My wife is going away for a few days, and I will be completely alone in the house for the first time in a very long while. The last time it happened, it was a different house.
I’m happy with this, even though I know I probably won’t be able to choose between the many profitable ways I might spend this time. I’ll end up slumped on the sofa in front of the TV, or asleep in the bath with a paperback floating by my feet. That’s OK – no one has to know.
My wife departs at 5.30am on Sunday, but my time alone does not really begin until the cat drives me from bed at 8 by repeatedly pressing its paw against my eyelids.
Downstairs I notice clues suggesting less than total isolation: a pair of large shoes in the hall; a rucksack on the kitchen table. It is evident the oldest one crept in shortly before my wife crept out, and spent the night. I pull on my coat and go to the shops, because now I will need more milk than I have.
The oldest one does not appear before I have been forced to feed the cat for a third time.
“Where were you last night?” I say.
“Just round here,” he says, his voice hoarse. “Out with Eddy and Sam.”
“How are they?” I say.
‘They’re good,” he says. “I think I invited them to lunch.”
“Did you?” I say.
“Yeah, I did,” he says.
“OK, that should be fine,” I say, looking into the fridge. “I might have to send you to the shops to get, like, potatoes. And beer.”
“I don’t want to think about beer right now,” he says, head in hands. “But yeah, I’ll go.”
The front door opens. The middle one walks in and throws his keys on the table.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” he says. “Is there food?”
At 2.30pm my wife sends me a picture of a tidy French hotel room. I send her a picture of the oldest one, the middle one and Eddy and Sam eating lunch at our kitchen table.
At 6pm everyone leaves, and I am alone for the first time. By 10pm I’m fast asleep.
The cat wakes me at 7am by standing on my chest and head-butting me. I have also received a text saying a package will be delivered between 10.46am and 11.46am. As it happens, I’m expecting a package.
After making coffee and feeding the cat and walking the dog and feeding the cat again, I spend the hours between 10.15am and 12.15am trying to work in the kitchen while waiting for the doorbell to ring. My laptop is fast running out of charge, but the charger is in my office across the garden. I don’t dare risk running out to get it.
At 11am my laptop is at 15% and I have no package. At 11.30am my laptop is on 8% and I still have no package. My wife sends me a picture of a French horse.
At 11.48 I run out to my office, plug my laptop in, then run back and check the doorstep: nothing. I think: I hate living alone. As I sit back down, the cat rakes the leg of my trousers, asking to be fed for a third time.
At 11.59am I check the tracking link in the text, only to be informed that my package was delivered to a guy named Dave at 10.47am. There is even a picture of Dave accepting the package. His head is cut off, but he’s wearing a pink jumper with a sequined purple snowflake on the front, and slippers that appear to have cat faces for toes. I do not recognise Dave’s Merry Christmas doormat, threadbare hall carpet or bright yellow front door.
I cannot claim to know everything about the secret indoor lives of my neighbours, but I feel I would remember Dave.
By 12.15pm I am convinced I have been the victim of an elaborate scam, but I don’t yet understand how I’m worse off, except for Dave having my stuff, if Dave is even real. At 12:20pm the doorbell rings and I run to open it, to a delivery driver holding a package.
“Oh, phew!” I say. But the package he hands me is a markedly different shape to Dave’s one.
“It’s for next door,” the driver says.
“What?” I say.
“They’re not in,” he says. “But if you take it, I can leave them a note.”
I look down at the package. It is indeed addressed to next door.
“This is so weird,” I say.
The driver gives me a look that says: believe me, I know weird, and this ain’t it.
