehow, between them, he and the man from across the road managed to lift her back over the railings. She sat on the steps of the house with her head buried in her hands and listened to Jake explaining to the police officers that she wasn’t a burglar; it had all been a mistake.
You’re telling me, thought Claudia, hot tears of self-pity seeping through her aching eyelids and dripping onto her wrists.
‘Well, well, you’re a dark horse and no mistake,’ marveled his neighbor when Jake had persuaded the police to leave. ‘Never had you down as the type to have a fan club, Jake. What are you, some kind of rock star in your spare time?’
‘His name’s Dan. He’s very into Neighborhood Watch.’
One way or another, Claudia thought morosely, Jake’s Neighborhood Watch scheme was out to ruin her life.
‘Now’—he put a mug of coffee into her hands—‘are you sure you’re all right?’
‘Is that meant to be a joke?’
‘I mean if you want to see a doctor I could drive you to the ER.’
Claudia shook her head. The last thing she needed was a gaggle of medical students with smirks on their faces prodding her bottom. By tomorrow, it would be one huge bruise. The least she could do was keep it to herself.
‘Sorry about the chips,’ said Jake, breaking the silence.
‘What?’
He pointed to the mug she was holding, chipped around the rim.
‘I’d have thought you could’ve treated yourself to new ones,’ said Claudia. ‘Now you can afford it.’
It wasn’t the first time she had made that kind of remark. Jake really wished she wouldn’t. He wished he didn’t keep remembering Poppy telling him that Claudia was only interested in men with more money than sense.
Ironically, it was probably thanks to Claudia that he was still living here. The more digs she made, the less keen he became on the idea of moving to a smarter address. And it wasn’t as if he was cutting off his nose to spite his face, Jake reassured himself. There was no rush, and he’d always been happy here. He loved this house.
He glanced briefly around his cluttered, comfortable-but-shabby living room, seeing it through her eyes.
‘Would you like to criticize my home too, while you’re about it?’
Claudia shook her head. The room was actually quite cozy, though clearly the domain of someone whose priority in life was not interior design. The carpet was threadbare in places, the furniture old and functional rather than elegant. Those striped blue and green curtains didn’t match anything else in the room…
Bloody curtains, she thought crossly. If he’d only taken the trouble to draw them properly there wouldn’t have been that enticing gap and she wouldn’t be here now, nursing a bruise the size of a pizza and looking a complete prat into the bargain.
‘So what were you doing outside my front window?’ asked Jake at last.
Claudia couldn’t look at him.
‘I wanted to find out if Dina was here.’
‘Who?’
‘Poppy’s friend. From Bristol.’ Painfully, she forced herself to meet his astonished gaze.
‘I’ve never even met Dina!’
‘I know. But I wouldn’t let her stay at the house tonight so she said she’d ask you instead. She told me you wouldn’t turn her down and anyway, from what she’d heard, you sounded right up her street. She’s a shameless uppity trollop.’ Claudia was indignant. ‘And a gold-digger to boot.’
Mildly, Jake said, ‘Well, she isn’t here. You came up my street instead. If you were so worried, why didn’t you just phone?’
‘After you’d stood me up on Monday and hadn’t bothered to get in touch all week? You’d have thought I was chasing you,’ Claudia snapped. ‘That would have looked great.’
‘You lying splattered all over my front garden didn’t look that great,’ he pointed out. ‘A phone call would have been easier. Anyway, why would I think you were chasing me?’
‘Oh come on! It happened to Caspar all the time. He spent his life getting us to field phone calls from besotted girlies.’ Her lip curled. ‘They were a standing joke.’
As opposed to a flat-on-your-back-in-the-rockery joke, thought Jake. Diplomatically, he didn’t say so.
‘I’m not Caspar.’
‘No.’
‘I’m not anything like Caspar.’ Dryly he added, ‘And I’ve never had a phone call from a besotted girlie in my life.’
Claudia thought it was just as well everyone wasn’t like Caspar. Imagine a world full of them…
‘What, never?’
Jake shook his head.
‘Why not? You aren’t that ugly.’
‘Thanks.’
Flustered, Claudia said, ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’
He smiled slightly. ‘You should have seen me as a teenager. When you’re awkward and shy and you wear drug store specs, girls don’t exactly swoon at your feet.’
‘But you must have had a girlfriend at some stage.’
‘I had a girlfriend for five years. Emily. She wore glasses too,’ said Jake. ‘The first time I kissed her, at the school Christmas disco, it was like antlers clashing. Everyone saw us go clunk.’ He mimed the jarring action. ‘We didn’t live it down for months.’
‘Yes, but you were together for five years, so it must have been serious. What happened?’ Claudia was burning with curiosity.
‘She had cystic fibrosis. She died.’
Claudia’s hands went up to her mouth. ‘No! How awful. God, I’m sorry… Poppy never told me.’
‘Maybe because Poppy doesn’t know.’
‘But that’s so sad—’
‘It was a long time ago.’ Jake shrugged off her sympathy. ‘Do you want another coffee? If you want to use the bathroom to tidy yourself up, feel free.’
It was pretty galling, being told to tidy yourself up by Jake—rather like Gollum suggesting your teeth could do with a scrape and polish—but when she reached the bathroom Claudia saw what he meant. The rubble in the dumpster had left a layer of grey dust over her black sweater, and her hair was thick with it too. There were twigs in her bangs and a smudge of mud across one cheek.
What a fright.
‘I’d better go,’ she said when she had made her way back downstairs.
Jake, rather touchingly, was emptying a packet of peanuts into a dish. Next to it stood a bowl of Ritz crackers.
‘Do you have to? I still don’t know why you came.’
You blind bat, can’t you see I was jealous? Why else would I leap about in a dumpster like a demented monkey? Why else would I try and climb up the outside of your house?
Claudia couldn’t say it. She gazed hard at a frayed patch of carpet and wondered why getting it together with someone you fancied had to be so fraught. Why couldn’t she make something approaching a first move? If Jake really did like her, why couldn’t he?
For a mad moment, she wondered what he would have done if she’d come back downstairs naked, if she’d just ripped off all her clothes and presented herself to him in all her wondrous glory.
But if she had, she would have looked an idiot what with all the crease marks on her stomach from wearing too-tight jeans, not to mention the whacking great bruise on her bottom.
Wondrous glory was hardly the phrase most likely to spring to Jake’s mind.
‘Here,’ he offered her the dish, ‘have a peanut.’
I’m such a failure, thought Claudia miserably.
The peanuts were stale. They tasted disgusting.
‘Come on, sit down,’ Jake urged. ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark starts in a minute. You know, with Indiana Jones.’
Indiana Jones. Wild, brave, reckless, and passionate. Claudia, her imagination running riot, wondered if some of that recklessness and passion might rub off on Jake. She sat down cautiously—ouch—at one end of the sofa.
‘You’ll be more comfortable if you stretch out,’ said Jake. ‘Put your feet up. Here, have a cushion.’
She uncurled her legs a few inches, wondering if he was inviting her to rest her feet on his lap.
‘Am I taking up too much room?’
‘Don’t worry about me. You’re the invalid. I’ll sit on the chair.’
‘Eh up,’ said Poppy at work the following week when Jake accidentally let slip that Claudia had spent Friday evening at his place. ‘I saw Claudia yesterday and she didn’t mention any of this! Come on, tell. Are we talking true romance here or what?’
‘Actually, we’re talking about watching Raiders of the Lost Ark and sending out for a Chinese. That’s all.’
‘What? Claudia hates takeaway Chinese! She calls it repulsive slop.’
Jake flushed. This explained why Claudia had left most of hers. Probably not expensive enough for her; he should have ordered a takeaway from the Savoy Grill.
‘You aren’t telling me everything,’ Poppy persisted annoyingly. Her own current state of bliss had got to her like religion. She longed for the rest of the world to be as happy as she was with Tom.
If she’d been a Jehovah’s Witness, thought Jake, he could have closed the door in her face. But she wasn’t, she was here on the stall, with an awful gleam in her eye.
‘Jake, I have to know! Did she stay the night?’
‘No!’
‘Oh well, maybe that’s too much to hope for.’ The gleam was still there. ‘How about heavy petting?’
‘Poppy, stop it.’
‘Snogging, then. You must have kissed her.’
There might not be a door to slam in Poppy’s face but there was a cash register he could bring down on her head. Taking off his glasses so at least he couldn’t see her anymore, Jake said wearily, ‘No.’
‘Not even a weeny one? On the doorstep? A good-bye peck on the cheek?’
Of course he had kissed her, a million times and a million different ways… in his dreams. All the time Harrison Ford had been swashing and buckling his way across the screen, sweeping his heroine masterfully into his arms, Jake had imagined doing the same to Claudia. The trouble was, the more he had wanted to, the more firmly he had remained welded into his chair. Crippled with uncertainty, he hadn’t dared move so much as a muscle. What if he tried it and she screamed? Or laughed? Or slapped his face?
As for the dreaded saying-good-bye-at-the-front-door scenario (surely the ultimate doorstep challenge)… well, he had been gearing himself up to it. A friendly kiss on the cheek, Jake had assured himself, wouldn’t be out of order. Not a slapping offence, at least.
But as Claudia had hovered and he had wavered, a motley crew of lads from the Crown and Feathers had been making their way noisily up the street. Spotting Jake and Claudia in the lit-up doorway they had passed by chanting, ‘Give her one, give her one, give her wo-on,’ and that had been that. Chance blown.
Hugely embarrassed, realizing he couldn’t possibly kiss her now, he had taken a step back.
With an awkward little wave Claudia had scuttled across the road to her car and driven off.
Jake looked so sad, Poppy rushed to reassure him. ‘Oh well, never mind, she was only interested in your bank account anyway. And imagine, if you married Claudia, you’d have Angie as a mother-in-law.’ She giggled. ‘She’d have your jockeys off in a flash.’
‘How’s Tom?’ said Jake, because Poppy was easily diverted these days and he didn’t want to imagine marrying Claudia.
Poppy heaved a besotted sigh.
‘What can I say? He’s wonderful. I’m so happy I could burst. The more we get to know each other, the better it gets. I’m meeting all his friends, and he’s so proud of me.’ Dreamily she shook back her hair. ‘I know it sounds sick-making, but I had no idea it was possible to feel so… so special.’
Poppy had got it bad and Jake was glad for her. He just wished it didn’t make his own life feel so empty in comparison.