The Boy Next Door

by Cathy Woodman

Genres: General Fiction

Synopsis

When childhood sweethearts are reunited, will the same sparks fly? Cathy Woodman's The Boy Next Door is a funny and poignant story of how love can blossom when you least expect it. The perfect read for fans of Jo Thomas and Trisha Ashley. 'Cathy Woodman is a real find' - Jill Mansell Terri Mills is going home to London. With only a battered mini and a bankruptcy order to show for her life in Devon, she's not feeling particularly proud of herself. At least her nine-year-old daughter Sasha sees their trip as an adventure. Terri's Gran is keen to lend a hand, and she's already found Terri a flat and a job, for which Terri's eternally grateful. If only the job wasn't at the local flower shop. Growing up, Terri had two passions: flowers, and the boy next door. Martin Blake, son of florists Val and George, was gorgeous. What's more, he was all hers - until her parents upped and moved to Devon and she never heard from him again. Now she's about to walk into his florist's - and straight back into her past... What readers are saying about The Boy Next Door : ' Funny, heart-warming and an absolute winner for me' ' Great plot, a lively and easy read ' 'A charming, well-written story '

Release date: April 26, 2012

Publisher: Headline

Print pages: 407

Sample

How did I let it come to this?

I glance down at the official letter in my hand. It is addressed to me, Terri Mills, ex-proprietor of the florist’s shop known as Flower Power, in Paignton, on the South Devon coast, and now an undischarged bankrupt. I might have excellent flower-wiring skills, and an enthusiasm for scrubbing buckets. I might be highly creative, especially when it comes to updating my CV (the less said about that, the better), but my instinct for colour and design and my individual style of combining flowers and foliage with natural materials, such as weathered driftwood, pebbles and shells swept up onto the beach by the tides, were not enough to keep my business afloat.

I post the keys through the letterbox of the shop door, take one last glance at the flat above which used to be home, and turn back to the mound of black binliners heaped up on the pavement. My nine-year-old daughter, Sasha, is perched on top, wrapped up in fleeces, a lilac raincoat and gloves against the January cold. She pulls her hood down, in order to see me better, and her long dark hair tumbles free.

‘When are we going to get there?’ she calls.

‘We haven’t left yet, Petal.’

Sasha’s lips curve into a smile, and my heart soars. Whatever happens, I am and always will be, Sasha’s mum. All the creditors and County Courts in the world can’t take that away from me.

I place the last bag at the foot of Sasha’s mountain just as a small, rather battered red car pulls into the parking space I have managed to preserve with a couple of traffic cones that I ‘borrowed’ from the roadworks in town.

The driver’s door flies open, and a woman dressed in a long coat, wide-legged trousers and heels, stumbles out.

I was trying to slip away quietly, but with Sharon turning up, there is no chance of that. Sharon, my best friend, doesn’t do quiet.

‘Terri!’ She rushes up and flings her arms around me. Her glasses clash with my shades. ‘I thought I was too late to give you two a lift to the station. One of the twins kept me up for the first half of the night, and the other, for the second. I overslept.’ She takes a step back. Her hair, of an indeterminate colour that is best described as grizzle (she has been dyeing it since I can remember), is out of control. Her lippy is smeared across her teeth.

‘You’re looking great, Terri. When the Official Receiver asked you for a list of your assets, you should have mentioned your figure, your long legs, and the fact that your teeth are all your own.’ Sharon smiles. ‘He might have looked on your petition more favourably.’

I’m tall – over a head taller than Sharon anyway – passably good-looking, and unreasonably slim for someone who lives on a diet of thick and creamy yoghurts and Galaxy bars. I wear contact lenses for distance vision, and I can still read bedtime stories to Sasha without needing glasses, as long as I hold the likes of Roald Dahl and Jacqueline Wilson at arms’ length. I have hazel eyes, freckles and auburn hair which, although short, has a tendency to curl.

‘The only interest the Official Receiver had in me was the fact that I had no money, and very little in the way of seizable property that my creditors hadn’t already seized.’ It was my fault that my business failed. I concentrated on arranging flowers, not my finances.

‘What’s with the sunglasses?’ Sharon enquires. ‘Are you planning to travel to London via the Costa del Sol, or have you been shedding a few more tears?’

I pull the faux-fur-trimmed hood of my jacket down, and slip my shades up onto the top of my head. ‘I’m past crying,’ I tell Sharon. ‘I decided to leave in disguise. Incognito.’

The smell of cold fish and chips wafts from the shop next door, and seagulls cry from the roof of the clubhouse on the playing fields opposite.

‘You could be Dick Whittington in those boots,’ Sharon teases.

‘Mum bought them for fifty pee in the charity-shop sale.’ Sasha’s big brown eyes spark with mirth. ‘I call them her kinky boots.’

‘You should be very proud of your mum, the way she can pick up a bargain.’

‘Let’s just say I’m grateful for boho chic.’

A dustcart comes rumbling down the road between the two rows of parked vehicles and draws up level with Sharon’s car. One of the dustmen walks towards us.

‘We can’t take all of that, my lover,’ he calls out in a rough Devon accent. ‘You’ll have to put some of it out next week.’

‘It isn’t rubbish,’ Sasha calls back. ‘It’s our stuff, and we’re taking it to London.’

I am thirty-nine years young, and all my worldly goods fit into eight binbags and a couple of suitcases. I was so desperate to hang on to Flower Power that I sold the furniture, lamps and toys, and even the rugs from beneath our feet. I scratch my head as the dustcart passes by. ‘It isn’t much, but how am I going to get it onto the train?’

‘You don’t have to.’ Sharon grabs my hand, and presses a set of car keys into my palm. ‘South London is three hours’ drive away. My little old banger doesn’t do much more than sixty with the wind behind it, but it’ll get you and Sasha to your gran’s by teatime. I’ve filled the tank.’

I picture myself trying to heave eight binbags up onto the overhead luggage rails in a crowded carriage on the Paddington Express. Trundling along with them in the back of Sharon’s car would be easier, not to say loads cheaper for Sasha and me.

‘Thanks, Sharon, you’re a pal. I’ll bring it back next weekend.’

‘Only if you can’t find anywhere to park it in Addiscombe. Terri, the car is yours. And before you start arguing about it, Chris agreed that you should have it. He’s bought me a new one.’ Sharon wiggles her bum, and sings a snatch of Groove Armada’s ‘I See You Baby (Shakin’ That Ass)’ from the car ad on TV. ‘Guess which model.’

‘Your husband is very generous, but I can’t accept it.’

‘Chris said that you wouldn’t take it as a gift, so we’ve agreed to sell it to you.’

‘Sharon, you’ve forgotten that Mum hasn’t got any money,’ Sasha observes.

Sharon pulls a purse out of her coat pocket and takes out a coin. ‘Yes, she has. I’m lending her a pound.’ She gazes at me. ‘Take it. You can pay me back when you start work.’

I hold out my hand. Sharon drops the coin into my palm. I hand it back. The deal is done.

‘Come on – I’ll help you load up,’ Sharon says. ‘How many black bags do you think you can get into a Supermini, Sasha?’

My daughter, possessing the optimism of youth, guesses all eight. Sharon says six, while I suggest four. Sharon is right. We squish six bags and the two suitcases into the back, leaving the front seats clear for me and Sasha, then abandon the remaining bags on the pavement for the dustmen’s return. I check them, and they only contain a lumpy duvet and some clothes that have seen better days.

‘We’re just like the Famous Five, setting out on an adventure, Mum, except that there are only two of us – at the moment.’ Sasha sweeps her hair back, twists it into a ponytail then lets it go, so that it bounces back around her shoulders. ‘Have you packed the ginger beer?’

‘Lemon squash and a flask of tea. Will that do?’

‘You’ll be the Terrific Two,’ says Sharon. ‘You are the Terrific Two.’

Sasha climbs into the car, leaving me and Sharon facing each other.

‘I’ll miss you,’ Sharon begins.

Tears prick my eyes and my throat constricts. ‘I feel as if I’m missing you already.’

‘Most people move from the city to the country. Trust you to do it the other way around! Keep in touch.’

‘I promise.’ I am just about to get into the car, when Sharon stalls me.

‘I almost forgot to give you these.’ She hands me a set of pink furry dice. ‘Good luck, and don’t forget to give me plenty of time to choose a hat.’

I tie the dice to the rearview mirror, not wanting to be caught for dangerous driving, and slide into the car where I turn the key in the ignition.

‘There are three and a half million men in London,’ Sharon says above the sound of the engine, which is more tractor than Supermini. ‘Even if you don’t meet Mr Right, you’ll have fun looking.’

‘I’m not looking!’ I shout as she stands and watches us pull away. She simply grins and waves.

‘Are there really that many people in London?’ says Sasha from beside me. ‘It must be very crowded.’

‘They don’t all live in Addiscombe where we’re going. Addiscombe is just a small area of South London,’ I explain. It’s also the place where I grew up. I turn right at the crossroads and Sharon has gone.

‘It would be great if you found yourself a boyfriend,’ Sasha says wistfully as we head for the motorway. ‘As long as he isn’t like the last one, who used to steal my chips,’ she qualifies, ‘or the one before him – Russ. The man who drives the ice-cream van thought he was my brother!’

Okay, the fast-food freak and the toyboy . . . I don’t have much luck with men.

‘I wonder how many ice-cream vans there’ll be in Addiscombe,’ I say, changing the subject. I am not looking for someone special any more. It takes time and emotional energy, and I am determined to concentrate on creating a new life for my daughter, moving into the flat which my grandmother has found for us, settling Sasha into a new school, and starting a new job where I am an employee, not the boss.

Can I get through it? At least the place will be familiar . . . Smiling to myself, I switch on the radio and adjust the tuning. It is a good omen. Gloria Gaynor is singing ‘I Will Survive’.

The tune keeps replaying in my head, falters a little when I have to park the car several roads away from our new address, and fizzles out completely when our landlord shows us around our home.

Pat is in his fifties or early sixties. He is dressed in a blue-and-white striped shirt, and suit trousers held up with red braces (very 1980s), and introduces himself as a property developer and general entrepreneur.

When he unlocks the front door and lets us into the flat, Sasha’s immediate response is, ‘Where is the furniture?’

‘My grandmother said that the flat was furnished,’ I say.

‘Part-furnished,’ Pat corrects me.

‘Which part?’ asks Sasha.

Pat demonstrates the ‘as new’ sofa that he has acquired for the living room, the bare expanse of carpet, and the wastepaper basket strategically placed to hide a cigarette burn. There are no beds. If I wish to purchase a double bed for the tiny, one bedroom in the flat, Pat says, he would be willing to re-hang the door so that it opens outwards into the hallway. I decline, allocating the room to Sasha.

Pat enthuses over the neutral colour of the kitchen units. It isn’t any old beige, apparently – it is ‘Cancun’ beige. Finally, he hands over a bathplug and keys.

When I tell him that I will pay him on receipt of my first wage, he informs me that my fairy godmother i.e. Gran has sent a cheque to cover both the deposit and a month’s rent in advance.

‘You mean Great-Granma hasn’t seen the flat?’ Sasha says later, once Pat has gone.

‘Apparently not.’ However, by the time I have finished cleaning our new residence, using a combination of bleach, vinegar and lemon juice, it looks and smells much better, although it could still do with something else to cheer it up, something that I consider an essential, not a luxury: fresh flowers.

‘It was very kind of Great-Granma to find this place for us, but it isn’t quite how I imagined it,’ I observe later.

‘Don’t worry, Mum,’ Sasha says brightly. ‘We’ll pretend that we’re on holiday.’

On the morning of her first day at school, I find a hand-drawn map in Sasha’s room, entitled Tourist Information for Addiscombe by Sasha Mills.

There are pictures of the red and white trams that run through Addiscombe between East Croydon and Elmers End. A plane with a pilot, resembling Biggles in goggles and a scarf, marks the site of the Croydon Aerodrome, the original London Airport, and the twin towers of IKEA lean precariously towards each other. Three other shops are marked Vinyl Resting Place, Prawnbrokers and Toys ‘R’ Us.

‘We’ll put this up on the wall with your other pictures – if we can find room.’ The bedroom walls are already covered with my budding Gainsborough’s signature landscapes of the English countryside, populated by black-and-white striped cows, and children flying speckled kites.

Sasha is standing beside her new Argos folding bed. Her long dark hair frames her elfin face. Her dressing-gown, open to reveal an uncharacteristically cheerful Eeyore on the front of her pyjamas, barely covers her knees, and her toenails are decorated with scuffed pink polish.

‘What would you like for breakfast? Cornflakes or cornflakes?’ I go out to the tiny kitchen without waiting for Sasha to argue that she would prefer Cheerios, and I take a box of cereal and a bowl from the cupboard beside the window.

I look outside, letting my eye follow the line of the fence which runs away over one hundred feet between two narrow strips of overgrown lawn that are white with frost. Whoever divided this Edwardian terraced house into flats in the first place made an odd decision, dividing the rear garden into two lengthwise plots.

‘What are you doing, Mum?’

I turn away from the worktop to find Sasha in her school uniform, a green jumper and black trousers that fit perfectly. I refuse to become my mother, buying my daughter clothes to allow for growth. I never did grow into the summer dress that Mum bought for me when I started at the very same school Sasha is going to, Havelock Primary.

‘I’m admiring the vista,’ I say.

Sasha frowns.

‘The view,’ I explain.

‘No, you’ve poured orange juice onto my cornflakes, and milk into my mug.’

‘Have I?’ I pick up the mug and examine its contents. Sasha decorated it herself. There is a family holding hands around the circumference; mum, dad and two little girls, beneath a blue sky and yellow sunshine. It’s her dream and, although I’d never tell her in case I should raise false hopes, it has always been mine too.

I throw the cornflakes into the bin under the sink and start again. We are going to be late. I am beginning to regret not asking Gran to take Sasha to school, but I wanted to do it myself on her first day.

‘What is your new boss like, Mum?’

Martin. I can hardly bring myself to say his name aloud. ‘Martin?’ Over twenty years ago, when I left Addiscombe with my parents, for a new life in Devon, he was tall, wide-shouldered and narrow-hipped. His brown hair fell wildly across his forehead in waves, above piercing blue eyes. I recall his playful smile and sexy laugh. Martin was definitely a vista to be admired, but that was way back, and looks aren’t everything. ‘I haven’t seen him for years,’ I say, and clear my throat.

Sasha drips milk across the worktop as she spoons fresh cereal from the bowl into her mouth.

‘Be careful, Sash. I’ve just cleaned everything.’

She giggles. ‘You can hardly tell me off about my table manners when we haven’t got a table, or chairs.’

‘Very funny.’ I plant a kiss on top of her head. ‘Love you.’

‘You too.’ Sasha crunches back her response through a mouthful of cornflakes. ‘Do I have to go to school?’

‘You know the answer to that. You have to learn to read and write.’

‘I can write already. Pneumonia is a very long word, how do you spell it?’

‘Ha ha. I, T.’

‘No.’ She dips her finger into the spilled milk and scrawls the word pneumonia across the worktop. ‘Tricked you!’ She grins, revealing a set of teeth that seem too big and too many for her mouth.

‘Clever clogs.’ I smile back. ‘Now will you hurry up, please.’

‘Can we go by tram?’

We walk. I stroll along, weighed down by Sasha’s backpack because I agreed to carry it on condition that she zipped up her coat and wore her gloves, and Sasha jogs beside me, breaking into hopscotch mode wherever she can find paving stones in the appropriate orientation.

The school – my old school – looks a lot smaller than I remember it. The Junior and Infant sections are on the same site: a collection of buildings, old and new, and prefab; a muddy playing-field and a playground surrounded by a high railing fence. The metal climbing-frame from which I used to dangle upside down by the backs of my knees, with my skirt down around my ears, and my navy-blue knickers exposed to the world, my head a few precarious feet from the tarmac, has been replaced by a wooden fort with chips of bark beneath it.

As we approach the gates, Sasha, who for some months has refused any physical contact between us that might be construed as embarrassing or babyish, slips her hand into mine. The width of her hand is such that I have to spread my own palm to accommodate it, and my throat tightens as I realise how quickly my daughter is growing up.

‘I can’t go to this school,’ she says suddenly. ‘It’s mingin’.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t use that word. I don’t like it.’

Sasha clings more tightly to my fingers when I walk her past the gaggles of mums and their children, through drifts of fresh perfume and fabric conditioner, across the playground. Once inside the school buildings, we track down the secretary who directs us to Sasha’s classroom and introduces us to Miss Hudson, the class teacher, before the bell rings to bring the rest of the children in from the playground.

I’ll bet with her cropped blonde hair, blue eyes and baby-pink lips that Miss Hudson has all the dads queueing up to buy her flowers. However, Sasha doesn’t seem all that impressed.

‘I’m not staying,’ she says firmly, keeping her coat on.

‘You can help me with the register.’ Miss Hudson holds out a pot of pens. Sasha wipes her nose with the back of her hand then pulls out the first pen she touches. ‘You’d better try it, see if it works.’ Miss Hudson hands her a scrap of paper.

‘What shall I write?’ Sasha kneels on a chair and leans across the table closest to her.

‘Whatever you like.’

‘Pneumonia is a very long word,’ Sasha begins, and Miss Hudson shoos me out of the classroom.

How will Sasha settle in? In my experience, it is more difficult to make friends when you arrive at a new school in the middle of an academic year than at the beginning, when friendship groups haven’t yet been established. I can only hope that someone takes her under their wing, like Sharon did to me when I moved to Devon. Yes, I survived, but it was different for me. It was a secondary school, and I was sixteen.

As I walk the ten minutes or so towards the park, I find myself glancing over my shoulder, looking out for potential creditors – force of habit, I suppose. A biting wind chafes through my jeans, and my toes are numb inside my kinky boots, as Sasha describes them, on account of them having tassels and skyscraper heels which wreak havoc on my tendons if I don’t wear them every day.

As I turn the corner, passing the traffic that jerks along bumper to bumper in the rush-hour queue into Central London, the wind drops and sleet-laden clouds part to reveal a weak, wintry sun.

Ahead of me is the Parade, a terrace of three-storey buildings, shopfronts with two levels of living accommodation above. Their red-brick walls seem to glow through layers of grime, and the pavement shines silver from the last shower.

For a moment, I wonder if I have taken a wrong turning, for there is no red-and-white striped awning outside the newsagents where I spent my childhood with my parents. However, there are still newspapers displayed just inside the open door, and posters in the window advertise extra services, including hot sausage rolls, a drycleaning service, and late-night opening.

There’s an electrical shop where the grocer’s used to be: an austere display of equipment behind a pane of smoke-effect glass, instead of crates of veg and apples on the pavement.

I glance at my reflection in the window. The glow in my cheeks makes my freckles appear less distinct, yet my hair is ruffled, making me look slightly wild. I try to smooth it down. I will have to do.

The fourth shop in the Parade is as I remember it – Bickley & Bickley: Funeral Directors & Monumental Masons – but the third stands out like a single bright bloom from an urban jungle of drab foliage. Gold lettering on faded green paint reads Posies: Flower Sellers since 1949, the year in which Martin’s grandfather opened his shop. I never met him. He died suddenly in his forties, and left Posies to Martin’s parents. I try to peer inside, but a screen of condensation trickles down the windows on either side of the door, making it impossible to see anything except indistinct shapes and splashes of colour.

I hesitate, my heart beating in my throat, and the palms of my hands damp with apprehension. Why on earth did I agree to come back? Because I needed a job, because of Gran, because I was tempted by the idea of seeing Martin again . . .

I place my hand on the brass plate on the door and push it open. The bell jangles, making me start. I step inside, and the door swings closed behind me, shutting out all sound apart from my heartbeat. I take a deep breath of the startling heat and stifling humidity, of the sharp scent of leaves and moist peat.

To my left are rows of staging, much of them obscured by flowers: roses massed in porcelain vases; single orchids in elegant glass stems; houseplants in terracotta pots; exotic ferns and yuccas; hyacinths in baskets – all blue.

Beyond these, the shop opens up into a space containing a desk with a till, and a small round table with three chairs. On one wall, painted pale green to show off the plants to their best advantage, is a series of framed certificates and awards. Opposite them are shelves crowded with greetings cards, cute teddies and unicorns, bottles of brandy and champagne, and boxes of Belgian chocolates.

Like Doctor Who stepping out from his Tardis, I have stepped straight into my past.

‘Is anyone there?’ I call softly. I hear footsteps before a figure emerges from the shadows at the rear of the shop. A man. Light slants through the glass behind me so that I can’t see his face, but I recognise him from the width of his shoulders, the slight stoop to one side and the way that he moves, slow and taut like a prowling tiger. I catch my breath. ‘Martin?’

He moves towards me until I can see his face. It shocks me because his brow is deeply lined in a questioning frown, the corners of his eyes are creased and his hair, cropped very short, is flecked with grey.

I almost laugh out loud. What did I expect? That he’d stay young forever like Peter Pan? Martin is two years older than me, which makes him forty-one. He is a middle-aged man, just as I am a rather foolish middle-aged woman, imagining that I could come back to Addiscombe to work for Martin as if nothing had ever happened between us, as if twenty-three years apart was long enough to heal old wounds.

‘Terri?’ Martin says slowly. Although the squareness of his jaw has softened, his voice is the same, like nut cracknell breaking into shards; sweet and hard-edged, sometimes cutting.

‘I’m sorry I’m late.’ I look him up and down, taking in the navy cords and pale blue sweater which complements his tanned skin. He looks me up and down in return, and I wonder what he sees. ‘Sasha – she’s my daughter – didn’t want me to leave her at school. It’s her first day, you see.’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ Martin holds my gaze. His eyes are blue, not speedwell or cornflower, but shadowy and changeable like the sky at dusk, and ringed with dark lashes. A shiver runs down my spine. ‘You’ve had your hair cut,’ he observes.

‘Many times since I last saw you.’ I try to make light of his comment, but Martin blushes as if he too recalls the last time that we met. He was eighteen. I was sixteen. We were cuddled up on the bed, listening to music in his room, with a chair propped up against the inside of the door. Martin gave me a ring, a heart-shaped green stone set on a plain gold band. I told him that I loved him. He said that he would love me for ever.

‘I must fly.’ Martin turns away abruptly, and picks up a file and notebook from the counter. ‘I have an appointment up in Town about a commission for an art gallery that’s opening next month. My mother will look after you.’ He calls back into the shadows, ‘Mum, are you there?’ then heads out of the shop as if he cannot get away from me fast enough.

He might well be embarrassed at seeing me again, and it doesn’t surprise me that he is running away. He didn’t have the courage before to meet me, and tell me face to face that our relationship was over. He didn’t bother to write or phone. Why should he have changed?

‘Well, if it isn’t little Miss Chocolate Orange.’ A woman comes bustling towards me, stops and stares.

‘Good morning, Val.’ When I was Sasha’s age, I used to invite myself to play in the shop. I pretended that I was the florist and Val was a customer, and made up bouquets of roses, with spray carnations and gypsophila. I remember Val as being taller than me, but now she is a couple of inches shorter. She must be in her sixties. She has grown heavy and her shoulders are rounded as if she’s borne years of disappointment; her cheeks are flabby and her eyelids hooded. Her hair, dyed a peculiar shade of burgundy, is cut severely around her ears, and left longer on top.

Like a chameleon, Val stands camouflaged against the flowers on the staging in a chintz tabard, rose-print blouse, striped skirt and opaque green tights. ‘To this day, I have been unable to understand how a parent could inflict the name of a piece of confectionery on their child.’

‘You can’t choose your parents,’ I say lightly, wondering whether or not Martin would have opted for Val being his mother, if he had had a choice.

‘Now that you’re here, I suppose that we’d better find you something to wear.’ She looks down at my boots. ‘We like to keep everything very traditional.’

‘Old-fashioned, you mean?’

‘It’s what our customers want.’

‘I don’t think that you’re allowed to tell me what to wear, Val.’

‘Oh Terri,’ she sighs. ‘I think that I can – unless you don’t want to stay for your week’s trial.’

‘Trial?’

‘Your grandmother didn’t mention that, did she?’ Val smiles for the first time. ‘Let’s find you a uniform.’

I follow her out to the back room through the door which has been left propped open with a bucket, following the sound of a radio: Bruce Springsteen sings ‘Dancing in the Dark’, from the year when I last saw Martin.

I remember the table that stands in the centre of the room with its scrubbed pine surface covered with pieces of plastic foam and wire. I remember the flight of stairs that leads directly from the room to the flat above; the double draining-board that is partially obscured by a forest of foliage; the porcelain sink that is filled with pots of scented hyacinths, all blue like the ones on the staging in the front of the shop; the worktop beneath a wall-mounted boiler.

The fr. . .