Page 27 of A Very Happy Halloween

Me

Could be better.

Alfie finally found a spider while I was scraping the remains of the jam-covered toast Harry had dropped off the floor—which may or may not have been the spider he lost—and the batteries in my foil cutter were dead. Annie Crump wanted highlights, which meant I’d need to either buy more batteries or cut the foil manually, and honestly, was anything else going to go wrong today?

Yes.

Yes, of course it was.

When I got back from the school run—why did they call it that when it was more of a sweaty march?—there was a truck parked in my driveway.

“Are you lost?” I asked the man standing beside it.

“Marigold Lodge?”

“Yes, but I didn’t order any of…whatever that is.”

“It’s the scaffolding for your roof.”

What?

“I don’t understand. I spoke to Kevin last week, and he said I was tenth on the list. That it would be months.”

The scaffolding guy shrugged. “Well, now you’re first on the list.”

“I’m not sure about this.”

“You want me to take all the stuff back?”

“I…” Then it hit me. Eisen. “Could you give me one moment?”

I dialled his number. The raging chipmunk. The overstepping, uncommunicative chipmunk, more like.

“Do you happen to know why a scaffolding truck just arrived at my house?”

“I thought they were starting tomorrow.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“You need a roof, so I called Kevin and got him to move you up the schedule. I figured that if you had to work tomorrow, I could come over and keep an eye on them.”

“How did you get him to move me up the schedule? You didn’t threaten to break his legs, did you?”

“Babe, most problems are solved by money, not violence. I offered him drinking vouchers.”

“You mean you bribed him?”

“Think of it as a bonus.”

“I can’t afford a bonus.”

“Good thing you’re not paying it, then.”

“You can’t…you can’t…”

“It was surprisingly easy. I just went to the ATM, told it how much money I wanted, and dropped the cash through his letter box. In all your googling, did you happen to check out my net worth?”

“No?”

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