Chapter 7
The strangeness of having a person beside me in bed who is not Nicol is putting me off sleeping.
Gavin is taller, broader; their skin gives off a different, floral scent which tickles my nose, my body alert to the fact this is a new person I don’t know I can trust. This may be leftover anxiety from Nicol, who smelt fine but was a rotten person, or because I have positioned Gavin in their comatose state with their head angled off the bed so if they vomit in their sleep it will, hopefully, land in the basin I’ve positioned beneath them.
Actually, maybe I can’t sleep because I am terrified they will be sick on my sheets, or on the nice rug I saved up for that’s next to the bed, or on me.
The thought of their hot vomit hitting me while I’m unconscious is enough to get me out of bed. I drag the decorative throw off the duvet and through to the living room, keeping the door to the bedroom open so I can hear if Gavin makes any noises that sound like choking to death on their own vomit.
The plan was never for Gavin to come back here, but before I knew it we were on my street, each step toward the flat taking ages due to kissing and fumbling with one another.
The realisation that Gavin was not in a fit state to consent to sex only became apparent when I got my keys out my handbag to open the door to the close and they started weeping.
‘I can’t go in there. Not when…’
The tears were what sealed the deal to no intercourse.
It’s not that I mind them being open with their emotions but, well, they have cried to me three times in three days.
I couldn’t risk them doing it while they were inside me, with the booze wearing off and them realising how low they’d sunk to fuck me.
Still, I would have been open to hand stuff at this point, so I tried coaxing them in.
‘He’s not in there, it’ll be alright.’
‘His body isn’t there but what about his soul?’
It was hard to imagine Colin possessing a soul, but if I do, I guess he must have had one too. Visualising it, all I could see was an insignificant wisp of air.
‘Look, I’m not entering into a negotiation, Gavin. You either come in or you don’t. I’m not going to make you.’
After getting dangerously close to me locking them out on the street, they followed me to my flat. ‘I’m sorry I’m always crying around you. It’s not usually like this. I’m sorry. I’m having problems.’
Inside, upon seeing the bathroom door, they shrieked and went into my room, where they lay down while I got them a glass of water. By the time I returned with it, they were asleep, fully dressed minus their shoes, in my bed.
Which is how I have come to be contorting to fit on my sofa, my body and brain too alert to switch off for sleep. I find myself scrolling on my phone, hoping to make my eyes heavy from reading the headlines.
The story ‘One in Every 21 Adults in the UK is a Landlord’ does the opposite to what I intended; my fury fuels me to find out more information about the only landlord I know by name now mine is deceased: Willie.
The top search result is his Facebook page, which doesn’t reveal much – only his profile and banner images are accessible to me.
His profile picture is a selfie, which, while surely taken on a modern smartphone, has mysteriously bad image quality, like CCTV from an episode of Crimewatch in the 1990s.
The sun is shining behind him, casting his face into shadow.
Blue skies and white clouds frame his head, highlighting how he’s probably only in his mid-forties, but his hair, or what’s left of it, ages him – he’s bald on top with stubby white hairs at the sides of his head.
What we can see of his face is sunburnt, and while I recognise he’s smiling, what constitutes Willie’s smile looks like a grimace, as if he’s not used to pulling that facial expression and it’s causing him pain.
The image on his LinkedIn isn’t much better.
As it’s a professional page he’s chosen a shot of him in a suit with a stern expression, like he’s too busy thinking about business to be personable.
The experience section on his profile shows he believes his job is ‘Property Developer and Project Manager at Hamilton Homes’.
He claims Hamilton Homes is ‘raising the quality of rental accommodation in South Lanarkshire and beyond’.
The ‘beyond’ sounds like he has global ambitions but probably means ‘Motherwell’.
The work experience that has helped him reach this lofty position is being a route planner for a logistics company for eighteen years.
I scroll down to the bottom of the list of other logistics jobs that precede his managerial one and find no building experience, no plumbing certification, no time spent doing manual labour, nothing that would indicate this man knows anything about property other than he can profit from it.
Amending my search to ‘Willie McAllister + Hamilton Homes’ brings up an HMRC page which shows his company’s accounts.
I’ve never filed a tax return, so I’m not entirely sure what a lot of the terms on the page mean.
What I can ascertain is that he owns rental properties valued at ￡982,000 and he earnt ￡66,000 from his business last year.
Yes, definitely so poor he needs to charge folk to put out a wheelie bin belonging to his own property.
The screen fades to black from my lack of scrolling but I don’t feel like putting it down yet. I swipe it back into life and search Willie’s name and Fixer Uppers Go Under the Hammer. It brings up his episode, which some dear, demented person has chosen to upload to YouTube.
Fixer Uppers Go Under the Hammer
Series 27, episode 22.
First broadcast 30/06/21.
MALCOLM is in a field welcoming us to the show.
MALCOLM
Welcome to the show.
OFF SCREEN: JEMMA scrolls through the episode until WILLIE appears.
WILLIE stops in front of the two-bedroom red brick house he bought at auction and looks it up and down.
CUT TO WILLIE and MALCOLM next to a brick chimney breast, a small electric fire nestled within it.
MALCOLM
I hear this is your thirteenth rental property – well done. Does that mean you have a roster of contractors who’ll do the renovation?
WILLIE
I’m fairly knowledgeable, having done so many of these renovations. I’m confident I won’t need any outside assistance.
MALCOLM
Even with the mould issue?
CUT TO a shot of pink bubbling mould next to the kitchen sink.
WILLIE
Even with the mould issue.
MALCOLM
And what about the garden in the front?
CUT TO a shot of a beautiful garden filled with mature flowerbeds which have overgrown slightly.
WILLIE
Parking is at a premium in this street so I’ll be ripping all that out and creating a driveway.
MALCOLM
So no green space at all in the front?
WILLIE
I think parking is more of a concern. It’ll mean there’s no maintenance needed for the front garden, which is something I’ve noticed tenants don’t always keep on top of as much as I’d like. This solution eliminates two problems in one.
CUT TO MALCOLM in the kitchen.
MALCOLM
They say thirteen is unlucky for some. Will that prove the case for Willie? Go and make yourself a cup of tea and come back and find out later in the show.
OFF SCREEN: JEMMA tap tap taps on the skip-ahead-ten-seconds button on her screen until she lands on WILLIE’s house.
The exterior, with the mass of grass and weeds in the garden, is shown. There’s a swish sound and the old house is transformed, with grey gravel where grass used to be and a matching grey front door.
MALCOLM (VO)
Wow! What a difference. It looks very smart from the outside, but what about the inside?
CUT TO WILLIE in the kitchen in front of shiny white cupboards. The mould above the sink is no longer obviously visible.
OFF SCREEN: JEMMA pauses the show and scrutinises the scene. The mould has been painted over, but if you really look you can see the bubbles of it underneath the emulsion. It is still very much there.
The staircase is shown before, its bare floorboards exposed, and then as it is now, resplendent with grey carpet covering it. The living room and its woodchip walls have been plastered smooth and painted white; the grey carpet from the staircase used in here, too.
WILLIE
I went for a white and grey colour scheme because that’s what everyone seems to like these days.
The upstairs bedrooms are smaller versions of the living room. The same white paint, the same grey carpet.
MALCOLM (VO)
The bedrooms are now crisp and clean. And as for the back garden?
WILLIE
We’ve done an Astroturf lawn and it’s worked out nicely.
A variety of shots of the garden highlighting the new plastic lawn.
WILLIE
We really wanted to make this a modern, profitable home.
MALCOLM (VO)
But does the agent agree?
OFF SCREEN: JEMMA, having had enough of brIAN for one day, skips past him until WILLIE reappears, low-key raging but pretending not to be.
WILLIE
That seems very low. I’ve had other valuations that are at least ￡100 a month more than that so that’s what I’ll be putting it on the market for.
OFF SCREEN: WILLIE’s paused irate face looks up at JEMMA from her phone screen. A growing hatred for him soothes her to sleep.