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That was the final straw. ‘I’m not depressed, thank you, and I think I’ll be just fine on a building site,’ I’d told him sweetly, ‘but thanks for your words of encouragement. I’ll treasure them. And, just in case you were in any doubt, you and I are over, OK?’
‘I’m sorry?’ He evidently hadn’t seen that one coming, and I’d felt a momentary pang of guilt. Five years is five years, after all, and he wasn’t toxic for all of them. I’d had to steel myself to carry on.
‘It’s over, Lee. You’ve changed and I don’t like the selfish person you’ve become.’
‘I’mselfish?’ he’d practically howled. ‘I’mnot the one who’s just done a midnight flit from their financial commitments, leaving me seriously in the shit.’
‘No. You’re the one who did a midnight flit from your employer, lost me the job I loved and then crowed about how clever you were.’
‘You’ll regret this. Don’t expect me to be waiting for you when it all goes tits up and you want to come crawling back,’ he’d snarled, before hanging up.
I’d sat there staring at the phone for quite a while, trying to work out how I felt. Part of me was sad that the final death knell of our relationship had just sounded, and I did shed a few tears, but his total conviction that I couldn’t do it had stirred up something stubborn in me. The idea of Dad and Ava’s inevitable disappointment when I turned up, having walked out of the job before I even started, also gave me pause for thought, as did the fact that I’ve blown a substantial amount of my redundancy payout on the car, so I can’t survive much longer without work. I have absolutely no idea how I’m going to solve the Deborah problem, but there’s a bloody-minded part of me that is determined to give it my best shot. If I run away now with my tail between my legs, she’s beaten me before the game has even started.
After breakfast, I head back to the caravan park. My plan is to take a serious look at the caravan of shit and make a list of everything I need to make it habitable. On the way, I stop at a supermarket and pick up some basic cleaning supplies, including several bottles of bleach, fabric freshener and antibacterial spray, along with a couple of pairs of rubber gloves. I’m dressed in my oldest, tattiest clothes so it won’t hurt to throw them away if I can’t get the smell out of them. As soon as I get there, I open all the windows as wide as I can to get some fresh air going through. The rancid milk is the first item that goes into a black bin liner, closely followed by a host of other out-of-date foodstuffs I find in the kitchen cupboard and fridge. I empty a whole bottle of bleach into the toilet and leave it to soak. I take the grimy net curtains and curtains down and stuff them into bags. There’s no washing machine in the caravan, so I trudge over to the site office to see if there are washing machines there, only to find that they’re both out of order. Someone has helpfully left a postcard advertising a laundrette in the town, so I take a photo of it on my phone.
When I get back to the caravan and sniff, things seem a little better, but there’s still a residual pong coming from somewhere. I find an ancient vacuum cleaner and mop in a cupboard, and set about sprinkling the threadbare carpet in the living area with freshener, before mopping the kitchen and bathroom floors thoroughly. The hot tap in the bathroom sink looks like it’s been dripping for a while, as it’s grown an impressive limescale stalactite, and there is a corresponding stain in the basin underneath it. I add limescale remover to my ever-growing shopping list.
By lunchtime, there are concrete signs of improvement. I’ve cleaned the fridge thoroughly, and the bleach has made a surprising difference to the toilet, to the extent that I was actually able to use it without worrying what I might pick up from it. Sadly, the same can’t be said for the oven, which is going to need some industrial-strength cleaner. It looks like something exploded in there and then got heat-welded to the inside. The glass door is so badly covered in black residue that I can’t see through it at all. On the plus side, I’ve treated all the soft furnishings with lavish amounts of fabric freshener and run the asthmatic vacuum cleaner over all the carpets, so the place is now smelling sufficiently fresh that I reckon I can safely bring my stuff in from the car.
As I’m hanging some clothes in the wardrobe, my eye is drawn to the bed, and I realise I have another major hurdle to overcome. There is no way I am going to be able sleep on that mattress. I don’t know how old it is, but Andy or one of the previous occupants of the caravan must have been quite a sweaty person, because there are very distinctive human-shaped dark stains on one side. I’m revolted and fascinated at the same time. In a funny way, it reminds me of the shroud of Turin, only without the historical and religious significance. Keeping well away from the stains, I tentatively perch on the mattress, only to have my fears confirmed as it sags hopelessly.
As soon as I’ve finished unloading the car, I grab the mattress and pull as hard as I can to try to get it upright, so I can drag it out of the caravan. I’m not sure how I’m going to dispose of it, but I need it out of here. It’s not particularly heavy, but it is unwieldy and, at one point, I end up with my nose practically pressed against one of the darker stains. I try as hard as I can to breathe through my mouth, but I can’t help inhaling some of the smell, and it makes me gag. How anyone could have slept on this is a mystery.
‘Hello?’ I hear Noah’s voice call from the doorway. ‘Is anyone in?’
‘In here!’ I call.
‘Where are you going with that?’ he asks as soon as he’s clapped eyes on me struggling with the mattress.
‘I’m getting rid of it.’
‘Right.’ He sounds uncertain. ‘Well, let me help you with it, at least.’ I feel the mattress go light as he effortlessly takes it off me and drags it out of the door.
‘Thank you,’ I tell him. ‘I’m not being funny, but what are you doing here?’
‘I was passing,’ he replies. ‘I thought I’d check in to see how you were in case the caravan of shit had depressed you so much you’d decided to bugger off back north.’
I smile at him guiltily. He has no idea how close to the truth that statement is.
‘No. I’m still here, as you can see.’
He sticks his head back in the door. ‘Wow,’ he observes. ‘You must have been working hard. I don’t think I’ve ever seen it looking so clean before.’
‘Thank you. There’s a long way to go, though. I need a new mattress, for starters, and I don’t know if a cleaner has been invented yet that’s going to put a dent in the nuclear wasteland that’s the inside of the oven.’
Noah is looking at my car with a quizzical expression. ‘What?’ I ask him.
‘I was just wondering how you planned to get the mattress in there. I assume you’re taking it to the tip?’
‘I hadn’t really got that far,’ I admit. ‘I just wanted it out. I was going to figure out the next steps later.’
‘I tell you what. Why don’t we load it into my van, take it to the site and throw it in the skip, and then I’ll give you a lift to a discount bedding store I know. They’re one of those “pile it high, sell it cheap” places and they always have loads of mattresses and stuff like that in stock.’
‘Are we allowed to do that?’
‘What, go to a discount store?’
‘No, dump the mattress in the site skip.’
