CHAPTER 3
Emma
Sunlight batters my corneas and I groan as I peel one sore eyelid open. I’m still lying cocooned in my throw blanket on the couch, the morning sun streaming through my living room window. The TV is on in front of me: Netflix is judgementally asking the “Are you still watching?” question.
“No, Netflix. I clearly fell asleep somewhere through the second watch-through of Love Actually .”
I squint at my smart watch and groan again. It’s 9.45a.m. I’ve slept through most of the morning.
“Lucky, I have no work today,” I tell the empty room around me. In fact, I don’t have work for the next eleven days, with our firm shutting down over Christmas and gifting us enforced annual leave. Most of my colleagues rejoice in this time off work, but for me, it’s come at a bad time. I don’t even have the routine of going into the office every day and losing myself in work to distract me; instead, I have to sit alone with my emotions.
And watch sappy holiday movies on repeat.
“Coffee,” I say out loud. “No, run first. Then coffee,” I argue with myself.
My normal routine is to get up at 6.a.m., do a quick 5km run around the Tan (a path along the Yarra River filled with Melbourne runners) and then coffee. If I don’t do the run first, I haven’t earned my creamy, caramel latte.
Sitting up, I wince at the crick in my neck from the less-than-supportive couch cushion acting as a pillow last night. I never fall asleep on the couch like this, but last night, when the movie ended, I couldn’t find it in me to make my way to my lonely bed and opted instead to go back to the start of the movie and watch it all again.
With a shaky hand, I down a large glass of ice-cold water from the fridge, using it to wash down a couple of paracetamol tablets. Over the course of last night, both during the party and my own pity-party on the couch, I’d drunk more alcohol than normal, and my throbbing head is paying me back for my overindulgence. The thought of running in this state makes my stomach grumble in protest.
“No,” I lecture said belly. “If you give yourself a day off today, what happens tomorrow? And the day after? Pretty soon, it will be an entire week with no exercise.”
The idea has my inside singing with happiness, but years of training myself to ‘just do it’ as per Nike’s directive, forces me into my running shorts, top and shoes. Securing my hair into a high, messy ponytail, I tuck my phone into my running belt and pop my earbuds into my ears, opting for a reality TV recap podcast today; some mindless drivel to distract me from my aching head.
Now ready to go, I open my front door and stumble over something placed on my ‘welcome’ door mat.
“What in the world—?”
I hold on to the porch railing, the only thing keeping me from falling—tripping—to my certain death and peruse the gifts left splayed in front of me.
A box, a bottle and some sort of note.
Intrigued, all thoughts of running and coffee (or running to get coffee) falling from my mind, I bend down to examine the parcel. The small pink box has a transparent lid, and inside are four gingerbread cookies, beautifully decorated and professional-looking.
“Interesting,” I mutter, picking up the box and opening the lid, taking in a deep, appreciative breath. It smells like Christmas in a box.
Delicious.
Even more curious now, I cradle the cookies in one arm and pick up the bottle of wine. Barossa Valley Shiraz. A deep red wine that just happens to be my favourite.
“Even more interesting.”
I look around to see if anyone is watching. The gifter of this gift, perhaps? Finding no one lurking in the bushes, I read the note.
And then I read it again.
“You’ve got to be kidding me!”
Embarrassment floods through me and I rush back through my open front door, dropping the cookies and the wine on my kitchen counter, then re-reading the note again.
Dear Neighbour,
I know the holiday period can be a difficult time for some. Here’s a list of movies to help you regain your holiday cheer…
From the helpful elf next door.
I blink, reading through the list, my cheeks flaming with mortification. The hunky guy next door has left a list—a well-researched list—of Christmas and festive movies for me to watch! My eyes dart to the wall next to me, the wall I share with my neighbour, and I sink to the floor, my trembling legs now unwilling to support my sorry body.
“Oh my gosh, he’s heard me over the last week ?”
My mind plays in high definition an image of me sobbing on the couch, a tub of ice cream and a bottle of wine keeping me company as I cry along with Emma Thompson (my namesake and general hero) as she realises her husband is a cheating rat.
“You deserve better!” I’d yelled at the TV on one particularly rough night. I’d viewed the movie through tipsy eyes, still feeling the sting of just watching Lilly pick Oliver up from work, the two floating away in a loved-up bubble. That night I’d been just a little bit extra raw during the re-watch.
“Oh no, he could hear me.”
I put my head in my hands and take in a deep breath and then another. My poor neighbour had clearly been suffering along with me, hearing every watch and re-watch of my favourite movie, and last night he’d…had enough?
“Is that what this list is all about?”
I glance at it again, a warmth filling my belly to keep my embarrassment company. He’d put together quite a collection of suggestions, all great holiday season movies (and some interesting-looking girl-revenge movies), and it’s obvious he’d be happy to listen to anyone of them through the wall. Or maybe he is so desperate not to hear Love Actually again, he’d be willing to listen to just about anything else.
“Well. That’s it. I’m going to have to move.”
I lie my overly dramatic self on the kitchen floor and with my phone balanced above my face, I log onto Real Estate dot com and start scrolling through the listings. I need to move. Today, if possible.
“How am I ever going to face him again?” I wonder out loud, putting down my futile search, knowing that realistically I’m not moving anywhere anytime soon. And that I’ll just have to get over myself and deal with this situation. “Although, it’s not like I’d be facing him again . I’ve never faced him to begin with.”
Mustering up the last of my rapidly depleting energy, I drag myself to my front window and peek outside. The neighbour’s car isn’t in the driveway, which means he’s out for at least this morning. This fits. His car is never there when I leave in the morning and is, more often than not, also absent when I get home.
“A man of mystery, that one.”
With another glance at the wall, the scene of the crime as I now view it, I feel a sense of brief relief knowing he’s not over there, listening to my crazy ramblings.
“I’ll have to stop talking to myself,” I whisper to myself. “If he can hear the movie, he can hear…me.”
With this oh-so-comforting thought bouncing through my brain, I grab a cookie from the box in the kitchen and demolish it in two bites.
“Oh my gosh, delicious!” I moan, clamping a hand to my mouth to quiet myself. It’s been a minute since my vow of silence and I’ve already broken it.
“There’s only one way to fix this, and it’s not me taping my mouth shut.”
With a firm nod, I shove another decadent cookie in my mouth—these are like heaven in a biscuit—and head to my hallway cupboard, where I file away miscellaneous bits and pieces for occasions such as this. Standing on my tiptoes, I reach up high and pull down a box where I keep all the free stuff I get when I travel for work. Inside, I rummage around until I find just what I’m looking for.
“This solves all our problems,” I tell the small black box in my hand. “If he thinks he can bribe me with cookies—really amazing cookies—and my favourite wine to stop watching Love Actually while I’m in an emotionally fragile state, then he can think again. A list of holiday movies isn’t the answer.”
With a longing look at my cookie box—only two left and I need to make them last—I peek out through my front door to check the coast is clear. As a last-minute gesture of goodwill, I grab a bottle from my wine collection and dash out a quick note to go with them both. Jogging to my elf neighbour’s front door—I still don’t know his name!—I leave my gift to him on his welcome mat and then set off down the driveway.
Feeling better than I did earlier, I run away from my townhouse, leaving the solution to my neighbourly problem behind me.