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Before he gets a chance to reply, Noah bursts through the door.
‘What the fuck’s going on, Ella? I’ve just had the Bitch Queen on the phone ordering me to take your keys off you.’
‘Yeah, I know. She fired me.’
‘Why?’
‘She demanded that I cancel the order with Kent Bricks. I refused to back down, so she sacked me.’ I hand him the site keys. ‘Here you are. I’ll drop the caravan key in once I’ve cleared it out.’ I push past him, automatically grabbing my hard hat, and march in the direction of my car. Now that the sales office has opened, the staff car park has been relocated to the other end of the site, so I have to walk past all the houses to get there. I can see the various team leads heading towards the site office for the morning meeting, and a few of them look confused to see me walking the other way, but thankfully none of them say anything.
‘Wait!’ Noah’s voice calls from behind me, but I don’t change my pace. A few seconds later, he’s alongside me.
‘What are you doing?’ he asks.
‘I’ve been fired, Noah. It’s over,’ I tell him, bitterly, as the tears finally start to flow.
‘You don’t know that. Give her an hour or two to calm down and I’m sure she’ll see sense.’
This is enough to stop me in my tracks and I turn to face him.
‘You know that isn’t going to happen as well as I do,’ I say. ‘I thought I had her this time, I really did, because I dotted every I and crossed every t when I bypassed Williamsons, but I underestimated her badly. Nothing anybody says or does will persuade her to change her mind. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a caravan to clear.’
‘Where will you go?’
‘I don’t know. Home, I guess.’
He looks absolutely crestfallen. ‘But what about you and me?’
‘I don’t know,’ I tell him honestly.
‘I do. Why don’t you bring your stuff over to my place? There are loads of building sites around here, and I’m sure one of them must be looking for a project manager. You’ll get a better job in no time and you can stay as long as you like.’
I consider what he’s said. ‘Are you asking me to move in with you?’
‘Umm, yes. I guess I am. Look, I’ve never met anyone like you, and I think we’ve got something special. If you go back north, I’ll do whatever I can, but I’m not sure how easy a long-distance relationship is going to be in practice. So yeah, why don’t you move in?’
‘What if I don’t find another job straight away? I don’t have another redundancy package to keep me going, Noah. I’ve been sacked. My pay stops now and I don’t have enough of my last package left to pay you rent.’
‘I didn’t say anything about charging you rent.’
‘So you’d let me move in and live with you for free? Eat your food, use your gas and electricity?’
‘Yes, if that’s what it takes to stop you leaving.’
I gaze into his eyes. There is so much love and kindness there, and I would love nothing more than to grab all my stuff from the caravan and drive straight to his house. But one of us has to be realistic about what that would mean, and it doesn’t appear to be him.
‘That’s a lovely idea, it really is,’ I tell him through my tears.
‘Great, I’ll come and help you move. I’m sure the others can get by without me for a bit.’
‘I haven’t finished. It’s a lovely idea, but I can’t take you up on it.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because it wouldn’t work, for all sorts of reasons.’
‘Such as?’
‘OK, let’s say I do this and move in with you. It would be lovely to begin with and I’m sure we’d be really happy, but there’s only so long that you’d be able to tolerate me freeloading before you started to resent me. I don’t want what we have to go there.’
