The Neighbour By C.L. Taylor

Fed up of the noise and her eagerly awaited parcels going missing, Wendy plans a sweet revenge on Jason next door…

There are three things that irritate Wendy Harrison more than anything else in the world: noise, injustice, and a disappointing weigh-in at Slimming World. In the last twenty-four hours she has experienced two of the three.

She barely slept last night thanks to her neighbour Jason Hayward playing music until past midnight and this morning Stella the weigh-in lady marked a 0.5 pound gain in Wendy’s Slimming World book.

Wendy could barely contain her annoyance. She’d been so good all week, she told Stella. She’d stuck to plan and everything (well, apart from the half packet of custard creams she ate on Sunday morning while reading the papers). She stewed about the gain all day at work.

Now, as she walks down the path to her house, she consoles herself with the fact that at least she has an evening of quality entertainment to look forward to. An email popped up in her inbox at work telling her that the new series of LineOfDuty had been delivered.

She listens for the swish of its cardboard package being pushed along the mat as she opens her front door. But there’s no sound, and no package either.

“Oh, for goodness’ sake.” Wendy stomps back out of the house and heads for the black dustbin in her front garden. She has emailed the delivery company at least three times telling them specifically not to leave her parcels behind the bin because her next door neighbour steals them – and yet they persist in dumping the parcels in the garden rather than attempting redelivery.

She has confronted her neighbour, several times, but he still denies any responsibility. It’s no coincidence that her parcels go missing whenever she has to work late. She knows it’s Jason. She caught him inflagrante one morning, tucking some cardboard packaging into his recycling box. Packaging, she discovered when she snatched it out of his hands, with her address on.

Jason looked horrified (faked, obviously) when she confronted him about his crime. He hadn’t stolen her post. He’d found the packaging on the pavement and was tidying it away before the bin men came.

“It’s windy,” he pointed out defensively, gesturing at a tree that was almost bent double. “It must have blown out of your box.”

How very convenient. Wendy considered reporting the theft to the police but dismissed the idea. She still hadn’t forgiven them for treating her quite so harshly after she grazed her ex-husband’s thigh with a steak knife after he asked for a divorce.

No, she resolved, as she marched into her house with the piece of cardboard under her arm, she would give her neighbour one last chance and if another parcel went missing he would face the consequences.

Wendy pulls her dustbin forward and peers behind it. Please, she thinks. Please be there. I’ ve had a terrible day and all I want is to sit in front of the TV and– No package. She wheels the dustbin away from the wall, just to be sure, then purses her lips,

turns on her heel and stalks off in the direction of her car. There are items she needs to buy from the supermarket (and they don’t include custard creams).

From her vantage point at the bedroom window, peering from behind the curtains, Wendy can see half of Jason’s front door. She checks her watch. 6.37pm.

She’s been at the window for an hour, waiting for him to return from work, but she’s not bored. Neither is she disgruntled that she took a day off work in order to hatch her plan. She’s positively fizzing with excitement.

She would bake Jason a chocolate cake, she’d decided as she perused the baking ingredients in the supermarket yesterday. He wasn’t a portly man but he had an appetite for sweet things – she’d spotted the ice cream tubs and empty boxes of chocolates in his recycling bin.

There was no way he’d be able to resist the cake. Thick gooey, irresistible chocolate cake with a salted caramel filling and ganache icing. And ground down laxatives, sieved in with the flour.

Wendy starts back behind the curtain as Jason’s car pulls up outside his house. She watches as he gets out, approaches his front door and then pauses. He crouches down, opens the lid of the cake box and takes out the card Wendy has included. ToJason–onegooddeed deservesanother. Unsigned, of course.

He glances around warily, as though expecting the sender to suddenly appear, then jabs a fingers into the icing and pops in into his mouth. He raises his eyebrows, gives a little nod of approval, then fits his keys into the lock and disappears into his house, with the cake box gathered to his chest.

It was a long night – one punctuated with the sound of a man roaring in pain, swiftly followed by heavy footsteps pounding the floor and a toilet flushing – but, for once, Wendy relished her lack of sleep. The man was obviously in absolute agony with stomach cramps. Justice had been done.

Wendy hums the theme to The Dambusters as she gets out of bed, pulls on her dressing gown and heads for the bathroom. She undresses, steps into the shower and turns it on. Nothing. Not a drop of water. She walks to the sink and turns on the tap. Nothing. Oh for goodness’ sake. Wendy stares at her dishevelled reflection in the mirror. I’ ve got an important meeting today. I can’ t go in looking like–

The doorbell cuts through her thoughts and she jumps.

Is it Jason, pale-faced and angry? Or worse, the police…

“Hello?” Tentatively she opens the front door and frowns at the man in a suit on her doorstep.

“Sorry to interrupt you so early, Ms Harrison,” the man says apologetically. “My name is James Edmonson. I’m the area manager for SwiftSpeed Couriers. These are yours.”

He offers her an armful of battered and torn cardboard parcels.

“One of our evening employees, now sacked, tried to up his productivity numbers by hiding parcels at the plant and claiming he’d delivered them. Some of them should have been delivered to you weeks ago. I can only apologise.”

“I apologise, too.” A man in a high visibility jacket pops up from beyond her hedge and taps a drain in the pavement with his boot.

“Your neighbour’s blocked toilet has caused trouble for the whole street. You’re going to be without water for a while…”