Free A Bed of Scorpions by Judith Flanders Page A

the panel. And thanks for the suggestion. Very slick.’ And he went back to a door nestled beside a dim-sum restaurant and was gone.
    In my entire life, no one has ever suggested I am slick. I preened. And tripped over the kerb.
     
    At lunchtime Jake texted to say he’d be home – by which he meant my home – around seven. We tended to spend most of our time at my place, for two reasons. One, his flat in Hammersmith was much further from the Tube than mine was, and from there to my office needed two changes, instead of being on a direct line. Jake drove to work, so it didn’t make much difference to him. And two, the first time I’d seen his flat, I’d looked around the nice cookie-cutter sitting room without a single personal possession on display and asked brightly, ‘When did you move in?’ The conversation went downhill after he said, ‘Eight years ago.’
    As I said, Jake’s very intuitive, good at reading people, but in many ways he’s, well, he’s just such a
guy
. I’m not starting a women-nest-men-live-in-caves rant, but he moved into this place after his divorce. His wife moved back to Lisbon with their son, and while Tonio came to visit once, sometimes twice a year, his was the only room that looked as if it hadn’t been designed by the division at IKEA that creates room displays for their catalogues. No, it was worse than that. The IKEA people would have added fake photos of Auntie Mavis, or some ethnic rugs, orpaintings on the walls. This place looked like it was ready to let out on short-term rental from an agency. There was some clutter, sure: books, magazines, those random odds and ends you never need until the day after you throw them away. But that was all. And so we mostly hung out at my flat. At least there was some colour there, and I didn’t fear I’d been struck with some dread neurological condition that made me only see beige every time I walked in the front door. All right, so maybe I was doing the men-live-in-caves rant. Beige caves. Impersonal beige caves. My point is, that when Jake said he’d see me at home, he meant my place.
    I got back with an hour to spare, so I put the makings of a stew together and stuck it in the oven. I could have had a drink and read, but I felt restless. I went up to see my top-floor neighbour instead.
    I live in a Victorian house that was converted into three flats a long time ago. I live on the ground floor, and above me are a couple of actors named Kay and Anthony Lewis, and their five-year-old son Bim. Bim’s real name is Timothy, but Bim was what he called himself when he first learnt to speak, and it suits him – he’s gregarious and outgoing, and it’s easy to imagine him bim-bam banging an imaginary drum as he marches along. Above the Lewises was Mr Rudiger. I knew his first name now – Pavel – but I’d never contemplated using it. In the nearly twenty years I’d lived here, I’d seen him exactly twice. And then, a few months ago, my flat had been broken into, and he’d put me up for the night. And we became friends.
    Mr Rudiger doesn’t go out. By that that I don’t mean he mostly stays at home. I mean, he doesn’t go out. At crisis point, those months ago, he’d left the house once, and afterthat he very occasionally came down to my flat for coffee or supper. Apart from that he never crosses his threshold. His daughter brings him groceries and any other essentials once a week, and as I see the post I know that the advent of internet shopping has meant he isn’t as reliant on her as he used to be. And now I know him better, I often exchange his books at the library, or supplement his daughter’s shopping runs with the odd thing from the market.
    Not that I’m boasting. I’m not a heaven-sent Lady Bountiful, scattering sweetness and light. If I were, it wouldn’t have taken me nearly twenty years to meet him, or to discover he had been a hugely influential architect in the 1960s and early 1970s, but had retired, no one knew