Chapter 1: Brilliantly Private

Well goodness me, whatever NEXT! There, through the window, I was seeing two strange girls on my lawn! In my garden! I’d never seen them before in my life.

It wasn’t as if they were retrieving a ball or something either: they were casually laying out towels! As though they thought it was a public park.

I hastened outside.

“This is my garden,” I raised a smile as I approached, not to be threatening. They were in bikinis already, having shed their skirts and jackets in a heap next to their bags. They turned and smiled back. Clearly it was just a misunderstanding. They were young, and I’m still quite tall, with shoulders, so I didn’t go right up and loom over them. I stopped a few yards away and waved my open palms to finish making the point gently.

“Oh sorry,” said the nearer one. She was late-adolescent, slender and very pretty. Long, straight blonde hair, shining dark-blue eyes. She smiled back at me, pressed a button on her music player and lay down on her towel.

“Sorry,” said the other one, with the same sincerity and also the same lack of concern, as she too lay down. She had the same confidence that her smile would make everything alright. The music player made a weird noise - indicating it was ‘online’, presumably.

“So, it’s not a public place,” I explained.

“We were getting hassled in the park,” the nearer one told me.

“This is much nicer,” her friend agreed, sweeping her long, wavy brown hair aside so she could make selections on her unnecessarily large phone.

“But it’s my garden,” I repeated, while appreciating that her athletic girl’s body would, along with her friend’s, be all too likely to attract unwelcome attention in the park next door. How had they got in?

“It’s a lovely garden,” she agreed, as some kind of young people’s music began to play. The small speaker made a surprising amount of bass.

“Yes but you can’t just come into someone’s garden,” I let myself sound a little more authoritative.

“Why not?” asked the blonde.

“Because it’s mine,” I said again. Surely this was simple enough?

“You’re not using it,” the brunette waved a slim arm around to indicate the space they were occupying. She was still smiling confidently, not getting my point at all.

“You can’t just help yourselves to other people’s gardens,” I gave up on trying to keep smiling. I didn’t want to spoil their day, but they had to learn.

“But you’re not using it,” the blonde repeated the irrelevance.

“It’s about privacy,” I told the pair of them - fifteen or sixteen perhaps, and not having grown up with a garden I could only guess. Their accents were local.

“It’s the privacy we like,” smiled the brunette, unscrewing the top of a small bottle and proceeding to spray her narrow neck and somewhat broad, straight shoulders with - presumably - sun oil.

“It’s brilliantly private,” the blonde was spreading her sun oil. Somehow the action wasn’t entirely businesslike as she shared a grin with her friend.

“It’s MY privacy,” I tried to get through to them, without being intimidating. I’m six foot two even now, and an ex magistrate, so I had to set limits for these youngsters without leaving them feeling bullied. But I couldn’t have kids coming in like this or who knew where it would end. “How did you get in?” I challenged mildly.

“Down the drive,” the brunette seemed to think it was obvious, “and round the side.”

“You can’t just walk into people’s gardens because the gate’s open,” I sighed. “Come on...” I pointed back to the house.

“Don’t you like us being here?” she asked.

Normally I might not have minded letting two girls in bikinis visit, but the presumption was annoying. And it could lead to friends joining them, parents looking for them or goodness knew what complications.

“That is not the point,” I wagged a grandfatherly finger at them. “This is my garden. My private garden, and you can’t just come in and behave as though it’s a public park.”

“It not being a public park is why we came,” the blonde smiled. “It’s so private, with these hedges and everything. We could see on Google Maps and it’s as perfect as it looked.”

I heaved an exasperated sigh. “Just because you like it doesn’t mean you can come and sunbathe in it. It’s a private space. Private. Privately owned and not yours!” I was beginning to see defiance now; under the casual, smiley attitude, that was challenging me to assert myself.

“We’re only here for an hour or two.”

“You’re not here for an hour or two, you have to go.” I pointed again.

“It’s just you though, isn’t it? We’ve never seen anyone else or another car, like a family. This huge garden and only you?” So they did live locally.

“Never you mind! It’s my garden and you haven’t been invited into it.” If my children, or even grandchildren, had been around they probably would have been here helping to chuck these interlopers out, instead of being away in their own houses. But my family hadn’t ended up in this substantial property by letting a couple of teen girls behave with such fantastic impertinence as this. “So, pick up your things, get dressed and leave.”

“I mean there’s so much space,” the brunette was lounging on her towel with no sign of getting up. “This is the biggest lawn ever! I mean, vast! It’s not fair to have it all for one person. And you weren’t even in the garden at all.”

“It’s like a park anyway,” her friend added. “And we don’t even have a garden, with our flats, we have to come and be in a park, basically, to be outside at all. And on a day like this...”

It was a beautiful sunny day I had to acknowledge. Still, I’d had enough of this help-yourself levelling-up woke nonsense.

“You’re going,” I growled, reaching down to pull the blonde up. She jerked her wrist away and rolled over, into her grinning friend. She couldn’t easily go any further so I reached across.

I tried to work out what had happened. I was on my back, on the grass. The girls were standing over me, one either side. Normally it doesn’t matter that I can’t just simply ‘get up’ like I used to - I have to roll over onto hands and knees first - but now I was looking up at two pretty but smirking faces of ... what? Girls? While I was trying to catch up, they each knelt down onto my arms, which I’d flung out as I fell.

I can’t lift even twenty kilos with one arm these days, so a fifty-kilo girl was captivating, but not in a good way. I struggled to pull free, but I was too weak.

“You tripped me,” I accused the blonde on my left arm. I realised she’d hooked the back of my knee with one leg and shoved me with the other.

“It’s just a bit of karate,” she laughed. “And not being old. I have to help my grandad carry things and so does Thea.”

“I’m not that old,” I objected.

“Everyone gets weaker when they get older,” Thea laughed with her.

It was true I’d been losing strength in recent years, though my predicament now was a matter of trickery, surely. Once I was upright I’d have these girls out of here in a jiffy! They weren’t even all that big.

“You’re not going to shout for help are you?” mocked the blonde. She picked up her phone. “The lads in the park might hear. Or would you like us to call someone?”

“Your family?” giggled Thea. “Or the police? Fire brigade? Who do you think Nance?”

I struggled again, but they were too heavy. I tried pressing down with my feet and legs, jerking my hips around, but my arms stayed put, pressed into the lawn, so it didn’t help. The blonde was called Nancy, then. I couldn’t think of anything to say, to her or to Thea, that wasn’t ridiculous; or think of anyone I wanted to see me like this!

“We could call Sarah,” smirked Nancy. “She could do with something for her Facebook. Or Insta.” She lifted her phone up, ready to film.

“Or you could let us stay,” suggested Thea. “Instead of going on our TikTok.”

I struggled again. It was percolating through that they were talking about ‘social media’. Facebook? I knew people who had it; or were ‘on’ it. TikTok is a Chinese spy contrivance of some kind, I certainly didn’t want to be on that! I still wasn’t shifting the girls, and now Nancy was pointing her phone down at me, holding it high to get herself and her fellow miscreant in shot. The view it would have - down onto their bikini tops - would garner a lot of interest would it not, these days?! The bikinis weren’t all that discreet even from a normal angle.