Chapter 1
Moonlight beaming through the open window informed Lola Hunt (33) that she was in her bed on a fine night, but what had interrupted her sleep?
A gunshot nearby sounded.
Lola sighed, thinking it would be some poor sod, with or without pals, attempting to steal one of retired farmer Fred Brown's goats tethered on his lawns in suburbia to keep the grass down.
Fred probably was firing warning shots and next he might shoot to maim. But firing even in bright moonlight coupled with rising anger, meant anything could happen, including shooting one of his inbred goats.
Lola stretched and padded off to the loo, remembering stories her mother told her from her experiences in growing up in post-World War 2 widespread poverty, when people stole food and nicked clothing off neighbourhood washing drying lines in order to survive more comfortably.
It was now a case of history repeating itself, thankfully in a much less severe version, as many people practically world-wide were coping with change in post COVID-19 years including the poor, while even former reasonably well-heeled financially folk were having to 'tighten their belts' in a growing age of job losses and falling incomes
In some cases, the period of financial and social readjustment could result in a growing number of people stealing what they wanted from other people.
Nude, she urinated, scratching under her left breast.
Lola was okay financially, as a result of down-sizing, having sold the marital house she received as part of her divorce settlement from Harry four years ago. And it had been good riddance after deciding he preferred fucking his female office assistant more than his wife whom he'd alleged had become 'sexually incompetent'.
That's what the jerk wrote when filing for uncontested divorce on the grounds of irretrievable breakdown of the marriage.
Well, thought Lola, in the bathroom, any right-thinking woman would choose to lay there in bed like she had in similar circumstances, when their once lean and romantic husband, having earlier consumed two straight whiskies after wine with dinner and beer starters, dropped on to her holding his erection and squashing her with his increasingly fat belly, the inheritance of even more weight from over-eating. Already half-sleep, he'd pound away and perhaps two out of every three occasions the session would end with him rolling off complaining how could a guy achieve ejaculation when his wife lay imitating a basket of wet washing?
Earlier, on the eve of commencing their failed trial separation, Harry had drenched her as heavily as he did on the first occasion that she'd allowed him to bang her.
What a pig!
"See," he'd cried. "All that cum is the result of you at last deciding to move your arse, and more."
"Yes Harry, it was quite incredible," she recalled saying to him, when reaching for a towel. "For once I was rather excited about having sex with you because it will be the last time forever."
He cried, actually shedding tears, and pathetically shouted 'Bitch,' watching her escape to the spare bedroom.
That had been the last time Lola engaged in sex with a male. Fortunately, three of her married girlfriends possessed strap-on devices.
Lola was about to roll back into bed, wondering about reaching for her vibrator, when there was knocking on the front door.
Nervously wondering who'd be making a social call at 3.20 am, she went downstairs, opened the door a little, and saw a guy pushing back the hood of his soft jacket.
"Yes?"
"Hi, I'm your nearest neighbour Cooper Roper. My housekeeper, Mrs Bishop, told me yesterday that you lived alone and upon hearing the seven gunshots..."
"Wow, were there seven shots?" Lola interrupted. "Something awakened me, but then I heard only one rifle shot. Look, I would ask you in Cooper but I'm um without nightwear."
"I'll try not to stare," grinned the fair-haired guy aged about 30.
That triggered the long-buried flirtatious side to Lola's behaviour and she smiled, "That's tempting, but give me a minute to disappear up the stairs and then come in and make coffee - everything is beside the coffee maker. I'll return wearing some clothing."
"That's very civilised of you Miss Hunt."
"Lola."
"Ah, a name of Greek origin, Lola."
Climbing the steep stairway, Lola wondered was Cooper named after the past film star Garry Cooper and heard her unexpected visitor call, "Great arse."
The attractive brunette divorcee turned, ready to vent the Auckland neighbourhood with a scream, "How dare you!" but caught herself and smiled, noting the doorway was exactly how she'd left it, almost closed. He was still outside.
"What an oaf," she giggled, moving into her bedroom to pull on jeans, a sweater and slippers, deciding not to waste time digging out a bra. She rarely wore one at home.
Lola returned to find Cooper standing beside the coffee-maker in the kitchen, that was part of the of her cute stone cottage with side window views across unkept grounds of the neighbouring huge property to the large heart-shape Lake Pupuke, the so-called inland jewel of inner Auckland Metro seaside area of Milford/Takapuna. They were located less than 20 minutes' drive into Auckland's Central Business District, err, apart from during morning and evening peak traffic times.
She spoke to sound neighbourly.
"I've heard the only child of the late wealthy Ropers was something of a recluse. Um, my guess is with you appearing on my doorstep, you are that person."
"Yes, I've spent a few years living in virtual isolation in rural Queensland, Australia, recovering my physical and mental health resulting from involvement in a horrendous road accident when a logging truck jack-knifed on a highway. Its load of logs tumbled free with some of them flattening my parents and our car. Miraculously, I was not wearing a seat belt and the initial impact of the collusion threw me on to the floor in the gap between the front and rear seats."
"But on to something else You've got this cottage looking lovely, from what I've seen, Lola."
She exclaimed, "Omigod, does that mean that you would have spent time in this near-derelict place that originally was occupied by the gatekeeper to your parents' estate?"
"Indeed, when growing up in the so-called Roper Mansion, I used to camp in this very room with some of my friends and eventually lost my innocence in here to the older sister of one of my friends who obviously wished to gain sexual experience to work in a brothel, or so I speculated. Incidentally, she's now a professor of English Romantic Literature at a university in the South Island and I know from experience that living on a university campus is quite similar to the reputed environment of a brothel."
"Sexual experience, what's that?"
"Ah, Lola. I now live as a recluse and you make it sound as you do, too."
