fell.
Bryn looked at Milne. Milne looked at Bryn.
‘OK,’ said Milne, at last. ‘I’m interested.’
4
‘Ha, ha, ha, Bryn, you’re a right berk, you are.’ Dai, Bryn’s brother, the former glory of the Pontypridd rugby pack, swung his leg back and kicked a hole right through the collapsing timber. ‘I must be a bloody ghost, like,’ he said, crashing against the side of the shed with all his weight and emerging in a shower of rotten wood on the other side. ‘I can walk through walls. Here, look here.’ He was about to give another demonstration of his supernatural powers, when Bryn intervened.
‘OK, OK, Dai, I can see the wall’s rotten, thank you. I was wondering whether you might be able to fix it up as well as knocking it down.’
Dai clambered back through the hole he’d made, meditatively ripping off another chunk of planking on his way.
‘That all depends on the load-bearing timber.’
He used a pocket knife to scrape at one of the main timbers supporting the roof. There was a layer of green slime on top, but underneath the wood was hard and good. He walked along the wall, testing the thick oak pillars. ‘Seems OK. Have you looked in the roof?’
‘Yes. The beams and roof trusses are basically fine. The rest of it’s a disaster.’
‘Ha, ha, ha, by God, Bryn, it’s a good job you didn’t get really drunk, otherwise God knows what you’d have bought. Dad’s cow barn looks a bloody palace compared.’
He laughed, but all the time his eye was assessing what needed to be done. It wasn’t long before he delivered his verdict. ‘I’d say we can clean up the main structural timbers, rip away the rest of it – that’ll be a short bloody job, and all – and just put up a new shell, tongue and groove, shiplap, whatever. Then the roof basically the same. What do you want? Cheapest would be sheets of ply with weather-proofing. ‘Course, you’d have to –’
‘Insulation.’ Kati had appeared from one of the rooms to the side of the main boathouse. She was wearing gumboots and was wadded like a doughnut in fleece-and-down jackets. Her perfect curls were stuffed away into a woolly hat and her cheeks shone pink and clear with the cold. ‘Insulation,’ she said. ‘Lots of it.’
Insulation, Bryn? I’ll use eighteen-mill tongue and groove. Can’t see you wanting insulation as well.’
Kati opened her mouth to protest, but Bryn waved her quiet. ‘My brother’s idea of a joke. We’ll stick in a ton of fibreglass.’
‘Mineral wool’s better,’ said Kati. ‘Non-carcinogenic.’
She explored the building’s timbering with her hands, trying to visualise how the insulation would work, and Bryn stepped close to her, not touching, but working alongside her, their breath forming one cloud which rose above them into the vastness of the roof. ‘Mineral wool it is,’ he said, without stepping away from her side.
‘Eh, eh, Ewan,’ said Dai. ‘We need to sort out some rooms in here. No point putting in insulation if you’ve got a thirty-foot ceiling. And what d’you want to do about the observation tower? Rip it down or fix it up?’
Bryn reluctantly left Kati’s side and continued round the derelict buildings with his brother, identifying problems, suggesting solutions. He was a good builder, Dai, and his business would have done well even if it hadn’t been the automatic choice of every Pontypridd fan within forty miles.
‘We going to use local labour, or d’you want me to bring my men?’
‘Use yours,’ said Bryn. ‘I don’t want to pay London wages if I can help it.’
‘I’ll tell that to my lads, see if they want to come.’
‘They’ll come.’
‘And they’ll have to stay somewhere.’
‘They can stay with me.’
‘I’ll try, I promise, but no guarantees.’
‘How many men d’you need!’
Dai looked around. ‘Half a dozen, plus trades. Sparky, plumber, decorator.’
Bryn pulled three wads of tickets from his pocket. ‘Six Nations rugby,’ he said. ‘England-Wales at Twickenham, Ireland-Wales at Lansdowne Road, Wales-France at the Millennium Stadium. I’m still trying to get Wales-Scotland, and the Italy game. Transport and beer thrown in as well.’
‘By damn,’ said Dai, fanning out the tickets in admiration. ‘You’re right, they’ll come. Bloody hell, Bryn, we’d even get Dad up to London for this, except he’s under the weather all the time now.’
After Dai had left, notebook crammed with notes, rugby tickets cosseted like the Crown Jewels in his breast pocket, Kati spoke to Bryn.
‘Nice guy, your brother.’
‘Salt of the earth, and just as thirsty.’
‘He called you Ewan. Why?’
‘We had a sheepdog called Ewan when we were lads. It’s just a nickname.’
Ewan was the name of a sheepdog, alright, but not just any old dog. Of all the many collies bred and trained by Bryn’s dad, Ewan was without question, beyond a doubt, and past dispute the randiest of them all. Dai had noticed Bryn’s not-so-casual closeness to Kati, and the nickname was invoked by either brother when they saw the other in pursuit of a skirt.
Kati nodded solemnly as though Bryn’s bland explanation made sense, knowing that it didn’t. Later that day, when Bryn took advantage of Cameron’s absence to take a meal alone with Kati, she laughed at his jokes, was merry and outgoing, was happy to talk about herself and her family, and showed a warm interest in Bryn and his family. But when the meal ended, she refused a ‘cup of coffee at my place’, kissed Bryn high on the cheek, and took a separate cab home to her Notting Hill flatshare.
‘Eh, eh, Ewan,’ said Bryn to himself as he watched her go, ‘never give up, boy, never give up.’
5
Starting in business is like jumping a ravine. Getting it right is terrific. Getting it nearly right is so bad, you’d better not have jumped at all.
Bryn knew that. He’d seen businesses take the run up, make the jump, lose their footing ever so slightly on take off – and then sail through the air, destined never to make the other side, destined to fall in appalled slow motion a thousand feet to the boulders and thorn bushes strewing the canyon floor.
He didn’t want to be like that. He took precautions, and one night he drew up a contract and brought it to Cameron, who was sitting in Bryn’s living-room-turned-laboratory.
‘Hey there, Money Man,’ she greeted him.
‘Hey there, Medicine Woman.’
‘Found me my money yet?’
‘Nope. Still looking. Found a cure for AIDS yet?’
‘Nope. Still looking.’
They laughed. Because he was laughing, Bryn spilled his coffee (Jamaican roast, double espresso, a hint of sugar). The coffee splurged out on to the sofa, staining the pale yellow silk. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said as Cameron leaped up, ready to mop it up. ‘Leave it.’
‘You don’t like the sofa? It’s kind of nice to spoil.’
‘It’s OK.’ Bryn shrugged. ‘But Cecily wants it back. As well as that,’ he said, pointing to a little Venetian chess table. ‘And that, that, that and that,’ he said, pointing to most of the other objects in the room.
‘She’s