Living Next Door to Danny

By Mavis J. Pearl

After her serious relationship with Mikey ends, thirty-odd year old Cynthia moves to an Essex town where she shares a rooftop terrace with neighbours from all walks of life. Prepared to heal the wounds her ex’s deceit has left her with, she makes new experiences – even those she isn’t ready for. The one constant is Danny, a stunning next-door neighbour out of her league. Getting to know each other through frequent games of chess, terrace parties and neighbourly comradery, Cynthia’s feelings for Danny become secretly more intense.
Hopeless that he would ever indulge her romantically, she dates other guys and experiences some more promising encounters than others. In her ambition to understand how her past relationship messed with her head, Cynthia is determined not to fall for anyone whose feelings for her are not genuine. While she tries to establish the ulterior motives of her suitors, her trust in Danny as her friend and neighbour gets stronger and stronger.
One night, they cross the (platonic) line and find themselves in the very predicament they have carefully tried to circumvent. Cynthia’s story is a journal about following the hunch for love and re-evaluating her instincts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mavis J. Pearl
• Release date: Mar 25, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311965936

Mavis J. Pearl

Mavis J. Pearl shares only her name with a fashionable show bulldog but she is entirely human. She was born in Vienna, Austria in 1974 and moved to Boston and Providence during her twenties. There she was first introduced to a career in education and experiences prompting her to write poetry and her first novel We Need to Talk. In 2004 she obtained a Master’s Degree in Teaching English and Spanish and has been teaching in London since.Titles by Mavis J. Pearl:Novels:We Need to TalkLiving Next Door to DannyFace ValueThe Cemetery of Gentle SoulsPoetry Compilations:In VainFollow me HomeStreets

Book preview

Living Next Door to Danny

Copyright 2015 Mavis J. Pearl

Published by Mavis J. Pearl at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favourite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Also by Mavis J. Pearl, Published at Smashwords:

Face Value - A Novel

We Need to Talk

The Cemetery of Gentle Souls - A Gnome’s Story

In Vain - Collected Poems

Follow Me Home - Collected Poems

Streets - Collected Poems

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: The Move

Chapter 2: The Neighbours

Chapter 3: The Italian

Chapter 4: The Ex

Chapter 5: The Rebound

Chapter 6: The Roof

Chapter 7: The Copper

Chapter 8: The Divorce

Chapter 9: The Visitor

Chapter 10: The Weight Loss

Chapter 11: The Wedding

Chapter 12: The Hungarian

Chapter 13: The Chess

Chapter 14: The Wife

Chapter 15: The 3rd of July

Chapter 16: The Boss

Chapter 17: The Judgment

Chapter 18: The Night

Chapter 19: The Morning After

About Mavis J. Pearl

Discover other Titles by Mavis J. Pearl

Connect with Mavis J. Pearl

Chapter 1: The Move

Mikey circled around the Iceland parking lot and pulled up behind a white Alarm Security van. Right, let’s do this were the words he spoke to the steering wheel while he routinely clicked the car keys towards himself, pulled them out and reached for the door handle. An odour comprised of raw mustiness and warm, fragrant Thai fumes fled into my nose as I hurried out of the passenger seat of his Cynther blue Peugeot 206. Before I could orientate myself as to where the different scents were coming from, he had already been unloading some bags and boxes from the boot with greater noise than care and ordered me to take up the items he had placed on the ground. While I was ascending a set of steep metal stairs, I heard the boot shut and the familiar sound of his heels against the asphalt as he followed me with the TV in his arms. We carried everything into the flat and went back downstairs to the car where a box of my favourite plants was waiting. Before I bent down to pick it up, Mikey looked slightly irritated in an all too familiar way and said, Right, I’m off. I walked to the side of the car he was standing at. All of a sudden this air of heavy sadness came over me and I hugged him. His posture remained stiff and upright throughout the embrace but he managed to pat me on the back three or four times as if he were curing infant indigestion. The remoteness of his touch made me even sadder, and good-byes were made more rushed than I had anticipated. I waited until he drove away so that I could wave our relationship good-bye once and for all. It was a symbolic moment that I knew had to be executed to full completion. I owed us that much. Without the drama in the end and the respect served, our four-year attempts at having a life together would not only have proven fruitless but, on top of feelings of failure and resignation, a hasty escape from his presence would have left the bitter aftertaste of regret. In the midst of Mikey’s religiously artificial partner adoption, his life-long quest for a superficially pretentious partnership and his almost brutal determination to inspect marriage material, I had always seen a speck of something genuine in the way he felt towards me. Had I not insisted on giving it an emotional moment at least at the very end, I would have officially admitted to myself that I was nothing but a business deal that got dropped with all losses cut. I wasn’t prepared to feel as worthless and depersonalised as that. I walked up the stairs knowing that those boot heels would not follow me again, certain that the only life around me in the last four years had been in the plants I was holding pressed against my chest, and curious whether the sadness that I was noticing within me was genuine. It was far from clear to me back then why I was feeling sad but nevertheless it was a heavy pull on my soul that I couldn’t ignore.

Julie?

Alright, darlin’? Julie’s voice bore comfort through the phone but it highlighted how much in need of comfort I was. I couldn’t hold back the tears and my own voice started to tremble.

I’m sad. Can you come over soon please, I...

I’ll be right there.

Julie had offered to bring over a few items that would help me to get started in my new flat but it was no longer the clothes rack or the air mattress that I required, it was her company. It was that voice that, in all circumstances, kept its elegance. The strength within her was evident in the way she never lost her grandeur, the way she never spoke out of line, and – most of all - the way she represented conservative English manners along with an ever open mind for changes, not readily succumbing to them but adapting subtly. A lady in her early fifties, her face betrayed youthfulness. All of her features supported the young spirit that she had always held on to. Her eye brows were raised with excitement when you spoke to her. The hazel of her eyes shone with enthusiasm while you were touched by her mild soul when she stretched her perfectly glossed lips to smile at you. She was one of those rare people whose laugh was but a cackle that sounded as if it was coming from a mischievous ten-year old standing in a corner plodding a practical joke, and when you looked into her eyes, you knew there would always be that childlike spirit that she refused to surrender to the trials of life.

It was her inner strength that I needed to have around me in those moments of loneliness. In four years being with Mikey I felt misunderstood, disliked, and on my own. One decision to leave him should have ended those feelings. Sitting on the floor of my yet unfamiliar new flat, I was no longer in the company of Mikey but I could still sense the echoes of how he made me feel. It was a new start and a new adventure that was meant to take me away from a life that I no longer wanted to be a part of. I loved the idea of leaving him, the thought of getting another stab at what the future might bring, and the dream of allowing myself to be free. Still, if you had seen me sitting on that blue carpet speckled with an early eighties pattern of flowers and dark stains left by previous tenants, leaned against a bare, off white wall that separated bedroom and living room, still uncertain of which was to become which, if you saw the tears falling into the palms of my hand, you would have known that the fear inside me was stronger than the relief I had anticipated.

As soon as Julie got to mine, I felt proud. She was the first visitor to see my new apartment. We carried a metal framed clothes rack up the stairs and went back down for a few bags that Julie had prepared for me.

I got you a present, she said as she handed me a Moulinex steam iron and a set of pots and pans. I got them at Argos, so nothing dear but I thought they would come in handy to get you started off. That was Julie. Her friendship confirmed to me what it should feel like when somebody cared about you. Those presents did not cost as much as the Dior make up, the J’adore gift box, the Johnny Rocha sheep skin handbag, or any of the Christmas and birthday presents I had received from my ex-boyfriend but they came from the heart.

I showed Julie around. Decoration fell short in the flat as it still had that empty look from the day I first viewed it on a spontaneously utilised lunch break. I remember taking the bus into Hornchurch with the strong desire to find an affordable one-bedroom right in the town centre. After having to dismiss all suggestions the estate agent had offered to me in his office, I said to him in despair, with a half-serious, half-whiney voice, Why can’t you have something right here, up there, and I raised my arms up to the heavens out of his window, for £500 and for me to move in right away? What looked like a prayer was merely an expression of an unrealistic wish. In American football terms, it was a Hail Mary one and a half minutes after the two minute warning, the ball thrown into the air with full might and little hope. How could I have known that it would land straight into the arms before the chest of my wide receiver and cross that line into the touchdown zone?

Actually, I’ve got something right up there. The estate agent pointed out the window as he surprised himself that my wish worked in reminding him. There’s a number of flats up above Burtons, and I know that one of them has been sitting empty for a while now. It’s not great but it’s £495, and it’s a one bedroom.

I thought the good man was joking, playing my heart strings, and fooling my senses but it was worth going along with it.

No way! That’s perfect. Can I look at it?

Well, I don’t really want to show you it because it’s ugly.

How ugly can it be? It’s exactly what I want, perfect location, and in my budget. Please let me have a look.

O.K. I’ll take you up there right now but it’s not as nice as the other pictures I showed you. Don’t expect nice décor.

O.K .

So there I was, showing Julie the flat that took me a flash to decide to take. A narrow hall way led from the front entrance around the corner straight through the middle of the layout to each of the four rooms. The first door on the right took you to what we both felt should be the bedroom. The walls were off white but textured in their finish, which looked like an attempt to cover up any surface flaws that would have taken more time to mend than to disguise. Bags of clothes and two boxes sheltered one of the corners while the wall left of the door became background to Julie’s old clothes rack. The carpet was blue with cream dots that were splattered in such a pattern that they formed the corners to little squares. I was never a huge fan of the colour blue for any part of any rooms, finding it impersonal, average, cold, and difficult to match, but the bedroom carpet looked cute. It certainly would have looked a great deal more special if it hadn’t been touching the carpet used for the hallway and bathroom. The best word to describe that one was disaster. It was hard to decide which was worse: the flowers, the shoe prints, or the raw blue that clashed with the deep midnight blue of the bedroom. The next room adjacent and entered through another door on the right of the hallway, was to be the living room. The floor was identical to the one in the bedroom and enticed similar annoyance when viewed at the entrance that separated it from the hall. A tall window comprising 6 rectangles of glass separated by wide white slabs of wood gave the two main rooms an art-deco flair from the inside, from the outside it made the apartment building one of the most attractive focal points of Hornchurch town centre as it stood prominently on its own corner dividing Station Road into North Street and High Street.

The only furniture that I owned stood in this room: a wooden dining set that I was only allowed to buy for Mikey’s living room because I insisted on having a place for me and guests to eat other than my lap. He felt it crowded his lounge and disturbed the waves coming from his surround sound set up. The table looked much better placed in front of my beautiful new window as it complimented the contrast between the blue of the carpet and the blue of the sky. The old TV was also in Mikey’s way after he bought his 50 inch flat screen. He was generous enough to let me have whatever we had spare. His old Toshiba VCR and some kitchen ware were given to me as a token of four years of financial ups and downs we shared, and even though deep down I took it for granted that I was able to now use some of the spoons he bought at Tesco’s, I did appreciate not having to go out and spend money that I didn’t have to spend now that being on my own was going to be my biggest expense. The TV was resting on a wooden shoe rack I had acquired at Ikea but Mikey and I were notorious for taking off our shoes and leaving them in front of the couch, outside the bathroom, next to the bed, or somewhere more random so it wasn’t the most utilised piece of furniture. My red rocking chair faced the TV and a couple of floor plants to each side of it.

The bathroom was an extension of the hallway although it was laid a step higher than the rest. The flowery carpet clawed its buds around the toilet seat. Even though it was warmer to step onto rugs rather than tiles when coming out of the bath, it always struck me as a taste faux pas that some British toilets were guilty of making. I found it unhygienic. The bath was very big but had no option of a shower installed. It was fenced in by pale pink tiles. The size of the room made it feel bright and spacious.

The kitchen opposite the living room had laminated floors and dated cabinets. It looked like a relict of the eighties matching the rest of the apartment. Again, a very strong point throughout were the windows. The kitchen window led out to the terrace that was shared by the other four flats above Burtons, the post office, Wimpy’s, and the Snooker Hall.

Julie and I spent the evening talking about work, my relationship ending, her relationship struggling, life and stuff.

Do you want to go out for a cigarette?

Yeah, let me just fill up our glasses.

We stepped in front of my door onto the big balcony that overlooked the Iceland parking lot, the adjacent terraces, the Flatling & Firkin – undoubtedly where the loud music was coming from - and Sainsbury. Julie leaned against the balcony railing while she lit her cigarette.

This is a great place for someone as young as you.

It is perfect, I know. And the estate agent said that the neighbours up here are really nice.

Julie blew out smoke to one side away from my face and gave me a hopeful smile. Either way, I said, it’s such a difference just being right in the middle of Hornchurch. I can just walk it to the station. Mikey’s place is so out of the way. There wasn’t even a pub in walking distance. Everywhere we went, we went by car. I couldn’t just go out of the house and walk to the shops.

And Hornchurch is a nice place. You’ve got everything you need around here.

We heard shoe soles echoing against the metal stairs, an arrhythmic