I know this must really hurt because you could never do better.
Although, now I think about it, that doesn’t sound like something Amara would say. She had the capacity to be bitchy and mean, but in a fun way, never cruel. Maybe… maybe she didn’t write it, and Nicol – who absolutely has it in him to be horrible, in the way only the people who believe themselves to be truly righteous do – did.
Gavin pulls the top of their towel tighter around their waist, showing no shame to be seen in a state of undress. Not that they should, looking like that. ‘Hi. I’m Gavin. Nice to meet you.’ One hand bundles the top of the towel, the other is offered to Amara, who refuses. Which is needlessly rude even for the weird circumstances we all find ourselves in, but I understand. Nicol would be pissed if he knew she had seen and touched Gavin while all they wore was a towel. In the past, I distanced myself from people for similar reasons.
‘You’re familiar,’ she tells them.
Gavin does not know that to mention to Amara they work for the letting agency – which will surely be where they’ve seen one another before – is shameful and will ruin my moment of glory. Worse still, they could tell Amara I work there. I push her towards the door.
‘We’re getting ready so you’ll have to go.’ Then I channel another bit of ‘Wannabe’, near the end where Mel B repeats the word ‘slam’ a lot. Although slamming a door in my ex-best friend’s face is probably not what the Spice Girls envisioned.
9
Gavin’s sitting at the end of my bed in yesterday’s clothes, honking – as I was yesterday – of the Febreze I doused them in after they were surprised to learn I don’t have huge shirts hanging about the house should a tall-bodied person need one.
‘Time to go.’ I hand them their jacket, wanting them gone before the electrician arrives so they’re not set off again by thoughts of Colin. From the window I watch them take a few measured steps towards the office before needing a moment to compose themself and then trying again. Gavin has only just rounded the corner when the electrician, accompanied by a police officer, appears from the other direction.
When they’re in the flat, I fear every action I make speaks to my guilt for a crime that was not committed. This is ridiculous, and yet this scrutiny of my story, of my flat, gives me a hint that something could potentially be suspicious, and the only person who could possibly be under suspicion is me. I show them both the fuse box and recount the tale of Colin’s great electrocution before the electrician begins the checks he’s been sent here to perform so my account of Colin’s death can be verified with evidence.
After no more than a minute, the police officer is clearly bored and goes out into the close and stands like a bouncer outside my flat door to read his phone. I assume he would not be this nonchalant if he really thought I was a killer. Still, having been spotted hovering over auld Colin when he died, I’m careful to keep out of the way, trying not to appear too interested – despite a random man dying in your flat being fascinating. I would busy myself with watching the television but the electrician has turned everything off at the fuse box and there’s no power.
Seconds or minutes pass – it’s hard to tell when all I’m doing is staring at a blank wall. The stress of this scenario stops me from focusing on reading anything, and it is definitely an inappropriate time to bank some images for Dave. Finally, the electrician says to me, ‘That’s me done, hen,’ as if I’m the one who asked him to come.
I decide to chance my luck. ‘Don’t suppose, seeing as you’re here, you could fix the light switch issue?’
He looks in the direction of the landing, checking what the policeman makes of it, which indicates he’s considering it. Alas, this minimal conversing is all it’s taken to summon the officer back to his duties. Maybe I shouldn’t have spoken; I see now how this interaction could be misconstrued as interfering in the investigation.
‘That us good to go, Dougie?’
Dougie nods. ‘Aye, that’s me done.’
They leave me alone with the light switch, which taunts me until I head off to work, spending the entire walk trying, and failing, to shake off thoughts of the worst-case scenario in which Colin’s death is deemed a murder and I am put in jail for it. Although would jail be much worse than my life is currently? No rent to pay, someone else stressing about what meals I’m having throughout the day, being locked up with hundreds of other women, a chance to forge the female friendships my free life lacks.
By the time I’m at work I’m neutral on whether being convicted of a crime I did not commit would be that bad. Gavin is at their desk, living their own worst-case scenario. I’d leave them alone in their hangover to wallow, but Brian has emailed us to say his day has filled with ‘housing valuations’ and he won’t be in. ‘What about guarding his phone? Should I give him a call to see what he wants me to do?’
‘He’s a big boy. If he needs your help he’ll ask for it.’
Brian’s phone, it turns out, has been left in the drawer of my desk with a note of instructions of what I need to do with it today. His public-facing diary shows him as doing accounting all day in the office, which feels risky when this is the easiest place in the world for his wife to visit to check if he is where he says he is. I show the note to Gavin, who shakes their head.
‘Bad sign, that. Means he thinks he’s in love with one of his women. He gets sloppy when he thinks he’s in love and then Leanne starts to become a problem for all of us.’
‘What makes you think that this time it’s not different?’
‘It’s not.’ And then Gavin rushes to the bathroom to spew.
Within the first ten minutes of my working day, I’ve completed the small amount of legitimate work Brian left for me – booking the photographer the company uses to take pictures of properties and paying his last invoice – then the illegitimate tasks of putting fake entries in his diary for a ‘company meeting’ tomorrow and an ‘accountant’s review’ next Wednesday. With nothing else to do, I find myself digging about on Willie, the arsehole landlord, to really get an understanding of how horrendous the people Perfect Property Solutions represents truly are.
Reading his files on the system tells me that, without fail, at every contract renewal on every property he raises the rent and offers no extra value for the increased price. Records of messages between him and Gavin show he never wants to fix anything, and when he does, he does it himself or gets his cousin, a car mechanic by trade, to sort it.
A sift through his Facebook friends leads me to the profile of his wife, who has an extensive collection of pics from their holidays to Dubai, the Seychelles and Hawaii. In each picture Willie looks like he’s been forced to be photographed, his beaming sunburnt face displaying a series of scowls. His wife’s accompanying caption is always along the lines of ‘William happy to be with me as per usual’. It’s hard to pick a favourite picture of them, but if I had to it would be the one of them on a beach – she has her hands wrapped around his waist and his body is angled as if he’s pulling away, desperate for release. Surely no picture on Facebook commemorating the occasion is better than this? Her profile picture is of them together a good while ago, which feels like a deliberate choice. Willie sort of looks his age here. Over the last few years he’s had some health scares, which were mentioned in vague terms in status updates, his wife telling people who enquire about further details to DM her. Obviously I would love to but I have not. He’s also put on a bit of beef, lost more hair and aged at the speed of unrefrigerated milk. I too wouldn’t choose to showcase my forty-six-year-old husband on the internet looking close to cashing in his pension.
He’s posted a few times to the Hamilton community on the Nextdoor app. Once complaining about a beeping noise on his street, the source of which was unknown. Three times about ‘dodgy characters’ he’s spotted minding their own business but daring to be on his street – surprise surprise, they were all people of colour – and many, many more times on the topics of foreigners, benefits and asking who declared Nicola Sturgeon the Queen of Scotland. Each post adds to the mounting pile of proof that he is a bad man. I know I’ve sated my appetite for hateful revelations when reading Willie complain about Hamilton’s disproportionate number of terrible female drivers doesn’t move me the way it would have an hour earlier. There is no shock at his awfulness, just a shrug – yes, that is classic Willie.
Rechecking his taxes, I note his registered business address is only around the corner from the office, at 13 Auchingramont Road. I write the number in the corner of my otherwise empty notebook page. Thirteen – the same number of rental properties he had when he was onFixer Uppers Go Under the Hammer.
Throughout my research, Gavin has been silent. At precisely 12:00 pm they push their chair back and say they’re going to get lunch. I give my eyes a break from my screen and stare out of the glass door in front of me, out into the street, and watch the world go by. To me, the pedestrians are there to be watched. That I am also on display isn’t obvious to me until a couple about my age stop and discuss a listing in the window. Both of their eyes flick over to me at different points, and their gaze forces me to perform the actions of work. I pretend to type and move my mouse around until they go away. What does not go away is a growing desire within me to punish Willie.
10
