‘Unfortunately, no… But he gave me some names of people to track down, talk to…’
‘Any joy with the Oscar conundrum?’
I shake my head. The Oscar Mystery remains a puzzle in our house that the sisters have all committed time and energy to solving.Oscar, 9th February. The pinned note on my phone meant something but there was no Oscar in my contacts or even in my Facebook friends. I followed Instagram people called Oscar but, after some random messages, it turned out that I knew none of them very well. Except one who wanted to change that.It’s all right, love. You still live at home and kiss your dog on the mouth.The agency confirmed that I’d not done any parties for an Oscar on that date either. So he was either a one-night stand or maybe he was someone else. We all had fun imagining who he might be: maybe he was a sculptor and I’d posed for him on that day (nude obviously), maybe he was a debt collector, maybe he’d done me wrong and I had a plot where I was going to avenge his wrongdoings. The sad fact was he probably wasn’t anyone that important at all but, still, the sisters dig, they rake through my browser histories and have made it a fun project. It makes me think that if the inclination was there, we could start our very own Charlie’s-Angels-style detective agency and take on the world.
‘Well, maybe there will be clues in your bedroom,’ Meg says as she takes a turn into a leafy suburban road in South East London, terraces of townhouses reaching into the sky, the street punctuated by 4x4 cars and impeccably kept gardens. Today, Meg and I have come over to my old neck of the woods, my manor in Herne Hill where I used to live a sketchy existence in my commune/shared house. There’s the hope that sifting through my room may bring something familiar to mind or indeed give us some key clues to the identity of the mysterious Oscar. As she reverse parks (badly and with much swearing), I’m not horrified at my street. It’s quite leafy and normal, I think I hear actual birds chirping and we’re parked next to an Audi, which is the hallmark of reliability.
‘Have you been here before?’ I ask.
‘No. I’m almost surprised…’ Meg replies, looking around, but then our gaze falls on the house we’re searching for. Oh. The one thing that gets my attention is that the house number has been written on a coaster and hammered into the front door with a single nail, but even without that you can tell the place is in some state of disrepair from the makeshift curtains, peeling paint and the old toilet in the front garden. We take a slow, hesitant walk towards it, pangs of teen disappointment that this is the house where I end up as a nearly thirty-year-old woman.
‘You!’ a voice suddenly pipes up from behind me.
Meg and I turn to see a man in a suit wheeling in a bin, an impeccably numbered bin, as I glance over to ours, which seems to be labelled with a spray can.
‘Hello?’ I reply tentatively.
I hope I haven’t slept with this dipstick. For one, no one does pinstriped suits with a patterned shirt. It’s like he deliberately wants to hurt my eyes.
‘How many times do I have to tell you lot to stop putting your bottles in my recycling bin? You don’t rinse them. Christ, you don’t even empty them sometimes.’
I will assume this man is our kindly neighbour and there may be a reason we gift him our recycling.
‘It wasn’t me.’
‘Of course it is. I can’t believe you have the gall to lie about it now!’ he continues ranting. I notice his kids and their noses pressed up against a living room window to take in the drama. I can’t give your dad a swift kick in the nads with you looking, eh?
‘I mean, it wasn’t me because I’m not living here at the moment.’
‘You’ve moved out?’ he blurts out hopefully.
‘She was ill,’ Meg pipes in, the man’s tone and demeanour obviously riling her too.
‘Oh…’ he says, not a hint of compassion in his voice. Methinks we didn’t quite get on, you were not the sort of neighbour who we borrow sugar from.
‘I thought I hadn’t seen your demon beast around for a while…’
‘Pussy?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘That’s her name.’
Meg now twists her lips around trying to keep in the laughter.
‘Well, she used to defecate in my kids’ sandpit. We caught her on camera.’
‘Then cover your sandpit?’ Meg suggests.
‘And who sits there and films a cat having a poo?’ I ask.
He eyeballs us both, knowing that he will lose this fight but needs the final word.
‘Well, tell your “friends” too that band practice and singalongs at three in the morning are not appreciated.’
He turns and drags his bin away. I hope they went super heavy on the bass.
‘Nice to see you made a positive impact in your community,’ Meg sniggers.
