Cloudy with a Chance of Love: The unmissable laugh-out-loud read. Fiona Collins

as he was now facing me. Well, he would be, wouldn’t he? He was hardly going to come down the stairs backwards on his hands and knees – although it wasn’t a disagreeable image… Oh dear. I was becoming a bit of a nuisance in my own brain. I appeared to be a slightly pervy, out of control divorcee and I hadn’t even received my absolute yet…

      ‘Well, nice to meet you, Daryl,’ he’d said, on the doorstep, and shook my hand.

      ‘You too, Will.’ His handshake was warm and firm. He really was very good looking. Was I blushing slightly? God, I hoped not. I watched him as he disappeared into his front door, giving a cheery wave to the back of his head in case he turned round, like the nutter that I was.

      So. It was an auspicious start. Friendly neighbour helps new neighbour move in while new neighbour pervs at friendly neighbour’s bum. Fabulous. Then he’d seen me illegally disposing of Freya’s stuffed, cuddly whale. I’d moved it with me, just in case, but she’d told me by text ‘just to get rid of the enormous, embarrassing thing’ and I couldn’t face going to the tip with all those jolly people that go there for fun, at the weekends. So, last Sunday morning, I sought opportunity in the form of a skip that had appeared over the road for someone’s building work and went and chucked it in there, before running back home, feeling a mixture of pleased-with-myself and terrified. Unfortunately Will had spotted me darting back across the road looking left and right like a fugitive and had waved at me jauntily from his kitchen window. He’d seen everything, hadn’t he? I knew he had because last Wednesday a poster temporarily appeared in the window of his front porch saying ‘Save the Whale.’

      ‘Very funny,’ I’d told him, on the Thursday, when I’d popped over to return the polka dot cake tin.

      ‘Couldn’t resist it,’ he said. ‘I had that old poster in my summerhouse.’

      ‘Very good,’ I’d replied drily, ‘as was the lemon drizzle.’ (Which was so not dry.)

      I raised my eyebrows at him. He raised his back.

      He’d spotted me eating it. Last Tuesday night, really late. In fact it was about two a.m., as I’d been up till then attempting to unload boxes, in between dancing to songs on my new digital radio. I’d been happily stuffing my face with lemon drizzle in front of the telly in a very unladylike fashion, whilst watching old repeats of Sex and the City, when he’d clocked me. Both our houses have a ‘side return’ and my sitting room is in mine; I’d taken down the tragic curtains from the window in there and hadn’t yet made plans to replace them. God knows what he was doing up at that time, but he’d seen me at it. I’d caught a very brief glimpse of his face at his window before he quickly pulled the blind down.

      Oh dear. The secret middle-of-the-night cake eater foiled again.

      ‘I’m really sorry about that,’ confessed Will. ‘I’m really not a stalker or anything. I was awake and just having a potter around. It was only a split second.’ A split second, but he’d seen enough; me being an absolute pig. I needed to invest in a blind for that window, pronto.

      So he was a bit of a joker, an insomniac, a very nice, helpful guy and extremely good looking. This is what I knew about Will. And he knew that I was a glutton, a secret bottom-watcher and someone who dumps things in other people’s skips.

      And now he’d seen me face down, drunk on our drive.

      Oh dear bloody god.

      I felt absolutely terrible but I had to go into work. There’s never anyone to cover for me. Well, there’s Elaine, on reception, but her voice is a bit whiny and she always takes a huge breath at the end of every line, which I think puts listeners off. I work in local radio. I’m a weather presenter. Seven times a day I read the weather at Court FM, in the centre of Wimbledon, and I have done for eighteen years. I don’t mean to show off, but I am really good at it. I’ve got a nice voice (it’s cheery, not too soft, not at all abrasive), I know my stuff and I can ad lib a bit, too. This means if a presenter wants to chat to me a bit after my weather bulletin, I can hold my own. I can sometimes be quite funny. Last week, when I was in the studio with Rob Wright, morning presenter (specialist subjects: local town planning and tennis – he’s ever so good when Wimbledon is on… he can talk about retractable roofs and pitch quality for hours), there was a lovely guy in there with a guide dog, waiting to be interviewed about current funding and footpaths. I finished my report with ‘… So expect light rain, spells of sunshine and the odd thundery shower and there’s a dog currently licking my knee, which is lovely.’ The listeners love that sort of thing. They text in and say so.

      It’s a big, buzzy office buzzing with lots of dynamic (with a couple of exceptions), happy people. Who wouldn’t want to work in radio? It’s great! I met Sam there: she’s a broadcast assistant and researcher. She finds people for interviews, writes the questions for the presenters, explores all the subjects that need exploring and generally keeps the content of all our daytime programming ticking. The station broadcasts from Wimbledon (fairly near the All England Club, actually) to all surrounding areas: Richmond, Wandsworth, Southfields, Putney – apparently you can pick us up in Kensington, if the wind’s in the right direction. I love my job, and to be honest, apart from my friends (although they both work here anyway), it has saved me from falling apart since my marriage break-up. I have to sound perky so I’ve had to fake perky. What’s the expression: fake it, till you make it? That’s me. I faked it for a long time, but now I’ve made it and am pretty damn perky for real. I’m quite proud of myself, really. I made it through the dark days of my husband leaving me for my best friend and out the other side, into sunnier times.

      My other friend, who also works here, is Peony. She’s a broadcast technician – responsible for all unfathomable techie things at Court FM – and she was in reception when I walked in, chatting to Elaine. I always just feel better when I go into work and this morning was no exception. My hangover lifted just stepping foot in that office. Peony said ‘All right, my love?’ and gave me a wink (Sam had obviously filled her in on last night’s antics). Elaine, clad in lace and ruffles as always, behind the front desk, beamed at me and handed me today’s staff newsletter. Rob Wright, striding across the news area ruffling some papers looked friendly and full of the joys. And even Sam, who should have been as hungover as I was, was smiling and looking great. In fact, she was laughing. I went over to her desk and plomped my big, hungover bottom on a spare chair.

      ‘Oh my god, Daryl!’ giggled Sam, spinning on her spinny seat. ‘What a day! What a night! Did you go straight to bed after I left?’

      ‘No,’ I replied, with a slow smile. ‘I thought I’d take some rubbish out to the bin and then lie down on my drive for a bit of a kip and be discovered by my next door neighbour.’

      ‘What!’

      ‘Yep.’

      ‘Will, your hunky next door neighbour?’ When Sam had come over, on my moving day (after her emergency date turned into a false alarm), I’d told her all about Will, and how good looking he was. She’d spent twenty minutes at my kitchen window, snacking on chopped-up green pepper and trying to catch a glimpse of him, but he didn’t make an appearance. She was ever so disappointed. ‘Oh Daryl, you didn’t!’

      ‘I certainly did. Oh, Sam, the shame of it!’

      ‘What on earth did he say?’

      ‘Not a lot. He just helped me into the house. I didn’t see him this morning but I must pop round and thank him. Good god, Sam, we were absolutely hammered!’

      ‘We were,’ she nodded, then grinned. ‘Good day though.’

      ‘Very good day.’

      ‘I’ve told Peony all about it.’

      I looked into Studio One and waved at Peony, who was now behind the big console with all the knobs on doing all that technical stuff I don’t understand. Peony is younger than us. She’s only thirty-two. She’s engaged to Max, who’s also a broadcast technician; she’s been in love with him ever since he first walked into Court FM with his goatee and his man bag,