2012 The Secret Teachings of the Next Door Neighbour

Prologue

‘If anyone can do this, it is you,’ he said, his clear, grey eyes locked into hers.

Pushing his chair back, he rose and extended a wrinkled yet immaculately clean and well-manicured hand over the polished desk towards her. Within its grasp he held a small silk wrapped package. She too reached out and for the briefest moment the tiny bundle was held suspended in time, supported by both the old and the young together.

‘After all these years, I find it hard to believe that the time has finally arrived,’ he said slowly, his rich voice resonating around the oak paneled, library walls, ‘but now, I realize, the hardest part of all is yet to come.’

She acknowledged his words with a slight nod of her head and with only a hint of her native Parisian accent detectable replied,

‘I will do my very best to ensure its safe arrival.’

She glanced down at the package, feeling suddenly overawed by the magnitude of her task. After all the years of training she’d come to believe that she was ready, but now, actually holding it in her hand, she wasn’t quite so sure.

The elderly man smiled, the myriad lines around his eyes creasing as he replied with sincerity,

‘I know you will.’

Paul: December 15th

As the tube train rattled into Oxford Circus Station, Paul glumly watched himself reflected in the carriage windows streaking by, thinking how tired, grey and middle-aged he looked. He knew he should be feeling happy, after all, he had the whole of the week running up to Christmas off work. And with the kids going to Julie’s folks he had a clear ten days to himself. But instead of happiness, Paul felt nothing but a kind of blank gloom.

The tube stopped and Paul, clutching his plastic bags waited in the throng to get on. His chances of getting a seat in this crush, he thought, looked pretty unlikely.

He squeezed on, wedged his bags firmly between his feet and took hold of a stainless steel pole. The doors closed with a hiss and the tube jolted into motion.

There was nothing worse than Christmas shopping, especially when you’d braved the crowded pavements and overheated shops and still hadn’t found what you’d gone for.

Chris was easy, 9 year old boys were. He’d bought him an Arsenal sports bag, knowing he’d be chuffed to bits with it, before spending a fruitless couple of hours picking up and putting down all kinds of junk, wondering what the hell to get Tara and Julie.

For God’s sake, he thought, he didn’t want to encourage Tara’s macabre sense of teenage fashion by getting her death’s head jewelry, or black make-up, even if it was what she’d like. The problem, he knew, was that anything that he liked, Tara on principle would look at with scorn.

The train rumbled on through the darkness with its cargo of blank-faced passengers, jolting in time to the rhythm of the tracks. As for Julie, Paul thought bitterly, the way she was fleecing him for money now he just didn’t feel like getting her anything. He was already paying all of Tara’s school fees, half the mortgage on the extension and most gutting of all, the monthly payments on his Land Rover that he’d left with her. Still, he’d have to get her something, even if it was only to show the kids that they still had some kind of family unity. It’d have to be something cheap, that’s all, he concluded.

Jesus, he could probably pick up some pebbles in the park for her to arrange in her feng bloody shui corner.

Paul had to consciously stop himself and think of something else. It was all too easy to fall into anger and resentment whenever he thought of Julie and he knew it didn’t get him anything but a splitting headache.

Now Elodie, at least Elodie was easy. Paul reached a hand into his trouser pocket and pulled out the plush velvet box, flicking its lid open. He’d spent more money on her than he probably would on the whole of his family, he thought guiltily. But it was classy and it would suit her. The tiny gold heart shone lustrously, nestled in its velvet bed, the minute diamond set in the right hand side seeming to wink cheekily up at him.

Just the thought of Elodie lit a spark of excitement somewhere deep inside him, brightening the cloud of gloom he seemed to have been under since moving to London.

Well, if the way to a woman’s heart really was expensive jewelry, he thought smiling, this was definitely the clincher. He snapped the box closed and patted it carefully back into his pocket as the lights and crowded platform of Warren Street Station streaked past the window and the train slowed.

A handful of passengers rose to get off and before the tube had fully stopped and the doors opened Paul had made a determined line for the nearest empty seat and dropped himself into it with a sigh of satisfaction.

Back in the tunnel again, Paul let his gaze wander idly over the faces of the passengers opposite him.

What was it about London, he wondered, that reduced everyone who lived here to the same miserable, drab grayness?

He caught sight of his own reflection and despite the blurred effect from the double glazing he could see he was just the same as the rest of them.

God, I’m getting old, he thought dismally, staring back into his own tired, grey eyes.

When Jeremy, from work, had offered him the flat in London at such a reasonable rent, he’d convinced himself that a trial separation might be good for them. There was sound financial logic in it. It would save him the expensive commute and meant he could leave Julie the car but inside himself he’d been excited, thinking London would give him the new lease of life he’d been looking for.

He’d seen it as a chance to reinvent himself as someone new, find some new friends and make up for the lost time of the last 15 years. But looking at it now, honestly, in the bright neon light of the tube carriage, he could see things for what they really were and he knew he’d been deluding himself. He was just a weary, nearly 40 year old watching his marriage slipping slowly but surely down the drain.

How was a trial separation ever going to help, or do anything for that matter, other than make the widening gap between them ever bigger?

It had about as much logic as Julie’s daft idea that getting a dog would make them a more complete family.

Ha! The least said about that, the better.

And the flat, he had to face it, was crap for the kids when they came to stay every second weekend. All Tara wanted to do was spend the day in bed with her laptop on facebook, while Chris was bouncing off the walls, needing some exercise. He could never please them both and he’d started to dread his weekends of parenting, forced to drag them unwillingly on expensive, joyless outings round London, to museums, ice-skating and McDonalds.

Paul again shook himself out of his depressing thought pattern, remembering his resolve to stay positive. At least he’d managed to quit the fags and the beer. It had been made easier, he admitted, because he didn’t have anyone to drink with here, but even so, it was an achievement. And he’d lost some weight recently. There was still a bit of a podge but half of what it had been three months ago.

He remembered how Julie used to nag him to exercise and keep fit and it had always seemed so hard, such an uphill effort but now, he reflected, since meeting Elodie, he’d found new motivation and even started to enjoy his sweat-soaked after work games of squash with Martin.

The tube rattled out of the grimy darkness of the tunnel onto the shining new tiles of Euston station. The platform was filled with people crowding round the doors to squeeze into the already hopelessly cramped space. The other passengers shuffled over, filling the aisles between the seats. The air was hot and stale as the doors closed around them and they jolted off again.

A smartly dressed, balding man sitting on Paul’s left unfolded a paper, holding it out like a shield between himself and the mass of other passengers.

Paul, for lack of anything better to do peered over his shoulder, letting his eyes scan up and down the columns, reading just the headlines.

Recession’s grip deepens.

Mortgage rates rise by 2.3%.

2012 shows highest unemployment and homeless figures ever.

Yeah, Paul thought, same old stuff. It depressed him to know that all there was to read was a relentless barrage of bad news.

His neighbour turned the page giving Paul the shortest of pointed glances as he did so.

Paul ignored him and continued scanning.

5 billion Euro mobile phone contract in Ukraine.

Drug search go ahead in city centers.

Well, that at least was a good thing if it kept the pushers off the streets. Paul thought protectively of Tara, staying out to all hours, up to God only knew what.

He craned his neck to try and read the small print of the article but the carriage was bumping too much and at this angle the lines of letters dissolved into incoherent mush. He turned his attention to the opposite page where a collection of ragged clothed youths were photographed under the heading.

Stonehenge exclusion zone to go ahead.

As more festival goers then ever are expected this year, Wiltshire constabulary have enforced a 10 mile exclusion zone. Chief Inspector Cluney made a statement ...

That was the problem in a nutshell, Paul thought, the youth didn’t care about the state of the country, the economy or progress, preferring to waste taxpayers money and precious police time. It was no wonder everything was going down the drain!

The man next to him shot Paul another look as he shook the creases from his paper and Paul gave up trying to read, shifting his attention to the neutral space of the advert panels above the windows.

At King’s Cross the crush eased off a bit as people poured out onto the platform, only half as many getting on. Paul watched with distaste as a down and out tramp staggered into the compartment, the other passengers instinctively making space for him and averting their eye contact. It was hard to pinpoint his age, though he probably wasn’t much older than Paul, his lower face covered in a dirty, grey stubble with unhealthy, prominent veins standing out bluish-purple on his cheeks. He was wearing a filthy donkey jacket and his hands inside threadbare fingerless gloves, clutched a can of super strength lager.

But what Paul found most offensive was his smell, a powerful, odious mixture of alcohol, dried sweat and stale urine.

It was disgusting, Paul thought, how people could have so little self-respect. They should create some kind of scheme where homeless people had to do community work, give something back to society in exchange for food and shelter. What these homeless people didn’t understand, Paul concluded, was that life’s hard for everyone. Sure, homeless people came from all walks of life but you couldn’t just give up and let yourself go when things got tough. You had to knuckle down and deal with it. He’d paid his own way through university, trained himself up and through perseverance and hard graft, here he was, junior partner at Hodgson, Burke and Burnett Accountancy Ltd. Maybe he wasn’t earning a fortune but at least he was paying his way through life and keeping his integrity.

That’s what really galled him about Tara. Why couldn’t she understand that he was working his butt off to give her the opportunity to succeed, to come out on top, that he hadn’t had. If Julie could just find it in herself to support him together he was sure they could make Tara see some sense.

Paul sighed, that was the heart of the problem really. How could they be effective parents when they couldn’t agree on anything? Somewhere, he mused, there must have been a moment when things started going wrong. A moment, perhaps, if he’d been paying attention he could have stopped this whole bloody mess from happening. Was it when Julie had first started getting into all that new-age nonsense? taking on the crackpot ideas of her new friends? Maybe that was his fault really, spending most of his weekends in the pub with the 4x4 club, instead of the family walks and outings that Julie had wanted.

Looking at things honestly, Paul’s off-roading and beer drinking weekends had really been a way of escaping the stresses and pressures of family life.

Or had it been way back when Tara started private school, when the finances had got tighter and he’d started taking all that overtime?

God! Maybe their problems went much farther back than either of them would be happy to admit.

Was Julie’s pregnancy with Chris just a pathetic attempt to rekindle the love that had once been so real?

It was hard to know, Paul thought, maybe all this analysis was nothing but a waste of time, a mental regurgitation of the same old stuff. One thing was for sure though, things had just gone steadily from bad to worse between them and what with the dog and the engine on Julie’s volvo blowing, the proverbial camel finally collapsed.

The tube had stopped and doors opened at Highbury and Islington. Paul hadn't even noticed, his train of thought entirely engrossing him.

Thankfully the tramp stumbled out onto the platform taking his stench and a stream of other passengers with him so that there were several empty seats now.

As the tube set off down the last and longest of the tunnels on his journey, Paul let his mind wander, as it so often did, back to Elodie.

Jeremy had introduced them over dinner when he’d handed Paul the keys and it had pretty much become a fortnightly tradition they’d kept up over the last three months.

God, she was cute! Not that, like Julie, she didn’t have some pretty weird ideas. But there was a huge difference between them. Where Julie would try to ram her self-help, pseudo-psychology down his throat, insisting she was always right, Elodie would just smile that pretty smile and drop the subject when he objected. The thing with Elodie was, she listened, without any of Julie’s judgement, manipulation and nagging.

Elodie seemed to care in a way that really helped him to talk and open up.

The tube jolted on its tracks and Paul felt a twinge of guilt. It wasn’t fair, he knew, to compare her to his 41 year old wife he’d shared a house and children with.

Still, she made him feel good, younger and more alive.

He wondered what she’d cook this evening, no doubt it’d be some cranky vegetarian recipe but that didn’t matter.

What did matter was that she’d invited him again, which meant she did like him, possibly even fancy him.

Paul smiled at his blurred reflection across the carriage, imagining waking up with her on Christmas morning, her gorgeous body nestled around his, the necklace in his pocket sparkling up from her graceful neck.

Finsbury Park station rattled into view and Paul’s fantasies evaporated as he remembered she’d told him she was off to France for Christmas. He picked up his gaudy collection of carrier bags, stepped out of the tube and started to climb the dirty, grey steps up to the traffic choked, evening streets above.

The Commander: December 15th

Four figures stood grouped around a circular marble table, rimmed with a heavy band of lustrous gold.

Its shiny surface was completely bare yet several inches above it hovered a holographic, three-dimensional image of planet Earth, rotating slowly on its axis.

Looking closely, the white spirals of cloud could be seen in motion, swirling over the ochre and green continents.

Above the hologram, over the heads of the standing figures, vast, fluted stone pillars stretched up and up, supporting a high, domed ceiling, from which a soft, artificial white light diffused down into the windowless room.

Three of the men were dressed in expensive grey suits, mirrored sunglasses resting on their slicked back grey hair. They were grouped facing the fourth man across the table who, from his powerful stance and exceptional height was evidently their superior.

‘We know they are preparing to move it out of England,’ said one of the suited men.

Their Commander’s gaze rotated slowly to a bank of surround screens that took up three sides of the room. He scanned the tight patterns of energy waves, continuously moving over the screens for a long moment before he replied,

‘Do we have the vibrational anomalies pinpointed?’

‘Yes sir.’

‘Good.’

The Commander took two powerful strides towards the central table, his steps ringing out on the black and white chessboard floor.

He reached a long angular hand towards a concealed console built into the rim of the table and pressed a button, instantly the hologram began to change. Without actually growing in size, the image magnified, rapidly zooming in, closer and closer, till the partially obscured outline of the British isles could be seen.

The Commander’s pale skinned face stared intently at the image.

‘Show anomalies,’ he said clearly and instantly three highlighted, electronic dots were superimposed over the first image. He turned his attention back to the waiting, suited men and scanned them slowly.

‘The moment has come,’ his voice, though firm, lacked any emotion, ‘Bring them in.’

The men nodded assent and sliding their shades over their eyes, turned to leave the room.

Paul: December 15th

Once home, Paul decided to wash the grime of central London off himself with a long hot shower. That, he had to admit, was a nice thing about living alone, there was always enough hot water in the boiler.

Wiping the condensation from the bathroom mirror as he stepped out of the shower, Paul gave his body a few moments dedicated appraisal.

It really wasn’t too bad for a nearly 40 year old, he thought. With a touch of pride he puffed out his chest and pulled his stomach in slightly to show his abs to better effect. What would Julie say to that? Well, she had definitely been right, he had been heading down flab road to paunchville only three or four months ago and now, after his regime of morning jogging and after work squash, the effort was definitely paying off. It was a shame that jogging was quite so arduous. He was never going to really enjoy it.

He turned to get a side view, folding his arm across his chest and flexing his biceps.

Yep, he thought with satisfaction, I’m not altogether un-fanciable and maybe, just maybe, tonight could be the night!

Paul started to dry himself slowly and methodically. Looking at things logically, he thought, she didn’t have a boyfriend and it was a well know fact that a lot of girls were attracted to older men.

He wrapped the towel round his waist and reached for the bottle of deodorant above the sink.

The fact that she’d never yet made any physical move towards him, apart from the brief, glancing cheek kiss he received each time they met, didn’t mean anything. She was a well-brought up girl, taking things slowly. It might even be a French thing, he thought, rolling the deodorant around his armpits.

He started to get dressed, choosing his clothes carefully from the bedroom cupboard.

He’d never met anyone as gorgeous as Elodie before, he was sure of it. From those long legs to those pert breasts, to her deep, melting eyes, she was about as perfect looking as a woman could possibly be. Of course, Julie had been a knockout in her day but that was before childbirth and time had taken its toll.

He couldn’t deny that her reticence, bordering on secrecy unsettled him and the things he had managed to find out didn’t quite add up. For example, he knew she was studying in London but what kind of course included yoga, meditation and martial arts? Definitely none he’d ever heard of. He pondered his choice of shirts, finally plumping for the pink and white pinstripe he reserved for special occasions.

How she made ends meet wasn’t too clear either. She wore designer clothes and they didn’t come cheap, he knew that, and what student could afford to get around London by taxi?

Well he had to suppose, Daddy back in Paris must be footing the bill.

Paul chose a beige v-neck sweater from the drawer, his thoughts wandering as he pulled it over his head. As long as Tara didn’t expect that kind of treatment because she wasn’t going to get it ...