possibly one that didn’t involve him being in her personal space, he slid one muscular arm around her waist and snapped away bits of broken wood with his free hand. Her face was pressed briefly into the soft fabric of his shirt. He smelled of wood and furniture oil and warm skin. She clutched at his shoulder as he started to pull her. If he happened to let go now she would go straight through the floor.
‘I’m not going to let you fall, okay?’
There were splintering and scraping sounds as he pulled her up, and then suddenly she was blissfully free of the floor. He placed her down carefully, making sure she put her feet on the joists. She noticed he didn’t rush to take his arm away, supporting her as she found her footing.
‘Are you hurt?’
The right leg of her jeans had a long and ragged rip in it, and her knee throbbed a bit. He crouched and examined her leg gently.
‘Well, there’s my pride …’ she said.
He looked up at her and gave a half-smile, which to a different girl in different circumstances might have been heart-melting, but in her case could only be interpreted as sympathetic. There was dust in her hair, dirt smeared on her clothes, and he’d just seen her at possibly her most undignified.
‘You’ve got quite a graze there,’ he said, standing up. ‘It’ll need sorting out. Let’s get you downstairs.’
‘So you do medical treatment too?’ she said, batting his arm away as he tried to help her across the attic and back to the hatch. ‘I can do it, I’m fine.’
‘I’m a superhero,’ he said. ‘I do everything.’
‘In that case, would you mind grabbing that box without falling through the ceiling?’ She nodded at the wooden box, still nestled safely in the corner among the cobwebs.
No way was she was going through this humiliating experience and still not have the box to show for it.
Jack watched as she negotiated the loft ladder and then walked downstairs, clearly trying to give the impression that she was completely unscathed when the graze on that leg must hurt like a bastard. She clearly had no clue how close she’d come to breaking her bloody neck. The crash had sounded as if half the roof had fallen in. He stood by until she hobbled into the kitchen, by which point he could no longer help himself.
‘Sit down, will you?’ he said, exasperated, taking her firmly by the shoulders and pulling out the nearest chair with his foot. ‘That leg obviously needs looking at, and you’re fooling no one with the gritted teeth.’
She frowned up at him, but didn’t argue. He pulled out a second chair and lifted her foot onto it. Half the right leg of her jeans was hanging off and he could see a bleeding scrape underneath.
‘I can either cut these off or rip them,’ he said.
‘That’s a bit brutal, they’re my favourite jeans,’ she protested. ‘Isn’t saving them an option?’
He held up the enormous ragged flap of denim that was practically hanging by a thread.
‘Seriously?’
She made a huffing noise and sat back, resigned, while he grabbed the Stanley knife out of his tool belt and cut the fabric away. Her shin was one long graze, fortunately not too deep.
‘Where does Olive keep her first-aid stuff?’
She pointed at the high corner cupboard. He found antiseptic wipes and dressings, and she held her hand out for them impatiently.
‘I don’t have time for this, I’ve got tons to do,’ she grumbled as she scrubbed the wound with an antiseptic wipe. ‘That attic up there is like something from “Hoarders: Buried Alive”. I’ve got four weeks off work to sort the house out, and as if that isn’t enough, there’s bloody Christmas to organise.’
Since he didn’t do Christmas, not any more, he couldn’t really relate to that as a major problem to be reckoned with.
‘I was sorry to hear the house is going,’ he said, watching her stick an inadequate plaster haphazardly over the graze. He was, too. Not all of his customers were as long-term or as friendly as Olive Jackson. This had been an easy gig, close enough to his house to fit around his other commitments, happily flexible if he needed to move workdays around at the last minute.
‘We haven’t put it on the market yet,’ she said. ‘How did you know?’
He crossed the kitchen and filled the kettle. Grabbed a couple of cups from the hooks above the sink.
‘Got a list of jobs sent my way last week from someone called Rod,’ he said. ‘Getting the place to look “shipshape for sale”, I think was how he put it.’
He caught her closing her eyes briefly.
‘Rod’s my partner,’ she said. ‘I’ve decided to move Gran in with us.’
He noticed that Rod, whoever he was, apparently wasn’t included in that decision.
‘Obviously care services don’t come cheap, and we’ve had to talk through all the options, but …’ She glanced around the room and out of the window at the frost-covered walled garden, and didn’t finish. He followed her gaze. The house was a beautiful 1930’s detached place in Canterbury. The kind of place they didn’t build any more. Rambling, full of memories and character, with big bay windows, and a mature garden that had been loved for years.
‘But selling it doesn’t come easy?’ he finished for her.
She nodded.
‘I spent a lot of my childhood here,’ she said. ‘I lived with Gran and Grandad on and off right through my teens, only moved out properly about five years ago.’ She nodded towards the kitchen door, held open by a wooden doorstop. ‘On that doorframe over there, my grandad marked my height every year until I stopped growing.’
‘I know. It’s on my maintenance list to paint over it.’
She fell silent at that, and he immediately regretted telling her.
‘There must be other options to selling,’ he said, trying to take a positive spin instead. ‘I mean, I know Olive is getting a bit frail, but her mind isn’t, if you know what I mean.’
‘I know exactly what you mean.’
‘I got the impression she intended only to leave this place in a box. Her words, actually.’
‘Tell me about it.’ Leg-dressing finished, she put her foot down on the floor and leaned forward to pick up a sheaf of leaflets from the corner of the table. ‘She’s been putting up a fight for months. She had a couple of minor falls a while ago, just cuts and bruises, you know.’ She held the leaflets up. ‘This was her latest attempt to fob me off. Stairlifts. Like a stairlift is the bloody elixir of life. The stairs are the least of her problems. She needs to be able to get around everywhere else, never mind the stairs. There’s the outdoor steps. The uneven floors. The tiles in the bathroom are a slip hazard. This whole place is an accident waiting to happen.’ She paused. ‘Except that it already has.’
She
