A week ago
Simon Debovar had come to a conclusion: he hated other people. Not any specific other people; just everyone who wasn’t him.
He hated their demands on his time. He hated how they made him wait behind them in queues; got in his way on the street; filled up the bus before he could get on it; asked him questions and then expected answers. But most of all, he hated how they smelled: sweaty and sweet and spicy.
Simon Debovar had two baths a day and never smelled of anything but clean, and that’s exactly how everyone else should smell, in his opinion. Anything else was inconsiderate. And lazy. Most inconsiderate people were lazy and most lazy people were inconsiderate, in Simon’s experience. And most people were one or the other. Usually both.
Having given up hope of finding a quiet corner of Edinburgh which he could have entirely to himself, Simon had decided to lock out the rest of the world and create his own kingdom: the Royal Burgh of 42 Queen’s Drive (“just past the Post Office with the two oaks outside, if you hit the Shell garage you’ve gone too far”, as it was known to the local Pizza, Chinese, Indian and Thai restaurants).
For thirteen years, Simon had lived a hermit’s life in the middle of one of Scotland’s busiest, most throbbing metropolises. Of course, he had to have some communication with the outside world, but he kept it to a minimum. When delivery drivers or repairmen necessarily came round, he would hide upstairs and shout directions. Had any of them ever challenged him as to why he remained a floor above, he was prepared to feign illness and/or injury as an excuse. In fact, he enjoyed dreaming up a new ailment each time such a visit was expected: “Today I shall have a broken toe, caused when I dropped a small antique clock in the shape of an elephant on it whilst visiting my Auntie Agnes.” He hadn’t dropped his Auntie Agnes’ clock, of course. He didn’t have an Auntie Agnes.
His living family consisted of, to his knowledge, a distant cousin called George, who’d married an Australian and moved to Switzerland (why an Australian would want to live in Switzerland bewildered Simon, sometimes keeping him awake at night wondering what Switzerland might have that Australia lacked), another called Sabrina, a lesbian who lived in New York, and Great Aunt Harriet, who, despite seeing all her peers and most of the generations after her pass on, had stubbornly refused to shuffle off her mortal coil.
Fifteen years ago, the rest of Simon’s family had been killed in a tragic, pudding-related accident.
A huge family reunion had been organised for the Debovar clan. Simon’s mother came from an unusually small Irish Catholic family, so they had been invited, too. The meal had been a huge success and everyone was just about drunk enough to throw themselves onto the dance floor when dessert was served.
Tragically, the chef had overloaded the flambés with alcohol at Harriet’s insistence. When he set the first one alight, the fumes in the air went up like the Hindenburg.
Luckily for them, Sabrina and George were outside, in the back of George’s car, being seventeen. George was a second cousin once removed on Simon’s father’s side, while Sabrina was a great niece to Simon’s mother’s mother – or something. Suffice to say that, had they not been interrupted by the explosion and gone on to procreate, the fruit of their union would not have had to worry about its eyes being overly close together. George had later confessed to Simon, at one of the funerals (he couldn’t remember which), that it would have been Sabrina’s first time with a boy, and that they had been at a fairly crucial stage when the building exploded.
Simon had wondered whether it was psychologically significant that an Irish Catholic girl had turned out a lesbian after her entire family was blown to pieces the first time she touched a penis.
George and Sabrina had been saved by their rampaging hormones. Simon found that oddly romantic. But then, Simon found a lot of things odd.
Harriet, on the other hand, had fancied a whisky with her dessert. When the waiter offered her a choice of what she called “cheap, dirty water”, she had barged out of the hotel and across the road to the off license for a bottle of Lagavulin. She had barely put her purse away when the fireball burst, shattering both the window of the shop and her newly purchased bottle. It took a protracted letter writing campaign, but Harriet had eventually managed to make the chain’s head office accept that, while she had paid for the bottle, having not yet picked it up she had not, in fact, taken ownership of it and that, as such, they were obliged to send her a replacement. They eventually sent her a case, just to make her stop.
Harriet had been saved by her refusal to drink cheap whisky and her determination not to go without it. Or, as she liked to describe it, by her high standards and a steadfast refusal to compromise.
Simon had stayed home to watch Friends. He didn’t like crowds. In the end, it had turned out to be a flashback episode, so he almost wished he’d gone, just for the hell of it.
Until the police arrived.
He sometimes wondered whether the officers had stood outside debating how to break the news to him.
“Son, we’ve got good news and bad news. The good news is: Christmas will be cheap this year…”
Fortunately for Simon, his mother’s brief resuscitation in the ambulance had made her officially the last to die, helpfully leaving him as the main heir to most of the wills, including his inexplicably wealthy Uncle Marvin. Thus, Simon hadn’t had to work a day since. He largely survived on interest from the stupidly large sum of money in his account, and if he ever ran a little low, he only needed to sell one of the hideous ‘artefacts’ Marvin had ‘collected’ throughout his ‘archaeological’ career. (Whenever Simon’s father had discussed his brother, there was always a proliferation of implied quotation marks left dangling in the air.)
George, Sabrina and Harriet were the only people Simon had any sort of normal contact with, and it was mainly to ensure the safe passage of regular payments he had promised them all after The Explosion. It only seemed fair that, with only the four of them left, he should share the wealth. Without the need to earn money, Sabrina had opted for life as a poet. Harriet had retired a few years before The Explosion, so only George had decided on a traditional career - as a lawyer. He had once tried to explain to Simon that he just couldn’t accept not earning his own keep, even if his salary was effectively just a top up on the significant monthly allowance Simon paid him. Simon couldn’t understand why anyone would choose an office over the comfort of their own living room, but there were a lot of things about people that Simon didn’t understand.
He was probably closest to understanding Harriet. His great aunt had a unique vision of the world. She imagined herself much like Jimmy Stewart in her favourite movie, Harvey - bumbling around the screen effortlessly while chaos cavorted around him. In reality, she bumbled around chaotically while the world occasionally stopped to scratch its head in bemusement. Sometimes, it got a black eye for its trouble.
Of all the people in the world Simon almost liked, he almost liked Harriet the most.
Simon kept the necessity for anyone other than himself to be in the house to an absolute minimum. Food shopping had initially been a problem. To begin with, he had paid a local child to get some groceries for him once a week. He would use the same child for a few years at a time, until they became curious beyond his tolerance. When Tesco announced home shopping over the internet, Simon threw himself a small party with a bag of 50 mini sausage rolls and a bottle of Dr Pepper.
Then he bought a computer. By phone.
During these 13 years, Simon became something of a mythical figure amongst his neighbours. Nicknamed “Herman”, after Herman’s Hermits, they saw him as a comical, disgruntled little gnome. Rumours spread that he had a rare skin disease, which prevented him from coming out into the sunlight. Others said that he was a vampire and, thanks to the imagination of 8-year-old Mikey McCormack, that he was half goat and didn’t want anyone to see his hooves. The neighbourhood children could sometimes be heard taunting each other with cries of “Herman’s going to get you,” or “You’re going to be goat food”.
Suffice to say, Simon Debovar was not about to appear on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list, unless the FBI actually wanted a slightly tubby, greying man with a penchant for Eggs Benedict and an allergy to other people.
Incidentally, Simon did suspect Harriet might be the ‘Mozzarella Mugger’ who’d been terrorising the suburbs of Melton Mowbray this last year. Apparently, there had been a rash of pensioners knocked unconscious by a sharp blow to the back of the head with a blunt object - possibly an umbrella or walking stick - who later woke up to find their noses stuffed full of Italian cheese. Harriet seemed a likely candidate. She lived in Melton Mowbray, owned both an umbrella and a walking stick and abhorred old people, since they reminded her that she, herself, was old. There was also the fact that she constantly referred to her peers as “stinking old cheesebags” and had vowed one day to make them all suffer as she did. Simon wasn’t sure how seriously she meant that, but she was almost as committed to the cause of antisocialism as he was, and he respected her geriatric nod in his direction. Were she slightly more antisocial, Simon might even ask her round for dinner. Of course, he wouldn’t, because she might actually come, and then he’d have to buy a load of new stuff: another plate, another fork, another knife - the things people selfishly expected a person to own purely for times when they came to visit.
Simon secretly hoped Harriet was the Mozzarella Mugger of Melton Mowbray because he was a big fan of alliteration. He respected her choice of cheese because of this. Ideally, she probably would have gone for a more pungent nose filling, but she’d have had to move and resort to murder to make the “Camembert Killer of Cambridge” work, and even Simon agreed that was extreme.
Besides, people only smelled worse after they died.
It was not so much a surprise, then, as cause for serious alarm when Simon was awoken from his mid-afternoon siesta (as opposed to his mid-morning, mid-evening and mid-bath siestas) by what seemed for all intents and purposes to be the ringing of his doorbell.
He sat bolt upright in bed, shook his head in an attempt to inject some clarity into his still dozy brain, yawned and stretched.
Of course he hadn’t heard the doorbell.
The doorbell didn’t work. Simon had it disconnected ten years ago as a birthday present to himself. (He’d enjoyed awarding himself the ‘no-bell’ prize and briefly lamented having nobody with whom to share the joke.)
Thus, having logically decided the noise that had awoken him was nothing more than a lingering dream, Simon swung his feet out from under the covers, stood up to his full 5 foot 9 inches and stretched for the ceiling.
He nearly threw out a vertebra when the doorbell rang again.
There was no denying it this time - it was definitely the doorbell. Could doorbells repair themselves? He really had no idea how they worked.
Was there such a thing as a door-to-door doorbell repairman?
Every fibre of his being was screaming at him to stay quiet; to pretend not to be in, just as he always did.
But the doorbell had rung.
Unfortunately, he had to know why.
Thus, despite desperately wanting the unexpected doorbell fixer to go away, he crept down the stairs in his dressing gown, carefully avoiding the squeaky steps - numbers 8 and 11. Slowly and carefully, he placed a foot onto the hall carpet. It was soft and welcoming. He liked a soft carpet. The fashion for hardwood floors was inexplicable to him. Why would anyone choose a cold, hard, slippy floor over a soft, warm, lush carpet? Especially on cold winter mornings. He was definitely a comfy, soft carpet kind of guy. He’d chosen the hall one because its slightly toasted cream colour reminded him of Andrex puppies. Of course, that meant he’d at least once pondered how many puppies would have been needed to make it.
Placing his second foot on the carpet, Simon took a deep breath and steeled himself for the short but ninja-like creep to the door, to see what his tormentor looked like.
“Mr. Debovar? Hello?”
Simon jumped like a startled butterfly at his name and nearly fell back onto the stairs. They knew his name! What kind of trickery was this? Now, in a panic, Simon had to decide what to do, quickly. Quick decisions were not really his forte - so he did what came naturally.
“Go’way!” he grunted, hoping his local reputation would be enough to see off the interloper.
“I’m sorry?” the voice politely answered. “What was that?”
Definitely male. Simon couldn’t decide whether that was a good thing or not. It might not be a thing at all. Either way...
“F’koff!” he grumbled, croakily. Surely nobody hung around after that. He could investigate the doorbell once the nuisance caller had gone.
“I’m sorry, Mr Debovar, did you say you have a cough? Perhaps I could offer you a sweet?”
This was not going well.
Simon did not take sweets from strangers.
He decided on a new tack - take the initiative. It was not something he was used to, but then he’d never had someone refuse to leave the front step before.
“Whadayouwant?” he splurted.
“I have a proposition for you, Mr Debovar.”
Ah. A salesman. The world made sense again.
“I’m not buying,” he called decisively, heading for the kitchen. He had some hazelnut coffee he was looking forward to trying this morning.
“Oh no, and I’m not selling. Quite the contrary, actually.”
Simon stopped. What was the opposite of selling? Buying? How could he know what Simon had that he might want to buy? Unless he’d broken into his house during the night, had a good look around and then left everything, in order to come back the next day and purchase it legally?
No, that was ridiculous.
Did he want to buy Simon? The thought of a troupe of white slavers barging down his door made him slightly light-headed. He suddenly longed to return to the comfort of his bed, where there were no people to confuse him and doorbells didn’t ring –exactly as they were supposed to not.
Wait a minute.
“How did you ring my doorbell?”
“I … pressed the button.”
“That bell hasn’t worked in ten years,” Simon answered triumphantly. He even had a little “Ah-hah!” to himself, in his head.
“It hasn’t?” Pause. “Oh.”
Simon heard what he thought was another, softer voice whispering.
“I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mr Debovar,” the male voice finally said. “We’ll come again tomorrow perhaps - or maybe Monday.”
Footsteps faded away down the path, then the gate swung open and shut.
Simon was elated. Having accidentally stumbled across the right question to make the possible white slave trader go away, he could get on with breakfast undisturbed.
Later, when the elation had passed, he would try the doorbell, which persistently would not ring.
Around the corner, a tall, thin man in a white suit, with mismatched eyes, turned to a dark-haired young woman in black leather and said: “How was I supposed to know the bell didn’t work? Who has a doorbell that isn’t connected? If you ask me, that shouldn’t count.”