My Perfect Stranger: A hilarious love story by the bestselling author of One Day in December

It hadn’t taken long for the shine to wear off. Honey had soon come to realise that the average age of people who gave to charity was around eighty. Either that or it was families clearing the decks of a deceased relative’s possessions. Cheap chain store separates. Moth-eaten dresses or suits that had been held on to for sentimental reasons that had died with their owners. Thrift shop jewellery with broken catches. Chipped teacups long since separated from their saucers. Stiff leatherette handbags with brass clasps and screwed-up bingo tickets in the bottom, or a yellowed letter that relatives hadn’t cared enough to hold on to. Honey could never bring herself to throw treasured mementoes away, so she slipped them into a drawer in the old bureau that doubled up as her desk in the small back room of the shop.

‘Tea.’ Lucille popped out of the kitchenette, a vision in tan support tights and an egg yolk-yellow sundress cinched in at the waist by a rhinestone belt. Lucille and her sister Mimi were the lifeblood of the charity shop, full-time volunteers who asked for nothing in return for their services apart from company and the occasional bright string of beads. They were magpies for colour and sparkle; or rather a pair of colourful canaries, singing wartime hits as they fluttered from customer to customer and batted their eyelashes against their heavily rouged cheeks to encourage a sale. Honey adored them both; fabulous aunts she’d chosen rather than had foisted upon her by the inconvenience of bloodline.

‘Thanks, Lucille.’ Honey took the dainty teacup and saucer. ‘No Mimi yet this morning?’

Lucille bent to pull a sequinned dress from the pile at Honey’s feet and shook it out at arm’s length in front of her. ‘She was entertaining last night.’ Her perfectly lipsticked mouth puckered into a tight, sour little raspberry as she turned the dress inside out to squint at the label.

‘Was she really?’ Honey whistled. ‘Not with Billy Bobbysocks again?’

Lucille sniffed. Her sister was far too smitten with Billy for her liking. Exactly what Mimi saw in him, with his ridiculous quiff and purple drainpipe trousers that were indecently tight for a man well into his eighties, was anyone’s guess.

Honey glanced down to hide her smile. Both Lucille and Mimi lived in fear of the other leaving, when history really ought to have taught them better. Men had come and gone in each of their lives, but their sibling bond had remained undiminished by romantic entanglements. It was a bond Honey well understood, having spent her formative years in the comfortable sweet spot between her elder sister Bluebell and their equally fantastically named youngest sister, Tigerlily. Their mother Jane, a failed actress forever saddled with the moniker ‘Plain Jane Jones’, had made certain that her daughters would never suffer the same indignity of anonymity.

Honey sorted the last of the clothes into washing and ironing piles and moved on to unpick the sticky tape from around a dog-eared cardboard box. The musty smell of long-discarded possessions assailed her nostrils as she peeled back the lid, and just as she was about to reach inside to remove the top layer of yellowed newsprint the telephone trilled in the office.

‘It’s probably Mimi ringing to say that she’s still indisposed,’ Lucille said with a scandalised arch of her eyebrows.

Honey grinned at the idea of being too swept away by the tides of passion to go into work at the ripe old age of eighty-three. ‘I sincerely hope so.’

But when she picked up the receiver, she found herself doubly disappointed. One, it wasn’t a love-swept Mimi and secondly, it was Christopher, the manager of the shop and the attached old people’s residential home. A man of much influence and no charisma, which he masked with borderline rude officiousness.

‘Staff meeting. Seventeen hundred hours. Don’t be late or I’ll start without you.’

‘But we don’t close until five p.m.’

‘So close early. You’re not exactly Tesco’s, are you? And don’t bring those old women, either. Paid staff only. Got that?’

‘Loud and clear, Christopher. Loud and clear.’

Honey sighed as the dial tone clicked in her ear. ‘Yeah. Goodbye to you too,’ she muttered into the empty ether. Would it kill the man to feign politeness? Lord knows how he got people to entrust their frail relatives into his care; Honey wouldn’t trust him with so much as a hamster. It was a great shame, then, that her financial security rested in his sweaty little hands.

Several long and eventful hours later, Honey dropped her plastic shopping carriers down on her front step and groaned with relief as she flexed her bag-sore fingers. Baked beans and tinned tomatoes were heavy but essential items on the non-cooking cook’s shopping list.

Her heart lurched at the crunch of broken glass as she shouldered the door open. Shit. Had she been broken into? Honey flicked her eyes over the undamaged panes in the stained glass door, confused, until she noticed the pink tulips strewn across the parquet hallway floor. The very same pink tulips she’d placed in her favourite glass jug in the hallway a couple of days ago to welcome herself home. Or at least it had been her favourite, until now. There was no mending it – whoever had broken it had made a very thorough job.

By the looks of the still dewy flowers and the huge wet patch on the floor, whatever had happened had happened fairly recently, and as everything else in the shared hallway looked ship-shape, that left only one possible culprit. Only one person who would come through here and smash her jug without bothering to clear up the mess or leave an apology note.

Thanks a million, Johnny Depp.

Honey slammed the hallway door shut and leaned against it. It had turned into one hell of a day. Christopher’s words at the earlier staff meeting scrolled around inside her head like ticker-tape on the twenty-four-hour rolling news channels. ‘Funding being pulled. Threat of closure. Six months. Period of consultation.’

The shop was under the cosh, and unless they secured new funding soon they’d be closed down within a few months. And it wasn’t just the charity shop, either; the whole home was under the hammer, leaving thirty residents facing eviction. What do you do when you find yourself unexpectedly homeless at ninety-seven? Honey had no clue, and Christopher had offered precious little in the way of answers. The day had gone from bad to worse as she’d struggled home with heavy shopping on the packed bus, standing next to a drunk teenager who had touched her bum at least twice. He’d been lucky not to have a can of beans wrapped around his head, but Honey was all out of fight. Until now.

The sight of her pretty jug and dying flowers strewn across the floor turned out to be the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back.

‘Hey, rock star!’ Honey yelled at her new neighbour’s door as she picked her way over the shattered glass. ‘Thanks for nothing!’ She dropped her shopping bags by her front door and leaned against it. ‘That was my favourite jug. Just so you know.’

She paused. Stubborn silence reigned, even though she was sure she’d heard movement beyond his door.

‘Fine. I’ll just send you the bill then, shall I?’

It had actually only cost 50p from work, but it had been pretty and his silence riled her. He was in there, she was sure of it. Although, thinking back, Honey couldn’t recall seeing his lights on when she’d passed his windows. Another day, another hangover. Too bad.

‘You’re not the only one who had a bad day, you know. I almost lost my job today.’ She screwed up her face as soon as the words left her mouth. Why was she telling a complete stranger her woes? Or worse yet, yelling them at someone who was clearly too much of an arrogant cock to care less?

Hal lay on the sofa, dark glasses over his closed eyes even though he was wide awake, pained by the effort of holding himself still rather than storming out there to tear a strip off Strawberry Girl. Flowers. Stupid, fucking, stupid flowers.

Storm out there. Who was he kidding? It had taken him almost ten minutes to make his way out into the hallway earlier that afternoon. All he’d wanted to do was answer his own goddamn front door. To stop the door-to-door salesman from banging on it, from banging on the inside of his head.

Who the hell put fresh flowers in a communal hallway anyway? How was he supposed to know they were there? The first rule of living with a blind person – don’t place unexpected hazards in their way. But then, Strawberry Girl hadn’t realised he was blind yet, had she? Thank fucking God, because when she did, she’d no doubt switch straight into that same mode most other people did around him these days, a vomit-inducing mix of sympathy and desperation to make things easier for him. He didn’t want to hear that falter in her voice when she first realised he couldn’t see, so he lay on the sofa and listened to her berate him instead. Not that he could have gone out there even if he’d wanted to. Not with a soaked crotch and hands still sticky with warm blood where he’d cut his hands to ribbons trying to gather the glass up.

He knew exactly what she’d think. He reeked of whisky, and no doubt looked like he’d tried to slash his own wrists. And on top of that he must look like he’d pissed himself.

A new low, even in Hal’s new world.

And she thought she’d had a bad day. She didn’t know the meaning of the words.

Honey dumped her bags on the kitchen work surface and headed back into the hallway with the brush and pan. She’d briefly entertained the idea that her mini rant might have piqued his guilt enough to make him clear up, but no such luck. His door remained resolutely closed, and her flowers were still scattered across the floor. She rescued them one by one, and then set to work sweeping the glass shards together. The water still on the floor made the job extra awkward, and tell-tale streaks of red caught her eye as it mingled with the glass and water. She frowned and stilled for a second. If that was blood, then maybe he had attempted to clear up after all. Or, oh God, maybe he’d injured himself and knocked over her flowers by accident, or maybe he’d had some sort of fit, or nicked an artery with the glass and was at this moment lying dead in his flat and it would be all her tulips’ fault. The way Honey’s day was shaping up, accidentally murdering her neighbour wasn’t beyond the realms of possibility. The floor cleared, she took a few steps towards his door and turned her ear towards it to listen. Nothing. She raised her hand to knock, but then stopped just before her knuckles made contact. What was she going to say if he answered? If you’re dead or injured then I’m sorry, but if you’re not then I’m not really sorry at all?

‘Hello,’ she called out tentatively. A stony silence filled her ears, and Honey felt the very edges of panic start to unfurl. ‘Hello.’ She tried again, a little louder, a little firmer.

Still nothing. She bunched her hand and banged on his door. ‘Are you alright in there?’

This time she put her ear right against the door and listened hard. Was that a shuffle?

Hal swore under his breath and hauled himself upright on the sofa. Strawberry Girl was fast becoming his nemesis. Why was she thumping on his door? Did she seriously want the money for her stupid bloody jug?

‘Look, I know you’re in there. I just heard you move.’

Hal shook his head. It was like living next door to Miss Marple’s over-zealous granddaughter. She must have her ear right against his door.

‘Just answer me, will you? Are you alright in there?’

Fuck. She was already checking up on him, and she didn’t even know he was blind yet. He made a mental note to keep it that way for as long as possible. He winced with pain as he rolled his shoulders and flexed his lacerated palms.

She must have heard him, because she thumped on his door even harder.

‘Do you need help?’ she called out as he made his way along the hallway, for all the world as if she were checking on an elderly neighbour who might have tumbled over their zimmer frame. Sour resentment settled over him.

‘What would it take to make you go away?’ he grouched through the closed door, and heard her puff out loudly as if she’d been holding her breath. Drama queen.

‘Are you always this rude?’ Her tone changed abruptly from concerned to snarky.

‘Only to people who piss me off.’ Her answering gasp made him smile for the first time since he’d moved in.

‘I piss you off? Is that why you smashed my jug and left the flowers all over the floor? Because I piss you off?’ The fact that she was shouting at him brought Hal perverse pleasure. No one shouted at him anymore.

‘That’s about the size of it, yeah.’

This time it was her foot that hit the door rather than her hand, and it was in anger rather than concern.

‘Pig. What have I done to you? Besides have the audacity to set off the smoke alarm and disturb your sodding hangover?’ Her unnaturally fast breathing gave away how riled she was. ‘Well, you picked the wrong day to mess with me, pal.’

Hal almost laughed. Miss Marple Jr had just morphed into Rambo. He crossed his arms and leaned against the door as he waited for her to carry on.

‘Unlike you, my life isn’t just one big round of parties and hangovers. I have responsibilities. I have a job. People who depend on me.’

The sudden rush of anger her words provoked had Hal groping for the door catch. He wrenched it open.

‘One big party? Is that what you think this is?’ He spat his words out and flung an arm back towards his hallway.

‘No,’ she shot back. ‘I’d say this is your lair. Somewhere to lie low and recover from your hangovers.’ Hal could hear the disdain drip from her voice, and he knew she must be taking in the details of his dishevelled appearance. ‘Look at you. You stink of booze, and God knows what else. You need a shave and a change of clothes …’ her voice trailed off, and he knew that she would be drawing all the wrong conclusions.

It pissed him off royally. He wasn’t a man given to hysterics before the accident, but keeping his temper seemed much more difficult these days. Strawberry Girl’s accusations felt as if someone had hurled a grenade into his brain and pulled out the pin.

‘My lair?’ he roared. ‘My fucking lair?’ A laugh started way down in the base of his gut, except it felt more like something dark and ugly trying to fight its way out of him. It rattled through his entire body, and he heard it leave him, a harsh, alien sound somewhere between a laugh and a scream of anger.

‘This isn’t my lair,’ he ground out, when he could speak again. ‘It’s my goddamn prison.’

Strawberry Girl didn’t speak, but her shallow breathing told him she was still there, still staring at him.

‘What?’ she said, eventually. The heat of anger had left her voice, edged out by bewilderment and something else that might have been fear. Hal heard it and knew he had her on the ropes. It would be so simple to go for the kill now, to reveal his blindness and have her fall over herself in her hurry to apologise. In his previous life he’d thrived on being the one in control, and the urge to take control of her now pressed hard against his skull. His aggressive streak had aided his meteoric rise as one of the country’s brightest stars in the restaurant industry. And he’d loved it all. The money. The cars. The celebrity patrons. The girls. One girl in particular. And he’d lost it all in a split second of showman distraction.

Life was different now. It was made up of the four walls of this flat, daytime TV he was almost glad he couldn’t see and wished he couldn’t hear, and microwave dinners that tasted of the boxes they came in.

He screwed his face up and sighed hard. Everything had gone to hell, but none of that was Strawberry Girl’s fault. Everything else in his life may have changed, but frightening women had never been his style and he wasn’t about to start now.

‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re right. You don’t understand, and I hope for your sake that you never need to. Can I go now that you’ve been a good girl guide and checked on your needy neighbour?’

Hal heard her draw breath to answer, but closed the door so he didn’t have to listen.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘It was so weird, Nell. He had blood all over his hands, and looked like death warmed up.’

Honey perched on a high stool at Nell’s breakfast bar, a sleeping Ava nestled in the crook of her arm.

‘Maybe he’s a vampire.’ Nell closed the dishwasher and spun around with a startled look in her eyes. ‘God, you don’t think he’d been trying to …’

Honey shook her head. ‘There were no cuts on his wrists, if that’s what you mean. I checked. It was his actual hands, but both of them. That’s weird, isn’t it? I think he’d tried to clear up my glass jug, but then why would he have been so clumsy? And then not finished the job!’

‘Prison’s such an odd thing to call your home,’ Nell said.

Honey glanced around the warm, welcoming kitchen. Nell’s tidy, gorgeous home embraced everyone who entered through the door in a big warm hug. Just being there was balm for her tattered nerves.

‘He was angry, Nell. Proper angry.’

Nell frowned. ‘I don’t like the thought of you living alone next to him, Honey.’

‘That’s another odd thing.’ Honey reached for her coffee mug. ‘I’m not scared of him, not in that way. If anything, I felt sorry for him.’

Nell leaned back against the kitchen surface with her steaming mug cupped in her hands. ‘I’m not sure I do. He’s been nothing but rude to you from the day he moved in.’

‘Well, I won’t be nominating him for neighbour of the year, that’s for sure.’ Honey stroked the sleeping baby’s fragile fingers, struck by how vulnerable and innocent she was. She couldn’t imagine the man she now shared a house with ever being like this. She had no clue who he was, but something had happened to him. Something awful, and it had made him just about the most angry, jaded person she’d ever met.

‘Tash texted me this morning from Dubai,’ Nell said, changing the subject.

Honey glanced out at the rain through the window, her train of thought broken.

‘Lucky cow. She moans about that job, but at least she gets to see the sun every now and then.’

‘She’s found you a pianist.’

Honey looked up sharply. ‘Jeez, Nell. It was a joke. She isn’t serious?’

Nell shrugged with a half-suppressed smile. ‘I think she is. She’s going to call you when she gets home tomorrow.’

‘Nell. I’m about to lose my job and Freddy Krueger has just moved in next door to me. Do you think I need any more hassle in my life right now?’

Ava stirred, her sleep disturbed by Honey’s agitation.

‘Probably not,’ Nell conceded. ‘But then what if he looks like Michael Bublé?’

Honey grinned. ‘Then I’d let him buy me dinner.’

Nell eased the half-awake baby out of Honey’s arms and into her own, where Ava slipped straight back into contented sleep.

‘Just wait and see then, okay?’ Nell winked as she headed upstairs to lay the baby down. Honey sighed. The relentless gloom outside was a fitting reflection of her mood, and the idea of having to endure a blind date with some random stranger to satisfy Tash and Nell’s ridiculous quest wasn’t a welcome addition to her burden.

Honey walked past the chemist on the way home, and then backtracked and went inside. A few minutes later, she emerged with a carrier. When she let herself into the house she approached her neighbour’s door rather than her own.

‘Umm, hello?’ she called out without knocking, as he must have heard her come in. She could make out the strains of music, something heavy metal by the sounds of it. Maybe he hadn’t heard her after all. She rapped on the door, loud enough to be heard, but hopefully not loud enough to be annoying. She waited, and then knocked again when he didn’t answer.

‘I have something for you,’ she called out. In answer, he turned the music up full blast, loud enough to drown out any further attempt at conversation. Honey shook her head and growled with frustration. He really was a nightmare neighbour. She bent and left the carrier leaning against his door, and after a few uncertain seconds she turned away and left him to stew in his misery.

Hal sat in the hard, unforgiving armchair with his forearms clamped against the sides of his head to drown out the noise of MTV and Strawberry Girl’s knocking. Only when he was sure he couldn’t take it any longer without putting his foot through the TV did he turn it off. The sudden silence was almost as deafening as the music. Was she still out there, waiting for him? He sat stock still and listened for a while until he was sure she’d gone, then sat there some more with his head in his sore hands, for some considerable time. He wanted a drink. He needed whisky, but the empty bottle was on his bedside table after he’d tipped the last of it into his mouth last night. He ran through his options in his head. Go without. Not an option. He could call someone, but who?

His close friends would no doubt feel duty bound to let his worried family know where he was, and anyone who didn’t care very much about him would value the gossip above his friendship. Poor old Hal, living in a grotty flat with just a whisky bottle to talk to. Such a shame.

No, calling someone he knew was out of the question. Maybe he could just go out in the street and hope that some kindly passer-by took pity on him enough to take his twenty-pound note and fetch his whisky? He thumped the arm of the chair in temper. How low did he have to go with this fucking thing? It scared him that as low as he was, there were still further depths to which he could plummet. There was only one option available to him; he’d known it even as his mind had cast around for alternatives. Strawberry Girl. He scrubbed his hands over his face and pulled his dark glasses over his eyes, then heaved himself out of the chair and along the hallway which had fast become familiar territory.

Hal paused as his fingers found the catch on the door. He hadn’t stepped foot outside since he’d knocked her flowers over. Apprehension encroached on his psyche, but he shoved it aside. He wasn’t going to become that man.

He swung the door open and stepped out, then lost his footing over something and slammed hard onto the floor.

Honey heard the almighty crash as she wandered out of the steamed-up bathroom in her dressing gown with a towel wrapped around her hair, still hot from the shower. She dashed for the front door without thinking, and opened it to find her neighbour sprawled face down across the floor, surrounded by the antiseptic cream and bandages she’d left for him.

‘Go back inside and shut your fucking door right now!’ he roared at her without looking up as his hands scrabbled around on the floor for something.

‘What? No, let me help …’ Honey’s hands flew to her cheeks in panic. It went against her every instinct to leave him there, but she was under no illusion – he meant exactly what he’d said. She stepped forward, and her toes touched against something unexpected. When she looked down, she found his dark glasses about to disappear beneath her foot. She bent and picked them up, relieved to find they were still intact.

‘Here.’ She held them out to him, and at the sound of her voice he went from groping around on the floor to absolutely bone still.

‘My glasses?’

Honey nodded, then after a beat she let out the softest of gasps at the significance of him needing to ask the question. ‘Oh.’

He reached out towards her without looking up. ‘Give them to me.’

She stepped out of her doorway and placed them in his fingers. He grabbed them and shoved them onto his face, then rolled over and scooted back against the wall, his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands.

Honey moved quietly around him, collecting up the chemist supplies back into the bag and putting them on the hall table. Shit. Why couldn’t she have just left them there in the first place?

‘I brought you bandages. And antiseptic. It was for your hands,’ she murmured, knowing it was insignificant. ‘I’m sorry.’