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‘I’m not. Welcome to my humble abode, lovingly referred to by my colleagues as the caravan of shit.’
‘For fuck’s sake. Are you serious?’
‘Deadly. Would you like the tour?’
‘Is the inside as bad as the outside?’ she asks.
‘Not any more. It took pretty much the entire bleach supply of Ashford, but it’s actually habitable now. I haven’t got any pictures of what it was like when I arrived, so you’ll have to use your imagination. It was bad, though. Trust me.’
‘Worse than that dodgy place in Wales we stayed in when we were little? Do you remember that?’
‘Was that the one where Mum spent most of the week chasing cockroaches?’
‘That’s it.’
‘Yeah, it was worse than that.’
‘Why didn’t you just come home?’ she asks, after I’ve described the mattress, its stains that reminded me of the shroud of Turin, and the state of the kitchen and bathroom.
‘I nearly did. I took one look at it and hightailed it to the nearest Premier Inn, fully intending to come back home the next day.’
‘What stopped you?’
‘Stubbornness, mainly. That and I wasn’t sure how to give the keys to the site back. Anyway, the site foreman has been really nice, and he helped me bring a new mattress in and take the old one to the tip.’
‘You’ve always been stubborn. I have no idea where you get it from.’
‘Of course you don’t. You aren’t stubborn at all.’
She laughs. ‘So the foreman is really nice, eh?’ There’s a provocative edge to her voice. ‘This new mattress of yours, has it seen a bit of action?’
‘Of course not! Quite apart from the fact that I’m never having another office romance, Lee and I have only just broken up.’
‘Just two little problems there. One, you’re on a building site, not in an office, and two, the relationship with Lee was dead long before you called it.’
‘That’s not true!’
‘Of course it is. Why do you think you’re able to talk about him so easily, without sobbing uncontrollably?’
‘Whatever. I’m not in the market for a new man, and it certainly wouldn’t be someone I worked with if I was. I’ve learned my lesson there. He’s just friendly, that’s all.’
‘Is he single?’
‘I don’t know for sure, but I think so.’
‘You haven’t asked?’
‘No. If I start asking too many questions about his personal life, he might jump to all sorts of conclusions and think I’m interested in him, which would be a disaster.’
‘I think you’re being a bit dramatic.’
‘I’m not. Think about it. Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that he’s interested in me. If I start sniffing around his personal life, he might take that as a green light to come on to me. I’d then have to turn him down and it would be massively awkward working with him. On the other hand, if he wasn’t interested, he might think I was coming on to him and feel he needs to let me down gently, which would also be awkward, because he’d constantly be trying to spare my feelings.’
‘Jeez. Talk about analysis paralysis. You could do it subtly, you know. You could find out a bit about his hobbies and then ask what his girlfriend thinks of them. Unless he’s gay, of course. Do you think he’s gay?’
‘I haven’t thought about it, because I’m not into him!’ I exclaim, my face reddening as I remember my unfortunate reaction to him holding my hand.
‘You so are!’ she laughs triumphantly. ‘I can see it in your guilty expression. So, given that you’re too shy to ask him outright, what makes you think he’s single?’
