Chapter 4
FOUR
17 MARCH 2005
St Patrick’s Day. Well, I shan’t be carousing in the street with pints of Guinness and a sexy leprechaun outfit this year – or any year, come to that. But I find myself, as I huddle under the duvet – which at least, now, covers a new mattress and a proper bed – considering breathing a prayer to him, the patron saint of engineers.
Yesterday a surveyor visited and the news he left was not good. The house, it seems, is practically falling down. There’s dry rot in the floors and rising damp in the walls, as well as evidence of woodworm and rodent infestations, not to mention the fact that the entire roof needs replacing before the top floor gets even more sodden than it already is and the ceiling above me collapses.
Then something else happened – something better. Maybe St Jude, patron saint of lost causes, has been looking out for me after all? It was when I visited the newsagent, not just because I’d run out of bread and milk but because Imran, the shopkeeper, was likely to be the only friendly face I’d see all day.
For the first time, I stopped outside Imran’s shop and took a proper look at the cards stuck in the window. Many of them were faded, curled at the corners and dusty – it’s a quaintly old- fashioned way to advertise one’s services, whether as a painter or a prostitute, now that everything happens on the internet. But one looked relatively new and freshly lettered, carefully handwritten with what looked like a permanent marker. I can’t remember now exactly what it said, but two things jumped out at me: Handyman Services and a mobile number.
I hadn’t been praying but it was like an answer to prayer.
I dialled the number. A young man’s voice answered and I gabbled out the fact that I was in desperate need of his services. Then he dashed my hopes: his circumstances had changed, he said, his accommodation in London had fallen through and so he was going to return to his family in Leicester.
Some kind of desperation possessed me. In that moment, it seemed like this boy – Luke, he’d said his name was when he answered the phone – was my only hope.
Don’t do that! I begged. You can come and stay in my house for free if you’ll do some of the work that’s needed.
He must have thought I was mad. I think I am mad!
But he must also be just as desperate as I am, because he agreed to come and meet me and see the house. I will have to pay him, I’m sure, in addition to putting him up in one of the rooms here – the one across the landing is probably the most habitable. There is far too much work here for one man to tackle, however desperate he is for a roof over his head, and I know absolutely nothing about this Luke – he could be a fraudster or even an axe murderer. But even if he is, I have nothing to be defrauded of and his axe-wielding skills might come in handy getting rid of some of the crumbling dry-walling left over from when this place was a warren of cheaply rented offices.
What’s more, he mentioned that his ultimate goal is to become an artist – almost as if he knew that would instantly make me look kindly on him, given my own mothballed ambitions.
Best of all, my conversation with him has given me an idea. I may have almost no money, but I have all the space I could want. Eventually, I may be able to find other people who are desperate enough to want to live here – people who will pay me actual money. I can cook and clean for them, like a proper old-fashioned landlady. The prospect makes me feel almost hopeful. Perhaps we have a future together, this house and me. I will put a card of my own in the newsagent’s window and see what happens.