First thing Monday morning Jimmy Achebe rang. I hadn’t even opened the post. He spoke hurriedly. He wanted me to do the job, he’d drop off a photo later that day. I reminded him to include his address, his home phone number and a note of any regular appointments Tina had. There was no point in my trailing her to aqua-fit and back, then billing him for it. Were there any days in particular he wanted me to cover?
‘Maybe tomorrow and Wednesday – it’s usually mid-week.’
‘And you tried asking Tina about it?’
‘Yeah. She wasn’t having any of it. Told me I was imagining things, says she’s not hiding anything. Told me to stop harassing her.’ I heard him blow out in exasperation. ‘Look, about the money. I’ll get what I can today but the rest, well, like I said..
‘Don’t worry, I’ll check back with you each time I’ve done a stint. That way, if it starts mounting up you can ask me to stop. How can I get in touch?’
‘I’ll have to ring you,’ he said, ‘but you can leave a message here at work. You’ve got the number, haven’t you?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Just say you want me to ring. They’ll pass it on. I hate this. I feel like I’m the one doing something wrong.’
‘Do you want to think it over a bit longer?’
‘No. It’s cracking me up. I just want it sorted.’
There was a lull in my morning after I’d opened and binned the post. I went swimming. Thirty lengths of the local pool and a reasonably hot shower. I emerged into the blank February weather feeling loose-limbed and smug.
Back home Ray had left a note on the kitchen table: ‘Harry knows someone looking for room. Sheila. May ring.’
My heart dipped. In order to make ends meet we needed to let out the attic flat. We rented the house from an ex-lecturer of mine. He’d gone out to do a year in Australia and they kept renewing his contract. We had to cover the mortgage, bills and maintain the place.
Our first lodgers, Joanne and Christine, had been great but they’d moved on once they’d saved enough for a deposit on a place of their own. Their successor, Clive, was the lodger from hell. Since we’d got him out we’d taken a succession of short-term lets: an actor appearing at the Royal Exchange, a teacher who needed a bolt hole while her damp-proof course was done and a German sociologist who was doing a term at the university. They were all a vast improvement on Clive but each time there was the disruption of getting used to a new face at the breakfast table, of negotiating use of the kitchen, the bath and the fridge. And in between we were short on income. We really needed a permanent person but I was still terrified we might end up with another complete wally. My old friend Harry wouldn’t deliberately send me a plonker but sometimes they could be hard to spot.