Page 127 of Not That Complicated

Giselle was about as suspicious of Adam’s advent in my life as I had been of hers, but it didn’t take him long to win her over. Dad, in contrast, loved Adam from the start.

He loved Adam for making me happy, he loved Adam because here, at last, was a man Dad could talk to about proper man-things, like construction. Sometimes, Adam brought Liam around, and then Dad could talk rugby, too. It was a dream come true.

Most of all, Dad loved Adam because under the combined pressure, I caved and let Dad build me a conservatory.

“It makes sense, Ray,” he told me. “It’ll raise the value of the property and add some interest to a very run-of-the-mill Cotswolds cottage.”

I thought that my cottage was already about as interesting as I could stand for it to be. I agreed on the condition that Dad could build it, but Adam had to design it. That had the pair of them happily conspiring for months.

In late spring, Dad and his right-hand man, Marley, came up to break ground. Adam and I had been together for almost a year, and I could barely even remember what my house had been like without him in it. Echoing. Empty. Just me and the dead guys.

On the day the building began, Adam was doing something technical on his enormous computer in our joint office. I was standing at the kitchen sink, thinking about the antique drafting table I'd bought as a surprise for Adam as soon as I'd said yes to the conservatory. It was actually going to be a conservatory/office for him. I couldn't wait to see his face when I showed him my design for it, once the exterior structure was up. I'd done a 3D render and everything.

Dad and Marley started up the digger. They'd been at this conservatory business for longer than I'd been alive and they still argued over who got to operate the thing. After their usual heated debate, Marley won the coin toss, and Dad had to stand there, hands on hips, yelling instructions that Marley ignored, because,I know what I am doing, Chris.

I heard the digger rattling away as I did the drying up, saw the arm go up and down a few times, registered a bit more yelling, and then the arm stopped and the digger turned off.

I looked out.

Marley dismounted and they stood side by side, staring down at the ground. The foundations had been marked out with string. Dad had laid it all out yesterday. I'd caught Adam sneaking out that morning to double check Dad had done it right.

I watched them, and frowned when they didn’t move. Slinging the damp tea towel over my shoulder, I went out the back door.

“Dad?” I called. “What is it?”

I joined them and we all stood there, staring down at the dark, moist earth of the trench.

“Huh,” I said.

“Yuh,” Dad said.

“That’s not a chimp,” I said after another moment.

“It's not just a hand, either.”

Adam came out and wandered over to join us. “What’s going on?” he said. "What are you all looking at?" He came to stand beside me and peered down.

“Maybe call Liam?” I said to him. “We found another—oh.”

Adam crashed to the ground in a dead faint.

Dad and Marley looked at him with mild surprise. “Did you know he was squeamish?” Dad said.

“I had no clue,” I marvelled, dropping to my knees and checking Adam’s pulse before I sat on the damp ground and lifted his head out of the dirt and onto my lap. He moaned faintly.

"Good job all he does is design the buildings rather than build them," Dad said. Clearly, Adam’s stock had taken something of a dip in the face of his ‘squeamishness’. “You don’t faint when you find dead people, do you, Ray?” Dad continued, judgement heavy in his voice.

I scowled at him. “I literally just found one, Dad. Right in front of you. I very emphatically did not faint. You watched me not faint.” Adam moaned again. I stroked his cheek. “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s okay. It’s a body, nothing to worry about.”

“You didn’t find it,” Marley said. “I found it.”

“Regardless, there was no fainting from me,” I said.

“Don’t even start, Marley,” Dad said, talking over me. “I found it and you know it. Don’t you go claiming it as yours.”

“Uh, I’m the one digging the holes, Chris.”

“I’m the one telling you where to dig, Marley.”

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