CHAPTER 2
Noah
Not again.
If I have to hear Mariah Carey singing about wanting ‘yooouuu’ for Christmas again, I’m going to scream. It’s been the same song, the same movie every night for the last week and just like I had every night for the last week, I’d been hoping against hope that my neighbour would snap out of whatever mood is making her watch this particular movie on repeat and pick something—anything—else to watch tonight.
But apparently, I’m not getting my Christmas wish or miracle or whatever I’d been hoping for and as I hear the dulcet tones of Bill Nighy’s “ Christ-mas is all around me” through my shared living room wall, I throw a pillow at it in disgust. When I’d bought this place, the first home I’d ever called my own, I’d been wary about sharing a wall with a complete stranger, but the real estate agent had assured me it would be fine. That my neighbour was a hardworking, quiet woman who barely made a squeak. And for the first few weeks after I’d move in, it had seemed she was right. The woman I lived next door to, the tall blonde in power suits and sky-high heels, had kept to herself and barely made a peep. It was wonderful.
That changed around the first of December. As the Christmas decorations went up all over the city, so too did the volume of the Christmas movies next door. Or a Christmas movie to be exact. Just the one.
Love Actually.
Now, I hail from London and like everyone from the UK, I’d grown up aware of this popular ‘made in Britain’ Christmas movie. My mum even watched it now and then during the twenty years I lived at home with my family. Having glanced at it in passing, it had seemed like a harmless little holiday film. But that was then, and this is now. Thanks to the lady next door, I now know every word, every syllable of the script. I know the whole thing, from the first note of the first song right through to the end, which is more often than not accompanied by the muffled cries from the woman next door.
At first, when I’d heard this, I had felt bad for her. Clearly, she’s gone through some sort of breakup, and I cut her some slack, given that Christmas is a rough time to nurse a broken heart, but after the third or fourth watch/listen along I’d had to endure, I’d wondered at her sanity. If she must have a breakdown of sorts, why can’t she at least choose a different movie every night to accompany it?
“I can’t do this.”
With another disgusted look at the wall of my living room and the woman I know is on the other side of it, I put my noise cancelling headphones on and lie back on my couch, closing my eyes and letting out a deep breath of frustration. I have to be up early for work in the morning and the perpetual Love Actually watching has me wound so tight, I need to take a moment to relax before heading to bed.
Christmas is my busiest time of the year. I work as a chef (a baker to be exact) at a popular cafe in the heart of the Melbourne CBD and as such, I’m up before dawn five days a week. I love my work, having studied under some of the city’s best pastry chefs and even though it took some getting used to—the whole working while everyone else is sleeping—it means I get the afternoons off. While most everyone else is stuck in an office, I’m done by lunchtime and can indulge in afternoons of surfing, bike rides and hiking. Give me anything outdoors and I’m in heaven.
“ All I want for Christmas is you. And you. And you .”
Dear Lord, I can hear the movie through the wall and through my headphones . Has she put the volume up to maximum or something? Is it not enough that she’s watching it again, but she also has to watch it on full blast?
Throwing my headphones onto the floor next to me—noise cancelling my butt—I sit up and rake my hands through my hair in frustration. I have to be up for work in five short hours and I’m too stirred up to fall asleep.
“At least I know the movie is almost over,” I mutter as I fill a tall glass with milk in the hopes this will soothe me enough to go to sleep. “She’s at the Christmas concert, which means it’s almost finished.”
Annoyed that I know this movie to this level of detail, I pace my kitchen, sipping on my milk and listening to the last scenes of the movie play out. There’s the chase through the airport (that one is pretty sweet), the scene with Colin Firth and his Portuguese love interest, then Hugh Grant and his secretary until finally, the first notes of “God Only Knows…” and I know my torture is almost at an end.
“There it is.”
The other side of the wall has gone quiet. I hold my breath, waiting for the sad sobs to penetrate my space and am relieved when there’s nothing. Maybe she’s on the mend. Maybe this will be the last time I have to hear about ‘love actually being all around’.
“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport…”
What. Is. This?
She’s not watching it again, is she?
I stop pacing and listen closely, sure my mind is playing tricks on me. Am I imagining Hugh Grant’s opening monologue about the joy of being at an airport?
“…General opinion is starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don’t see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere…”
Oh my gosh. She is starting it again. That’s why there’s no crying from her side of the wall; she’s self-soothing by watching this terrible—truly terrible—movie again!
“I can’t do this.”
Grunting, I slam out of my kitchen, shut myself in the bathroom, the room farthest away from the wall, and sit on the closed lid of the toilet to strategise.
“I can’t live like this,” I groan to my reflection. “I moved in here—by myself, with no roommates—to avoid this sort of situation. Having to live with other people being messy and noisy and darn right weird; it’s not for me. I’m all about the simple life.”
My bloodshot, tired eyes in the mirror agree with me. I can’t keep listening to this same movie, night after night. It’s making me cranky and loopy. How has she—crazy, neighbour lady—not gone batty after watching it so many nights in a row?
“I need to do something.”
Standing up, I tap on the Google search bar on my phone and start typing in desperation.
How to silence a noisy neighbour?
The responses are creepy and somewhat frightening. Moving on.
How to help the heartbroken?
Ah, too much work.
Other holiday movies for sad women?
Now this may be useful.
I stare at the screen in front of me, a list of movies to cheer up the heartbroken during the festive season. At the top of course is Love, Actually, but underneath is a plethora of movies. Enough to fill the next week, at least. Why isn’t she watching any of these? Does she not know they exist?
I feel a sense of optimism. Maybe if she’s aware that Love Actually is not the only movie to get her through her holiday heartbreak slump, she may give something else a chance? A few different something elses, and then I won’t have to listen to this movie on repeat night after night.
“This may work.”
My reflection nods back at me, and with a sense of renewed purpose, I take out a notepad and jot down a list of movies for my neighbour and wall-sharer to indulge in over the holiday period. I start with The Holiday —a dreadful-looking movie with Cameron Diaz and Jude Law. It’s got Christmas thrown up all over the cover. She’s going to love it.
After that, I add Last Christmas and Bridget Jones’ Diary (not sure if it’s a real Christmas movie, but it’s got a festive vibe). According to my Google-found blog, When Harry Met Sally is the perfect holiday movie, so I add that to the list, along with Serendipity and Four Holidays . In a flash of inspiration, I Google ‘female revenge movies’ and add a few of those, in case she’s in the mood to get over the ex-boyfriend, rather than wallow, and by the end I have a healthy list to help my neighbour navigate at least the next week.
With another flash of inspiration, I fill a box with some of my freshly baked Christmas cookies and grab a bottle of wine from my wine wrack. I tear a piece of tape from the tape dispenser and stick the list to the bottle of wine. My thinking is that the treats will help soften whatever offence she may take to my movie suggestions—we have to live next to each other, after all—and that she may be more open to giving one of them a try.
Please God, please let her give one of these movies a try.
Tip-toeing out of my front door, I jog to hers and place my offerings in front of her door, and then with a small sense of satisfaction, I return to my home, snuggling into my bed with the sounds of Love Actually floating into my subconscious as I wish for sleep.
Only a few hours until a new day. And hopefully, dear neighbour, a new movie as well.