Speaking of which, the extension is really coming along nicely now. By the time it’s done the whole rear of the ground floor will be a lot more spacious, and I can’t wait to see what it looks like.
Mitchell’s design is fabulous, I have to say. By extending several metres back from the old rear wall of the house, we’ll open out the kitchen and the lounge into one huge, light-filled space. This also gives us room to put in a downstairs cloakroom, which should increase the house’s value even more.
Fred and the boys have already knocked down the wall between the kitchen and the lounge, and have put a strong RSJ in its place to hold the first floor up. It really is quite incredible what you can do to a property once you have the plans in place, and the expertise to see them brought to life.
Which is why I’m standing here in a brand-new set of overalls. I want to be a part – however small – of seeing those plans turned into reality, just so I can stand back when the house is finished and know that a tiny part of it includes Hayley Daley’s blood, sweat and tears.
‘Oh God! She’s bleeding!’ Danny moans. ‘Can you stop it?’
‘Please stand back, Mr Daley.’
The paramedic’s jacket has the same shiny cuff as my overalls.
‘Everything’s gonna be fine, lad,’ I hear Fred say. ‘Let’s just move back and let him patch your sister up.’
‘Right, what can I do?’ I ask Fred Babidge expectantly.
He gives me the narrowed eyes. ‘What would you like to do?’
I wave a hand. ‘Oh, I don’t know. Anything really. As long as someone shows me the ropes, I’ll be fine, I’m sure.’
Fred’s doubtful expression fills me with feminine rage.
‘What’s the matter, Fred? Don’t you think I can do anything?’ My tone is haughty. My face is sharp. ‘Is it because I’m a woman?’
Fred sighs and puts down the hammer. ‘Hayley, my youngest, Trina, would be here working on this job if she hadn’t got pregnant. My wife has forgotten more about furniture-making than I’ll ever know, and my old mum – may she rest in peace – could put up a set of shelves blindfold in a hurricane. This has nothing to do with you being a woman.’
‘Then what is it, Fred? What is it?’
‘You’ve never done a day’s DIY in your life, have you?’
My hands go to my hips in indignation. ‘And what makes you say that?’
‘Well, firstly, you’re wearing a set of overalls that most labourers wouldn’t go within a thousand feet of. Then there’s the fact that last week you asked me what a spirit level was, and when I asked you the other day to order us some more two-by-four, you told me that buying a new truck would be far too expensive.’
I don’t have an answer to that. My anger is instantly quashed, as I realise that Fred is not being a sexist pig – he’s just got a set of eyes and a functioning brain.
‘But I want to do something, Fred!’ I say in a whiny, nasal tone that I intend to regret for the rest of my life. Every feminist on the planet would be tutting louder than the cement mixer if they were here.
Fred folds his arms. ‘Okay, I get you. This always happens on a job. I once had a seventy-five-year-old grandmother of six up on a ladder doing a little light plastering before her hip gave out.’
‘Well, there you go then! If you got her working, you can give me something to do as well!’
Fred’s eyebrow arches. ‘The old dear was in hospital for a week. You should have seen the paperwork I had to fill out.’
I stamp my foot. Somewhere in the world a cold shiver has just run down Germaine Greer’s back. ‘Oh, come on Fred! I’m not going to hurt myself!’
‘Now I’m just going to give you a small injection for the pain, Miss Daley.’
I nod and squeeze my eyes closed.
‘Then we’ll get you into the ambulance, and to the hospital as quickly as we can.’
Fred looks over at where Spider and Weeble, the smallest member of our building team, are putting floorboards down in the massive new lounge. Spider is holding the boards in place while Weeble nails them into the joists with a very loud and very powerful nail gun. ‘Boys? You got anything Hayley here can do?’
The look of veiled terror is priceless. If I look closely, I can actually watch the blood run from Weeble’s face. I can’t do the same with Spider as all those tattoos are in the way.
Fred sucks in air over his teeth. ‘I tell you what, there’s some wood needs cutting for the studwork. Do you think you can handle a saw?’ he says to me.
I nod enthusiastically. That sounds like just the kind of job I can do: simple, easy and straightforward.
Fred takes me out of the extension and onto the patio area, which has been cleared somewhat thanks to Baz’s efforts with an old industrial strimmer.
Fred walks over to what looks like two thick black plastic hurdles. ‘Now these are sawhorses, Hayley. You stick your wood across them, and saw through them.’ He picks up a long length of thin wood and places it over both of the plastic hurdles. ‘So I want you to measure out lengths of three metres, and cut twelve separate bits. You got that?’
I nod slowly.
‘Good stuff.’ He takes out a tape measure and a thick black marker and hands both to me. ‘Remember, three-metre lengths, alright?’ Fred then retrieves a long saw from beside the sawhorse and hands that to me as well. ‘You good?’
I nod again, faster this time. I want to show willing.
‘Smashing! Off you go then!’ Fred gives me a pat on the shoulder and returns back to where he came from, into the bowels of the house and out of sight.
For a few moments I just stand staring at the hurdle things. I was rather hoping for some more complete instructions, but it appears that Fred is one of those minimalist types, who prefers to give people the bare facts and let them work things out for themselves.
Fair enough, I suppose. This will be my chance to endlessly impress him with my independence, and ability to pick things up quickly. Germaine will be so proud!
I go over to the pile of wood and immediately get two splinters. Carrying a length very carefully over to the two hurdle things, I place it on top of them and use the tape measure to section out three metres, which I mark with the pen. So far, so good. Then I grab the saw, take a deep breath and drag the teeth across the wood. Fairly quickly, I build up a nice rhythm, and the sharp saw neatly cuts through the wood in no time at all. Before I know it the two pieces of long wood are falling apart. I have successfully cut my first piece of wood!
I look up to see Fred standing where the double doors to the extension will eventually be. He smiles and gives me a thumbs up, which I return with enthusiasm. ‘Keep going then,’ he tells me, before disappearing off into the house again.
And keep going I do, for an hour. By the time I have finished, there are six splinters of wood in my fingers, and a big pile of three-metre timber lengths. The job is done and I couldn’t be happier about it. Not least because those splinters are really hurting. I should have worn gloves.
‘So, how do you fancy screwing those bits of wood together into a framework for me?’ Fred offers as we stand eating sandwiches in the sunshine.
‘Er . . .’ I reply, looking down at my hands. I’m going to need a good couple of hours with the tweezers and Savlon as it is.
‘Go on, sis!’ Danny encourages. ‘It’ll save me having to do it!’
‘Yep,’ Fred adds. ‘Then you can get on with treating the floorboards, my old cupcake,’ he says to Danny.
Ah, I see what’s going on here. Fred has cunningly made sure there are enough easy jobs lying around the place to keep both Daleys busy and out of his hair. The studwork had obviously been earmarked as a Danny job, but with my, er, helpful assistance, he can do something else that the average five-year-old could probably have a decent go at.
We are both being smoothly handled.
‘Oh, okay,’ I agree, with visions in my head of walking around the completed house, patting the stud walls affecti
onately, as someone offers me a million quid for the place.
And so, a short time later, I’m back on the patio surrounded by wood, with Fred once more giving me a detailed set of instructions.
‘Right, you put three down this way round,’ he says, placing the bits of wood down on the flagstones. ‘Then two this way round.’ Another two lengths are put at either end of the other three. ‘Then you use the stud brackets to screw ’em altogether using the inch-long screws, and the drill with the screwdriver attachment over there. Just make sure the middle one is exactly one and a half metres in the centre and you’ll be golden. Do six of them, and then I’ll come back and we’ll do the supporting struts in between, alright?’
Not really.
‘Yes, I’ll be fine, Fred,’ I assure him. ‘Off you go.’
I could, and should, get him to go through all of that again in finer detail, but I figure I’m on a roll now, and probably don’t need any more assistance.
Fred claps his hands together. ‘Lovely jubbly. If you need any help, just ask.’
And with that, he leaves so I can I continue with my new career in advanced carpentry.
Sadly, it turns out I wasn’t on any kind of roll.
The only thing rolling around here are my eyes, in frustration every time I have to use that bloody drill.
You see, the wood is hard, and the screws are quite blunt. The cordless drill is also large, heavy and quite unwieldy. Persuading the screws to go through the holes in the bracket and into the wood straight is a virtual impossibility. I struggle for fifteen minutes with the first frame, and end up with something more warped than the Starship Enterprise. The only wall you’d want to build with this thing would be one in a house of horrors at the funfair. I pull out the screws and do it again, but try as hard as I might, I just can’t get everything to marry up straight, even if I stand on the wood while I’m screwing.
There must be any easier way to do this . . .
‘There must be a better way to get to the ambulance,’ I moan through the fog of pain.
‘This is the best way, Miss Daley,’ the paramedic replies, strapping me onto the wheeled stretcher.
‘Just mind the new floorboards!’ I wail, as my head swims with the pain medication he’s just administered.
I make my way back into the house to find that everybody has buggered off.
The kitchen extension and lounge are empty.
Looking out of the broad front windows I can see why. Danny has been out and apparently bought doughnuts. The entire workforce is crowded round him and tucking into a large box of Krispy Kremes.
Why did nobody tell me there were bloody doughnuts?
I am most, most put out. I have been forgotten about. Because I have been out in the back garden struggling with the studwork for hours, it has become a definite case of out of sight, out of bloody mind.
Men!
There’s no way I’m going out there to ask for help now – and I’m not going to ask for a doughnut either. They can just feel incredibly guilty later when they realise that they forgot all about me. Yeah. That’ll do it.
I turn to stamp back out to the garden, when out of the corner of one eye, I spy a tool that may well make my job outside much, much easier.
The nail gun is even heavier than the drill, but it looks like quite a simple contraption. It also looks ancient. There’s grease and other substances I can’t identify covering the thing, and a strong smell of oil emanating from it. There’s every chance I’ll need to disinfect myself once I’ve finished using it, but I’m sure as hell going to give it a go on the studwork, as it might save me a lot of bother.
I walk back out to the patio and over to my bits of wood.
‘Right then, you bastards,’ I whisper to the nearest two pieces. ‘Let’s see you put up such a big fight when I use this.’ I shake the nail gun triumphantly over the wood, as if they weren’t completely inanimate and totally unable to appreciate the import of my words.
With renewed resolve, I put the two bits of wood at right angles to one another, bracing one with my left foot. I place the bracket between them, put the end of the nail gun where the bracket hole is, and grit my teeth.
I press the trigger and . . .
WHAMP!
A six-inch nail shoots through the hole, into the wood, out of the other side and right into my foot.
There’s no pain.
Not at first.
Just shock.
‘Mib,’ I exclaim in a weird squeak. ‘Mib mib,’ I repeat, my bottom lip quivering.
I can see the nail’s grey steel entering the side of my dirty white trainers. Judging from the size of the nail, a good two inches of its length are now inside my body.
Are now inside my body.
The world starts to go fuzzy at the edges.
‘Mib,’ I say for a fourth time. Quite what this means I have no idea. Maybe in my state of shock I’m channelling some long-dead language of my ancestors, and ‘mib’ is what they used to say when they accidentally drove a foreign object into the side of their foot.
I pull my foot away from the wood, and feel the nail sliding out as I do so. As soon as the nail is free of my shoe, I instantly see the edges of the trainer turn from mucky white to bright red, and the world goes even fuzzier. I stumble, and plant my injured left foot hard on the ground to stabilise myself.
Ah, there’s the pain.
A bright, lancing spear of agony shoots up my leg, through my body and out of the top of my head. I let out an involuntary scream.
Sadly, that’s not the only involuntary action the shock of the pain hitting me causes. My finger also flexes on the trigger of the nail gun.
WHAMP! WHAMP! WHAMP! goes the infernal machine, sending nails ricocheting off the patio. Two cracks appear in the flagstone beneath my feet, and somewhere I hear the sound of breaking glass as one of the flying nails finds a target.
With another scream – one of terror – I throw the nail gun across the patio. When it hits the ground, another four nails come spitting out of it in quick succession. Luckily – oh so very luckily – the gun is pointing away from me as it does so. Not so luckily, it’s now skidding along the concrete paving stones and will very soon hit a bank of earth. When it does, it will rebound, and there’s no telling where the nails might end up if it fires any more off.
‘What the hell’s going on?!’ I hear Danny exclaim from the extension doorway.
I spin around and in full-on commando style I screech, ‘Get down now!’ As I do, I crouch, ignoring the fresh burst of pain from my left foot.
‘What do you mean, get d—’
WHAMP! WHAMP!
The corner of the brick to the left of Danny’s head explodes as another ricocheting nail flies from the gun, hits one of the lengths of wood I’ve been wrestling with for the whole day and shoots past my brother’s head.
‘Jesus Christ!’ he screams, and assumes a crouching position.
I look over at where the nail gun has come to rest. It’s not spitting out six-inch death bullets any more, but it is making an ominous clicking noise, indicating that if it finds another nail in the magazine, we could still be in serious trouble.
‘Fuck me!’ Fred Babidge roars, striding past both crouching Daleys. He grabs the nail gun, immediately flicking a switch on the side that makes the thing silent. ‘What the hell were you doing, Hayley?’ he spits at me.
I instantly go shamefaced. Fred has never once raised his voice to either of us, but here he is, doing it now while holding an implement that nearly killed both my brother and me.
It’s all my fault!
‘I was . . . I was trying to get the studwork done,’ I say in a meek voice.
His eyes bulge a bit. ‘With a bleedin’ nail gun? Christ, girl. What do you want to do next? Prune a few rose bushes with a chainsaw?’
My face falls. ‘The screws wouldn’t go in properly,’ I complain.
He looks at me for a moment, words forming on his lips. Then he appea
rs to remember that I am in fact a client paying him a great deal of money, so he breathes deeply, and obviously thinks better of voicing his opinions about my DIY skills. ‘Well, at least neither of you got hurt.’
‘Ah,’ I say, holding my finger up. ‘That’s where you’re wrong.’
I lift up my foot to show him the damage. A few drops of blood hit the patio and I immediately go fuzzy again. ‘I think I’m going to faint . . .’
And indeed, I do.
Thankfully, Danny is there to catch me. Otherwise I’d be adding a heavy concussion to severe foot trauma.
The world goes black – and not a moment too soon.
‘It’s no good, the stretcher’s too heavy with her on it,’ I hear one of the paramedics say as I swim in and out of consciousness.
I grab him by the shiny yellow coat. ‘Are you saying I’m fat?’ I drawl at him, trying not to drool from the pain medication he’s just pumped into me.
‘What?’
‘Are you saying, Mr Paramedic, that I am fat?’
‘No, Miss Daley! It’s just that we could carry the empty stretcher across the lounge, but there are too many floorboards missing for us to wheel it back with you on it.’
‘Because I’m fat. Correct?’
Danny appears at my side. ‘Just ignore her. She gets like this when’s she’s not feeling well.’
‘Not feeling well?’ I snap. ‘I’ve just stabbed myself with a six-inch nail!’
‘Only a tiny bit of it, sis. I had a look.’
‘Oh, bugger off, Danny. You once cried for a week when a bee stung you on the bum.’
Danny’s face flames red as the paramedic tries to supress a smile.
‘We can carry it for you,’ Fred offers, the rest of boys standing around him looking muscular.
Bless them. They want to help me in my hour of need, even though my hour of need was scheduled entirely by my own stupidity.
The paramedic shakes his head. ‘We can’t do that. Health and safety. If anything happens to her, it’ll be on our heads.’
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