Nailed It!

by Mel Campbell

  Rose laughed despite herself. ‘I just wish we could be together, even just for a couple of minutes without the cameras. I just need to be with him.’

  ‘You might get your wish,’ Nicola said, excitement in her voice. ‘Look, it’s a surprise challenge.’

  On the screen the contestants were all together in Alex and Karen Mueller’s kitchen. Len was talking to them about some kind of charity bake-off – the charity part must have been real, as it was the most animated she’d seen him look. The idea was that everyone would go back to their own new kitchens and bake an item that could be sold, and the three items that made the most money would earn their bakers the next three Ninja Tradie picks.

  Rose frowned. ‘I didn’t even know this had happened. They must have filmed it mid-week and not told us. What does this stuff even have to do with renovations?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Nicola said. ‘Half the challenges on these shows are just pulled out of thin air. It’s probably cross-promotion with that cooking show they do later in the year or something.’

  ‘These shows are so bizarre,’ Rose said. ‘When can we go back to watching Grim Designs?’

  It didn’t take Rose long to realise Michelle was going to easily win this challenge. The Muellers had a better kitchen but had no idea how to bake, and spent most of the time shouting at each other; nobody else even had a working oven yet. Gino and George just lit a fire in one of the holes in their backyard and tried to grill a whole chicken on it, while Mick and Sahara were too busy brainstorming ‘statement’ spreads to put on their sandwiches to actually make them. Surprisingly, it was the Morgans who were Michelle’s closest competition, as Jenny got to work while Chloe stayed out of her way.

  ‘They’d probably win the whole show if the daughter just stayed in bed all day,’ Nicola said.

  But Michelle was absolutely in her element. Wearing a crisp gingham apron and industriously wielding an egg beater, with cute smudges of icing sugar on her face, she smiled blissfully as Len’s voiceover droned on and on about her cooking skills. Rose started to suspect the whole thing had been a set-up designed to ensure she won this week’s challenge.

  ‘During the long months of her little brother’s illness,’ Len was saying, ‘Michelle developed the interest in healthy eating and mindfulness that has made her one of this country’s top Instagram influencers.’

  Nicola groaned. ‘Have you checked out her Instagram page?’

  Rose shook her head.

  ‘It’s so basic. It’s called Michelle’s Mindful Munch.’

  ‘God, I know,’ Rose said. ‘That word “munch” makes me want to close my legs forever.’

  ‘I’m sure she’s got nothing on Dave’s mindful munch.’ They both cackled.

  ‘Just salads and selfies, salads and selfies,’ Nicola continued, ‘while she writes these gushing messages about how grateful she is for the earth’s bounty or whatever. “It’s a blessing just to be living on the same planet as kale.” Barf.’

  ‘I can’t believe she thinks this bullshit is, you know, a real job,’ Rose said.

  ‘She makes it really boring, but she does have …’ Nicola looked down, presumably at her phone, ‘two hundred thousand or so followers, which is a decent start. She probably won’t have to get a real job for a while after Mansions, and if she can spin it off into another media gig … maybe a cookbook or three … she might do all right out of the whole thing.’

  ‘She can definitely cook,’ Rose said. ‘Those bacon cupcakes look delicious.’

  ‘I’m sure Dave likes your cupcakes more.’

  ‘Save the smut for later, they’re about to announce the winners.’

  Len rambled on for a while about how the proceeds of this celebrity bake sale were going to help various charities. His face was aglow as he explained how important it was to give back to the community, and how important it was to cook, because if you gave a man a fish he’d eat for a night, but if you taught him to fish he could host his own reality program. Even Rose was shouting at the screen telling him to hurry up by the time he announced that Michelle and Dave were the winners.

  ‘Pick me,’ Rose said. ‘Please pick me.’

  The Morgans placed second with some kind of breakfast pancake made out of melted Mars Bars, while the Muellers were third with a store-bought box of muesli bars that they’d signed. But Michelle and Dave were first: the show cut to stock footage of Rose and the other Ninja Tradies waiting in the pen while thinking music played.

  ‘Just pick me,’ Rose shouted.

  ‘Will they accept this Rose?’ Nicola quipped.

  Dave and Michelle were talking discreetly to each other, but their mics were on so their whispering didn’t make much difference.

  ‘Rose?’ Michelle said quietly.

  ‘Rose,’ Dave said in a hushed tone.

  ‘Yay!’ Nicola said.

  ‘We pick Rose,’ Michelle said to Len. Beside her, Dave beamed.

  Rose thought she was going to faint.

  They were filming Rose the second she got out of her ute Monday morning. Not the official camera crew: the fans who now lined the dusty chain-link fence that ringed Corona Court. Everyone seemed to have their phones out, calling her name as she walked towards the site office. She’d briefly smiled and waved when she got out of the ute, but that was it, and by the sound of their yelling some of the fans wanted more.

  Once she was far enough away she turned to look at them. There probably weren’t that many out there – a dozen or two at most that she could see – but they were loud and persistent. She wondered if it was the long trip that did it. If Mansions had been filmed in the heart of the city the fans could have driven past on their way to work and be done for the day, but after a forty-five-minute drive out into the middle of nowhere, they wanted their money’s worth.

  If you looked (and she had) you could already find fan footage online; one of the big disadvantages for Sahara and Mick, and Gino and George, was that their lack of rear walls made it a lot easier for fans on the other side of the fence to see in. No wonder the producers wouldn’t let the contestants go online; if they could see the unedited footage that was doing the rounds they’d freak out. Watching Gino and George flitting around the backyard making spooky hand gestures made no sense at all if you didn’t know they were recording a podcast, and the fan forums were full of wild conjecture. Some people thought the lead-contaminated soil had damaged their brains; others thought it was for the as-yet-unannounced interpretative dance challenge.

  Rose walked inside the site office. With Moss the Boss gone, Cody handed out the assignments directly.

  ‘Rose,’ she said, ‘you’re spending the week with –’

  ‘Michelle and Dave,’ Rose said. ‘I saw the episode.’

  ‘Good girl,’ Cody said. ‘We need all the ratings we can get.’

  ‘Does watching online count?’

  ‘Not unless we put out a press release saying it does,’ Cody said.

  It was all she could do to stop from running to Dave’s house. Was it quicker to go to the front door or around the back? Where in the house would Dave be? How could she make sure she saw him first? And then a camera crew appeared by her side and she froze her face into a blank mask. Surely they couldn’t film her every second of the day with Dave?

  It was Michelle who opened the front door. She had her own camera crew with her, complete with a baseball-cap-wearing field producer Rose didn’t recognise; they filmed Rose’s face, while Rose’s crew filmed Michelle. And suddenly Rose realised why Michelle had picked her: after a week of her flirting with Lightning Rod, she wanted a week where Rose and Dave showed no interest whatsoever in each other. What other choice did they have? Michelle and Rod could flirt because there was nothing behind it, but if Dave and Rose did anything it could give their relationship away. And by making sure things stayed purely professional between R
ose and Dave on screen, Michelle would get to be the sexy exciting one, while they were just boring stiffs there to do a job.

  ‘Hi Rose,’ Michelle said warmly. ‘Great to have you back.’

  ‘Can’t wait to get started,’ Rose said, just as warmly. Michelle opened her arms for a hug. Rose stepped up to her and hugged her right back.

  A lot had changed in the week since Rose was last in Michelle and Dave’s house, and none of it was good. Rose didn’t doubt for a second that Lightning Rod was a decent electrician, and that all the wiring he’d installed was top notch. But he didn’t seem to have paused for a second to think where he should be wiring half the projects Michelle and Dave had come up with, and while there was nothing here as blatantly lethal as the Sword of Damocles, Rose was going to have her work cut out for her just to make this place safe to walk around in.

  For one thing, Rod had helped install a row of four ceiling fans in the ground-floor entertaining area. They probably would have been handy to help air circulate and cut down on heating bills – except for the fact that, to keep them in a straight line from the hallway to the back sliding doors, two of them had been installed right next to support pillars.

  Dave had been standing in the kitchen when Rose had walked in. ‘Hi Rose,’ he’d said in a cheery but neutral tone. She couldn’t blame him for his lack of passion. While he didn’t have his own camera crew, Michelle’s team were right behind her and Rose still had a camera operator all but attached to her hip. ‘Hi Dave,’ she’d said, hoping the yearning she felt in every fibre of her being stayed buried. ‘Great to be back helping you guys.’

  Her nails were jammed into her palms so hard she was worried she’d draw blood, but she couldn’t seem to unclench her fists. They wouldn’t film her hands, would they? She moved her right hand to her tool belt and forced her fingers to grasp the handle of the hammer hanging there. She could do this. They’d find a way to be together.

  ‘Did you see our awesome ceiling fans?’ Dave said. ‘They’ll cut down on heating and cooling costs, and they’re great for our carbon footprint.’

  ‘Have you tried to turn them on?’ Rose said, keeping her voice level. ‘I think there may be a problem with the clearances.’

  ‘We only had them fitted on Saturday,’ Dave said, moving towards a switch on the wall. ‘This’ll be the first official test.’

  ‘Wait!’ Rose shouted as Dave’s hand closed over the switch.

  Two of the ceiling fans started up smoothly; the third spun a little but stopped as soon as a blade hit the nearby support pillar, the motor cutting out instantly. But the one that was hanging closest to the kitchen bench around which they were clustered kept going. Each time a blade hit the support pillar, it broke off; each blade snapped off at the same point as the fan turned, and each one went flying into the kitchen.

  The first blade bounced off the oven by Michelle’s head as she ducked. Rose didn’t see where the rest went; she dived onto Dave and crash-tackled him to the floor as the blades whizzed by overhead. The camera crews were swearing and Michelle was shouting something but Rose didn’t notice or care.

  ‘Hi,’ she whispered, lying on top of Dave.

  ‘Hi,’ he said softly back.

  ‘Turn that fucking thing off!’ one of the camera crew yelled.

  Rose reluctantly clambered off Dave and flicked the switch. The fan was harmless now all its blades were gone, and everyone else slowly got to their feet.

  ‘That’ll make another great promo,’ Rose said bitterly. ‘I hope you got all that.’

  ‘If these guys didn’t,’ Michelle said, ‘those guys did.’ She pointed towards the glass wall between the entertainment area and the backyard. At the far side of Dave and Michelle’s yard was a low wooden fence; a little further away was the chain-link fence that encircled the court. And beyond that Rose could see three or four fans holding their phones up, trying to film what was going on inside. One of them was also holding up a video camera.

  ‘Shit,’ the producer said. ‘You didn’t think to put curtains up?’

  ‘The curtain challenge is at least a fortnight away,’ Michelle said indignantly.

  ‘Leary is going to go nuts,’ the producer said, walking out of the room as she began to talk quietly into her headset. Michelle followed her but the camera crews stayed behind, already filming the aftermath. Rose carefully took a couple of steps back from Dave.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘I’m fine,’ he said cheerily. ‘I guess we should have double-checked the measurements for those fittings, hey?’

  Rose wasn’t sure whether to be relieved he was unhurt, or angry that he wasn’t taking this more seriously. ‘I guess so,’ she said calmly, watching the camera filming her out of the corner of her eye. ‘You never can be too careful on a building site.’

  Rose felt the phone in her back pocket vibrating. She let it go; they weren’t meant to answer phones while they were being filmed.

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘shall we keep going?’

  ‘I guess I can show you what’s changed since you were here last,’ Dave said. ‘I’ve made a few improvements over the last week.’ He pointed towards the stairs. ‘Let’s start with the master bedroom.’

  They couldn’t go up the stairs until a camera crew had gone up first to film them walking up, while the other followed close behind. Rose gritted her teeth and hoped the cameras didn’t notice. Being this close to Dave but not being able to do anything – not even give him the smallest of smiles – was pure torture.

  ‘Hang on,’ Rose said when they reached the first floor, looking at a new glass door at the end of the hall they were in. ‘Is that a new balcony?’

  ‘Sure is,’ Dave said proudly. ‘I thought we should take full advantage of the view.’

  Rose walked down the hall slowly. ‘It’s a nice view,’ she said. ‘But if you don’t mind my asking, what kind of reinforcement have you got under it?’

  ‘It’s totally safe,’ Dave said. ‘I put at least six two-by-fours supporting it, running diagonally from the edge of the balcony floor to the wall underneath.’

  ‘Hang on,’ she said, stopping dead. ‘That’s not a wall underneath. It’s the back windows.’

  ‘Yeah, the windows are the wall,’ Dave said.

  He wasn’t wrong; at ground level the rear of the house was a row of floor-to-ceiling windows. But they weren’t as sturdy as Dave thought.

  ‘So, just to be clear,’ Rose said, ‘the supporting beams for this balcony are attached to the downstairs windows?’

  He nodded. ‘If they can hold up the side of the house, they can hold up a little balcony.’

  ‘Dave,’ Rose said, working hard to keep her voice calm, ‘the windows don’t hold up the side of the house. The window frames do that. The windows are just glass.’

  ‘But the supports are solid,’ Dave said. ‘I glued them on firmly.’

  Glued. Not even any brackets. ‘Dave,’ Rose said, turning to face him. ‘Never, ever set foot on that balcony. We’re going to have to remove it. It’s not safe.’

  ‘It was fine last night when I was out there. The producers were here for every stage and they didn’t have a problem with it.’

  ‘If you were standing on that balcony last night, you’re the luckiest man alive.’ She walked over to him. ‘Please, don’t go out there. It’s really dangerous.’ This never would have happened if Moss the Boss were still here, she thought.

  He started at her for a moment, a glint in his eye. Then his face softened and he nodded. ‘Okay, you’re the expert.’

  It took another hour or so to go through the rest of the upstairs area. Rose wanted to examine the place inch by inch, just in case Dave and Michelle had laid carpet directly over an open trapdoor or something. She was relieved to find it was all relatively safe, though Dave did mention his plan to place a skylight in
the floor so the downstairs office underneath would get more light. ‘That’s an interesting idea,’ Rose had said, ‘but I think we need to focus on getting the basics right for the next few days.’

  They’d just come out of the upstairs entertaining area when a voice called from downstairs, ‘I need both camera crews down here, right now.’ It was the field producer, back from reporting Rose’s latest rescue to Leary. The crews hurried past Rose and Dave, their cameras pointing at the ground. ‘Rose and Dave, you too,’ she yelled.

  The second the camera crews were down the stairs Rose lunged for Dave. He was already moving towards her, and their kiss was almost a bodyslam. Their teeth clashed; their noses mashed together; the claw end of her hammer dug painfully into her hip. It was the best kiss of Rose’s life.

  ‘I needed that so badly,’ Dave gasped. He was clutching Rose like his life depended on it, and his hands were buried in her hair.

  ‘Me too,’ Rose whispered, her own hands bunching the back of his T-shirt. ‘It’s been forever.’

  ‘We can’t go that long again. I can’t do it.’

  Rose shook her head, then kissed him again, smoothing down the shirt over his delicious muscles. ‘But we can’t stay up here.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ he said. ‘I thought having you around would make it easier, but having you so close and not even be able to talk properly to you, it’s –’

  ‘Torture?’ she said.

  He nodded.

  ‘I’ve got an idea,’ she said. ‘I’ll write you a letter, and leave it for you tomorrow behind the loose tiles in the upstairs bathroom. You write one for me too.’

  ‘That’s brilliant.’

  ‘C’mon,’ she said, dragging him towards the stairs. ‘If we leave a letter for each other each day, at least then we’ll be able to stay in touch.’

  His hand ran down her back as they walked. She shivered. ‘We definitely need to stay in touch,’ he said softly.

  ‘Behave,’ she whispered as they walked down the stairs. ‘Most of the upstairs looks good,’ she said loudly; Michelle was standing at the bottom of the stairs, staring up at them as they walked down. Rose’s phone shuddered in her back pocket yet again; that had to have been the sixth or seventh time this morning. What was going on?