ILLUMINATION BOOK CHAPTERS (UPDATED LIST OF CHAPTERS HERE).. ROMANTIC COMEDY — QUIRKY ROMP — CO-STARS MOOCHER THE DOG

‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ — Chapter Nine

Git-Next-Door improves upon acquaintance — and then gets weird again!

The whole concept of ‘denial’ crashed in upon Liz with all its advantages. She decided to try it out. If she didn’t think about Hugh’s impending nuptials then it couldn’t affect her one way or the other. Okay then.

Staring out into the street, she realised she must have been standing on her own doorstep for quite a while before becoming aware of Tortoise-woman. Again. Unbelievable. And Hugh had just been there. It couldn’t possibly be coincidence. Liz couldn’t work it out, though, and gave the woman such a ferocious look she backed off, but not before Liz noticed a smug look on her ratty face. Liz shut the door, kicked it and stomped up to her attic.

She went back to the trial balance and gazed at it as if for inspiration. She wasn’t thinking about anything. No, nothing. Nothing at all.

Then she remembered that she hadn’t retrieved the black recycling bin after it’d been emptied. No one else would do it. The fact that she usually refused to do so on the basis that someone else should do it occasionally was neither here nor there. It was urgent business to retrieve that bin now and if she just happened to run into Git-Next-Door as she did so, well then, that was Fate. In fact, she’d probably been given the gift of Git-Next-Door’s undoubtedly missing finger to keep her mind off other stuff.

She raced down the stairs, feeling the wind rush through her hair, and burst out of the front door. As luck would have it, Git-Next-Door was just about to shut his own door with him on the inside. Liz leapt lithely over the intervening, admittedly low, wall between his path and hers and yelled, “Git… Hello! Hello! I need to speak to you.”

His door stopped moving. She’d caught his attention. She ran up his path and pushed her face into the narrow gap he’d left. “Good Morning, Mr Oliver, I must speak to you.”

“Why should I speak to someone who calls me Git?”

Good question.

“I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t,” Liz said, on the basis that disarming candour might do the trick. Well, she’d seen it work for other people and it was time she tried the devious route too. “I just wanted to ask about your… how you are. That’s all.” Liz realised this must seem very odd to him. They’d been uneasy neighbours for a couple of years and never exchanged pleasantries. Unpleasantries, yes.

“Why should you be interested? You never have been before.”

Quite so.

Liz struggled to make her face look politely concerned. “I’m making a new effort. After all, we are neighbours. It’s silly for us to carry on the way we do.”

The door opened a fraction more. “You started it by bringing a load of unwashed students into an erstwhile nice street.”

“I beg your pardon! None of them are students. My lodgers are all perfectly respectable people whatever they do.” Well, that was open to question, but not to hers — or his.

“And you’re always parking outside my house,” he said.

Liz strove for a peaceful tone of voice. “No one owns the street, Mr Oliver, and in a road like this one, you park where you can.”

“But these houses are only a car width, give or take, and your house has several cars attached to it.”

This was obviously a hit. And time was going on and Liz was getting nowhere. She would have to buckle. “You’re right, Mr Oliver, so right. I’ll tell my lodgers not to park in front of your house anymore. Okay?” Fat lot of use that would be, but there you go. She could imagine them rolling around the floor clutching their stomachs in a somewhat strained attempt at sarcastic mirth when she tried it.

Miraculously, the door opened fully and Liz was blinded by a broad grin. It only appeared briefly and disappeared just as fast. “Goodness — you should smile more often. It makes such a difference!” Not the most tactful thing to say, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. It had taken about thirty years off his age. Good grief, Liz lived next door to a possible Man. She’d had no idea. She made the most of it though and shot through the opening. They were a bit close together, and he stepped hastily backwards. “Yes. Do come in. Let’s go through to the front room. I assume your house is the same as mine only the other way around.”

“Yes, indeed. Lovely houses aren’t they?” Liz found herself in a room so crowded with books there was nowhere to sit. Books lined the walls, the floor, the mantelpiece. They covered the tables, the chairs and the piano. Liz loved books and always went out of her way to nose around other people’s, but in here, where would she start? It was a treasury of the written word and they looked read, too. None of this smart binding and inside there’s an empty box in which you could conveniently slide a DVD. She couldn’t even see a television.

Her opinion of Git-Next-Door underwent an instant transformation, especially as she spotted what looked like all the McGuigan mysteries ever written. He was a favourite crime writer of hers. Her neighbour was obviously a highly discerning reader.

“Mr Oliver, I must apologise for all the mean things I’ve thought about you. I’m so sorry, but tell me, why don’t you let your cat stay in at night any more, not even at firework time?” Well, she didn’t know how that slipped out when all she wanted was to be incredibly nice to him…

“I don’t have a cat.”

“You don’t?” That explained that. “Oh. Well, why did you kick my car? I saw you do it. I even heard the ‘thunk’.” Some inner demon seemed determined to get all her grudges out into the open, just when she wanted nothing but to be diplomatic. And nosy.

He stood upright. He had been moving great piles of books off the chair. “That was when you had the flat tyre, right? It was me that put the note through your door about that.”

“Oh. And I went and thanked the guy across the road… He accepted my thanks you know.”

“My dear Mrs Houston — he’s hardly going to refuse your thanks when he’s been putting on the show ever since you moved in.”

“He’s what? ‘Putting on the show’? For me?”

“You’ve never noticed?” He looked so surprised there seemed to be a danger of the flashing smile again. In fact, he laughed. Well, you could have knocked her down with a silk tie. What a difference! Liz wondered if her mouth was hanging open. She wondered if she was drooling.

“Oh, dear. The poor chap. All those spectacular pecs and tight, short-shorts and you’ve never noticed.” By this time he’d cleared away a solid three years’ worth of reading and lo and behold, there was a second chair.

They both sat down.

“Anyway, Mrs Houston, how can I help you?”

“Do call me Liz and you are…?”

“Clive.”

“Well, um, Clive, I was just wondering how, how you were…”

He gave her a wry look and said, “I’m fine, thanks. Why so concerned all of a sudden?”

“I noticed your, um, your hand…”

“Oh, yes, my hand.” He looked at it in some surprise as though only just aware that it existed, let alone that it was attached to the end of his arm. By now Liz had decided that she was shouting up totally the wrong set of stairs here. How could such a nice man have anything at all to do with having his finger removed and put in her fridge? Here they were in a respectable neighbourhood, such things didn’t happen. She must be losing it. And anyway, it was too much like coincidence if it turned out to be her neighbour’s finger. Too neat by half.

Then he said, “I had an accident. With a power tool.”

Her interest re-awakened briefly only to die again. That just explained the bandage.

But she tried for a kindly and sympathetic tone. “Ooh, nasty. I hope you’ve had it seen to.”

“Yes. It was seen to all right.”

“Oh, good. You’ll be okay, then.” But he didn’t look okay at all. In fact, he looked as though he would burst into tears any moment.

“I won’t be okay,” he muttered, his head down as though studying his bandage for imperfections. “Never again will I be okay.”

“It was serious then,” Liz said feeling a little uncomfortable at witnessing the pain he was in, although she was beginning to feel he might be laying it on a bit thick. “I do wish you’d called for help. We are only next door.”

“I don’t think you could have helped.”

“I wouldn’t be too sure of that, you know. We’re full of hidden talents next door. Some might be extremely well hidden, but they’re there. Oh, yes indeedy.” Liz was uncomfortably aware that his mood had changed dramatically. He was staring at her in what Liz could only describe as a calculating manner, opening his mouth and shutting it again as though undecided about saying more. Suddenly, Liz didn’t want to know any more, but it was too late.

“That was the finger I wore my ring on,” he said. “I can’t wear my ring anymore.”

Ring? What ring? Liz couldn’t even work out which finger he was referring to under the heap of bandage. Perhaps he meant a wedding ring?

Rather feebly Liz said, “Oh, surely when it’s healed you can wear your ring again.”

But he wasn’t having any of it. “No,” he said. “Never again.”

And Liz suddenly knew that he hadn’t just had an accident with a power tool. For some inexplicable reason, he had cut his finger off and put it in her fridge. Liz always knew there was something very, very strange about her neighbour and this just went to prove it. Liz just knew it was his finger lying out there in her back garden, masticated, digested and ejected by her best friend. She just knew it. She realised she’d make a great detective. She’d have the most incredible hunches and at the end of the story all her wonderful reasoning would take the last three chapters to explain.

In the meantime, her mouth was so dry she was afraid it had stuck irretrievably closed and would need a jemmy to get it open. He gave her another can-I-trust-you? look and came out with it. “It was cut off. Completely cut off.”

Liz coughed, not sure quite how to react, feeling she should show surprise but unable to dredge any up.

She coughed again, wildly searching the book-filled corners of his front room for inspiration. “Your finger was cut off,” she said. Great line, Liz!

“Yes, that’s right. My finger was cut off, at the base.”

Liz had to check what she thought were the facts. “Did you take the finger with you to the hospital in case they could sew it back on? I’ve heard that if you immediately pack it in ice, they can do amazing things, like re-attach it and it’s as good as new.”

“No, I couldn’t find it.”

Eek! It was his finger. Please God no one ever tells him that her dog ate his finger for breakfast. It must have been his finger. How many people in the neighbourhood had lost their fingers recently? But, hang on, how did it get onto a very pretty paper plate, wrapped in cling film in her fridge? That didn’t fit. Even if he’d been in a delirious state of shock Liz couldn’t imagine him fiddling about with pretty paper plates and cling film while his life-blood spurted from his finger’s old home. Why her fridge? Why the plate? And then he’d have to mess about breaking into her house while he was bleeding to death. It didn’t make sense.

“But what could have happened to it?” Liz could imagine some creature darting in to snatch up a fallen finger and darting out again — just about — but the rest of the presentation failed her.

“You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”

Liz flinched and stared at him. She hadn’t even started to ask all the questions crowding into her mind.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean to snap, but the memory is still rather painful and I’m afraid of what might happen next.”

“I don’t understand…”

“No, you don’t, do you. I didn’t do this to myself. Someone did it to me.”

Liz’s heart stopped. Her blood congealed. Or that’s what it felt like. She struggled for breath and swapped Harrison Ford for Marlon Brando. Although maybe one can’t really compare a mere finger with a horse’s head, but even so…

Finally she drew in enough breath to demand of him: “Why are you telling me this?”

“You asked.”

Fair enough. Although she wished she hadn’t now. That just went to show what can happen when you ask a few innocent questions. Liz didn’t think she wanted to be a detective after all. She’d rather be an accountant. Cripes — what was she saying? It was all Hugh’s fault, all this. If not for him she never would have tried the denial route, the distract-herself-with-something-else route.

“I did ask. You’re right,” Liz agreed. “Are you seriously telling me that someone else cut your finger off?”

“There were three of them. Two held me down and the other cut it off.”

This couldn’t be real. But he obviously thought it was. Best to humour him. You just couldn’t tell about people could you? And for a while she’d been thinking he might, after all, be a nice neighbour to have.

“I’m sorry. It must have been very painful.”

“Understatement.”

She tried harder. “It must have been a nightmare.”

“It was.”

“But why would they want to do such a thing? Who were they?” It couldn’t be helped. She was naturally interested in other human beings.

“They were trying to get information out of me.”

Oh! “And did they succeed?” Liz wondered if she could leave without him noticing, but he was closer to the door than she was.

“No, certainly not. I haven’t kept the secret all these years only to give it away now. I’ve watched and watched for years and they’ve only just found out where I am. It’s what to do now that’s the problem.”

“You think they’ll come back?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Ohmigod. What are you going to do?”

“I just can’t decide. I think I’m still in shock.”

“Why don’t you call the police?”

“Don’t be silly.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I can’t call the police — that would really set the cat amongst the mice. My name’s not really Clive Oliver.”

Liz had a sudden premonition and sighed heavily and loudly before asking him: “The police are after you too?”

“Of course.”

Of course. Naturally. Silly her. The feeling that she’d been transplanted to live her life in a cartoon just grew and grew.

“Well…” Liz was stumped. Unfortunate turn of phrase perhaps, but it explained her puzzlement perfectly — yes, Liz was stumped.

He was muttering away to himself, “Not exactly after me, but if they know then everyone will know…”

What on earth was he on about? Liz wished she’d left their relationship as it was, although his constant peering through his immaculately laundered net curtains was now explained. It had nothing to do with all the supposedly unwashed lodgers living next door to him, but rather to whoever it was he watched for. Liz supposed that was something although she was still suspicious of the eagerness with which he raced out of his house whenever one of them drove their car from outside of it. Seconds later, he’d be out there, haring down the road to get his car just so he could park it outside his own house. He must be watching them to do that so regularly. Anyway, this was all fairly pointless just at that moment…

She was saved by the bell. There was no mistaking it. It shrilled throughout the house. She looked expectantly at Clive. He looked at her. His face was grey. Sweat rolled down his cheeks and he was visibly shaking.

“Do you want me to get that?” Liz offered. “You don’t look as though you’re feeling very well yet. Perhaps it’s still the shock of your accident.”

“No! No, leave it. It might be them, back to get me.”

“Oh, surely not. Not in broad daylight. Not in Malvern Road,” Liz said, laughing, just a little hysterically. “I’ll go and see.” As Liz got up from her chair she heard her own door-knocker being enthusiastically exercised. “Look, whoever it is, is at my door now. It can’t be them. It’s probably someone selling dish cloths.” And whoever it was had got fed up with ringing her bell and was now leaning on Clive’s again. “All right, all right. I’m coming,” Liz muttered as she left the front room, turned into the lobby and opened the door.

There were three men standing there. They all wore jeans and rather nice sweaters. They all looked pretty fit and wholesome. They looked like they could be fun. “Were you looking for me?” Liz asked. She batted her eyelashes a few times before remembering she’d given up all that.

“Are you Liz Houston?” asked the yummiest one. Fleetingly it crossed her mind to wonder why he assumed she was as she wasn’t in her own house. But it was only fleeting. He was pretty yummy.

“Yes, I am. How can I help you?”

“We believe you have a man called Simon Medley living with you…”

She let out a big breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding. At least if they wanted Simon, it couldn’t be the do-it-yourself surgeons who had pinched Clive’s finger, although Liz was still having some difficulty believing in their existence. This was Malvern Road.

She was always cautious about other people’s business, though. She didn’t want to give away any information about Simon without asking him. On the other hand it might be to do with his work so neither did she want to put them off entirely. Liz couldn’t think what to say so she said nothing. Was it possible that Simon was in trouble too? Was it possible that everyone she knew led secret lives about which she knew absolutely nothing? From this day forth she was never going to open her mouth again without, first, a great deal of thought.

Of course, by the time she’d come to this life-changing conclusion the three men were showing signs of impatience.

“Look, I don’t know why I bothered to ask. We know Simon Medley lives with you and we want him. Tell us where he is.” Liz must have looked startled. Yummy’s tone had completely changed from a lovely warm toasty-brown to an icy bluey-green with frosting.

The middle one of the three chuckled. Liz hated people who chuckled for no known reason. Why do they do that?

She stood straighter. “Tell me who’s asking and I’ll leave a message.”

“Don’t mess with us, Liz,” the shortest one said. “It could be painful.”

Liz didn’t like being threatened. It immediately made her do the opposite, but then, it was usually the likes of: “Don’t eat that cake straight from the oven, Liz, you’ll get stomach-ache”. Mind you, cake straight from the oven was worth stomach-ache. Liz had by now decided, despite her earlier disbelief, that she knew who these three were — and she was fond of all her fingers.

But what could they possibly want with an unassuming, pocket-burning man like Simon? Liz was certain the worst thing he’d ever done in his life would be on a par with going to work with no socks on. Sadly, however, it didn’t seem that horrible things only happened to horrible people.

As if they were one being, Yummy, Shortass and Chuckler suddenly advanced on her, but she was ahead of them. She leapt back and slammed the door.

Chapter Eight of ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ is here!

Chapter Ten of ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ is here!

All ‘White Lies and Custard Creams’ chapters to read are here.

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