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I did shed a few tears when I locked the front door behind me. They weren’t heartbreak tears; I think Lee and I have definitely reached the end of the road. They were more like tears of frustration, that I’m going to have to rebuild my life from scratch at the age of thirty-two. The whole of the last five years suddenly seem like they’ve been a colossal waste of time.
In an ideal world, I’d have left the keys behind on the side in the kitchen, but the door has a security lock that you have to set from outside, so I’ve carefully fed them into our secure postbox on the ground floor. As I cross the Queen Elizabeth II bridge and see the sign welcoming me to Kent, a few more tears leak out. What if Lee is right, and I don’t belong here? I certainly feel like I don’t belong here. It’s weird, really. Out of the window, I’m still looking at the same tarmac, sky, grass and stuff, but it feels different somehow. Alien.
Before long, the satnav is directing me onto the M20 and the last stage of my journey. Around thirty minutes more and I should be there. A lead weight of unease settles itself in the pit of my stomach and intensifies as the motorway signs count down the miles to Ashford. The voice of self-doubt in my head is saying,What are you doing here, Ella? This has got to be one of the biggest mistakes you’ve ever made. If it wasn’t way too far to contemplate, I’d seriously be considering turning round and driving straight back home.
It takes me a while to find the site. The satnav dumps me in the general vicinity, but I have to drive up a few roads before I pick up signs directing site traffic for Atkinson Construction. The site itself, when I arrive, looks fairly typical of developments I’ve seen before. There are lots of large, shiny billboards advertising an ‘exclusive development of four- and five-bedroom homes’ with artists’ impressions of the houses, and a promise that the show home will be open soon. There are also large flags featuring the Atkinson logo on poles either side of the site entrance. Even though it’s only 4p.m. on a Friday, the gates are padlocked, so I park the car, get out and peer through the gap to see if I can spot anyone.
‘Are you Ella?’ a voice behind me asks, making me jump. I turn to see a man dressed exactly as I would expect a builder to look, with a hi-vis vest over a short-sleeved top and trousers that are both covered with cement dust marks. Even his sturdy-looking boots are scuffed and faded. He’s squinting a little in the bright sunlight, but I can see that his eyes are deep brown. His dark hair matches the stubble on his chin and, as my eyes drop to his torso, I can’t help noticing the thickness of his arms. My stomach does a little flip, and I mentally tell myself off.
‘That’s me,’ I reply. ‘You must be Noah.’
‘I am,’ the man replies with a smile. ‘I’m the site foreman. You’re not from around here, if your accent is anything to go by.’ He holds out his hand for me to shake and I’m not surprised to find that it’s rough and his grip is strong.
‘I’m sorry I’m late. I’ve driven down from Leeds, and the M25…’
‘Don’t sweat it. I’m on overtime, so you can take as long as you want.’ He grins. ‘In fact, if you wanted to go and explore for a couple of hours…’
‘I think I’ve done enough driving for one day,’ I smile back at him. The whiteness of his teeth is in sharp contrast to his sun-bronzed skin and there’s a definite twinkle in his eye. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was flirting with me.
‘Come on then, let’s get you in,’ he says, pulling a large bunch of keys from his pocket. ‘The main gate key is this one.’ He separates a key from the rest before handing them all to me. Although the padlock is probably the biggest one I’ve ever seen, the key turns easily and the lock pops open.
‘I’ll open the gate for you,’ Noah tells me. ‘Just drive through and follow the signs for the site office. I’ll meet you there in a sec, OK?’ I go to return the keys, but he holds up his hands. ‘Those are yours. I’ve got my own set,’ he explains.
The site office turns out to be a Portacabin about a hundred yards inside the gate. I pull up in one of the spaces marked outside it and Noah strolls up a few seconds later, as I’m pulling on the steel toe-capped boots I bought after completing my training. I yank my new hi-vis vest and hard hat out of the boot and turn to face him again. I feel slightly self-conscious wearing them, mainly because I’ve been hiding them at the bottom of my wardrobe for the last week, desperately hoping that Lee wouldn’t spot them. I don’t know why I was worried – he never looks in my wardrobe – but I’m still getting used to the idea of keeping secrets from him.
‘So,’ he says, eyeing me up and down. ‘I’m not gonna lie, the boys and me were a bit concerned when they heard the latest victim, I mean project manager, was a woman. We don’t get a lot of women in this industry. I’ll warn you now that some of them are a bit old-fashioned in their views and don’t think a building site is any place for a woman to be. You know how women used to be considered bad luck on ships?’
My anti-sexist tirade is choked off by curiosity.
‘No, why?’
‘Two reasons. The first was that sailors believed women made the sea gods angry, and they would send bad weather as punishment. I don’t know if this is true or not, but my grandad told me that there was an incident way back where a ship went out with a load of female passengers, hit a terrible storm, and so the sailors decided to lob the women overboard to try to appease the gods.’
‘Did it work?’
‘Of course not! The women all drowned and the boat sank anyway. There was only a handful of survivors.’
‘Oh. What was the second reason?’
‘Simple, and probably more relevant here. Captains worried that women on ships would distract the sailors. A sailor who isn’t paying full attention to what he’s doing is a disaster waiting to happen, as is a builder.’
‘You seem to know a lot about it.’
‘Yeah, well, I come from seafaring stock. Anyway, the point is that some of the boys have similar views about women on building sites. I’m dealing with it, but you just need to be aware.’
‘I think we need to get one thing clear from the start,’ I tell him, coolly. ‘I’m not going to put up with any sexist claptrap, OK? For a start, women can’t be bad luck on building sites, otherwise Sarah Beeny would have been dead long ago.’
‘Ah, but is she a real builder or just a TV personality?’ Noah challenges.
‘She looks pretty hands-on to me.’
‘Maybe she’s the exception that proves the rule,’ he chuckles. ‘Anyway, don’t worry about it. I have it in hand. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything.’
‘No, you definitely should, but you can tell “the boys” that they’d better keep their medieval opinions to themselves. Thinking of which, where is everyone?’
‘It’s POETS day today, so the site packed up at lunchtime. All building sites pretty much do.’
‘POETS day?’
