Page 4 of Now and Again

She got out of the park without tripping over any further historical landmines and headed for home. She tried not to remember anything painful as she walked. Instead, she thought about the present. But that wasn’t so great, either. So her brain compromised and she thought about the new facts learned in those few awkward seconds. What had India said about Juliet, something about her being a nanny now? That wasn’t surprising. Riley could easily imagine her being good with kids.

In terms of Riley’s assessment of the grown-up Juliet, she was forced to admit that she looked very… well. Grown-up agreeably. She looked better for no longer dressing like she was trying to make herself invisible. Her face looked better with age. Those arresting green eyes had only gotten… Riley settled on the word, ‘Nicer.’ Yes. Nice. No other words were allowed entry.

As she put her key in the door of her flat, she vowed to stop thinking about Juliet. It would only lead down a rabbit hole that Riley didn’t have the headspace for right now.

But she needn’t have worried, because Juliet fell off the agenda very quickly when Riley realised her key didn’t work. ‘What the fuck?’ she muttered to herself. She banged on the door. There was no answer.

‘Nick?’ Riley called through the door quietly, so as not to bother the neighbours. A few seconds of silence later, she stopped caring about that. ‘Nick?!’ she yelled, banging on the door. ‘Are you in there?’

There was a shuffling from the other side of the door. But no answer. ‘I can hear you in there!’ she called.

She heard a loud sigh, and the door opened—on a chain. Nick, her flatmate - and landlord - peeked out from the crack in the door, most of his skinny mustachioed face hidden. ‘Riley, I’m… I’m sorry. It just hasn’t worked out.’

Riley had wanted to believe this was a mistake, but there was no mistake at all. ‘So you just change the locks? Whodoesthat? What the hell happened to the thirty-day notice period?’

‘I thought this would be better. Clean break,’ Nick shrugged timidly.

‘This is totally illegal,’ Riley told him, still working through her shock, moving into rage.

‘Well, actually, you never got around to signing the contract, did you?’ Nick said smugly.

Shit. That was true. She’d moved in hurriedly six months ago, a quick change of address needed when Riley had broken up with Noah after she could no longer deny that it wasn’t working. Nick had been a friend of a friend, and it had all been nice and informal, leaving Riley under the impression there wasn’t a rush to get the contract sorted, eventually forgetting about it altogether. With time, Riley found that Nick was a bit stuffy, but nothing she couldn’t handle. Until Nick started laying down ground rules. Nothing big initially, clean up after yourself, no secret electric heaters racking up giant electric bills, that sort of thing.

Then it got a bit more… austere. He wanted her to use his system of colour coding for cutlery. Red dot on the handle meant Wednesday, blue dot meant Tuesday, and so on. ‘To avoid over-wear on some items,’ he explained. It was a bit much, but Riley went along with it for the sake of a quiet life.

Then Nick asked Riley if she could go out on the balcony to brush her hair, that the hoover was not used to long, female locks, and was getting blocked up. Riley thought it was taking the piss to make her stand in the cold of morning just to brush her hair. But she had to admit, her hair was rather thick and long. She’d broken more than one brush in it. So maybe he had a point?

But then Nick crossed a line. Not one Riley knew she had until Nick told her he thought it was best if she didn’t have any overnight visitors. Point of fact, Riley hadn’thadany ‘overnight visitors’ in her tenure at Nick’s place, but she didn’t like the sound of the rule anyway. She was an adult who paid rent. She could do as she pleased in her own room. She could have an orgy, theoretically. Which was what she had told Nick at the time. His ratty little moustache shot up. ‘An orgy? You’re going to have an orgy?’ he asked, horrified.

‘I’m not planning one, but…’

‘Because that’s really… I mean, the unsanitariness just for a start…’

‘Nick, I’m not gonna have any orgies anytime soon! I just want you to know that you can’t dictate stuff like that. I pay my rent on time. You’re my landlord, not my dad.’

Nick looked like he was going to argue about it, but instead, he just scrunched his moustache up and took a sip of his kombucha. Riley was quite pleased with herself for putting him in his place. She had hoped that this was the start of a more balanced relationship.

Until her key wouldn’t work.

‘Nick, just open the door, would you?’ she asked, trying to sound like a reasonable and clearheaded person and not like someone who wanted to throw their control freak of a landlord from the balcony she’d been shivering on all winter while she tamed her locks. ‘Let’s just talk about this, can’t we?’

Nick appeared to think about it. But it became clear that it was only for appearances. ‘No, I think you should just go. I’ll send your stuff on.’

‘To where? I don’t have anywhere to go, you know that!’ Riley said, less calmly. Being reasonable had achieved nothing, might as well indulge some righteous ire.

But Nick wasn’t too worried about her. ‘There’s got to be somewhere, Riley. You’re a very personable... person. I’m sure one of your friends could take you in.’

‘I can’t just pitch up on someone’s doorstep, Nick.’

‘You pitched up on mine,’ he said. ‘This was never going to be a long-term arrangement, was it?’

‘I agree. It wasn’t,’ she concurred happily. ‘But that doesn’t mean you needed to do this so nastily. We could have just talked. I could have left in a few weeks.’

‘Yeah, but… I don’t really like confrontation. I was hoping you might just go away,’ he confessed.

Riley had to laugh. ‘You thought you could just change the locks and I wouldn’t want to have a conversation about it?’

Nick sniffed. ‘Look, I have to take care of myself, so I’m shutting this door in a second and putting on noise-cancelling headphones, blasting Celine Dion to heal from this. I’ll take them off in half an hour, and if you’re still here, I’ll be forced to call the police, OK?’ he said nervously. He took a deep breath and slammed the door.

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