Page 16 of From Notting Hill with Love…Actually
“Well, I wasn’t. But what the hey, I shall have to now, won’t I? Just to give you another movie scene to help you on your way!”
“Really—you’d do that for me, a total stranger you’ve just met on the street?”
“My darling Scarlett,” Oscar said with his hands on his hips. “You can’t be atotalstranger now, can you? No total stranger would be sitting in my lounge, eating my biscuits, and wearing my T-shirt, now, would they?”
***
I left Oscar’s house with a spring in my step, and a Fortnum & Mason shopping bag swinging from my arm, complete with my clean white shirt inside. Along with some very precise instructions from Oscar on how I should continue to dry it out when I got to the new house.
As I whizzed along the streets and finally found my way to my new home, I felt confident that at last things were looking up. I’d actually met someone nice here, someone who wanted to help me, plus I was going out to dinner tonight!
Maddie had phoned with new instructions on how to get to the house, but now as I looked at the scribbled notes on the crumpled piece of paper in my hand I wondered if I’d misheard her.
“This can’t be right,” I said, looking around me. “I musthave got the wrong area.” I was sure Maddie had said alittlehouse off the Portobello Road; these all looked like mansions. But the street sign at the top of the road had the correct name, so I slowed down and continued trundling my case along the pavement, carefully inspecting the numbers on the houses as I passed.
At last I came to a house that matched the number on my note and stared up at a large cream-fronted residence, much like all the others on the street. I reached for the black iron gate and cautiously pushed it open. I was sure my new neighbors would be twitching their net curtains (if they had anything so common) at the sight that was creeping up Belinda and Harry’s steps right now.
I stood on the doorstep and rummaged in my handbag. Belinda had had some keys couriered over to me by motorbike the day before, saying she couldn’t possibly trust anyone else to let me in when I arrived.
There was obviously a good neighborly spirit in the area, then.
I really must get a new bag, I thought, as my hand groped around for the keys.
“Good evening,” I heard a voice call from the next house.
I looked across at the voice, and standing in the same place I was, on the steps next door reaching for his own keys, was the young man from the travel bookshop earlier. He wasn’t wearing his coat now or carrying a shopping bag, but was dressed casually in a brown leather jacket, white T-shirt, and jeans.
“What are you doing here?” I blurted out.
He looked surprised. “I could ask you the same thing. Where are Belinda and Harry?”
“They’ve gone away on holiday for a few weeks. I…I’m house-sitting for them.”
I’m not surprised they didn’t want their neighbors letting me into the house if you’re anything to go by, I thought as at last I found the keys.
“That sounds a plausible excuse, I suppose.”
Howveryneighborlyofyou, I thought sourly, as I put the key in the lock. “If there’s nothing else?” I inquired, turning to face him and raising my eyebrows in what I hoped was a haughty, “I really don’t have time for your silly questions” kind of way.
“Actually yes, there is. Why did you think I worked in the bookshop earlier? Do I look like a shop assistant?”
He looked anything but as I stood face to face with him now. His attitude was definitely much more “Don’t mess with me” than “Can I help you?” My new neighbor was tall, with tousled, sandy hair, and as he stood looking accusingly at me, with one of his eyebrows raised in a quizzical manner above his pale blue eyes, there was almost a look ofTheHoliday-ing Jude Law about him. I quickly shook this vision from my head. No, that was taking this movie thing a bittoofar.
“No, I mean yes, you did back then obviously, or I wouldn’t have said it. Look, my head’s been all over the place today; it’s my first day here and everything is new to me.”
I hoped he’d feel sorry for me and embarrassed that he’d been so mean. But instead he just continued his interrogation.
“This head of yours,” he asked, slowly looking me up and down. “Is it often all over the place? Do you often have problems putting your thoughts in a sensible order?”
OK, I’d thought Oscar had been a bit off the wall to beginwith, but he now seemed positively sane in comparison to this dude.
“Not usually, no, why do you say that?”
“No reason,” he said, turning away. He unlocked his own door and pushed it slightly ajar. “It’s just your T-shirt suggested to me otherwise.” He gave me a smug smile as he stepped into his house and swiftly closed the door behind him.
I looked down between the lapels of my jacket. I’d been so engrossed in everything that Oscar and I had been talking about earlier that I hadn’t paid any attention to what was on his T-shirt.
It was navy, and emblazoned across it in big bold white letters was the phrase: I CAN’T EVEN THINK STRAIGHT.
