Chapter 32 #2
I give Gavin the keys. ‘You go up, I’ll be there in a minute.
’ Understandably, they seem a bit miffed at being told to disappear so I can speak with my ex, but they do as I ask.
I stand inside the building, using my body to hold the front door open so I won’t have to make Gavin buzz me in.
It also allows me to hear the sound of Gavin opening the lock, entering the flat and shutting the door behind them.
Nicol seems to understand this is what we’re waiting for and doesn’t say anything until all the noises necessary for privacy are completed.
‘So, what is it?’ My intention is to sound strong and direct. I wonder if, actually, I sound stroppy.
‘We need more information. Anything you can get on Heather Gray’s properties and any dodgy stuff she’s done in the last five years. By next Thursday if possible – that’s when we have our next union meeting.’
‘Oh, just loads of sensitive information to get in five working days. Sounds reasonable.’
He puts a hand on my elbow. ‘I know this is a lot to ask, but if we get her, it’s going to help so many people.
It’ll all be worthwhile and it’ll all be because of you.
’ He completes his uncharacteristic kindness towards me with a full wide-eyed look.
See how truthful and kind I am being, he’s trying to say to me. It’s disconcerting.
‘I’ll see what I can do. Get Amara to text me when and where I’ve to share what I find.’
And even though we slept beside one another every night for years, exchanged bodily fluids, shared a language of catchphrases and jokes only we would understand, we don’t know how to say goodbye in this new arrangement and so I let him walk away without any farewell.
It distracts me, the fissures that form after a relationship ends, how I could once feel everything about him and now nothing.
Is this what will happen with Gavin, I wonder, as I make my way into the flat to the scent of onions frying.
Gavin is in the kitchen opening a packet of mince; there’s a small saucepan of garlicky tomato sauce beginning to bubble.
I come up behind them, wrap my arms around their belly and put my head in between their shoulder blades.
‘Smells delicious.’
Gavin shoogles their back as if I’m an insect they’re trying to shake off. I release. I guess if their ex had turned up and wanted a private conversation I too might be irritated.
‘The conversation with Nicol was really nothing. He likes making things sound more dramatic and important than they are.’
They chuck the mince into the saucepan, the scrap of material that soaks up all the meat juices in the packet still clinging to it. Picking it off with their fingers, they doggedly refuse to look at me. ‘If it’s nothing, then you can tell me what it is.’
I sigh, which I shouldn’t do because as soon as I do I realise it sounds like I’m dismissing Gavin rather than what it really is – exasperation with Nicol for continually causing issues in my life. Honesty, as they say, is the best policy.
‘I’m funnelling him information about one of the landlords that uses work as their agency.
Heather Gray. Who is a very bad person, by the way.
You know the cleaning company she uses at end of tenancies for her properties?
She owns it, so she can charge double the going rate, get a legitimate invoice and then reclaim it through the deposit protection scheme, ripping off her tenants one last time.
Despicable. The union are trying to get a legal case together and Nicol wants me to get more documentation for their meeting next week. ’
The sliver of the pink juicy bit of material on the mince comes off in one clean peel.
Gavin holds it between their index finger and thumb daintily before they chuck it in the bin and then starts smashing into the mince with a wooden spoon.
‘So you’re risking your employment for someone who cheated on you?
Definitely breaking data protection laws by revealing sensitive information about her?
Why would you do that for him? You know he wouldn’t do anything like that for you, don’t you? ’
I open the fridge, take out a bottle of white wine we half drunk last night, hoping the visual reminder of a happier time might bring Gavin out of this mood.
‘Nicol is, and I’m not just saying this, awful.
A terrible person. However, Heather Gray is worse.
She is a scourge on society, a parasite.
So, temporarily, I’m able to put aside my dislike of Nicol.
Only for another week and then after the meeting I’ll have nothing to do with him ever again.
I promise.’ Gavin keeps battering the mince. ‘Wine?’
‘No, I’m OK, thank you,’ and then they start to grate cheese, their body angled away from me, their focus on the cheese and the grater and absolutely definitely not me.
I pour myself a glass of wine, put the almost-empty bottle back into the fridge and enjoy the tinkle of it hitting against other bottles when I shut the door, before taking a restorative sip, trying to act nonplussed about Gavin’s huff.
I understand it but I don’t want it to develop into an argument from anything I do, and so I go to the living room and open up a book I have moved about the house for months, from my bedside table to the coffee table to next to the bath and then back to my bedside table, but have never actually read beyond the first three pages.
I feel concerned, worried, that Gavin will not stop being upset with me, and that the truth about what I am doing with Nicol – a small detail, really – will be all it takes for them to be put off me, because I am not lovable, I am not attractive.
It was a good decision on my part not to mention the feet pics yet; they are maybe not able to accept the ickier parts of my being.
Periodically I turn the pages of the book I cannot focus on, so if Gavin were to observe me they would see me being unbothered and at the same time bookish and intellectual.
There’s a tension in the air, any move I make could be the wrong one, and so I stop even turning the pages after a while, in case they are the flap of a butterfly’s wings that causes the explosion of our burgeoning relationship.
All the while I listen to the sounds of Gavin moving around the kitchen, trying to decipher what they mean.
Is that clank of a pan being put onto the stovetop a sign they are angry, or is it the usual amount of racket they make while cooking?
When the tap turns on is that Gavin wetting their face to calm down and take the heat out of them or are they washing their hands and no longer thinking about Nicol?
I don’t know them well enough to understand how they’re reacting, and that remains true when they come into the living room, their jacket on and their backpack over their shoulder.
‘Food is in the oven, it’ll need about thirty minutes. I won’t be eating it, I forgot I had things to do so I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Then they hover at the threshold of the room and I can’t tell if they want me to plead with them to stay or if leaving is for the best.
‘Are you sure? Can’t you at least stay until after dinner? I was really looking forward to spending the night with you.’
‘No, I need to go. I got a message about work stuff that’s urgent.’
‘From our work? I’ve never heard you or Brian doing stuff at night. Is everything OK?’
‘Yeah, just that Go Holdings client. They don’t have that many properties but when something goes wrong I need to be across it ASAP.’
They come towards me and kiss me on the lips, which could be sincere emotion or a way of shutting up further questions. Then they go. I have no clue how I’m supposed to feel about it until I remember what they said, and I set a timer for the food because I may be confused but I am also hungry.
When the lasagne is cooked, I take a big slice and then set myself up on the sofa. I won’t be watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest like we planned. With no real thought, my fingers perform the actions they have done hundreds of times to bring up Fixer Uppers Go Under the Hammer.
Eating dinner, I think of reasons to tell Gavin tomorrow why the lasagne is famous to me.
Because it is the best cheese sauce I have ever tasted, it has the perfect ratio of filling to pasta to sauce, because they made it for me and no one has ever put in this much effort to feed me for as long as I can remember, let alone while upset with me.
I will tell them I look forward to when they make me one in a good mood because I expect it will be even better.
And then I will tell them I will not do what Nicol asked me to do if it upsets them.
They are my future and Nicol is my past and can stay there if Gavin wants him to, I have other means of making a difference.
Fixer Uppers Go Under the Hammer
Series 1, episode 17.
First broadcast 21/08/00.
MALCOLM (early thirties). He is in Larkhall outside a bungalow that has been painted a lurid pink.
CUT TO: MALCOLM inside the bungalow, talking to camera.
MALCOLM
(Laughing) Welcome to ‘The Blancmange Bungalow’. Don’t worry, it’s not actually called that, I just think it should be.
MALCOLM spreads his arms wide in the entrance hallway. The walls are covered in textured wallpaper, which has been painted a deep raspberry.
MALCOLM
(His laughter continues) Wowsers, and now we’re in the raspberry sorbet hallway!
MALCOLM rubs his hand across the wallpaper.
MALCOLM
Thankfully, the walls do not have the consistency of sorbet.
Walking down the hallway, MALCOLM points through to the living room.
MALCOLM
There is the living room.
OFF SCREEN: JEMMA can only take so much of this. She watches at double speed to understand the bungalow has structures to do with mining close to its foundation and so intense structural work will need to be done by whoever purchases it.
CUT TO: The auction. HENRY (early thirties) has a Ewan McGregor look to him. He wins the bungalow for ￡38,000.
MALCOLM (VO)
The winning bid came from property surveyor Henry. I met up with him at the Blancmange Bungalow to find out his plans to give it less wobble.
OFF SCREEN: JEMMA is losing patience, she fast-forwards to the reveal.
The exterior of the house is now white where before it was pink.
MALCOLM (VO)
Well, bye bye, Blancmange Bungalow, hello to a fresh new start.
There is a montage showing each room in its rejuvenated state. Most of the rooms have been painted magnolia and have had new beige carpets fitted. HENRY is in the living room talking to an interviewer off camera.
HENRY
The structural stabilisation has been completed – at great expense – so the house is now totally safe and will have no further movement.
OFF SCREEN: JEMMA grows hopeful that a man this handsome, who has put so much money into fixing the house’s foundations, will keep it to live in. She remains this way when the estate agent gives their estimate and HENRY reacts by puffing out his cheeks in disbelief.
HENRY
Seems like a ridiculous amount of money. (Beat) Unfortunately, that does seem to be the going rate. The value in this area is only going to go up, so because of that I’m going to rent it out.
OFF SCREEN: JEMMA learns an important lesson. Even the handsome can be greedy bastards.