“Off you go,” Colin said.
Diwa approached the ladder. He examined it from one angle, then another. He selected a corner of the outer plastic and attempted to insert his thumbnail into the seam. His thumbnail, which was buffed and clean and almost certainly the product of a manicure, slid off without making any impression. He tried again, with more force, and the plastic puckered slightly but didn’t yield.
“Is there a secret to this?” Diwa looked around the hallway. He poked at the plastic agitatedly. He pinched the seam and pulled, then attempted to bite it, and Colin, despite himself, had to look at the ceiling for a moment to recover.
After ninety seconds of this, Diwa stood up and turned to Colin with wounded dignity. “I think the plastic is, um. Defective.”
Colin took his own keys out of his pocket, selected the largest one, and drew it down the seam of the outer plastic in a slow, deliberate line. The plastic parted easily under the key. He didn’t open it the rest of the way. He pulled the key back, closed his fist around the keyring, and held it out.
Diwa took the keys. He crouched in front of the ladder, lined the largest key up against the seam, and went at it. The first pass was tentative and the plastic only dimpled. He adjusted his grip and tried again, and the seam opened under the key in one long satisfying breach. He kept going through the inner layer without being prompted, and when the stepladder stood revealed in all its yellow B&Q glory with the price sticker still stuck to one leg, Diwa looked up at Colin with a smile as he returned his keys.
“You’re going to set it up under the fitting now,” Colin said.
Diwa set it up. He extended the legs and looked for a long moment at the locking mechanism before working out which way it went. The ladder unfolded, swayed once, and settled.
“Now you’re going to take the bulb out of the box and out of its little plastic sleeve.”
This Diwa managed without incident. The bulb was one of those Edison-style filament things that cost twelve quid and gave off less light than a match. Colin had opinions about people who spent twelve quid on a light bulb, but he would keep them to himself now on account of this alpha’s dimples.
“Up you go.”
Diwa put one foot on the bottom rung. He paused.
“Could you, um.” Diwa cleared his throat. “Could you maybe hold the ladder. While I’m on it.”
“I’ll hold the ladder.” Colin set his hands on the side rails. Diwa climbed, slowly, the bulb cradled in his palm. He got to the third rung and stopped.
“It feels higher than it looked.”
“You’re three feet off the ground, and you’ve still got some way to go.”
“Yeah, no, I know, it’s just…” Diwa looked down at Colin and then quickly looked back up at the fitting. “Okay. Okay, I’m doing it.”
He reached up. The fitting was, in fact, well within his reach without him needing to go any higher, which was a small mercy.
“A lad I used to know got electrocuted doing this exact job,” Colin said conversationally.
Diwa’s hand stopped moving. “What?”
“He forgot to flip the breaker. Same as you nearly did just now.”
“I didn’t, I flipped it.”
“He thought he had, too.”
Diwa was very still on the ladder now. Colin kept his hands on the rails and his voice in the same flat, unhurried register he used to give people the bus timetable.
“The thing about getting a live current through you is that your muscles lock. You can’t let go of the wire. People think you can. You can’t. The current contracts the muscles and the strongest muscles in your hand are the ones that close it, so your fist clamps shut around whatever’s killing you and there’s nothing you can do about it. You just stand there until someone notices.”
“Colin.”
“And that’s if you’re lucky enough to be standing on something dry. If the ladder’s metal, like that one, and your other hand’s touching it, the current’s got a lovely little paththrough your heart on the way to ground. The smell’s the worst bit, people say. Bit like pork crackling but sweeter.”
“Colin, I’m holding a…”
“And the thing they don’t tell you, the thing that gets people who think they’ve had a near miss, is the cardiac arrhythmia. You can walk away feeling fine and drop dead three hours later making yourself a cup of tea. It’s the electrical signal in the heart, see. Gets scrambled. Doctors can’t always pick it up. Bloke I knew, he was at his sister’s birthday. She blew out the candles, and he went over like a sack of spuds.”
There was a small, wet swallowing noise from the top of the ladder.
