There was a recent thread on the Literotica Forums about the top 20 words that British people know and American's don't (and visa versa), so as a challenge, I've included all of them here. You may want to see if you can guess what they are.
Edited on 18th March 2022 to remove a inconsistency regarding Rebecca's accomodation and other minor corrections.
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"This is the place," Rebecca Brown said to her former colleague as they drove past. "I'll just find somewhere to park."
That proved difficult. There were no spaces by the side of the road, so they had to pull up in the carpark of a little cluster of shops: a florist, a fish-and-chip shop, and a chiropodist. Rebecca made careful mental note of the 'friendly local amenities' for future reference. She might even get plaice and chips on the way home so she could be able to describe it to interested parties as 'a lot better than it looks on the outside' without having to lie directly.
It was another rainy Nottingham day in April. Her first step getting out of the car landed her straight in a kerbside puddle. She had to retrieve an umbrella from the boot before going over to Phillip's side to shield him while he got out. Client and customer trumped lady and gentleman these days, even if he was only playing at being a customer. An estate agent should have learnt by now to always keep at least one umbrella actually inside the car and she theoretically had at least three at any one time to ensure clients stayed dry, but she found it almost impossible to stop people wandering off with them. It seemed like she'd been getting increasingly ditzy recently. She'd ended up locking herself out of the house last-week and had to wait an hour for her mother to come back from the pub. She'd moved back in a couple of months ago, at the age of twenty-seven, when her latest relationship had gone south. It was just a temporary thing, but it was causing her any number of frustrations. She was planning on addressing at least one of those frustrations today.
They had to huddle together to avoid getting wet. This brought her close to Phillip. Despite what the movies may have had her believe, she found very little that was romantic about sharing a brolly. You were either dry and worrying if your partner was getting wet, or else you were getting wet and wondering if you could move it slightly without appearing selfish. Still, he'd come, so she was happy enough.
Phillip Musgrove had been her partner when she'd first joined. He'd shown her the ropes of selling houses. He was a master of getting people to fall in love with a property they'd otherwise ignore. It was, he said, not fundamentally about how you described it. People weren't fools and two decades of constant property shows on TV had made them wise to all the little linguistic tricks; saying 'compact' when you meant 'tiny', describing a garden as 'easily maintained' because it was all concrete. The skill was making friends with them, finding out what the clients really wanted out of a property which was always connected with what they wanted out of life and which rarely what they said they wanted. The you had to work out the areas where they were willing to compromise. This could take weeks and months, enough time for the wife or girlfriend to start to fall just that little bit in love with him, as Rebecca had noticed on more than one occasion.
He'd always been more than happy to take advantage of this to sell a house, but, as far as Rebecca know, he'd never taken 'advantage' advantage. At the time he'd been happily married. She'd met his wife on a number of occasions, both at company social events, but also just while they had been out and about between clients, dropping off keys or credit cards. They'd even bumped into each other at the tombola at the annual Nottingham Faire and she'd seen them laughing like teenagers on the dodgems later. It must be nice to be able to feel that young when you're that old, Rebecca had thought. Increasingly she was feeling old when she was still young, especially since moving back in with her mum. Of course, that had been when his wife could still get out of the house. Her illness had been sudden and she'd gone from diagnosis to death in the space of six months. Phillip had worked for year after that, but his heart wasn't in it anymore and, after revaluating his finances, he'd decided to enter an early semi-retirement. Rebecca had been wondering what he'd been doing with his life in the two years since. She'd asked round the office a few times, but apart from him sitting on some sort of historical building commission or quango or something, she hadn't been able to find out much. People tended to have a bad impression of estate agents, especially after they'd been gazumped a few times, but Phillip had always seemed like a really nice guy as well as sexy as hell.
"Nice area," Phillip remarked. It was indeed, as their marketing blurb said of practically every property on their books, well situated. Far away from the students to the east, the yobs to the north but not quite into the boring blue-rinse areas to the west.
She opened the gate to a semi-detached four story Victorian property which appeared a lot thinner than it was tall. "Not the front," she said. "Round the back."
She guided them towards a side gate and fumbled for a moment trying to hold both the key and the umbrella and not get soaked. Phillip took the umbrella from her, and she had more success in getting the door open. Immediately through it was a set of steep steps that went down a whole storey. They were slick with the rain, so they took their time going down. The garden was long and thin and, unlike the front of the property, looked poorly maintained, if not yet quite overgrown. The back of the house jutted out about twenty meters or so, but only one floor high. There was a white plastic garden table and chairs that were quickly collecting water. Rebecca got the side door to this back apartment open and they happily got out of the downpour.
"Owner?" Phillip asked.
