3

  She’d observed him – for some considerable time – from the window of her shop. He was impossible to miss, in all honesty, being morbidly obese and given to accentuating that fact with the wearing of ridiculously mismatched clothing.

  Some of it had looked rather feminine, as a matter of fact.

  Anthea had even resented one or two of his outfits, certain in the knowledge that she herself would never have had the courage to even dream of attempting to carry them off.

  Nor the legs.

  How could a bloke like that still have a better figure than her?

  And bigger boobs too.

  Life was just simply not fair.

  There were no clues as to where he might have come from. In fact, he’d been in that office, across the road and down from her, for years without her ever noticing either it or him.

  Until that Monday morning in May, fourteen years ago.

  It was like he’d just been parachuted into her eyeline that day.

  Well, obviously he couldn’t ever have been ‘parachuted’ in.

  It would’ve been hard enough to have found an aircraft that could take him in the first place, never mind a strong enough canopy to break his fall once it had conked out completely, called a ‘Mayday!’ and crashed.

  Nevertheless, he’d suddenly appeared from somewhere.

  She’d kept an eye on him daily with a reluctant, yet growing, fascination. He was certainly punctual. Every morning, at four minutes to nine he would appear, waddling his way along, in the general direction of ‘Somehow’. There was no denying the huge delight and utter relief Anthea had felt, upon discovering that there was finally somebody else on that High Street who was definitely fatter than she was.

  A huge weight had been instantly lifted from her and transferred to an unwitting Humphrey’s shoulders.

  Still, he looked as though he could handle it.

  His build suggested he was job-sharing with Atlas.

  He seemed to possess the capacity to handle almost anything, judging by her observations of him in that street. Most mornings he’d be accosted by passers-by or even by random car drivers. And they never seemed to look very happy about it either.

  It had actually proved rather unsettling for her to have to watch, like some kind of modern-day bear-baiting.

  What was motivating these strangers to feel such a revulsion towards this poor man that they felt entitled to barrack him in the street? And what on earth could possibly have been motivating him, as he simply carried on his way and gave them all a cheery gesture?

  At a rough estimate, he could have sat on at least half a dozen of his aggressors at one time and left no trace of their ever having existed. But instead, he seemed almost happy just to have made their acquaintance.

  And what about her?

  She ought to have been out there to defend him herself if she was that worried about him.

  So, why wasn’t she?

  She’d had several opportunities where – rather than simply observing this, increasingly disgusting, spectacle – she could’ve done something to help. Except that such a thing would have meant actually talking to people, in general… and, quite possibly, to him specifically.

  And except that, for once in her life, she was part of a crowd.

  That crowd.

  Any crowd.

  It wasn’t the sort of crowd she would’ve chosen in an ideal world but then her world was far from being ideal. She hated herself of course but that, in itself, was rather comforting.

  Business as usual.

  So to speak.

  They might never have actually met, if Humphrey hadn’t done something, quite extraordinary, towards the end of that May.

  Anthea was there, in her usual place, trying desperately to remember what a customer might actually look like, yet not really looking forward to ever receiving one again. She glanced down at her watch, in order to plan a respectable break between her elevenses and lunch. And then, upon raising her head, she was confronted by the – somewhat unsettling – sight of that mysterious, multi-chinned man-mountain galloping – purposefully – across the street, apparently in her direction.

  Before she had a chance to dive behind the counter and hide herself from view he was there.

  Upon her.

  The fact that the door was locked bought her some precious thinking time. She never bothered putting the ‘Open’ sign up at all until a customer actually tried to get in.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  That way, she was in control.

  The idea of her opening her doors in a futile act of welcome, only for no bugger to ever come in there would have been far too much rejection for her to have to handle. If nobody ever wanted to come in there again that was fine. Because it was no longer their decision.

  Little things like that made all the difference to Anthea.

  But this man obviously did want to come in.

  He tapped – urgently – on the door and – for a moment – they made eye contact.

  Anthea didn’t like eye contact. It was far too intimate. The eyes were supposed to be the windows of the soul or some such rubbish and she didn’t want anybody seeing too much of hers. Neither did she appreciate getting a rather unwelcome and unexpected – although not altogether unpleasant – look at this man’s soul, via a pair of – really rather beautiful – varicose-vein-blue coloured peepers.

  She tried to focus on the size of him instead, which was easier said than done as he was blocking most of the light and her rods and cones hadn’t yet properly sorted themselves out.

  They seemed a bit distracted actually, apparently devoting their entire attentions to those eyes.

  She felt herself moving toward the door and reaching for the lock.

  Time seemed to slow down.

  Perhaps it was having difficulty getting around him?

  He definitely had an interesting face, if ‘interesting’ implied the presence of no noteworthy features whatsoever.

  Apart from those eyes.

  It wasn’t that he was ugly, it was more that his features just really didn’t seem to matter.

  It was all very, very strange.

  She checked his hand for a wedding ring but saw no evidence of one. Although, only someone of immense wealth could ever have afforded enough precious metal to circumnavigate a ring-finger of that size. And then suddenly he was beside her, a man that big not really having too many other options.

  This was all new as far as Anthea was concerned. As a general rule she repelled other human beings, an action usually given a fair old kick-start by her tendency to push them away – with great force – in the first place.

  She felt distinctly faint in his company too, although that might’ve been the effect of such an enormous physical presence carrying off all of the available oxygen in the room.

  He introduced himself, although she wasn’t really listening to what he said to her. She wanted desperately to shake the hand he’d offered her though but – for some strange reason – her body wouldn’t respond properly to her executive instructions. She was desperate to know why he was there but just as desperate not to let him know that she was desperate.

  ‘Desperate’.

  God, in any of its definitions that word might – just as well – have had her ugly mug beside it by way of an emphatic illustration.

  She decided to be rude to him, in order to throw him completely off the scent.

  And because, well, it was just really much more comfortable for her.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Well, that was an epic failure right there. The intonation was fine – grumpy, tinged with that extra special air of the homicidal – but the sentiments… what the hell had happened there?

  ‘Can I help you?’

  Really?!

  She couldn’t even recall ever using those words before.

  What a stupid time for them to have lost their virginity. And, on that subject, had she wet herself in some way?

  Just what in the world was going on?!

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t quite catch your name.’

  Ah! Now this was her kind of opponent: a man apologising for something that was, in no way, his fault.

  Yes.

  She could definitely work with him.

  ‘Anthea. Mumble.’

  She wouldn’t normally have even mentioned that hellishly embarrassing surname but there was an ulterior motive behind it.

  She hoped, very much, that he would laugh.

  Like everybody else always did.

  Then she’d know what kind of a man he was.

  An evil henchman of Satan’s, quite obviously

  Just like all the others.

  The only problem was, he hadn’t laughed. Neither had he tried to tell her it was a ‘lovely name’, which was a course of action usually adopted by people, once they’d finished laughing. He had simply continued looking at her and chatting to her.

  And smiling at her.

  It seemed he’d decided to do something unpredictable that morning: to change things around – ever so slightly – for the benefit of his tormentors. He’d started seeing the same old people – every day – on his regular route and the same old comments – every day – were starting to get awfully boring for all concerned. He’d intended to work the other side of the street for a change and then cross back over further down but had changed his mind on the spur of the moment.

  He’d planned on hiding completely for a few minutes, just to see if anyone would miss him. And Anthea’s shop, he’d assured her cheerfully, was the perfect hiding place under those circumstances.

  After all, nobody would ever have expected to find anyone at all in there…

  … which was harsh but perfectly true. The bloke was brave, she had to give him that.

  He was there – alone – in a room with her for one thing, which almost transcended bravery altogether.

  What she wasn’t aware of at the time – and what she wouldn’t have believed anyway – but what he told her much later on, was that he’d been desperate for an excuse to come over there for weeks.

  Her silhouette had intrigued him.

  The whole place had bemused him, for he’d never seen a single customer in there.

  The mystery of it all had been slowly driving him mad.  Or so he’d said.

  He’d been thinking things over and had reached the – unbelievably arrogant! – conclusion, as far as she could make out, that there was something he could do for her, in some sort of professional capacity.

  Why should such an obvious introvert have chosen such a strange way to make a living, he’d enquired of her. That was a very good question too and the truth was, she had no idea.

  Oh, the shop itself had been in the family for years, so that part was easy to explain. It sold nothing especially useful, but people used to spend money in there anyway.

  Anthea used to help out there sometimes, although very much in a behind-the-scenes sort of capacity: making the tea; cataloguing the trinkets; hiding from the world, that sort of jazz. Then her auntie had died – rather inconsiderately, it had to be said – and somebody – somewhere – had thought it a good idea for her to take over.

  Oh dear.

  The only consolation was that – at an age when most other women were working on their financial independence – Anthea still lived at home with her parents. So the fact that her shop never seemed to have any customers was nowhere near as traumatic as it could have been.

  The bloke with the blue eyes actually seemed to be listening to her.

  Nobody ever listened to Anthea.

  Probably because she never seemed to have anything interesting to say.

  All the same, she really rather wished he wasn’t there.

  ‘Do you know something? Right now, I would really like to take you.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?!’

  ‘Under my wing. Sorry, take you under my wing. Sorry, my breakfast was repeating on me a bit there.’

  Charming.

  Anthea had visited three different branches of ‘offended’ within the space of four seconds… with a rather mysterious detour through ‘hopeful and excited’ on the way.

  The cheek of the man was really quite breathtaking.

  Why did he want to help her? She hadn’t asked for his assistance and she didn’t need his help. His very presence in that building was unsettling her immeasurably.

  She wanted him out.

  ‘Listen, I don’t need anyone, all right? I can cope quite nicely on my own. And you can mind your own, if you don’t mind.’

  He hadn’t taken any of the hints that had accompanied that particular statement. Not the open door; not the two-fingered salute; not the four letters of abuse she’d addressed and mailed directly to him.

  Instead, he’d smiled at her even more broadly.

  Why, he’d enquired of her, was she even trying to run any kind of establishment that required regular contact with free-thinking human beings?

  Her shop sold things she must have known nobody in their right mind would ever want.

  What was the point of it all?