don’t you?’
‘I’ll get started,’ says Alphonse.
Els and Dieter, they’re called. It’s written on the estimate. Els left after making him a cup of coffee and Dieter has been working upstairs for some hours now, in his study on the other side of the house. He makes frequent trips to the toilet.
In the absence of their inhabitants, houses often inform Alphonse about the kinds of stories they’re going to tell. Or they mislead him. That happens too. A wastepaper basket with children’s drawings torn into tiny pieces, or shrines, or holes in the plasterboard, recently kicked.
Els and Dieter’s house gives little away. They’ve tidied their things into sleek fitted cupboards and drawers. On the walls are pictures of the family in the snow, the family in swimming gear on a slide; the series runs thematically through the four seasons.
One of the living-room walls is made up of large glass doors that look out onto the garden at the back of the house. In contrast to the orderly interior and the front garden’s manicured lawn, it makes an unkempt impression. The ladder against the wooden fence reminds him he’s forgotten his own. He can make do with a chair, removing his shoes to stand on one, but it’s not easy working like that.
Björn keeps Alphonse company, silent but watching his every move. For a long time he believed the barking of dogs came down to one of two messages: ‘Don’t do that!’ and ‘Hey!’ They had nothing else to say. Björn isn’t the first dog to have caused him to doubt this, even yawning along with Alphonse as he stretches after applying the masking tape. Coincidence, he thinks, but it happens again.
He mentions it when Dieter comes down to check there’s nothing he needs.
‘That means he likes you,’ says Dieter. ‘Dogs have a lot of empathy. Just lately I read that they don’t bark to communicate with each other. It’s a language they’ve developed for talking with us.’
‘I thought only humans found yawning contagious.’
‘We don’t know very many people who yawn when we yawn, do we, buddy?’ Dieter pipes at the dog. No further explanation is forthcoming.
‘I’ve forgotten my ladder,’ says Alphonse. ‘I could go home and fetch it, but I notice there’s one in the garden.’
‘Can you get it yourself?’ Dieter heads off upstairs.
Outside it’s even hotter now. Alphonse does his best to avoid stepping in dog mess as he crosses the garden. Isn’t Björn ever walked? In attempting to remove the ladder he sees there’s another on the other side of the garden wall. They’re linked by a worn purple swimming board with M AND L FOR EVER written on it in felt-tip pen. It’s a rickety structure, easy to dismantle. He props the board up against the garden wall and resolves to tie the whole lot together again more securely later.
As he cleans the living-room walls, the sound of the hard brush sends Björn to sleep. The ammonia Alphonse uses to tackle the greasier surfaces in the kitchen wakes him up again, though. He sneezes and slinks away to the hall with a look of alarm. Then claws tick on the stairs. Alphonse opens the glass sliding door to dispel the stench.
When his master comes down to make himself a sandwich, the dog isn’t with him.
‘Like anything?’ Dieter asks, his thoughts clearly elsewhere.
Alphonse has his own sandwiches, but he accepts a cup of coffee.
Dieter looks past him, at the ladder, then out of the window. He walks over and slowly shuts the sliding door.
‘Mila put that ladder there,’ he says. ‘Children.’ He smiles apologetically, then signals his habit of eating at the computer.
Mila is about thirteen and resembles neither of her parents. With a dramatic sweep she throws off her backpack.
‘Hello,’ she says. Then, dismayed: ‘What’s my ladder doing here?’
‘Perhaps you could say hello to Alphonse first?’ Her mother has come in behind her.
‘I just did. What’s my ladder doing here?’
‘I borrowed it for a bit, because I forgot mine. I’ll put it back shortly. I’ll tie the swimming board nice and tight. Promise.’
‘But I need it now.’
‘Homework first,’ says Els.
‘Haven’t got any homework.’
‘I don’t believe that.’
Mila storms out of the room the moment her father comes in.
‘Hello!’ he says crossly. Without responding, she runs up the stairs.
‘Puberty. We won’t be spared,’ Dieter chuckles. ‘You don’t think of that when you’re in it yourself, how your own children will subject you to it eventually.’
‘It’s not that bad,’ says Els.
She asks whether he has any children.
‘I don’t think so.’
They find that funny and something gleams in their eyes, a slight curiosity, slight suspicion. Alphonse resolves not to make that corny old joke any more.
He fetches the cable ties from the van. On the other side of the house he attaches both ladders to the swimming board.
‘I’m calling on your neighbours shortly, by the way,’ he says, back in the kitchen.
Els and Dieter stare at him as if he has a hatchet embedded in his skull. Why the neighbours? He explains that he’s taking them some colour swatches, so they can choose a colour. As soon as he’s done here, he’ll make a start there.
Dieter wraps his arms around his head. Els slaps a painted wall with the flat of her hand. ‘Damn,’ she says, looking first at her Pick Nick-pink hand and then at the skeletal fingers on the wall. ‘Sorry.’
Alphonse presses a cloth to the mouth of a bottle of turpentine and holds her hand in his to clean it. For a moment she stands there like a crestfallen child, her fingers wide open so that his resolute, fatherly strokes can find all the paint. Then her rage flares again. ‘Really, what are they playing at?!’
He takes a small, new roller out of its packaging and skims it breezily over the handprint like a lightweight steamroller. It works.
‘Everything we do, they copy,’ Dieter explains. ‘No idea what’s going on in those people’s heads. They see your van out front and before you know it, their kitchen’s in need of a new colour too.’
‘Their bedrooms.’ They haven’t heard him.
‘It’s been going on for years. We buy a house, they buy a house. We have a baby, they have a baby. We get a new car or travel across the United States and they do too.’ Els glumly removes traces of paint from under her fingernails. ‘What are we supposed to do? Move?’
‘We’re not moving.’ It’s Mila who’s spoken. They didn’t hear her coming downstairs and as she crosses the
