‘Yes.’
‘You don’t have to tidy up after us.’
‘I don’t mind. I needed a break from staring at a computer screen.’
He’s oblivious to my pointed statement.
He starts to unload the dishwasher while I make myself a coffee, trying to take a leaf out of his book and ignore April’s insistent cries. Eventually, Charlie gives up and lifts her out of her playpen, sitting her on her nappy-clad bottom on the floor with a saucepan and a wooden spoon to play with. She bashes the utensil against the pan.Ow, my ears!
I walk over to the French doors and look out while waiting for the kettle to boil.
‘Is that what you do?’ I call over my shoulder. ‘Make stuff out of wood?’
‘Yep.’
‘Like what?’
‘Play kitchens, houses, tree houses, that sort of thing.’ He has to raise his voice over the racket April is making.
I’m always impressed by people who can make things with their hands. I turn away from the doors. ‘Do you always work when April is asleep?’
‘Yep. But how much time I get varies.’ He casts a wry look at his daughter. She gazes up at him and he narrows his eyes at her.
Whack, whack, whack.
‘Water’s boiled,’ he notes absently, glancing my way.
I get on with my task and leave them to it.
‘Tell him to give you a key!’ my friend Marty exclaims the following evening when I call her from up on the field. I’ve come here to catch up on my emails and check the comments on my blog, but I got bored after a while and decided to call my best mate instead.
Marty and I were introduced in our early twenties by a colleague who worked at the same travel magazine as me – Marty, herself, is a travel agent.
I’d just broken up with my boyfriend, Vince, and we clicked straightaway. We flat-shared for three years, although I lived with her only on and off, as, once I went freelance, I travelled around quite a bit. We’ve been great friends ever since.
‘I can’t ask for a key,’ I reply. ‘Not yet. He barely knows me. I don’t want to go to him with a list of requirements.’
‘A key is hardly unreasonable, especially as he asked you to work from his house.’
‘Iwillask him for one, just not yet. Maybe next week.’ I smile at a woman as she trundles down the steep hill towards the toilet block with her onesie-clad daughter, before returning my gaze to the estuary. The tide is on its way back in. ‘I sat out on his front wall for a bit today. It was really hot.’
‘What’s wrong with his back garden?’ she asks, so I explain.
Charlie was hammering earlier, as well as sanding. He seems to be making basic structures out of wooden planks – at the moment he’s working on a play kitchen. I don’t know where the branches will come in.
‘Is he shaggable?’ she asks suddenly.
‘Highly,’ I reply with a smirk, then immediately feel guilty for being so flippant considering the circumstances that brought me here.
‘Does he look anything like Ross Poldark?’ Marty asks eagerly, blissfully unaware of my altered mood.
‘No,’ I reply firmly. ‘You’reobsessedwith that series!’
Poldarkis set in Cornwall, so she does have a reason for bringing it into our conversation.
‘Yeah, I am. Aidan Turner is insanely lickable.’
‘Lickable?’ I ask with a laugh, as our conversation goes off on a bizarre tangent. Nothing new, when it comes to Marty.
