Love: A Messy Business by Abbie Walton

sufficient as she went by, but Kate realized that there was an opportunity here, if she played her cards right, to do a bit of snooping about Colin.  The trick was going to be thinking of a plausible reason to stop and then find a way of bringing Colin into the conversation.   Fortunately, Kate was (not by her own choosing) quite an experienced barmaid and so she was quite used to making small talk off the top of her head and, at the same time, convincingly charming her customers into believing that she actually gave a damn about what they were talking about.
    Fred, never missing a thing that went by his house in either direction, had spotted Kate arriving in the distance on her bike and had stopped his garden work momentarily to acknowledge her as she went by.  However, to his surprise, instead of cycling past as he expected, she gradually slowed down and came to a halt right by him.
    “Morning, Fred!  How are you this morning?”
    “I’m not too bad, actually.  To what do I owe the pleasure of you stopping for a chat?”
    “Well, I was a bit worried about you, to be honest Fred,” she lied.
    “Really? Why ever would that be?”
    “Well, I didn’t see you at the pub last night, Fred.  Very unusual, that.  You’re one of my best customers.”  She was lying again.  She quite liked Fred, but her best customers were those who drank four or five pints a night and left a healthy tip at the end of the evening.  But Fred was buying this hook, line and sinker.
    “I just wanted to check you were OK; that you hadn’t fell under a bus or something.”
    “No, nothing quite like that, although the reason is probably almost as painful.”
    “Oh? I’m sorry to hear that.”  Kate was in full fabrication mode now.
    “Lumbago,” said Fred simply, as if no other explanation was needed, nor was it.
    “Ah…”
    “It’s a bugger when it strikes.  Right out of the blue it is, and then it’s gone again.  I’m fine this morning.  Hopefully, I’ll be back out again tonight to prop up your bar again as usual.”
    “Very glad to hear it, Fred.”  It was time to move the conversation along to her original purpose.  She made a motion with her head to indicate Ashton House across the road.
    “How are you getting on with your new neighbour, then?  Keeping you awake at night with lots of all-night parties, is he?
    “Not a bit of it.  Quiet as a mouse, he is.  Hardly see him at all most days.”
    “Ha, I bet you find that a bit of a disappointment.  Nothing to gossip about then, is there?
    “Are you calling me a gossip, young lady?” he said with a twinkle in his eye.  “Just call me your unofficial Neighbourhood Watch Scheme – always looking out for what’s going on for the good of the community.  Any road, I don’t see him much at all, but there are people coming to the house almost every day, and more than once a day sometimes.”
    “Really? I wonder why?”
    “No idea, love.  The odd thing is though that almost all of them are women, nice-looking women as well, I might add.  Dressed up to the nines a lot of them.  Each of them stays for a few hours - but here’s the really strange bit.  They never seem to come out wearing the same clothes AND they always seem to come out with wet hair.  Beats me, it really does. “
    “Yes, that is odd, really odd.”  Kate secretly wondered if these women were all arriving to provide Colin with a form of personal service that she would be far too embarrassed to mention to Fred.  As a matter of fact, it wasn’t something she really wanted to think about.
    “Anything else funny going on at Ashton House, Fred?”
    “Hmm, not much.  But whatever he is doing in that house is causing a huge amount of rubbish, that I do know.   He put six bins out last week for collection – six!  I live on my own, as you know, and I can barely fill one bin every two weeks.  Still, it’s really none of my business, I suppose.  As long as what he is doing isn’t