Page 52 of Not That Ridiculous

He would if he could work out how to operate a door handle. Phil would let anyone in, up to and including Satan.

“You’ve got a nice little house here, Charlie,” Jasper said out of nowhere.

“If you’re about to expand the critique of my gardening to include my?—”

“No, no. Not a critique! A suggestion. An idea. It came to me out of the blue. I know you’re way too busy to think about renovations now that your parents are off living in Spain and Amalie abandoned you?—”

“She didn’t abandon me.”

Jasper gave me a look.

Yeah. She walked out and left me in a tough situation.

If anyone else dared to criticise my sister I’d tell them to fuck right off, but this was Jasper. Besides, his staunch loyalty was endearing.

His unsubtle determination to get something going between me and Kevin, however, was not.

“—and I thought: lightbulb! Why not ask Kevin? As a buddy. As a friend. A friend with tools. I’m sure he’d love to help out.”

Oh, he would.

“You’ve had those doors off the kitchen cabinets practically since you moved in,” he continued. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have them functioning?”

He gestured expansively around the kitchen.

I waited

“Oh!” he said.

There we go.

“You fixed them!”

“I—” oh, bollocks. “Uh. They are fixed, yes.” If I told him that Kevin did it?—

Jasper grinned at me. “Kevin did it for you, didn’t he?”

I could lie, but what was the point?

Jasper was, after all, the most famous investigative journalist in all of Oxfordshire.

Mostly famous for being almost sued by Ray when he accused Ray of being a serial killer after the bodies were discovered in his house.

And then being almost sued by Ray’s dad when he accused Ray and Ray’s dad of being a father-son murder team when the third body was discovered in his garden.

But famous was famous.

“Yes,” I said.

Jasper looked far too excited to hear this. He bustled around the kitchen, opening and shutting all of the cabinets admiringly.

“Are you done?” I asked once he’d completed his nosy circuit.

“Yep. It looksmuchbetter in here with the doors on, doesn’t it?”

“Yes. I’m ecstatic.”

“Speaking of doors, you should get Kevin over to have a look at the front. You took so long to get it open, I nearly gave up and came around the back.”

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