Page 13 of All Our Missing Pieces

I glanced sideways at him. His eyes were on the road but he was smiling, as if he was looking at something far more beautiful than the traffic on the Mile End Road.

‘Now I’m sounding like a wanker myself.’ He laughed. ‘I told Orla all this when I first spoke to her – I reckon it’s partly why she gave me the gig. Like she’d rather have a struggling artist working on her house than a proper builder. Anyway, what about you?’

I told him that my degree was in English literature, but because I didn’t want to be an academic or a teacher, I’d taken the first job that was offered to me, which happened to be as a junior HR assistant in the head office of a high street bank.

‘They’ve got me working on the staff newsletter,’ I admitted. ‘Not exactly Shakespeare. Especially as it’s all outsourced to an agency, and all I seem to do is chase people for information, then chase them again to sign it off. We’re still working on the March edition, although we’ll be lucky to get it out before the end of May.’

We’d arrived at the road where the house – my old house, as I already thought of it – was by this point. I directed him to turn right and he found a parking spot.

‘Want me to come in with you?’ he asked.

I hesitated. It would only take a few minutes to pack my things – clothes, toiletries and books. I didn’t particularly want him to see the dirty laundry I hadn’t got around to washing – but also, I felt that he’d act as a kind of bodyguard, protecting me from Samantha’s malice.

And so it proved. When I opened the door and Luke stepped in behind me, she and Gary emerged from the kitchen, saw him and watched in wide-eyed silence as we walked up the stairs together. No snide giggles followed us, and when we returned downstairs ten minutes later, Luke carrying the suitcase holding my clothes, me with already splitting supermarket carrier bags of books in each hand, they stayed silent.

‘I’m moving out,’ I said unnecessarily. ‘You can keep my deposit, but I won’t be paying next month’s rent.’

They nodded mutely. Luke stepped out and I followed him, locking the door behind me then posting the keys back through the letterbox.

‘Chatty pair,’ Luke said, his mouth quirking into that half-smile I was already learning to watch for. ‘Must’ve been a laugh riot living with them.’

‘Like you won’t believe,’ I said, and the two of us burst out laughing.

I couldn’t help wondering whether Samantha and Gary could hear our laughter through the closed door. I hoped they could.

After that, things fell into a routine quickly. When I left for work, Luke and Orla would already be up, Luke scraping away decades of old wallpaper, Orla tackling the forest of weeds outside, Maud the cat perched on what remained of the garden wall watching her.

By the time I returned home, there’d be progress to be shown and comment on: a struggling rose bush uncovered from a net of brambles, carpet tiles torn up from the floorboards in one of the first-floor rooms, a skip outside that had been organised by Luke and paid for by Orla.

We ate together in the evenings, vegetarian food cooked by Orla. The kitchen, as she’d warned me, was one of the worst rooms in the house, the cupboards sagging off the walls, an ancient cooker with spiral hotplates and a rusty fridge its only amenities. But Orla’s cooking was delicious and it felt almost luxurious to sit together at the shabby, Formica-topped table on rickety wooden chairs, eating and talking, Orla or Luke or sometimes both of them with a sketchbook on the table next to their plate.

It felt right. It felt like being a family. It got so as five o’clock approached, I looked forward to leaving the office and coming home.

When Saturday came, I was woken by the sound of Luke’s feet on the stairs – already, I knew his heavy tread, quite distinct from Orla’s lighter footsteps and Maud’s almost inaudible padding. Then I heard him whistling and a low crunching sound as he connected a power tool to a plug socket.

Then the whirr of his drill started up.

For a moment, I was annoyed – I never signed up for this! It’s eight thirty on a Saturday, for God’s sake. But my irritation was short-lived and I found myself unable to get back to sleep, not because of the noise but because I wanted to get up and see what was going on.

I pulled on faded jeans and a T-shirt and left my room. Orla’s and Luke’s bedroom doors were open, both their beds neatly made. I could smell eggs frying and hear the sizzle of a pan when the drilling noise paused.

I descended the stairs to the first floor and found Luke wrestling with a large panel of dry-walling even taller than he was.

‘Need a hand?’ I asked.

‘I’m all good. It’s not heavy.’ His voice was muffled, his face invisible. I could only see his strong, paint-stained hands gripping the edges of the board.

‘Yeah, right. It’s just awkward. That’s what they all say.’

He put the board down and laughed. ‘Go on then. If you could grab the other side, we’ll get this downstairs and into the skip.’

I obeyed, and together we managed to do as he’d suggested, heaving the board up and hearing it crash on to the pile of rubble that already half-filled the skip.

I dusted off my hands. ‘What’s next?’

‘You don’t have to do this, Livvie.’ He smiled at me. ‘Unlike me, you’re paying full whack.’

‘But I want to help.’