Page 24 of The Winter of Second Chances
School holidays were a whirlwind of guilt and self-loathing. As a woman, you couldn’t afford to excel in just one thing; you couldn’tonlybe a great parent, oronlyhave a great career, you had to be great atallthe things you did, or society would deem you a failure.
‘You’re amazing!’ people would say. ‘I don’t know how you do it!’
And Annie would think,If only you knew what a fraud I feel most of the time.She was forever waiting for them to realise that she was making it up as she went along. Boisterous melodies from a live folk band burst out of the open door to The Captain’s Bounty along with the smell of roast beef and potatoes cooked in duck fat, rooting her back in the present. The joyous sounds of banjo and fiddle seemed to suit the landscape. It was a little after six; obviously The Captain’s Bounty’s turn to feed the masses. Annie determined to test The Captain’s hospitality soon.
It was still light. There were a couple more weeks before the evenings would start drawing in earlier. But it was cooler now than it had been at the same time even three weeks ago and Annie was glad of her sweater. She walked slowly down the hill, soaking in this beautiful place that was to be her home for the coming months. And she felt...well, she felt lucky.
The next morning, Annie was woken by a strange squeaking sound and the tinny clatter of metal. She was momentarily disorientated until she remembered where she was and then she pushed the discombobulation of sleep aside and opened her eyes. The wallpaper was a festival of pink tea-rose posies tied together with lilac ribbons in repeating patterns around the walls. The morning light permeated the cream jacquard curtains. Annie stretched and rubbed the sleep from her eyes – carefully so as not to encourage more wrinkles than was necessary.
There came another metallic clatter. Annie padded out into the hallway in her blue scotty-dog pyjamas, scratching her bird’s nest head as she went. She yawned loudly as she walked into the sitting room and came face to face with an unfeasibly tanned man looking in at her from the other side of the glass.
Annie screamed and threw a scatter cushion hard at the window. The cushion thumped dully against it and flopped onto the window seat. The tanned man looked down at the cushion and then up at Annie, bemused. Annie dashed back into the hall and stood with her back to the wall, panting. Her brain clicked back into gear and she realised it was the third Monday of the month, which meant the man at the window was Paul, the window cleaner.Jeez! Where is the time going?she wondered.
Annie mussed her hair into what she hoped was more beach-tousled than sweaty-bed, straightened her pyjamas and walked back into the sitting room, with as much dignity as she could muster. Paul was laughing, hands held up – one holding a squeegee – in surrender, in a way only a person supremely confident at the top of a ladder could do. He had a friendly face. His skin was the colour of a well-roasted chicken, and a career spent outside had given him wrinkles around his eyes and mouth that deepened into well-worn creases when he smiled.
She found herself laughing at him laughing at her and quite forgot that she wasn’t wearing a bra and that her boobs grazed the bottom of her ribcage beneath her baggy pyjama jacket. She had a sudden urge to twirl her hair around her fingers, and a strange stirring in her tummy-hugger pants reminded her that she hadn’t had sex in a very long time. And, more to the point, that she would like to remedy that as soon as possible.And why shouldn’t I?she thought.I’m forty-four, not dead!
Paul motioned down towards the ground and raised his eyebrows. Annie gave him a double thumbs up and wondered if she’d always been this uncool. As Paul began to dismount the ladder, Annie dashed into the bedroom and hurriedly put on her bra. She scooted into the bathroom and performed the quickest of tooth brushes and squidged a blob of toothpaste onto her tongue for extra freshness; she didn’t want to frighten him off with morning breath.
Several unboltings later, Annie wrenched open the front door and felt the fresh morning air burn her minty tongue and whistle through the gap in her pyjama top. Paul the window cleaner leaned casually against the mailbox post. He wore a white T-shirt – wet down the front – and old straight-cut stone-washed jeans. His hair was a mess: a tangled windswept mass of blond and grey, with coarse stubble to match. Annie expected him to snap open a can of Diet Coke any second. He broke into a wicked grin when he saw her.
‘Hello!’ he said. He walked over to the steps and leaned against the handrail; one foot rested on the bottom step. When not scaling ladders, leaning seemed to be his thing. It was difficult to descend the steps with any kind of sex appeal whilst wearing hedgehog slippers and a pink fluffy dressing gown with cat ears on the hood, but Annie gave it her best shot.
‘Hello,’ she said, hoping she didn’t have a toothpaste moustache.
‘Mari found her brave victim then,’ said Paul.
‘Victim?’ asked Annie.
‘Have you ever spent a winter on a beachfront?’
‘No,’ admitted Annie. ‘But how bad can it be?’
‘Spoken like a true towny,’ said Paul. ‘It can get pretty wild!’
‘I think I can handle it,’ said Annie.Oh my God! I’m flirting!
‘I’m sure you can. Is it just you?’
Forward!she thought.
‘Yes,’ said Annie. ‘Just me.’
Paul grinned. If a star sparkle had pinged off his teeth at that moment, Annie would not have been surprised.
‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m Paul.’
‘I know,’ said Annie. ‘Mari told me you come every third Monday. To clean the windows, I mean,’ she added as if she needed to clarify.
Paul laughed, a deep gravelly laugh, and Annie began to feel very hot inside her animal-themed nightwear. She wasn’t sure if it was the flirting or the menopause.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Ialwayscome on a Monday!’
The heat spread up her neck to her cheeks.
‘Smashing!’ she said.
Smashing?? What kind of response was that?
