‘Abby, hi. Excuse my teammates in the background, most of them were dragged up. The lot of them would benefit from a year in a Swiss finishing school.’ I shoo them away with my middle finger, but they loiter, refusing to just get in their cars and fuck off home.
‘How are things?’ Her voice is filled with amusement.
‘Grand. Apart from I’ve just spent the last three hours standing under a ridiculous amount of lighting wearing a stupid amount of concealer for our annual calendar. I don’t know how those models do it.’
‘You didn’t ask any of the ones you encountered along the way?’ There’s a hint of knowing in her tone.
I groan. ‘Please don’t you start on me as well,’ I beg. The guys overhear.
‘Lover’s tiff already?’ Marcus says gleefully. ‘Is it any wonder he can’t keep a woman?’
Abby hears it all. Thank God I’ve been honest with her. However difficult the task they set me, it’d be ten times worse, had I not been truthful.
‘Put Marcus on the phone,’ Abby says to my amazement.
I hand it over to him and watch the smile fall from his face. He tries to push it back to me, but I walk away. Reluctantly, he holds it to his ear.
‘Marcus? Give my fella a break, will you? I need him in tip-top condition for tonight. If he’s wound up, he’ll blow all over my bedsheets before I get near him.’ Abby’s confident authority resonates throughout the car park, a dirty laugh emphasises her point.
‘Holy fuck, I’d recognise your voice from the radio anywhere.’ Marcus is momentarily starstruck, apparently forgetting he’s equally famous in his own right.
‘Lucky fucker,’ Eddie mutters.
Abby’s acting skills prevail once again.
‘We’re ringing to invite you to the Pieta House fundraiser Friday afternoon. Some of the wives are coming. It’d be great if you could make it.’ Marcus adopts an eloquent telephone voice, unrecognisable as the balding baboon that instigated this entire farce.
‘I wouldn’t miss it,’ Abby coos down the phone.
She’s putting on one hell of a performance. I owe her big time.
‘Now, put Callum back on. I’m wet and I need him.’ She dissolves into pealing girlish laughter. Marcus hands back the phone in stunned silence.
‘Abs,’ I repeat the nickname her friends use on Saturday morning.
‘Come to mine. I’ll text you the coordinates. Come hungry,’ she says before hanging up.
Is she for real, or is it me that’s been slipped the roofie?
‘I’ll have to take a raincheck on that drink, bro.’ I can’t even pretend to be sorry.
‘No wonder. Can I come with you? Abby might want the job done properly.’ He winks at me saucily. I imagine physically removing the smirk from his pretty-boy face.
A text pings through with the Eircode. I set the sat nav in the Jeep and wave smugly at the boys as they lurk, stunned in the car park. Their shock is nothing in comparison to mine. I merely mask it better.
Twenty minutes later, I’m outside a detached house in a secluded, well-manicured estate in Tallaght. She opens the front door before I can knock. A sopping wet running top clings to her cleavage, damp wavy hair surrounds her glistening face and fresh droplets fall from her fingers.
Not exactly the scene I’d been hoping for.
‘Know anything about plumbing?’ She shrugs, completely unfazed. Another woman might have applied make-up at the expected arrival of one of Ireland’s ‘supposedly’ most eligible bachelors. Not that I buy into that bullshit – those idiots know nothing about me. Abby hasn’t even changed out of her running gear.
‘Are we starring in some weird porno that I don’t know about? Damsel in distress needs sex-starved man to examine her plumbing? Are you filming this?’ I’m rewarded with uncontrollable hooting laughter.
‘You’re hilarious in addition to infuriatingly arrogant, I see. Should make the next couple of months a little more bearable.’ She possesses an uncanny ability to inflate my ego, before instantaneously bursting it in the same sentence.
I roll up my shirt sleeves and follow her through to a traditional country style kitchen with cream woodwork and a huge Aga. I spot the problem immediately. It’s hard to miss with the contents of the cupboard beneath the sink strewn across the cream tiled floor. I fight the urge to laugh and look pointedly at her as I turn off the tap. For a woman with two degrees, you’d assume it would have been the first port of call.
‘I wanted to see where it was leaking from. I couldn’t do that if it stopped,’ she justifies.
