‘I’d call it getting to grips with the task at hand.’
‘Well, just be careful not to get to actual grips with him.’
I snort into my glass. The wine has worked on my empty belly; I’m feeling loose with my words. ‘Gavin, so you know, it’s not Brian from the office I’d want to get to grips with.’ My face reddens, and I swirl my rank wine while Gavin fumbles with their phone, probably booking a taxi to get away from me. Their glass is empty; they’ve had about half of the bottle in ten minutes and it’s showing as they tap away at their screen, looking at it through one squinted eye.
‘I found it!’ They shift closer to me, thrusting their phone in my face.
‘What’s this?’
‘It’s the showreel Brian made of himself from all his telly appearances.’ It consists of clips of Brian holding clipboards walking through manky homes, and then doing the same route in the renovated places and delivering his mealy-mouthed catchphrase to the soundtrack of ‘Chelsea Dagger’ by The Fratellis. The final shot is Brian staring at a new boiler and nodding his head enthusiastically, which creases Gavin up, which in turn makes me laugh, too.
‘Did he ever get any work from this?’
‘What do you think?’ The top of their thigh is against mine, the heat of their body burning into me. I don’t get excited by this. Gavin has drunk more than me, the alcohol is making them miss normal boundaries.
Giving them the extra space they clearly need, I edge away, leaving a hand’s width of seat between us, only for Gavin to perform a land grab with their thigh, pressing it back against mine. This repeats until I am against a wall, no more territory to yield. I turn to ask what they’re up to, only for them to grab the back of my head and plant a wet kiss on my lips. The force of their hand and the lack of room I have to pull away without head-butting the wall makes it impossible to escape, but that’s fine because I don’t want to.
7
The strangeness of having a person beside me in bed who is not Nicol is putting me off sleeping. Gavin is taller, broader; their skin gives off a different, floral scent which tickles my nose, my body alert to the fact this is a new person I don’t know I can trust. This may be leftover anxiety from Nicol, who smelt fine but was a rotten person, or because I have positioned Gavin in their comatose state with their head angled off the bed so if they vomit in their sleep it will, hopefully, land in the basin I’ve positioned beneath them. Actually, maybe I can’t sleep because I am terrified they will be sick on my sheets, or on the nice rug I saved up for that’s next to the bed, or on me.
The thought of their hot vomit hitting me while I’m unconscious is enough to get me out of bed. I drag the decorative throw off the duvet and through to the living room, keeping the door to the bedroom open so I can hear if Gavin makes any noises that sound like choking to death on their own vomit.
The plan was never for Gavin to come back here, but before I knew it we were on my street, each step toward the flat taking ages due to kissing and fumbling with one another. The realisation that Gavin was not in a fit state to consent to sex only became apparent when I got my keys out my handbag to open the door to the close and they started weeping.
‘I can’t go in there. Not when…’
The tears were what sealed the deal to no intercourse. It’s not that I mind them being open with their emotions but, well, they have cried to me three times in three days. I couldn’t risk them doing it while they were inside me, with the booze wearing off and them realising how low they’d sunk to fuck me. Still, I would have been open to hand stuff at this point, so I tried coaxing them in.
‘He’s not in there, it’ll be alright.’
‘His body isn’t there but what about his soul?’
It was hard to imagine Colin possessing a soul, but if I do, I guess he must have had one too. Visualising it, all I could see was an insignificant wisp of air.
‘Look, I’m not entering into a negotiation, Gavin. You either come in or you don’t. I’m not going to make you.’
After getting dangerously close to me locking them out on the street, they followed me to my flat. ‘I’m sorry I’m always crying around you. It’s not usually like this. I’m sorry. I’m having problems.’
Inside, upon seeing the bathroom door, they shrieked and went into my room, where they lay down while I got them a glass of water. By the time I returned with it, they were asleep, fully dressed minus their shoes, in my bed.
Which is how I have come to be contorting to fit on my sofa, my body and brain too alert to switch off for sleep. I find myself scrolling on my phone, hoping to make my eyes heavy from reading the headlines.
The story ‘One in Every 21 Adults in the UK is a Landlord’ does the opposite to what I intended; my fury fuels me to find out more information about the only landlord I know by name now mine is deceased: Willie. The top search result is his Facebook page, which doesn’t reveal much – only his profile and banner images are accessible to me. His profile picture is a selfie, which, while surely taken on a modern smartphone, has mysteriously bad image quality, like CCTV from an episode ofCrimewatchin the 1990s. The sun is shining behind him, casting his face into shadow. Blue skies and white clouds frame his head, highlighting how he’s probably only in his mid-forties, but his hair, or what’s left of it, ages him – he’s bald on top with stubby white hairs at the sides of his head. What we can see of his face is sunburnt, and while I recognise he’s smiling, what constitutes Willie’s smile looks like a grimace, as if he’s not used to pulling that facial expression and it’s causing him pain.
The image on his LinkedIn isn’t much better. As it’s a professional page he’s chosen a shot of him in a suit with a stern expression, like he’s too busy thinking about business to be personable. The experience section on his profile shows he believes his job is ‘Property Developer and Project Manager at Hamilton Homes’. He claims Hamilton Homes is ‘raising the quality of rental accommodation in South Lanarkshire and beyond’. The ‘beyond’ sounds like he has global ambitions but probably means ‘Motherwell’. The work experience that has helped him reach this lofty position is being a route planner for a logistics company for eighteen years. I scroll down to the bottom of the list of other logistics jobs that precede his managerial one and find no building experience, no plumbing certification, no time spent doing manual labour, nothing that would indicate this man knows anything about property other than he can profit from it.
Amending my search to ‘Willie McAllister + Hamilton Homes’ brings up an HMRC page which shows his company’s accounts. I’ve never filed a tax return, so I’m not entirely sure what a lot of the terms on the page mean. What I can ascertain is that he owns rental properties valued at £982,000 and he earnt £66,000 from his business last year. Yes, definitely so poor he needs to charge folk to put out a wheelie bin belonging to his own property.
The screen fades to black from my lack of scrolling but I don’t feel like putting it down yet. I swipe it back into life and search Willie’s name andFixer Uppers Go Under the Hammer. It brings up his episode, which some dear, demented person has chosen to upload to YouTube.
Fixer Uppers Go Under the Hammer
Series 27, episode 22.
First broadcast 30/06/21.
MALCOLM is in a field welcoming us to the show.
