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JENNY
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'Thank God that day is over' thought Jenny to herself as she turned the car engine off. She got out of the car and walked round to the boot to grab her work bag. It was so heavy and she was so worn out, it took a great effort to heave it onto her shoulder. She closed the boot and started across the back lane towards the house. As she opened the back gate to the yard, she remembered that she hadn't locked the car. She turned and pressed the remote, hearing the locks click and seeing the lights flash. She could see past the car, and the garage beyond, a glimpse of the back garden.
'God, it's like a jungle' she thought to herself. She wondered whether her and Mike had taken on too much with their first house together. It was a two-storey terraced house with a garden in the front and a second garden in the back, across the back lane. With both of them working full time, they just didn't seem to have the capacity to keep on top of decorating the house and keeping both the front and back gardens tidy. Fortunately the front garden was fairly low maintenance and, as it faced the main road and had a low fence, keeping it presentable was more of a priority than the back.ย The back garden was another matter entirely. It was overgrown with weeds and bushes that were out of control. The worst was just beyond the garage; it had spread so far and wide it made it a tight squeeze to get beyond the corner of the garage into the garden beyond. Admittedly, it was actually planted in nextdoor's garden, just the other side of the fence, but it had grown so big it had come through and covered a fair chunk of their lawn, and neither Jenny nor Mike had got round to pruning it on their side.
'Not that those two are much better!' she thought, as she turned back to the house and let herself in. Jenny contemplated their neighbours, David and Natalie. They were a few years older than her and Mike, and the neighbours didn't really speak to each other. Not that they were rude or offensive, they just kept to themselves and only said 'hello' if they passed in the street. Occasionally, they would take in parcels for each other and this was always dealt with politely. It was usually David who would bring any parcels round to Jenny and Mike, or call in to collect parcels they had taken in for him and Natalie, and so Jenny had spoken more to him, out of their two neighbours. He seemed harmless enough and was always pleasant and friendly when he called at the back door.
'He has a nice smile,' Jenny thought. She couldn't discern anything much else about him, other than his physical appearance. He had a short beard that was light brown, now flecked with grey, and a receding hairline. He had a slight paunch, but wasn't fat and he had long, muscular legs. She had occasionally seen him in his lycra shorts, getting on his bike to cycle to work, so she knew he wasn't unfit, although perhaps his exercise regime wasn't able to keep him as trim as it did a few years ago.
Jenny put her bag down by the back door and slipped off her shoes. Mike wasn't home. She remembered he was on a late shift today. They both worked for the police; he as a detective, and she as a crime scene manager, but they rarely saw each other at work and more and more, their shift patterns meant that they saw less of each other at home than they used to.ย Jenny went into the kitchen and put the kettle on, to make herself a coffee. She glanced out of the window. It was a warm day and the sun was occasionally peeping through the clouds.
'If I wasn't so tired, I might've tried to make inroads on that back garden,' Jenny thought. 'but right now, I can't be bothered.'ย The kettle finished boiling and she poured some water into her mug and stirred in the coffee granules. She grabbed the milk from the fridge and added enough to make it turn a light brown and then wandered over to the sofa. She flopped down and pulled out her phone and idly scrolled through her social media accounts.ย 'I'll finish this coffee and then go and have a shower and try and forget the stresses of work' she thought.
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DAVID
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Natalie was late home from work. Again. This new job had had a massive impact on his and Natalie's home life. She was frequently working beyond her scheduled hours and most of the daily chores therefore fell on his shoulders. They rarely had time to spend together that wasn't subtly (or not so subtly) eroded by the stress she was under. It had been months since they had been physically intimate. David hadn't masturbated this much since he was a teenager and had first discovered self-pleasure.
He stripped off his work shirt, trousers and socks and put on a comfortable t-shirt and some baggy shorts. It was warm today and he didn't need to look presentable. He went downstairs and pulled the washing machine open. It needed emptying, so he fetched the laundry basket and filled it with the wet clothes. He grabbed the clothes pegs and stepped out into the yard.
'May as well get these dry' he muttered to himself.ย He was nearly done hanging out the clothes, when he heard an upstairs window open, next door. This was followed by the sound of a shower running. He looked up.
'That bathroom window doesn't seem to be the best design,' David thought. It opened outwards, at the bottom, so an observer from the yard could see through the gap, into the bathroom beyond. What could be seen in the bathroom beyond was limited by the angle and how far the window was opened, but it still didn't seem the best consideration of privacy.
At that moment, as if to prove his point, David noticed some movement through the gap. Some lightly tanned skin could be seen and some long brown-blonde hair. It was his neighbour, Jenny, and it was clear that she was naked. He couldn't see much, just a narrow strip of her back, but he felt his breath and his pulse quicken, and a slight stirring in his groin. She turned to the side and he caught a brief glimpse of the pale white skin on the side of her breast, before he realised he was staring and looked away.
'I hope to God she didn't see me looking' he thought.ย He moved to the other end of the washing line. If he hung the remaining clothes up from the other side, he could face next door and casually look up again and might 'accidentally' see a bit more. He chanced another glance up. The angle was slightly different from here; he could still see Jenny and she was now more or less facing the window. The section of her body visible to him now comprised the strip of her torso from her belly button to the gentle curve of the underside of her breasts. She was slim and, what he could see of her, was attractive, and he could feel himself beginning to stiffen. At that moment, he could see a towel being wrapped about the naked body and she had turned away.
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JENNY
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