The builder boyfriend has dug himself a hole. I don’t mean he’s in trouble with me. I mean he has literally dug himself a hole, in our new backyard.
Since we moved in he has been digging there, sinking deeper into the earth on the lower ground floor level until he has almost disappeared. At first he dug happily, then diligently, then like a man possessed.
Sweat dripping from his brow, swearwords from his lips, he dug and dug, piling up earth, rock, brick and crazy paving in a huge pile in my cottage garden. Any time I dared to ask what he was doing, he yelled for tea with sugar. As I unpacked boxes, he dug away, becoming ever more Neanderthal.
‘Why don’t you take a break?’ I suggested, tiptoeing down to him with cake.
‘Because I’ve got to shift this floor.’
And he duly moved from digging up the patio to digging up the inside of the house. Clumps of tiling flew and he started yelling in builder speak: ‘Ring the skip company. I’ll need an eight.’
‘An eight?’ I said to the skip hire. ‘Ri’-o,’ said the girl. ‘M’husband’ll be there in ’arf ’aaaaa.’
This was always a do-up, but I envisaged a lick of paint and a new kitchen.
The day after we got the keys the BB smashed through a stud wall making a tiny bathroom and boxroom into a big second bedroom. ‘What about the other second bedroom?’ ‘You mean the new bathroom,’ he said, ‘with a bit walled off to make a corridor to the staircase to the loft room.’ And he disappeared, then reappeared above me through a hatch, then ripped open a larger hatch to expose a vast dramatic skylight going all the way to the roof through the stairwell.
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