came round to measure up for bookcases over a week ago. I think he may have snuck it out with him when he left. Which explains a lot, actually. At the time he certainly had me fooled. I even felt a little sorry for him. Now, of course, I’m beginning to wonder if he was actually a carpenter at all.
He spent hours measuring up; literally hours, and then at the end, while he was still blowing gently over a stonecold cup of tea, I asked him, not unreasonably I thought, how long he thought he might need to build the things. And he looked astonished. He looked quite put out. Five minutes passed with him carefully adjusting the position of his mug on the kitchen table, scratching on his fleabites and so on…
Until finally, very, very slowly, he said: ‘Fact ezzz, Madam [Madam!] I can’t say…Not in so many werrds…I wud if I cud, believe me…Much as I’d love if I cud, see…As the saying goes, How long is a piece of string?’
And that was it. Beyond that, however many times I asked, whichever way I phrased the question, he simply refused to be drawn.
I got his name off a card at the launderette, but that’s hardly a solid endorsement, is it? If my laptop doesn’t turn up soon I think I’m going to call the police.
Called the police. Funny. Ten years in Shepherds Bush and I never bothered to contact them once. Three months down here in Paradise and I’ve already got the number for the local station on speed dial. What does that say? Not at all sure, yet. But it must say something, mustn’t it?
I had already explained how I wrote novels and magazine articles and so on, and about Ripley and Dora and the new dog called Mabel, and the move down from London. I’d explained that my husband was originally from Quebec but that he didn’t really speak much French any more. I think I told him about my 2.1 in history, my antipathy to the London Olympics, and about my recently deceased great aunt who was allergic to oysters. So I was on the very point of handing over the carpenter’s name and telephone number—when I spotted my precious laptop, nestling happily beneath a large dictionary on my, er, desk.
Luckily, I managed to get the policeman off the telephone without his suspecting anything. He’s suggested I go down to the station to make an official statement. Which obviously I can’t now, can I?
Shame.
Never mind. Tonight I have the mysteriously nonresponsive and familiar-looking babysitter coming round. I’m going to dinner with Rachel White and her husband the accountant and, truth be told, I can’t wait. I’ve not been out for so long now I don’t think I’ve looked forward to an evening so much in years.
Unfortunately Fin’s not going to be able to make it. He just called. One of his financiers pulled out this morning and the film is on the point of total collapse. So. He has meetings to go to. I hope Rachel doesn’t mind. It’s not his fault. There’s really not much he can do about it, anyway. And she seems very nice. I’m sure she’ll understand.
!!!!! She CANCELLED me! She bloody CANCELLED me!
I saw her at the school gate so over I scuttled, all smiley and super. I should have realised that things weren’t going to be simple from the start, because I opened with a friendly-but-casual ‘Hello, Rachel! Still on for tonight?’
And she definitely looked offended. ‘Goodness, I should hope so,’ she said.
I ploughed on in any case, friendly-but-casual as before.
‘…He’s so sorry,’ I said. ‘He was looking forward to this evening so much, but he’s stuck in these awful meetings the whole night, and it was a choice, really: make the dinner party or save the film! So I’m afraid you’re going to have to make do with just me!’
She shook her head, and I could tell before she spoke, by the shape her lips were making, that I’d got it wrong. I’d got everything completely wrong.
‘Oh, what a shame!’ she cried, almost as if I’d told her I had to amputate the leg. ‘Oh, goodness, what a shame. Oh, that’s such a disappointment!’ The skin around her nostrils went red, and I realised with a chill that she wasn’t looking at me any more.
I said, ‘Rachel, he’s so sorry. And so am I. But still I’m so looking forward—’
She said, ‘Don’t be silly. There’s no way we’re dragging you out in the middle of the night on your own. Certainly not.’
‘But—’
‘No. We wouldn’t think of it. We wouldn’t dream of asking such a thing.’
‘But—’
‘No.’
‘But, please—’
But, no.
No.
And that was it. She said she’d make another date ‘when Finley’s schedule is a bit clearer’, and she suggested we meet for ‘a coffee’ one day next week.
Fin went to the screening of Hatty and Damian’s short film last night. He said it was very, very good. Dying to see it.
I sent them a bunch of flowers for luck. Wonder if they arrived in time? Any case I’d better take the dog out. She’s making funny coughing noises, and all the chocolate biscuits have gone missing. Got a feeling she’s about to be sick.
Half the builders I telephone don’t even bother to return my telephone calls. The rest make appointments, and then never turn up. Can’t quite work out what I’m doing wrong.
Fin, needless to say, has had a little more success. Somebody in London gave him the name of an Irish woman called Megan, who apparently once did some work for one of the Rolling Stones and who consequently (he’d been warned) presented herself very much as a Builder to the Stars.
He contacted her last Friday evening, and she hopped onto her broomstick there and then, arriving at our front door, hunchback and shoulders fully relaxed, dyed black hair perfectly coiffed and stout little body positively dripping in eighties-style jewellery, within an hour of his making the telephone call. How does he do it?
Sadly, however, we had to reject her. Or maybe she sadly rejected us. It was pretty clear from the beginning that we were singing from different hymn sheets.
‘I can tell you’re a woman with discerning taste,’ she muttered to me, leaning her broomstick against the porch and shimmying into our untouched, half-lit, empty hallway. I felt quite aglow for a moment—until I looked up and down and around and about and realised she had absolutely nothing, at that early stage, upon which to base the observation.
Anyway. She took the briefest of glances round our bomb-site of a house and then, suddenly, looked at her watch and announced she had to leave. She couldn’t possibly discuss budgets or plans with us, she said, until we had inspected the property she and ‘her boys’ were currently working on in a village about twenty miles away.
We went to look at it the next morning. A Saturday. It was a house belonging to a couple of art dealers from Seattle, neither of whom was present. Nevertheless I think she was quite put out that we tipped up with the children. It’s possible she was quite put out that we tipped up at all.
The tour, which was made unnecessarily stressful by her rampant irritation with our fairly well-behaved children, seemed to go on forever. Fin