Say Hello and Wave Goodbye Page 6

  ‘You working today then?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah. Rush job on.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t work on Saturdays.’

  ‘I don’t, and I don’t really want to work today but I can’t get out of it. Bloody nuisance. I put in for the job months ago and she dithered about and then rings me this week and says she need it doing asap. I should have said no but the money’s too good to turn down. I might have to work tomorrow as well.’ He looks fed up.

  ‘Well, if there’s anything I can do,’ I say in a throwaway manner as I lick my finger and flip over a page of my magazine.

  ‘Do you mean that?’

  ‘Do I mean what?’

  ‘About doing anything? ’

  Too late I realise what I’ve said; the Beccabird laughs manically.

  ‘Of course,’ I say, not meaning it at all. ‘Anything. Just ask.’

  ‘You look reasonably fit. Can you dig? And lift stuff?’ He looks me up and down with narrowed eyes. Don’t push the boat out with the compliments, Flynn.

  ‘Yeah, of course I can,’ I say indignantly. The Beccabird laughs even louder.

  ‘You could help me. I’d pay you.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t expect you to pay me.’

  ‘No, I insist. It’s hard work and I’m getting paid well so I wouldn’t expect you to work for nothing.’

  I shrug. ‘Okay but you don’t have to.’ Why did I open my big mouth?

  Flynn claps his hands together and rubs them. ‘Brilliant, you’re a star, Becca. I’ll give you one of my boiler suits to wear and it’ll be so much quicker with the two of us doing it. I really appreciate it. Right, I’ve just got to load up the truck so I’ll see you out the front in what, say, ten minutes?’

  ‘Ten minutes?’ I splutter, nearly choking on my coffee.

  ‘Yeah.’ He turns and stomps out through the kitchen. ‘And don’t bother showering ‘cos you’ll be filthy by the time we’re finished. And wear old clothes,’ he shouts over his shoulder as he goes out of the front door.

  Why did I open my big mouth? I’m not in the slightest bit fit and I’ve just managed to talk myself into a day’s hard labour.

  Well what else did you have planned ? asks the Beccabird spitefully, Lunch with your friends, a hot date?

  She’s right; I was only going to sit here feeling sorry for myself and eat my bodyweight in chocolate reading about Kerry Katona’s latest husband. I’ll think of it as a work out, I decide, it’ll be good exercise and might even kick start anew health regime. I jump up out of the chair and make myself run up the stairs as if this will somehow make me fitter. I dash into the bathroom and brush my teeth while looking longingly at the shower, I could be in and out in five minutes.

  Five minutes! Snorts the Beccabird. You’ll be ages and make Flynn late for the job.

  Annoyingly, she’s right, I’m not the quickest at getting washed but I feel grubby, I haven’t left the house without showering in many years.

  No. I can’t make Flynn late, I’ll just have to feel dirty because I really don’t have time. Teeth scrubbed, I quickly squirt some deodorant underneath my armpits and rub a wet wipe over my face, which will have to do.

  I sprint into my bedroom and drag my oldest jeans from the bottom of the wardrobe; faded and worn to a soft denim, they’re the most comfortable pair I possess. I yank my pyjamas off and throw them on the bed and drag the jeans on and pull an old T-shirt over my head. It might be a bit cold so I pull a sweatshirt out of the drawer that’s definitely seen better days. It’s a bit tight because I put it on a too hot wash but it won’t matter because it’ll be underneath one of Flynn’s boiler suits. I pull on the socks with the hole in and put my rattiest old trainers on. I knew these old clothes would come in handy one day.

  Seeing as you wear them to slob around the house most of the time you weren’t going to throw them away, were you? the Beccabird, as usual, has to stick her beak in.

  I drag a comb through my hair and scoop it up into a pony tail and ram a baseball cap over the top. It’s greasy and due a wash this morning but no time for that now; a vision of me relaxing in a luxurious bubble bath soaking away the aches and pains of the day pops into my head. I’ll probably lose at least half a stone with all this exercise and get nicely toned up as well.

  Perfect.

  Just in time too; I hear a rumbling noise and look down into the street from my bedroom window to see Flynn’s battered open back truck pulling up outside the house. A jumble of spades, assorted gardening tools and what looks like rubble and mud are heaped haphazardly in the back. I grab my house keys from the dressing table and run down the stairs, having a quick look in the kitchen to make sure I haven’t left anything turned on before I leave the house.

  I rap on the truck window and Flynn leans across the passenger seat and pushes the door open. I clamber onto the front seat which is an all in one bench and I wonder where the gear stick is hiding. Sausage is sitting on the seat next to Flynn and as I shut the door and pull my seat belt on, he sidles up next to me.

  ‘Hello, Sausage.’ I stroke his velvety ears and he looks up me with his liquid brown eyes.

  Flynn is frowning at my feet.

  ‘There’s a spare pair of overalls there.’ He nods at the seat between us. ‘You’ll have to roll the legs up.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Flynn is frowning at my feet.

  Haven’t you got any wellies?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What size are you?’

  ‘Five.’

  ‘Christ, midget feet,’ he snorts, pushing the gear shift on the steering wheel and stamping his foot on the accelerator. ‘I’d lend you a pair of mine but I take an eleven.’

  ‘I haven’t got midget feet, I’m a girl. I’m not supposed to have size eleven feet,’ I say.

  ‘I suppose they’ll have to do,’ he says, as if I can change the size of my feet. ‘Just be careful where you’re stepping. Don’t want any nasty accidents.’

  I say nothing and pull Sausage onto my lap so I can cuddle him. He nestles into me and promptly falls asleep.

  We drive through the centre of Frogham and out onto the B road towards Frogley-by-Sea. We bump along the road and everything in the truck seems to rattle; if I didn’t have the seat belt holding me in I think I’d slide off the seat. I hold Sausage a bit tighter. The seat feels as if it’s made from concrete and I hope we don’t have too far to go.

  ‘So where’s this job?’ I shout over the noise of the engine.

  ‘About ten miles away. Cracking house but it’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere.’

  ‘And what’s the job? What are you actually doing there?’

  ‘Nothing too drastic. Some borders and putting some stone in front of the pond and a general tidy up. The garden’s a bit drab and needs tarting up. The stone chippings are being delivered this morning and the plants were delivered yesterday so we’re good to go.’ I notice he doesn’t sound so Irish today so his mum and dad must be due a visit.

  ‘So why does it have to be done today?’

  ‘Ah, well, I quoted for this job months ago and I never got it – I’m pretty sure she gave it to someone else who was cheaper and I reckon they let her down. Then she rings me on Thursday asking if I’d do it and I said no, I was too busy, told her I was all booked up for weeks to come. Then she asks what about doing it over the weekend and I said no, I don’t work weekends but she’s not listening and she’s near begging me. Says it has to be done before next week ‘cos she’s having some sort of a do. Thought she was going to have a breakdown.’

  ‘So what made you change your mind?’

  ‘Money. Steve had this great idea of telling her I could do it as an extra special rush job but it’d cost double what I originally quoted – if she pays it great, and if she says no, well that’s her look out. Win win, as they say.’

  ‘Wow, double. And she said yes.’

  ‘Yeah, couldn’t believe she was prepared to pay that much. So now I have to put my
money where my mouth is and get the job done. Which is why I’m more than happy to pay you.’

  ‘Great!’ I say hoping that he’s not expecting too much. Apart from walking to work every day – which I haven’t actually done yet – I don’t do any exercise. At all. Ever.

  I’m surprised Steve’s not helping though, as it was his bright idea.

  ‘Steve didn’t want to help you with it then?’

  ‘God no!’ he says. ‘Manual labour isn’t really Steve’s forte.’

  ‘No?’ I question, ‘What is Steve’s forte then?’ But I don’t think Flynn can hear me over the roar of the engine because he doesn’t answer.

  A vision of Steve pops into my head; an immaculately groomed air steward, perfect hair and skin with immaculately defined eyebrows. I’m intrigued though. I wonder when I’ll get to meet him? I mean, they can’t stay at his house all of the time, surely? I study Flynn’s profile out of the corner of my eye; his hair is definitely dyed because I can see dark roots coming through. Even though he’s frowning as he concentrates on driving there’s no disguising his good looks, he has lovely eyes and blemish free skin and I feel quite envious of him, if he got something done about that awful red hair, he’d be absolutely stunning.

  But he’s gay , warns the Beccabird.

  Yes, I know , I’m just making an observation, it’s not as if I fancy him or anything because I know that would be completely pointless.

  We swerve around a corner that I didn’t see coming and Sausage and I slide roughly into the passenger door before we come to an abrupt halt in front of a large detached farmhouse.

  ‘This is us!’ shouts Flynn. He flings open the door and jumps out of the truck onto the gravel drive. Sausage wakes up instantly and scuttles across to Flynn who reaches in and scoops him up in one hand and tucks him under his arm.

  I unclip my seatbelt and get out and stretch to ease the cramp in my legs from sitting on the hard seat. I watch as Flynn starts to unload tools from the back of the truck while Sausage trots around sniffing.

  I grab the overalls from the truck seat and attempt to pull them over my feet but they’re too narrow. I have to resort to taking my trainers off to get them on and then put them back on again while hopping around. I belatedly realise that it would have been much easier if I’d stayed in the truck and done it there. Once I’ve got the buttons done up I roll the legs up and also the sleeves; it absolutely swamps me and I feel ridiculous, I could probably fit another me inside it as well. And all of that rolled up material is heavy, too, I feel exhausted already with the effort of putting it on.

  ‘You going to help me unload or just watch?’ Flynn shouts at me.

  I don’t answer but waddle to the back of the truck trying to not walk like a sumo wrestler because the rolled-up bits are so bulky.

  Stifling what I’m sure is a laugh, Flynn pulls a shovel from the truck with one hand and holds it out to me. I put out one hand to take it and when he lets go I nearly drop it and have to clutch it with two hands, it weighs a ton .

  As I turn to go round to the back garden I look at Flynn who has a big cheesy grin on his face.

  ‘Something funny?’ I snap.

  ‘No. Nothing.’

  I glare at him unsmilingly and he bites his lip and turns away and starts dragging more tools off the back of the truck. I stand for a moment and watch as his shoulders shake with laughter.

  I knew this was a bad idea.

  Chapter Six

  T he back garden is massive; I knew it was going to be bigger than Flynn’s little back yard but I wasn’t expecting these estate-like proportions. I feel hopelessly inadequate now that I’ve seen the scale of the job and I’m hoping that I’m not going to let Flynn down.

  We haven’t seen the owner yet; Flynn says she’ll be back later but we’re going to crack on anyway because it’s not as if she’s going to be doing the job with us. I am a bit disappointed she isn’t here because I wanted to see what she’s like, this woman who has more money than sense.

  In addition to the giant-sized boiler suit I’m also wearing a pair of Flynn’s work gloves which are much too big for my hands, God knows what I must look like. The gloves are stiff and hard and when I put them on they creaked when I bent my fingers. I eyed the brown stains on them and didn’t much like the look of them so I didn’t want to put them on when Flynn gave them to me. I said I didn’t need gloves and I’d be fine without them. This produced a load of guffawing from Flynn and when he eventually stopped he thrust them at me and said I’d have no hands left if I didn’t put them on.

  Flynn has laid a giant tarpaulin out on the grass and we’re digging the soil out from around the pond so we can lay a membrane down – whatever that is - and then put the stone chippings on top of it. I asked Flynn what he was going to do with a tarpaulin load of soil and he looked at me like I was stupid and said, well, obviously, we’re going to build the borders up with it for when we put all the plants in. Wasn’t obvious to me at all.

  We’ve not been digging for long and I’ve already had enough. Flynn digs his spade into the ground and with one shove of his boot he pushes it in and it fills it up with a great load of soil whereas just getting the spade into the ground is a struggle for me. Once I’ve got the end of it in the ground I have to put all of my weight on it to push it into the earth before I can actually get any soil on the damn thing. Most of my first spadeful went all over the lawn as I shakily carried it over to the tarpaulin because it was so heavy. Flynn wasn’t pleased at all.

  ‘Not on the grass!’ he’d bellowed. ‘It’ll take us all day to get it off there!’

  So now I’m carrying tiny spadesful of earth so that I don’t drop any and I’m sweating like a pig already, which isn’t surprising considering the amount of heavy-duty boiler suit I’m swamped in.

  I think briefly about taking my sweatshirt off but soon dismiss the idea as just thinking about the hassle of struggling out of the boiler suit and then putting it back on again is exhausting.

  Stop whining , mutters the Beccabird, who’s been chipping in with unhelpful comments like this since we got here. I could cheerfully batter her over the head with the spade and throw her in the pond.

  Dig, push, lift, trudge. After a couple of hours of this I seem to have developed a sort of rhythm. I’m also absolutely knackered and I’m desperate to sit down for a rest but I’m determined not to give Flynn the satisfaction of seeing me give in. The pile of soil is growing on the tarpaulin and we’ve dug a large area around the pond so I’m hopeful we’re nearly done.

  ‘Let’s stop and have a bit of lunch,’ Flynn shouts on his way back from emptying his shovel. Or is it a spade? I have no idea what the difference is, or if there even is a difference.

  ‘If you like.’ I say nonchalantly, although in my head I’m spinning cartwheels around the garden in celebration. Sausage lifts his head at the mention of food; he’s been watching us from a cosy nest that he’s made for himself in the old-fashioned, brick porch over the back door which is sheltering him nicely from the wind.

  I pull my gloves off and try not to wince as they catch on the massive blister on my right-hand palm, the result of all the digging, I just hope it doesn’t burst.

  ‘We’ll eat in the truck,’ Flynn announces as he digs his spade into the ground with one hand and leaves it standing up. I do the same with mine but as I hurry to catch up with Flynn I hear my spade fall over with a thud into the dirt.

  Pathetic! shrieks the Beccabird.

  Flynn grabs a rucksack from the back of the truck and picks up Sausage and chucks him into the cab and climbs in after him. I go around to the passenger side and clamber in and breathe a sigh of relief to be out of the battering wind. And my feet, oh God, the bliss to be off my feet for a while. I’m sure I’m going to have a bruise right across the sole of my foot from pushing that spade into the ground.

  Flynn stares out of the window frowning.

  ‘Looks like it’s going to rain.’

  I say a
silent prayer for torrential rain so we can go home. I’ll pretend I’ve got something planned for tomorrow that I can’t possibly get out of so that I don’t have to come back here.

  ‘So,’ Flynn says, rooting around in his rucksack, ‘I’ve got BLT, prawn mayonnaise, cheese and tomato or cheese and pickle.’

  ‘Cheese and pickle please.’ I’m glad he’s bought some food because I never even thought about lunch. Not that ten minutes was long enough to get dressed and do a packed lunch.

  He tosses a supermarket bought plastic pack of sandwiches at me which I catch just before it hits the floor. By the time I’ve managed to open the packet Flynn is ramming the second half of a prawn mayonnaise sandwich into his mouth while he opens the packet of cheese and tomato.

  ‘Is that enough?’ he asks. ‘There’s a packet of BLT here.’

  ‘No this is plenty.’ I study my hands and wonder if there’s anywhere I can wash them. I’m about to ask Flynn but think better of it in case it just confirms to him that I’m a wimp. I hold the sandwich using the plastic packet and take a bite. Delicious.

  ‘Sure? ‘Cos I’m going to eat it if you don’t want it.’ He’s already ripping the packet open.

  ‘I’m sure.’ Christ, I haven’t even finished my first sandwich and he’s on his third pack. I suppose all this hard graft keeps him from putting on weight.

  ‘What about Sausage? Doesn’t he get anything?’ He’s gazing up at me from the footwell with big, sad eyes.

  ‘No, he’ll get his tonight.’

  ‘I could give him a bit of mine,’ I say, breaking off a corner of bread. Greedy sod, you’d think he’d spare a bit of his food for his dog.

  ‘No. Don’t give him anything, human food isn’t good for him. He’s just a scavenger, he’s had breakfast. Can’t be having a fat sausage dog with his belly scraping along the ground.’

  I put the corner of bread in my mouth while Sausage looks at me reproachfully.

  Flynn produces a huge tartan flask from his rucksack and unscrews the cup.

  ‘I’ve only got one cup so you go first.’ He fills the cup to the brim with steaming, dark brown tea and hands it to me.