She decided to let him go ahead of her. It paid to be careful.
‘The bedroom’s just down there,’ she told him, standing back and pointing along the corridor.
‘Just down where?’
‘Last door on the left. You can’t miss it. We had to pull the bed out and stick a container under the leak to catch the water.’ She watched him warily as he sauntered along the corridor, looking through the open doors, in no visible hurry to get to his destination.
‘And would you mind hurrying up?’ she called after him impatiently. ‘I have a lot of chores to be going on with.’
‘So you work here, do you?’ he called back casually, taking his time, as though she hadn’t spoken. He paused outside the bedroom door to look at her, hands thrust into the pockets of his trousers. ‘Don’t you want to come and hear what I’ve got to report about your leak?’ he asked loudly. ‘Nothing to be afraid of, madam. I’m a perfectly well-behaved member of the human race.’
She didn’t like the way he had called her madam. It reeked of disrespect. She pursed her lips together and walked towards him.
The man was wasted in his business, she thought absent-mindedly. He was just too predatorial-looking to spend his life peering down broken drains and inspecting faulty washing machines. He should be out in a jungle somewhere, exploring the depths of the Amazon and slaying man-eating snakes with his bare hands. Or something like that.
‘It’s over the bed. There.’ She pointed to the ceiling and the patch of wallpaper underneath which had been unravelled by the dripping water.
‘I see.’ He walked into the room, side-stepping various articles of clothing which were lying on the ground.
‘Andy’s room,’ she found herself saying, just in case he thought that this mess belonged to her. At the age of twenty-two, and four years her junior, Andy still hadn’t developed any noticeable talent for clearing up behind him. Twice a week a cleaner came and purged the house, but in the intervening days he allowed his bedroom to develop the sort of teenage chaos that would have driven most mothers round the twist. She supposed that his untidiness was simply a reflection of the fact that he had never had the need to be tidy. There had always been someone else clearing up behind him, making sure that everything was neatly folded and put away. Even when he cooked, which he did with flourish, the kitchen afterwards resembled a badly bombed site.
She edged over the wrought-iron bedframe and snatched a pair of boxer shorts off it, dropping them to the ground and then kicking them under the bed. When she raised her eyes, it was to find the plumber looking at her with an unreadable expression.
‘You were saying about the leak?’ she reminded him weakly, staring in concentration at the damp patch on the ceiling.
‘Could be serious.’
Jade’s face blanched. ‘Serious? How serious?’ She didn’t like the sound of that. It didn’t look like much from where she was standing, but then again she wasn’t a plumber, and who knew what build-up of water could be lurking above the ceiling? She imagined Niagara Falls pouring down the wall, destroying everything in its wake, including the vastly expensive carpeting.
‘Can’t be sure.’ He stroked his chin again and continued to stare at her, which she failed to notice with the onset of the horrific, water-filled scenario that was now running through her head. ‘You say you…what?…spotted the water…?’
‘We were watching television and I felt a drip on my head,’ Jade explained, dragging her eyes away from the ceiling and meeting his, which were now glacial. ‘Andy got on the phone immediately,’ she said defensively, primed to contradict any accusations of irresponsibility, not that it should be any concern of the man in front of her. ‘I was here when he made the call, and I know that he stressed the importance of getting it seen to as soon as possible.’
‘And what time would that have been?’
‘A little after eleven in the night,’ Jade said impatiently. ‘Don’t you people keep a log book or something for incoming calls? Look, can you fix it or not?’
‘Not at the moment.’
Jade groaned in despair. ‘But we—Andy explained to you the importance of getting this sorted out. Yet you come here without so much as a screwdriver in sight and tell me that you can’t fix it at the moment.’ She sat on the edge of the bed. ’Well, when can you fix it?’
‘Why don’t we go downstairs to discuss this?’
‘What’s there to discuss?’ It seemed perfectly clear-cut to her.
‘What needs to be done.’ He shrugged and continued to look at her with relentless concentration. She could almost hear his brain ticking away in his head. Probably working out the vast charges he would make at the end of this little job.
‘Oh, all right.’ She stood up wearily, threw one last disgusted look at the leak, which appeared so inoffensive, or had done until the Wilkins man had said otherwise, and headed out of the room.
‘Perhaps we could discuss the situation over a cup of coffee,’ he suggested to her, halfway down the stairs, and she paused to look at him over her shoulder.
‘Haven’t you got other jobs you need to get to?’
‘Not at the moment.’ He had stopped when she had turned to address him. Now he took another step down, and for some reason the thought of being cooped up on the staircase with this man towering over her was enough to get her legs moving again. She swung around, trailing her hand along the banister, and skipped lightly down the remainder of the stairs.
‘Well, I happen to be quite busy,’ she said pointedly, leading the way to the kitchen.
‘Of course. Doing what?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ She couldn’t believe her ears. The man’s rudeness defied description.
‘I only ask because I’ve been here before. A few times, actually, and the house has been empty.’
‘Why would a plumber come to an empty house?’
‘Contract.’ He shrugged eloquently, as though that single word explained a host of things.
Jade groped her way to further enlightenment. ‘Oh, I get it. You come every so often to check up on the place and make sure that everything’s running smoothly?’
‘Exactly.’
‘I’m surprised Andy didn’t recognise your name in the book, in that case,’ she mused aloud, filling the kettle with water and plugging it in.
‘We plumbers. A forgetful lot.’ He raised his eyebrows expressively, and somewhere in the depths of her head she realised that he was laughing at her.
‘Yes. Quite. How do you take your coffee?’
‘Black, one sugar. So…’ He strolled around the kitchen and finally, as she had known he would, ambled over to the kitchen table, where he looked with interest at the drawings spread across the wooden surface. From the other end of the room, Jade watched him with a growing feeling of antagonism.
‘Have a seat, Mr Wilkins,’ she said tightly, ‘and then perhaps we could discuss the matter at hand?’
‘Draw, do you?’
‘That’s right, and I really haven’t got the time for chit-chat.’ How much more blatant did she have to be? She filled their mugs with boiling water, wondered whether it was too late to call in another firm to have a look at the leak, and then stood stock still as he held up one of her sketches to the light and began inspecting it.