Say Hello and Wave Goodbye Page 7

  I swallow the rest of my sandwich and take it from him and sip possibly the best cup of tea I’ve ever had in my life. Amazing how a bit of hard work can make you appreciate something so simple.

  It takes me ages to drink because it’s so hot and I can feel Flynn getting impatient so I quickly drain the last of the tea in one gulp and scald my mouth. I hand the cup back to him and he refills it and swallows it in great gulps; his stomach must be made from copper because that tea was hot .

  ‘Right, back to it.’ Flynn opens the door and jumps out.

  Rain I pray, rain .

  I get out of the truck and pick Sausage up and put in down and he trots off into the back garden, no doubt going back to his cosy spot by the back door. My feet hurt even more than they did before. Please, please, rain.

  We trudge around to the back garden and Flynn stands, hands on hips, surveying our handiwork before marching back to the truck and reappearing with a roll of black material.

  ‘We’ll lay this out and then start shovelling.’

  ‘Righto,’ I say. It’s catching.

  We lay the black material carefully over the ground we’ve just dug out and hold the edges down with heavy stones.

  Flynn stands back and looks at it. ‘That’ll do. You stay here and do the spreading and I’ll barrow it round.’

  I stand and wait while he stomps around to the front of the house where the stone chippings have been delivered. Spreading stone should be a lot easier than digging and was that a drop of rain on my face? I think it was; there’s definitely rain in the air. Come on, I urge the clouds, chuck it down.

  Flynn reappears from around the side of the house pushing a wheelbarrow filled with stone chippings. I watch as he pushes it across the patio and upends it onto the black cloth we’ve just laid out. I can’t believe how quickly he’s filled the wheelbarrow.

  ‘Okay, spread it out and I’ll get the next load.’

  I grab the rake and attempt to push the stone evenly across the cloth. Useless, the rake doesn’t move any of the stone but skims over the top. I fling it to one side and retrieve my spade from the mud and start using it to spread the stone which is a lot harder work than I thought it would be.

  ‘Christ, haven’t you done that yet? You’ll have to go quicker than that.’ Unbelievably Flynn is back with another wheelbarrow full. He upends it onto a new patch of cloth and I start and try to speed up a bit. Another drop of rain lands on my nose swiftly followed by another and I look up and it’s definitely raining. Hard.

  Flynn stomps past me and upends another load of stone.

  ‘It’s raining,’ I say, stating the obvious.

  ‘It’s just a scud. Won’t last long.’ He stomps off with the empty wheelbarrow.

  ‘It’s raining really hard,’ I say when he brings the next load around.

  ‘It’ll pass,’ he says over his shoulder as he upends the wheelbarrow.

  ‘I don’t think it will.’ I look up at the black clouds through the driving rain.

  Flynn stops and puts the wheelbarrow down for a moment and gazes skyward, frowning.

  ‘The thing is, I’ll just have to carry on because otherwise I’m going to run out of time.’ He picks the wheelbarrow up and heads to the front garden. ‘But feel free to sit in the truck if you want.’ He shouts over his shoulder.

  I’ve had enough and desperately want to go and sit in the truck but I’ll feel bad if I do. I can hardly sit in a nice warm cab and watch him shovel stone in the driving rain, can I? And actually, I’m soaked now so I might as well carry on. I pull the hood of my sweatshirt out of my overalls and pull it over my head and then put it down again because my hair’s all wet anyway.

  I shove and push the stone and when the next barrowful arrives I don’t stop and we continue in this fashion until all of the stone is in front of the pond. Once he’s finished bringing the stone round Flynn joins in with the shovelling and as the rain starts to ease off the spreading is complete.

  Flynn strides up to the patio by the house and I follow him and stand next to him as he surveys our handiwork.

  ‘Looks pretty good,’ he says.

  It does look good; the blue chipped stone makes the pond stand out from the rest of the garden and makes the pond look newer and somehow prettier.

  ‘It does,’ I agree.

  ‘Yeah, I’m pretty pleased with that and I think she will be too.’ He looks at his watch. ‘I think that’ll do for today, it’s nearly five o’clock. We’ll clear up and get off, shall we?’

  ‘Great!’ Sounds like a fantastic idea to me but first I have an urgent need for the toilet. That huge mug of boiling tea has worked its way through and I realise that I haven’t been to the toilet all day.

  ‘Have you got a key for the house, Flynn?’

  He shakes his head. ‘She did offer but I don’t need to get in there for anything so I said no. Didn’t want the responsibility.’

  ‘So what do you do if you need the bathroom?’ I sound like someone off an American soap.

  ‘Me? I just go behind a tree or hedge. We’re out in the middle of nowhere, no one will see you.’

  An image of me struggling out of wet overalls and squatting behind a tree flashes in front of me. No. Definitely not. I’ll have to wait until we get home.

  ‘Oh, I’ll wait until we get back,’ I say casually. ‘No rush.’

  The Beccabird crosses her legs and beak.

  ‘Okay.’ He walks over to the pond and chucks the spades and rake into the wheelbarrow. ‘I’ll start loading up.’

  I just hope I can hang on until I get home.

  I trudge round to the front of the house and try not to think about how much I need a wee. Flynn stands at the back of the truck scraping the spades clean and is it my imagination or is he deliberately getting every single speck of mud off the spades? I’m sure when we started using them they were pretty filthy already.

  ‘You get in,’ Flynn says, looking up. ‘I won’t be long.’

  I climb up into the truck, wincing. I’ve got stomach ache I want to go so badly. I drum my fingers on the seat and will him to hurry up; what is taking him so long? I look in the mirror and can’t see him. I swing and look out of the window to see him outside the front door talking to a woman. Blonde and smartly dressed in a tweed skirt and jacket, she has her hands full of shopping bags – designer-type boxy ones, not Tesco plastic – and the front door is open so she must have just got home.

  Hurray! I can use the toilet. I open the truck door and jump out and trot over to them in an ungainly manner fighting against all of the bunched-up material around my legs, I am so looking forward to taking these overalls off. I fight the urge to walk with the tops of my legs clamped together.

  ‘Hi!’ I give my friendliest smile. The one that people seem to find annoying.

  ‘Oh, hello.’ I see her eyes flicker over me and I don’t blame her, I must look a strange sight.

  ‘I’m Becca, I’ve been helping Flynn.’

  ‘Yes, Flynn’s going to show me what you’ve done once I’ve put my bags inside.’

  ‘Would you mind if I use your toilet?’ I burst out, dispensing with any pretence at small talk or niceties, I really can’t wait any longer.

  ‘Of course,’ she says and I see her eyes flicker again over my wet, filthy boiler suit and mud caked trainers.

  ‘I’ll take my shoes off.’ I say, almost hopping from one foot to the other.

  ‘No need, I’ll let you in the back door and you can use the one in the boot room.’

  ‘Great.’ Hurry up .

  ‘I’ll see you at the back door.’ She goes inside the house and I dash around into the back garden, the sound of Flynn’s clomping footsteps behind me.

  I stand in the back porch hopping from foot to foot with my thighs clamped firmly together .

  Hurry up .

  After what seems like an hour she finally unlocks and opens the back door.

  ‘The boot room’s to the left,’ she says as she stands a
side to let me in. I rush past her without a word, veer left and find myself in a room with a washing machine and tumble dryer. There are two pairs of green wellington boots neatly arranged underneath a row of pegs holding a jumble of coats.

  I look around the room to see a door set into the opposite wall and I charge towards it and yank it open to be confronted by a vacuum cleaner and assorted mops and brushes.

  I slam it shut and look around in panic, which is when I notice the other door that was right next to it all the time. I pull the door open so hard that it bounces of the adjoining wall leaving an imprint of the handle on it. Too desperate to care I step inside and pull the door shut and lock it.

  My legs are well and truly clamped together now and with fingers that feel the size of sausages I fumble to undo the buttons on my boiler suit, which is soaking wet and making the buttons almost impossible to undo. I hear someone whimpering and realise that it’s me and I’m about to give up when the material gives and I finally mange to undo them. The boiler suit is still sopping wet from the rain and it’s sticking to me like clingfilm but with an almighty effort I manage to yank the trousers down to my knees.

  Just got to get my jeans undone now; the button hole is bigger and gives easily and I grab hold of the zip and yank it down in triumph. At last, nearly there! But my body has decided that enough is enough and it can wait no longer and I watch in horror at the slowly spreading stain on my jeans.

  There’s no chance of stopping now and I sit down on the toilet seat and give in to the inevitable, feeling huge relief mixed with shame.

  After what feels like twenty-five gallons of urine leaving my body I stand up and wonder what the hell I’m going to do.

  You are disgusting , the Beccabird says with distaste. Fancy wetting yourself at your age.

  I undo my trainers and take them off and pull the boiler suit over them; thankfully they’re wet with rain and nothing else as the pee didn’t reach them. I then take my sodden jeans and knickers off. The knickers are so wet they’re practically dripping so I hold them under the tap and rinse them several times and place them on the side of the sink. The jeans aren’t so bad so I roll them into a ball with the wettest bits inside and put them on the floor before putting the overalls back on. I’ll just have to hide my clothes until we get home and no one will know. I pull some toilet paper from the roll and wet it under the tap and wipe the toilet seat over and then dry it with more paper. I do feel awful about it but it was a complete accident and there was absolutely nothing I could do.

  I flush the toilet and hold the wadded jeans behind my back as I step out into the boot room. I go through to the back porch but I can’t see Flynn or the house owner.

  ‘You found it okay?’ says a voice from the behind me and I whirl around to see the house owner coming towards me.

  ‘Yes, fine, I say, hurriedly hiding my jeans behind my back.

  ‘Flynn’s waiting in the truck for you. The pond looks great by the way, I’m very impressed with it so far.’

  ‘Great,’ I say. Did her nose just wrinkle? Oh God, she can probably smell the pee.

  ‘So you’ll be back tomorrow?’

  ‘Try and stop me!’ Why did I say that? I back slowly out of the back door. ‘See you tomorrow!’

  ‘Yes.’ She’s looking at me very strangely and I realise that she’s going to know that I rammed the toilet door into the wall and made a hole in it. I keep backing out with a stupid grin on my face until I get out of her sight and then I break into a run. I race around the side of the house until I get to the front where I slow down. Flynn is sitting in the truck with the engine running so I make my way to the passenger side via the back of the truck and casually poke my wet jeans into a gap next to the spades. I can fish them out when I get home before he finds them.

  I clamber into the cab and settle on the seat and try to ignore the scratchy seam of the boiler suit sticking into my bum.

  ‘She seemed pleased with it,’ he says as we pull away from the house and rattle along the road.

  ‘Yeah, she seemed more than happy with it.’ But she’s definitely won’t be happy when she sees the imprint of the door handle in her boot room wall.

  Which is when I remember.

  I left my knickers on the side of the sink.

  Chapter Seven

  A s soon as we got home I went straight out to the kitchen and stuffed my pee stained jeans and boiler suit into the washing machine with a few other bits of washing and turned it on. I felt better as soon as it started to fill up with frothy suds and all evidence of my humiliation vanished.

  Except for the knickers of course.

  I washed my hair and then had a lovely long soak in the bath with lots of scented bubbles; it was fabulous. After years of having hurried showers in shared bathrooms – because the other occupants always wanted to be in there the minute I’d locked the door – it was heaven to luxuriate and relax. Flynn had already hopped into the bathroom before me and true to his word he was out within ten minutes.

  I was fully expecting to spend the evening on my own but while I wallowed in the bath Flynn shouted through the door to ask if I wanted to share a takeaway. ‘Sounds great!’ I’d shouted back and the next thing I know he’s hammering on the door to tell me it’d arrived.

  I think I’d dozed off because the water felt a bit cold and my fingers had gone all wrinkly so I jumped out and quickly dried myself, had a bit of a heated debate with the Beccabird (have you no pride!) about what to wear - but I won so I went downstairs in my pyjamas and dressing gown. It’s not like Flynn hasn’t seen me in them before and we’re housemates so I don’t need to dress up for him.

  Flynn was busily opening foil trays and had arranged them nicely on a tray on the coffee table along with the cutlery and plates and it smelled delicious. ‘Righto,’ he’d said as I came into the lounge, ‘We’ve got Chicken Balti, Lamb Madras, Chicken Tikka and Pilau rice. Oh and bhajis, naans and poppadums of course.’

  He didn’t bat an eyelid at my pyjamas and he was wearing checked cotton trousers and a t-shirt that looked suspiciously like loungewear, which is what men like to call pyjamas, so he obviously feels the same as I do. I mentally stick two fingers up to the Beccabird.

  ‘Is that alright?’

  ‘Great! Balti’s my favourite,’ I say, settling myself down on the sofa.

  ‘Should have asked really but I took an educated guess. You don’t look like the korma type to me.’ He hands me a plate.

  I’m not sure whether that’s a compliment or not.

  ‘How much do I owe you?’

  ‘Nothing. It’s my treat, you’ve been a big help today, I couldn’t have done it without you.’

  ‘But you’ve paid me far too much already.’ Flynn had insisted on giving me a hundred pounds when we got back.

  ‘No arguments, and I told you, she’s paid me over the top for the job. Now, sit down and eat.’

  I do as I’m told and I load my plate with Balti and rice and a naan bread as well. We tuck in and the Balti tastes like the best curry that I’ve ever eaten in my life because I’m so hungry. If this is what manual work does for you then I obviously need to do a bit more of it. Sausage watches every mouthful we swallow for the first few minutes but then realises it’s futile and with a theatrical sigh he gives up and trots over to lie on Flynn’s feet.

  When I can’t possibly fit any more in I watch as Flynn scrapes every last morsel of food out of the foil containers onto his plate. It must be his third helping and I can’t help wondering where he puts it all because there’s not an ounce of fat on him.

  He catches me watching him and winks at me and I quickly find the hem of my pyjamas really interesting as I feel my face start to heat up.

  He’s gay , states the Beccabird with a exasperated sigh.

  I know. I don’t need telling but I do have to keep reminding myself because it’s easy to forget, how typical of my luck that I meet a really lovely guy and he has to be gay.

  You wouldn’t
stand a chance with him even if he wasn’t , you-know-who reminds me.

  I’m well aware that he’d be way out of my league even if he was available and not gay, but a girl can dream, can’t she? I’m not doing any harm.

  ‘I’ll just clear this lot up and we’ll watch some telly, eh?’ Flynn says as he wipes the last of the naan bread around his plate, shoves it in his mouth and starts stacking plates and dishes.

  I jump up to help him.

  ‘No. You sit down. I’ll do it,’ he says firmly as he goes out to the kitchen. ‘You get the telly fired up.’

  I pick up the remote and after puzzling over the hundreds of buttons on it I finally find the right one and turn on the enormous television. I can’t help remembering when Jonathan and I were together; I don’t want to but I can’t help it, he’s popped into my head and is refusing to leave. Thinking back, I concede that he might possibly have just about managed to order a takeaway if I’d prompted him but I’d have been the one getting the plates out and then clearing it all away again afterwards while he sat and watched me. And I’d have been paying for it all too. It would never have crossed his mind to get up and help or actually do anything around the house, that’s what I was there for.

  What did I ever see in him?

  Hold that thought, says the Beccabird helpfully, and the next time you see him perhaps it’ll stop you from following him.

  Flynn comes back in and flops heavily onto the sofa and groans as he rubs his stomach.

  ‘Think I might have eaten a bit much. Greedy bastard.’

  I laugh and he joins in.

  ‘You should have stopped me, sheer greed. Can’t bear to waste anything either.’

  ‘You could have put it in the fridge and finished it tomorrow,’ I suggest.

  ‘Not possible, I have to clear the plate, or dish, or pot, it’s the way I was brought up. Think I’ll have to get the Rennies out.’ He gets up and disappears back out to the kitchen and reappears minutes later chomping on indigestion tablets.

  ‘Okay, enough whinging from me, what do you want to watch, The Voice or the film on the other side?