Page 11 of Her Fixer Upper

‘Read them properly,’ I admonished him, noticing the way his eyes were skimming over the page. ‘Remember that I’m a dab hand at recognising when Year Nines are lying to me about reading the work.’

‘Yes, Miss,’ said Charlie, flashing that easy grin of his.

His grin got wider as he read on.

‘Wow, you really have thought of every eventuality,’ he said. ‘And sub rules? I would never have considered such things. I see the sense in the financial guidelines, but some of these are starting to get into the realms of the ridiculous. Rule 16a, “toilet seat must be left down” – I’m a civilised human being, so that’s not a problem. Besides, they say in Feng Shui that you should also close the toilet lid, otherwise you’ll flush all your wealth away.’

‘As neither of us have any wealth, I can’t see that being a problem,’ I said, slightly concerned by the reference to Feng Shui. I hadn’t considered the possibility in The Rules of having to arrange furniture according to an ancient eastern principle.

Charlie’s eyes sparkled in response, and I wondered if he was teasing me. He continued with the list.

‘Rule 16b: “if there is only one bathroom and either party intends to spend longer than half an hour in there, they must seek the permission of the other”. I’m not sure I’ve ever spent longer than ten minutes in the bath. In fact, I’m more of a shower guy myself, but I’m happy to go along with it. Oh, and now we’re really getting to the interesting part. “Relationship between house-sharing parties and others…” Let me read on.’

I felt my face grow flushed as he read the clinical way I’d set out how I saw our house-sharing arrangement working.

‘Rule 18a: “prior warning must be given if an overnight guest is expected”. That’s almost as bad as being at my parents’ place, although I trust you won’t be quizzing any overnight guests about whether their intentions towards me are honourable? And rule 18c, this is very interesting. “No getting involved.” Can you explain that to me? It’s not quite as clearly expressed as the other guidelines.’

I examined his features carefully. Surely he knew exactly what I meant without me having to spell it out for him? Despite his seemingly innocent expression, I strongly suspected he was yet again trying to wind me up, but I had no choice but to take him at face value. My cheeks started to turn warm. Why was I getting embarrassed about discussing this? We were two adults, not children any more, and it was much better that everything was clear from the very beginning so there was no room for crossed wires.

‘No getting involved. We remain friends, and friends only. With a joint mortgage at stake, we can’t afford the complication of not keeping things platonic. Not that there’s any chance of that kind of thing happening, of course.’

‘Of course,’ said Charlie, his voice completely neutral. ‘Don’t worry, I won’t take the implied insult personally.’

‘Charlie, you know I didn’t mean it like that. What I meant was that you’re like the brother I never had. I’m sure most women think you’re really hot.’

We burst out laughing at the same time.

‘Oh heck, I’m making it much worse, aren’t I?’ I said between embarrassed splutters.

Charlie put his arm around my shoulders and gave me a squeeze. ‘You’re quite something, Hutch. May I add an extra rule to the end? Let’s call it Rule 50 subsection e. We mustn’t take ourselves too seriously. As long as we can have a laugh with each other, everything else will work out for the best.’

‘That makes sense to me.’

‘Do we have a deal then?’ Charlie held out his hand.

After a moment’s hesitation, I put mine in his and we shook. ‘We have a deal.’

What had I let myself in for?

ChapterSix

Ireturned to Leeds to spend the rest of the weekend alternating between marking schoolwork and nervously pacing up and down the living room of Leila’s flat while I questioned my life choices. Charlie meanwhile went back to the estate agents, where hopefully they wouldn’t be too disappointed that he’d failed to sell The Glades to me. He promised that he was going to spend all his time, between the other appointments he had booked, reaching out to new mortgage brokers with a view to getting us a meeting as soon as possible. I was glad that he was enthusiastic, and realistically I knew he’d probably have better contacts than me given his Saturday job, but it felt weird to be taking a back seat during this crucial stage. I’d be the first to acknowledge that I like to be in control, but I told myself it was a good exercise. We were buying a house together. It was only right that we divide the tasks up between us.

Fortunately, Charlie was true to his word. Late on Sunday evening he texted me to say that we had a meeting with a mortgage broker the very next day.

‘I went for 4:30, hope that’s okay?’ he asked in the message. ‘I figured you would have finished school by then, unless you have an after-school supervision to do, and it gives me a couple of hours before my evening ballet class.’

‘You do ballet?’ I messaged back, even though that wasn’t exactly the most important detail of the text. It felt like an insight into adult Charlie’s character, and I couldn’t help feeling envious that he seemed to have a much more interesting life outside work than I did.

He replied with a gif of an elephant in a tutu. ‘Yes. Boys do ballet too, you know.’

‘That’s not what I meant,’ I tapped out, stung that he would even think I’d be judging him for being a man who enjoyed ballet. But, I reminded myself, we’d not spent enough time together as adults to really know each other’s values. I firmly dismissed the slight churning sensation this thought produced in my stomach. Charlie had been a good kid, and if we had any differences of opinion on important issues, The Rules were there to protect us. ‘I was wondering how you can afford to do evening classes when you’re supposedly saving every penny for the mortgage?’ I hit Send then instantly regretted it. I sounded like I was nagging him. What he chose to spend his money on was his own business. Just because I had ended up living a near-hermit life while pursuing my goal, it didn’t mean that everyone else had to do the same.

‘I clean the studio after class in return for the free session. Happy?’ was his response, which made me feel even worse. Charlie didn’t have to justify himself to me, and I didn’t want him to think I was going to be a bossy and controlling house partner and make him change his mind, however keen he was to buy Oak Tree Cottage. But I couldn’t really apologise further without making a bigger deal of the situation than it warranted, so I moved the conversation on by suggesting we have a phone call to get our stories straight.

‘We want the mortgage broker to back us, and he or she is only going to do that if they believe we have a rock-solid relationship. Banks won’t want to take a risk on us falling out three months down the line. I mean, of course we’ll explain that we’re friends, but perhaps we should gloss over the fact that we’ve been out of touch with each other for a little while?’

My phone rang thirty seconds later.

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