Page 4 of Her Fixer Upper

‘Get. Out.’ I over-enunciated the words, so that even his booze-addled brain could understand them, then I pulled the door wide open and gestured to him to be gone.

He staggered across the room and stepped into the hallway. I was about to heave a sigh of relief when he turned back towards me. He slipped the tip of his tongue out of the corner of his mouth as he eyeballed me, and then his gaze wandered downwards. Even though I was wearing the thickest, baggiest flannel pyjamas imaginable, I felt as exposed as if I was naked.

‘I knew you’d be fiery with that hair of yours. One for the memory bank,’ he said. Then he hauled himself upstairs.

I gripped the door frame to try to stop the trembling in my hands. I felt violated and utterly vulnerable. This was meant to be my home, the place where I could feel completely safe and relaxed. Instead, I was standing here shaking, a normally calm and poised woman reduced to a quivering mess. I tried to pull myself to my senses and retreated into my room, dragging the chest of drawers behind the door so that Steve couldn’t get in if he decided he was in the mood for round two. I was shivering with shock. I wanted to wrap my duvets around me and hide myself in their comforting warm folds, but they were tainted by Steve’s touch. I would rather burn them. I tore my pyjamas off – they too would be going in the recycling pile – and then once I’d got a comfy tracksuit on, I started haphazardly throwing my possessions into bags. I could not live here a single moment longer.

But where could I go? After tonight’s horrifying experience, I’d never feel safe renting a room in a shared house again. And if I tried to push the boat out and rent a place by myself, it would be a struggle, and my dreams of home ownership would become even more unattainable. I knew Leila would happily offer me her sofa to sleep on, but that was only a short-term fix. I needed a long-term solution.

Suddenly Leila’s jokey comment about Charlie and me buying a house together came back into my mind. We’d both laughed it off, but was it actually all that laughable an idea? Charlie and I were in the same boat, wanting to buy, but not being able to do it by ourselves. And who better to buy a house with than my best friend? Well, he had been my best friend when we were eleven, but from last night’s brief encounter I didn’t think the Charlie of today was all that different from the Charlie of old. As a child he had been a loyal and completely trustworthy friend. I couldn’t imagine those characteristics would have faded with age. The still-surging adrenalin was making my brain run at a million miles an hour, and the idea developed rapidly. What if we were to find a place that needed a bit of fixing up, fresh paint, new flooring, that kind of thing, complete the work together, and then sell it on for enough of a profit to enable both of us to get deposits for our own separate places? We’d been turned down for mortgages as individuals, but Charlie himself had said that the adviser had told him he’d have a better chance as part of a pair. And with two incomes rather than one, there was double the opportunity to find somewhere affordable. It would be the best of both worlds. We’d both achieve our dream without being tied into a long-term house-sharing commitment.

I forced myself to take a moment before I got carried away with the idea. I knew I was in a state of high emotion, never the best frame of mind in which to be making a big decision. I needed to take a breath and think about this logically, really assessing the practicalities of the plan. I threw on an extra hoody and then sat down on the floor, my back against the chest of drawers. I put my glasses on, pulled a notepad out of my school bag and then used my marking pens to draw up a list, green ink for the pros, red for the cons. But I soon realised that things weren’t quite as clear-cut as that. My first potential pro was getting on the property ladder at last, but did doing it tied to another person make it more of a con? On the other hand, fifty per cent of something was better than one hundred per cent of nothing.

Another massive pro was that I would no longer be at the mercy of predatory landlords like Steve. Though I also needed to be honest with myself and admit that I was considering living with a man whom I’d last known properly before puberty struck. Sure, he’d probably moved on from his childhood Indiana Jones obsession, but what was adult Charlie really like? We wouldn’t only be living with each other; we’d be financially tied together. Commitments didn’t get much bigger than that. My red pen faltered on the page. And then I heard a creak from the hallway outside my room, and I knew without doubt that anything was better than staying here.

ChapterThree

To give Leila her due, she didn’t bat an eyelid when I buzzed the intercom on her flat at four-thirty in the morning, even though when she opened the door to me she had the appearance of someone who was about to experience a massive hangover kicking in. She took one look at the hold-all and pile of bin bags full of my worldly possessions, which I’d somehow managed to hook onto my bike and wheel over to her place, and opened her arms. I sobbed noisily on her shoulder until one of her neighbours rapped on the wall to remind us that most people were still in bed and trying to sleep at this uncivilised hour. Then she helped me carry the bags upstairs to her tiny but beautifully appointed flat, and set about making me a cup of very hot, very sweet tea while she gently prised the full story out of me. When I got to the part where Steve had tried to pull my duvets down, she picked up her phone and started dialling.

‘I’m calling Nim, he used to be on the sex crimes squad. He’ll sort the bastard.’

I lunged for the phone. ‘Please don’t. I really don’t want the police involved.’

‘Nim doesn’t count, he’s my ex. Sort of.’

‘Yes, but he’s still a copper, and if we involve him, he’ll have to make it official. Besides, I don’t want to be held responsible for you having to get in touch with your ex again.’

‘He’s only an occasional ex, as you well know. We’re still friends with benefits and involving him in this situation would very much be a benefit.’

‘I’m not sure Nim would agree with that,’ I muttered.

‘Don’t distract me. Are you saying we shouldn’t involve the authorities because you’ve got another form of punishment in mind?’

I pulled a face at Leila. ‘Um, hello. Have you ever met me? Just because my pervy landlord decided to try it on, it doesn’t mean I’m going to go Liam Neeson rogue and start taking matters into my own hands. No, quite the opposite. I merely want to put the entire episode behind me and forget the whole thing ever happened.’

Leila dropped another spoonful of sugar into my tea, then reached out and gripped my hand. ‘Drink up, hon, and we’ll discuss this further. I know this is only the shock talking, because we are both very aware that unless someone makes a stand against creeps like him, they will carry on with the same pattern of dangerous behaviour. I totally understand why you want to forget it ever happened, but what if it had been one of our sixth formers that had been in your position?’

She’d got me there and she knew it. With a groan, I gave her permission to drop Nim a message. Even if the only thing that happened was that Nim went round and had a quiet word, maybe that would make Steve think twice before he did anything similar with his next female tenant. Leila was right. He needed stopping. I finished the cup of disgusting tea, and felt an overwhelming wave of tiredness hit me, perhaps a delayed reaction to the drama of the night.

Noticing my yawns, Leila made up the sofa bed for me, then, sensing that I wasn’t quite ready to be alone yet, she sat stroking my hair like a parent looking after a sick child and told me silly stories about the kids at school which she knew I’d heard a hundred times before and were therefore comforting in their familiarity. My last waking thought was that I must tell her about my decision to buy a house with Charlie, but before I could put the right words together to explain it to her, I drifted off to sleep.

* * *

I woke to the sound of Leila giggling. If I wasn’t very much mistaken, Nim had responded to her message by paying a personal visit. I wrapped a blanket around me like a cape of protection and padded into the kitchen to join them. Nim was leaning against the countertop sketching a caricature of Leila on the back of an envelope while she sat on the worksurface next to him, casually resting her arm along his shoulders as she cheerfully critiqued his artwork. It was as if they’d never been apart. I hesitated on the threshold, feeling like an intruder.

‘Hey, Freya, are you okay?’ asked Nim, switching from flirting with Leila to professional police mode in an instant. ‘I’m so sorry about what happened to you. What a scumbag. Do you feel up to talking about it?’ He gestured for me to sit at the kitchen table, and sat down opposite me, watching my expression closely while Leila quickly rustled up some coffee for us all.

‘I’m feeling a bit better now I’ve had some sleep. Thanks for coming round. I feel silly wasting your time with this. I kind of want to forget the whole thing ever happened, but as Leila says, if someone doesn’t stop him, he’ll carry on trying it on with other people.’

‘You’re most definitely not wasting my time. Now I’ll totally be guided by what you want to do, but I think I’ve found a way of dealing with the situation without dragging it out too much, if that sounds good?’ He waited for me to nod, then continued. ‘It might interest you to know that I’ve done a little digging, and our Stevie boy doesn’t have an HMO licence, so I will point that out to him when I pay a visit later today to warn him of the error of his ways. House in multiple occupation licence,’ he clarified, catching the confused expression on Leila’s face and mine. ‘It means that he’s not technically allowed to have as many tenants as he does. It’s a poor substitute for arresting him, which I’m happy to try, if you want me to, but the burden of proof is a bastard when it comes to this kind of thing, and being completely honest with you, sadly I’m not sure it would get much further than an arrest.’ He pulled a face. ‘It winds me up no end, but that’s the judicial system for you. Don’t worry, I will be having a stern word, making Steve very aware that if he even thinks about trying something like this ever again, I will track him down and throw the book at him.’

He jabbed his finger on the table for emphasis as he gave me a sneak preview of the cold anger which Steve was soon going to be on the receiving end of. I felt grateful that he was on my side, even if I was slightly dubious about how good an idea it was for Leila to have him back in her life longer term.

‘Thanks, Nim, I appreciate your support.’

‘Happy to do my civic duty. Sex pests like him need to learn the error of their ways.’ He put his mug down on the counter. ‘Right, ladies, I’ll leave you to it. Let me know if there’s anything else you want, Freya. Maybe see you around some time soon, Leila?’

‘Sure,’ she said, in such an affectedly casual manner that I knew she was already calculating how soon she could get away with arranging it without seeming too keen.

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