1
Finding a new place to live is a lot about luck – you can get somewhere in as good a neighbourhood as you can afford, but you cannot tell until you've been there a while whether the people, your neighbours, are any good.
When I moved to London last September, I have to admit I was pretty daunted by it all – big city, massive buildings, millions of people crammed into the place. It wasn't like I was a farm boy, but having grown up in a fairly small town and spent university in a pretty small city, I just wasn't prepared for London.
The new job came first, an offer I could not refuse, though the work itself wouldn't be all that interesting. I arrived and after three fairly stressful weeks looking for a new flat, at last I had my place, a fairly quiet street in quite a colourful part of North London. But just how colourful, I had never figured to start off with.
For the first few days, I didn't really meet any of my neighbours. Mostly, strangers in London keep to themselves, so I found nothing odd in the lack of 'community spirit' around my flat. I knew people at work, I had friends back home, and even a couple who had moved to London before me – so I wasn't worried. I heard my neighbours going up and down the stairs, and occasionally bumped into them, greeting them with the usual polite hello.
My world was fairly regular, travelling to work, working the full day, returning home for supper and bed. Nothing out of the ordinary at all. Until I came home one evening to find a beautiful girl sitting on the stairs outside my place.
2
The girl sitting on the step outside my flat was quite something. Young, slim, devastatingly pretty, she had the kind of looks that made married men wish they were single and single men wish they were A-list celebrities.
But she was in a state: her long brown hair all tangled as it flowed down her back, her beautiful big brown eyes red and puffy: it was quite clear she had been crying. And quite clear she had been hit.
"Hey, are you okay?" I asked, pausing on the small landing six or seven steps immediately below her. A stupid question – she was clearly not okay, the cut on her swollen lip seeping blood – but I really didn't know what else to say.
She nodded, but I could see she was holding back more tears.
"You live 'round here?" I asked her.
She nodded again, saying softly: "Upstairs."
"So we're neighbours," I smiled, "I'm Jack."
"Natalie." She looked straight in my eyes, and I swear my body temperature rose by five degrees.
"Are you... locked out or something...?" What to do? I couldn't leave her out here, surely? I was new to London, and I had figured that the primary law of people here was 'mind your own business', but I couldn't leave someone clearly in distress here.
"No," she said, and I was worried she would leave it at that, keeping it monosyllabic. Perhaps she didn't want me to poke my nose in where it wasn't wanted. But no, she said: "My father... he gets a little... angry at times. When he's been drinking."
I nodded sympathetically. "Your mother at home?"
She shook her head. "She ran off with some rich guy," she said. Her voice, now that she was using it, was nice, clear, intelligent-sounding. "Two years ago, they went to Spain, I think. Haven't heard from her since."
"Oh, I'm sorry." What could you say to that? It put your life into perspective: any quibble I had with the tedium of the daily nine-to-five was suddenly put in the shade.
I pulled my keys out of my pocket, indicating that I was going to head into my flat. "Are you going to be all right out here?" I asked her. I felt sure that inviting her inside my place would seem somehow seedy, and in that moment I realized I could see up her skirt in that position. She certainly had nice legs, but I caught my breath as I glimpsed a sight of her pink panties between those slender thighs.
It had been far too long since my last relationship had ended.
I looked hastily away, my eyes connecting with hers again, trying not to let her know I had seen anything. Not really thinking now, a little flustered I have to admit, I said: "If you want, you can wait in my flat – we can get that cut of yours cleaned up."
Damn it, she was in her school uniform and everything, I really shouldn't have been inviting her in. But she was in trouble, and I felt bad about just leaving her out here.
I was fully expecting her to say no, and though there wasn't really all that many years between us, she would give me a look like I was a dirty old man.
But she didn't. She looked into my eyes and for the first time gave a weak smile, before saying quietly: "That would be nice."
Inside, she sat on my bed and watched television while I dabbed at her injury with a warm, wet tissue. There wasn't a lot in my flat, just a bed, desk, chest of drawers and built-in wardrobe, so it wasn't necessarily odd that she should be on my bed – there was nowhere else to really be in there.
But as she sat there, cross-legged with me sitting in front cleaning up her face, I realized I could see her panties again. Damn it, I really shouldn't be looking. But it was hard not too, and inside my trousers things were also pretty hard.
I put some germoline on her cut lip, which stung a little but she took it well. She smiled, warming my insides again, and she said: "Thank you, Jack."
Somewhere, I thought, there was some really lucky guy who would be with this girl. But I was with her now, and this flash of her little pink cotton panties was the most intimate sight of a girl I'd had in over a year.
Finished tending her wound, I stood, putting the germoline back in my tiny little bathroom.
"Hey, this really great movie's starting," she called. "You mind if I stay and watch it?"
"Sure, go ahead," I said.
I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself – there was no room for me to do much in that flat with here there, but as I came back out of the bathroom, she patted the bed beside her, urging me to sit next to her.
She was smiling like she had no troubles in the world, saying: "Johnny Depp is so cool as a pirate in this..."
Natalie was right, it was a great movie, and as we sat back against my mass of pillows to watch it, I was able to forget that there was this staggeringly beautiful schoolgirl lying on my bed with me there in my flat. She was just a friend in those moments.
We chatted a little through the movie, mostly trivial stuff, movie stuff, but as the final credits began to roll, she said: "Do you have a girlfriend, Jack?"
A question loaded with possible subtexts.
"Uh... no..." I replied truthfully enough. "Not since university."
The corners of her mouth sank and she nodded slowly as if to silently say: "Interesting."
Then after a long pause, in which I became rather self-conscious with her just looking at me, she said: "I should go. Dad's probably fallen asleep by now."
