Finally we find out who’s been invading our rooms and leaving dog hairs, sweetie wrappers and moving my ketchup.
Word of the day: Heuristic – helping to discover by trial and error
So it was tense when me, Jinjing, Hamoudi and Neville sat down beneath the watchful eyes of the cat picture. Did I only imagine that those eyes followed us as we sat down? Yes, I did, but it would have happened if this was a horror movie. I tried to keep things light, but Neville looked shrivelled and wary, Jinjing was cool and sharp and Hamoudi was a big innocent bear, as always. I suspect I looked like I’d wandered in by accident, that’s kind of my thing.
Jinjing started by saying we all had to remain calm and honest and work out a resolution, fair enough. Then I shared my news about the perfume wafting around the flat when I got home.
‘Isn’t that just the landlady though?’ said Neville. ‘She always makes the place smell.’
‘What?’ we all said. Because of course we know the landlady, we each met her before we moved in, but she shouldn’t be in the house, not without us knowing, not without 24 hours notice. And here is Neville talking like it’s a common occurrence we should all be aware of.
‘What do you mean always?’ asked Jinjing.
‘She comes round quite often in the afternoons,’ said Neville. ‘I guess it’s when you’re all at work.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us?’ said Jinjing, she was getting shrill, which summed up how I felt.
‘Does she have a dog?’ I asked.
‘She had a dog when I had my interview,’ said Hamoudi.
‘Does she eat sweets?’ I asked.
‘Does it matter?’ said Jinjing.
‘Well, yes, because she if she eats sweets, she’s been in my room. And if she’s been in my room, then she’s the one who broke my laptop. In which case,’ my turn to get shrill now, ‘I want some bloody money for it.’
‘Why didn’t you tell us that she’s been coming in the house?’ repeated Jinjing to Neville, I think she wanted to continue blaming him for something.
‘I assumed you knew,’ he said.
After that there was some general annoyance and tetchiness. The only thing we could agree on was that one of us needed to tell the landlady to stop turning up when we were at work, but that none of us actually wanted to do it. Stalemate. We left it at that.
So, aliens, Illuminati and sleepwalking are out, and a small middle-aged lady with a bad perm and a yappy dog is in. My life just got 43% more dull.
inkbiotic 