Page 83 of Not in a Million Years

‘For when you need to carry out advanced DIY projects such as – you know – changing a lightbulb.’

‘My lightbulbs are LED. They last ages.’

‘But not forever. So what do you do when you need to replace one?’

‘I…’ Now I thought about it, it was slightly ridiculous. ‘It depends. Sometimes I’ve asked Jintao next door to come over and give me a hand. He’s got a stepladder. Or I wait until I’m getting a handyman in to do other things and ask them to do that too.’

‘For an independent woman, Kate, you certainly need men to help you out with a load of basic stuff.’

‘As it happens,’ I bristled, ‘the last time I paid someone to change my lightbulb, it was a woman electrician. So there.’

‘Doesn’t alter the fact that you’d rather sit in the dark than stand on a step two feet above ground level.’

‘Look, are you going to do this thing with the speaker or are you just going to pick a fight?’

‘I’m going to put up the speaker just as soon as I’ve finished picking a fight with you.’ He grinned, and I couldn’t help smiling back.

‘God, you really are the most annoying person I have ever met.’

‘I could say the same about you.’

‘Just as well there’s a level playing field. If there was disparity in our annoyingness, that wouldn’t be fair.’

A favourite saying of Andy’s sprang into my head: All’s fair in love and war. It looked as if it wasn’t war between Daniel and me any longer – but could I dare to hope for love?

Resolutely, I pushed the thought from my mind. ‘So are you going to drill a hole in my wall or what?’

‘No, I’m going to have the speaker hold itself up through sheer force of will. Of course I’m going to drill a hole.’

‘But what about—’ I looked at my pristine bedroom, the walls painted an even pale grey, and at my neatly made bed, on which – in the absence of a stepladder – Daniel was presumably going to have to stand. But I bit back my protests – he was helping me out, after all. He’d spent over an hour editing the audio we’d recorded (with headphones, thank God – if I’d had to listen to it I’d have cringed myself inside out) and now he’d given up a morning to come and install the speaker in a position that would cause maximum annoyance to the residents next door, and get it set up on a timer to start playing at five in the morning.

It would be churlish to complain about him drilling holes in my walls or his feet on my duvet. Especially as, in other circumstances, I would have been delighted to have them there.

But he said, ‘Grab me a chair from the other room and I’ll stand on that. You don’t want my great trotters on your bed.’

When I returned with the chair, he’d slid the bed to one side, revealing the embarrassing jumble of suitcases, shoeboxes and other crap that I kept under there (doesn’t everyone?). But he ignored it, moved the chair into position, got out his drill and spirit level and set to work. A few minutes later, the speaker was in place.

‘Job’s a good ’un.’ Daniel stepped down, but without looking, and his left foot descended on one of the shoeboxes that had been under the bed. He stumbled, righting himself quickly but kicking the box to one side, spilling its contents over the floor. ‘Shit. Sorry, Kate.’

‘That’s okay.’ Hastily, I dropped to my knees and gathered up the contents of the box – mostly old letters, photographs, birthday and Christmas cards I hadn’t looked at in ages. Maybe, I thought, once the Airbnb situation was resolved and my flat felt like a safe haven again, I’d spend an evening going through them all, drinking wine and indulging in a bit of maudlin sentimentality.

‘You missed one,’ Daniel said, joining me on the floor. ‘Here you— What the hell?’

In his hand was a birthday card Andy had given me when I turned twenty-nine. He’d had it printed by one of those places where you upload a photo online and they post you a card – or a mouse mat, or a coffee mug or whatever – with your chosen image and text on it.

Andy’s chosen text was: ‘Happy birthday to the world’s best fuck buddy.’ And the picture was a selfie he’d taken of us in bed together, covered up to our chests by my duvet but still clearly naked.

I could remember what he’d written inside: ‘I checked in all the card shops but they didn’t have one that was right, so I made it myself. Love you to bits, Katie babe. Stay as beautiful as you are.’

I’d treasured it at the time, reading the greeting over and over, but I’d never found the words to ask him whether he meant it – whether he did actually love me – or whether it was just something he’d written there, in his flamboyant fountain-pen scrawl, because he had to put something and he wanted to make me happy on my birthday.

‘It’s just a card.’ I tried to take it from Daniel, but he held on to it, staring down at the photograph and the words with an expression of dawning comprehension on his face. ‘Daniel. That’s mine.’

Finally, he let go, and I shoved the card back in the box, cramming the lid down on the overflowing contents.

But there was no lid that could cover what Daniel now knew. The secret Andy and I had kept for so long wasn’t a secret any more.

He stood, dusting his hands on his jeans, and said, ‘Okay. Now I get it.’

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