“Nothing!” I sing, wondering how I lived with them this past year. Then I wonder for the first time if Mum truly enjoys her life waiting on my father hand and foot. That’s her sole purpose, especially since he sold his firm and retired. Faffing. She had no aspirations, no career ambitions, except being a stay-at-home mum and housewife. Now that I’m all grown up, she passes the days away faffing. Faffing around the house, faffing in the garden, faffing over my father, and faffing over me when I’m home. I look like my mother, the dark hair, the pale green eyes, but the similarities end there. She faffs. She’s wholesome. I, however, am not. I fuck married men.
“You should be ashamed of yourself!” Dad barks as he wanders into the kitchen armed with his garden shears.
I jerk at his voice. Did he hear my thoughts? Oh God, he knows. He knows what I’ve done! Beads of sweat—guilty sweat—start to form on my forehead. They’ll disown me.
“Your car is an absolute disgrace,” he goes on. My hands hit the side of the worktop, holding me up. Shit, I’m being paranoid.
“You can wash it if you like,” I breathe, gathering myself and finishing off the tea, handing him his mug. He eyes the tea with caution, and I know it’s because my mother hasn’t made it. “Half a sugar,” I confirm before he asks.
He places his shears on the side, making Mum shriek in horror. “Stanley, dear good lord!” She darts over and swipes them up. “Now I’ll have to clean the worktop again!”
Dad rolls his eyes and turns on his heels. “Well, it’s been at least an hour since you last disinfected it, June. I’ll be in the garage.”
“Yes, dear,” Mum chimes, not showing a shred of annoyance at my dad’s grumpiness. I don’t know how she does it. Since he’s retired, he’s a real grouch.
“I’ll be in the dining room,” I say, leaving Mum scrubbing the worktop. I park myself at the dark wooden circa-1990s table and load my laptop, falling into thought as it fires up. A bad move, but those marks on Jack’s neck are a constant in my mind, now accompanying Jack’s face and his wife’s.
“You work too much,” my mother says, wandering over to the sideboard and dusting off a minuscule speck of dust from the shiny surface.
“That’s how people become successful, Mum.”
“And what about the other things in life?”
“Like?”
“Like a husband and children. When are you going to make me a grandmother?”
Grandchildren? I laugh to myself. More people for her to faff over. “Give me a chance, Mother.”
“Well, you’re knocking on thirty.” She nods at the drawings splayed out on the table before me, while I look at her incredulously. “Does that really make you happy, Annie?”
I swallow and return to my laptop. “Yes. Very happy.”
I hear her sigh, leaving me to get on with my work quietly. “Maybe when the right man comes along you’ll think of something other than work.”
I close my eyes, wilting in the chair. I’m already thinking of something other than work. Except he isn’t the right man.
*
After a pleasant dinner with my parents, I pack up my things and kiss them both good-bye, promising I’ll pop over this weekend. I’m scrolling through my e-mails as I make my way to my car, checking for any that are going to keep me up late. One jumps out at me from the French company that is manufacturing my super-duper glass roof, and I frown as I open it, hoping the production is still on track as they promised.
“Oh shit,” I breathe, scanning through the e-mail. “No, no. no!”
I pull my car door open and throw my bags onto the passenger seat, then fall into the driver’s.
“How can you miscalculate the weight?” I ask my phone, diving into my work bag for my calculator and drawings.
I urgently punch at the keys, hoping beyond all hope that they’ve made a mistake in saying they’ve made a mistake. If the roof is two-hundred kilos heavier than they’ve stipulated, it’s going to throw all the engineers’ calculations askew.
“Fuck!” I slam my head against the headrest when the figure on my calculator matches the revised calculations in the e-mail. “You bloody idiots!”
I start my car and reverse down the drive quickly, kissing good-bye to my planned early night.
*
When I pull up at the project site, it’s dusk and the driveway is now ram-packed with skips, scaffolding, and materials, the two entrances blocked off with security railings. I park down the road and grab my things, my mind searching for a remedy to the spanner in my works. I can think of none, and the thought that I may have to kiss my glass roof good-bye makes me want to cry.
Of course, I ignore the warning signs all over the metal railings telling me not to enter the site, and pull back one of the panels, squeezing through the gap. I let myself in, hurrying straight to the back of the building where the extension will be built from the back external wall. Flicking a light on, I get my drawings out and find the calculations I need while pulling up the e-mail with the new, actual weight of my roof. It takes approximately ten seconds for me to conclude that my roof doesn’t stand a chance of being held up by the proposed steelwork without another load-bearing wall to support it. And there is no other damn load-bearing wall nearby that I can tap into. My heart sinks, and I reach up to my forehead to rub away the instant headache.
Thud!
I jump and swing around, my hand moving from my head to my chest. What was that? My eyes scan the space, wary. “Hello?”
Thud!
And my heart kicks up ten gears.
Thud!
I reach for my mobile, moving warily toward the sound coming from outside.
Thud!
The noise continues, consistent and even, and I pull to a stop, wondering what in heaven’s name I’m doing moving toward it. I should call the police, but just as I start to back up, ready to leave, I hear a light curse. The voice gets me moving back toward the sound, and I round the corner to find the door to the garden open. I lose my breath when I see what the source of the noise is, and I reach for the frame of the door for support.
Thud!
Jack slams the shovel into the ground and wedges his booted foot on the top, working it down before heaving the spade up and tossing the dirt aside. My body goes lax and my phone slips from my hand, hitting the floor at my feet. He swings around quickly and I’m nearly knocked to my arse by the sight of him in dirty old jeans, his chest bare and sweating, and his muscled torso glimmering in the dusky light. His hair is damp, his face smeared with mud. Oh, lord have mercy.
“Annie?” Jack moves forward, squinting, as if he’s not sure he’s seeing right.
I gulp and look away from the enthralling sight of his naked torso and perfectly dirtied face. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize anyone was here.”
“I’m just…” His words fade, and I look up at him. “Digging a trial pit.”
“Don’t you have employees to do that?” I ask, thinking I’m sure none of them would look as good as Jack does digging a hole.
He glances down at the pile of dirt he’s built up, wedging his shovel in the ground next to him. “I like getting my hands dirty every now and then,” he tells me quietly.
“At eight o’clock in the evening?”
He looks up at me as I bend to collect my phone. “What are you doing here?”
The scratches on his throat catch my eye again, though they’re fainter than they were yesterday morning. “A problem with the roof.”