‘No, you are.’ He shoos me out of the way while he drags a little heater and bottle of paraffin in with him and closes the door behind us.
I watch as he stomps his boots on the remainder of the doormat and looks around. The smell of his autumnal woody aftershave and the chemical hint of paraffin from the bottle he’s carrying have almost obliterated the cloying smell of damp emptiness that permeates the entire building. His eyes fall on the half open kitchen door and he shakes his head. ‘Evergreene had been meaning to fix that for years.’ He glances between that and the living room and then up the stairs before looking back at the kitchen. ‘That’ll be the cosiest room. Let’s take everything in there.’
He watches in amusement as I squeeze through the gap, pushing the air mattress through first, tossing the pump after it, then squishing myself through, getting my boobs unpleasantly squashed, and pulling the sleeping bag in behind me. When I’m finally in the kitchen and panting for breath from the exertion, his hand slots around the edge of the door and he lifts it easily, pulling it fully open. He gives the hinge a good smack with the flat of his hand and it stands upright, making me feel like a bit of a fool. Why didn’t I think of that?
He looks around by torchlight. ‘If I set up this heater and pump up the mattress, you’ll be nice and cosy in here. You can “camp out” until you’ve got the bedroom sorted.’ Before I have a chance to say anything, he shrugs the backpack off his shoulders and holds it out to me. ‘Mum sent this over for you.’
I put the bag on the unit I wiped clean earlier. It’s warm to the touch, and when I undo the zip, the most gorgeous spicy cinnamon smell wafts out.
‘Thermos of hot pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread just out of the oven, another slice of pumpkin pie, and a flask of tea,’ he says before I can question what’s inside.
‘And if you don’t like pumpkin?’
‘You’re stumped.’ He laughs at his own joke. ‘Stumped, get it? You know, tree farm, et cetera?’
It does actually make me laugh, mainly at how pleased he sounds with himself for such a good pun. ‘Anyone would think you were a pumpkin farmer.’
‘Well, I think we’ve proved that I’m not a comedian.’
This time my laugh is genuine as I unload the bag and set the lovely things Glenna has sent out on the unit. The sight of a flask of tea makes my eyes sting again. I knew I was desperate for a cuppa, but I had no idea quite how desperate until this moment. I force myself to swallow and bite my lip until I’m certain I won’t cry again. ‘Thank—’ I go to thank him but my voice breaks on the first word.
I can’t believe I didn’t even think to bring any food with me. I just thought I’d pop down the street to one of the many shops or takeaways, like I do in London. I didn’t even consider how remote this place is and how vast the countryside seems.
I can feel his eyes on the back of my head, and he seems to know that I’m barely holding it together in the face of warm, pumpkiny food and PG Tips.
‘And yeah, don’t ever eat with us if you don’t like pumpkin. I grow eight thousand pumpkins a year, we have a lot to use up afterwards.’
‘Eight thousand?’ I say in surprise. ‘Your farm must be massive.’
‘So’s yours.’ He sounds nonchalant. ‘Bigger than mine, even. You’ve got about six thousand Christmas trees.’
‘Six thousand?’ My voice has risen to a pitch only audible to whales. He’s got to be joking. ‘And they’re not all dead?’
‘Of course they’re not. But don’t go getting too excited, they’re not in sellable condition either.’
‘What am I supposed to do with six thousand Christmas trees?’
‘Origami?’
It makes me laugh again. I can hear him doing something behind me, so I turn around and watch as he goes to a cupboard under the stairs and comes back with a mop. He takes the keys the estate agent gave me off the unit and lets himself out the back door. Outside there’s a bucket of steaming soapy water waiting, which he must’ve left there on his way over. He plunges the mop in, squeezes it out, and comes back inside to start swiping over the floor.
‘Are you seriously mopping my kitchen floor for me?’
‘There’s no point in putting clean things down in this mess. It won’t take a second.’ His eyes are twinkling in the low light and there’s something in his smile that makes me smile. ‘Have a cup of tea, you look like you need one.’
I can’t argue with him there. I gratefully guzzle tea from one of the plastic flask cups. Within minutes, the kitchen floor is a totally different colour than it was before, and Noel’s unfolding the air mattress and spreading it out. He inserts the nozzle of the foot pump into the hole and starts pressing his foot up and down on it.
‘I can do that,’ I say, thinking I should probably start doing something to prove I’m not completely useless at fending for myself. I’ve pumped up a few paddling pools and inflatable flamingos over the years, when the summer’s hot and Chelsea decides to put a kid’s pool in her miniscule back garden and sit in it drinking wine.
I go over to where he’s standing and try to take over without losing any of the air he’s already pumped in, but the process of me standing on one leg was never going to be a neat one – what I actually do is stamp on his foot and nearly overbalance. I flail around like a drunken great white shark trying to perform the Bolero routine and clutch the sleeve of his flannel shirt to stay upright. When did he take his coat off? I glance through the open kitchen door and see it hanging on the rack in the hallway, along with the hat he was wearing earlier. He’s wasted no time in making himself at home.
Once we’ve established that I’m not going to fall over and I’ve got a rhythm going with the foot pump, he goes back to the collection of things he dumped by the refrigerator and takes the heater outside to fill it. When he comes back in, he sets it on the floor, lights it and puts the safety guards in place, and sits back on his knees to show me the knobs to operate it. It makes the room smell like a Saturday morning at the garage. ‘This can burn quietly all night to give you a bit of light and warmth. The fumes will burn off in a minute, and you’ve got no roof or upstairs windows so there’s plenty of ventilation.’
I can feel the heat emanating from the little heater already, and it makes something that’s been tight in my chest since the moment I set foot in this house start to loosen.
He nods towards the pump. ‘Are you all right carrying on with that? Can I go and have a look around?’
‘Do you need a tour guide?’
‘This was my second home growing up, I know my way around.’ He takes a few steps across the kitchen but stops before he reaches the door. ‘Unless you want to give me the grand tour, that is? This is your house now, I have no right to walk around uninvited.’
I wave a hand dismissively and nearly overbalance again. ‘Be my guest.’
He adopts a French accent, which doesn’t work at all with his deep Scottish tone, and sings a few lines of ‘Be Our Guest’ from Beauty and the Beast. It makes me laugh so much that I nearly overbalance yet again. Disney songs and imitating singing candlesticks are the last things I expected from him, and his French accent gets progressively worse as he goes up the stairs and strains of the song filter down through the floorboards.
The mattress is starting to take shape, and I manage to switch legs without falling over when my thighs start to burn. I listen to the creaking floorboards as he crosses the landing and goes into the rooms above me. I like that he thought to ask if I wanted to show him around, even though he undoubtedly knows this house better than I do, and I’m strangely comforted by the sound of his footsteps upstairs.
‘So, what do you think?’ I ask when he comes back