Somewhere, far from the fast food joints and the spent nitrous oxide cartridges of the typical town, in the brochure-worthy parts of the English countryside, lie the 7 houses. Five terraced, and two detached.
I don’t remember the first time I passed them. Or the second, for that matter. But the time came when I eventually found myself by the 7 houses. Each one ever so slightly larger than the one before, in order from right to left. The rightmost in pristine condition, the leftmost detached - a downright sooty black.
There shouldn’t have been anything significant about them. Terraced housing in the countryside isn’t too common, but isn’t entirely unheard of either - take the entire village of Middlecliffe, South Yorkshire, for instance. The place where I learned the true meaning of ‘street meat.’ But I digress.
Each terraced house had a fenced garden of width roughly equal to that of the house, the length being at least thrice that of a typical back garden in England. As I walked by the second from left house, I couldn’t but notice that not only the house, but the whole garden had a… slimy feel. As though a slug had criss-crossed the whole garden just before a light spring rain. The snail house, I thought.
By the time I got to the last house on the right, I was close to moving on with my day, and forgetting about a mildly interesting street I came across at one point during my day, as one is wont to do. Then she waved at me. Not quite in the periphery in my vision, but I definitely had to turn my head to look. In the window of the closed back door of the small house, a pretty girl about my age. That is to say, in her early twenties and no more. And she waved.
Now, I don’t about you, but I wouldn’t normally assume a stranger waving from the window of their house is waving at me. And yet, there was no one but me in the whole field when I turned to look. Nothing but I, the 7 houses, and the girl in the window of the closed back door of the rightmost house. As though to reassure me, she smiled. That smile was the one deed to a thousand words. And she waved me over.
The back fence wasn’t so high that I couldn’t vault it. She was still smiling when I knocked on the door.
Though I couldn’t quite sense it when she opened the door, I knew something was off as soon as she spoke. “It’s great to see you,” she said. Still beaming. You see, there’s normally only a few situations when a nice looking girl will be so happy to see a total stranger. Most of the possibilities involve them wanting something from you.
“You look like I know you from somewhere, have we met?” The other possibility, which can sometimes come up, is that you’re no strangers at all. There are few situations more awkward than when someone remembers you (especially in great detail), but you have not the slightest recollection of them.
“Oh, I think we’ve met once or twice.” The way she said it implied we’d known each other much more than just the twice. As is so often the case for a single man, I found myself disarmed by her warm smile and playful manner.
“You’ll have to forgive me, my memory isn’t as great as it once was.” And still I couldn’t place her.
“Maybe a nice tea will refresh your memory. Would you like some?” A step back - she gestured at me to come in.
With only the slightest hesitation, I stepped into the rightmost house.