It’s the slight vibration of the wood beneath my buttocks that makes me turn, and there is Psychobitch, a cashmere coat slung casually over her gym-honed shoulders, picking her way cat-like through my pile of tools. My heart sinks like a coin thrown into a barrel of diesel, slowly but surely, and I groan my way to my feet to watch her slightly too thin lips move.

She comes up to me in the misty light and begins to talk. She knows I’m deaf and she over-compensates for this. She mouths her words as if she’s wrapping her lips like clingfilm round a plum, as if she’s cutting through tough salami skin with her teeth. ‘Mr Player, I’m delighted to see you.’

I spread my hands - the right hand throbbing — and smile tensely. ‘And I you.’

‘There are a few things … well, many things, that Brian and I are unhappy about.’

‘I’m sorry about that.’

‘Why didn’t you return my phone calls yesterday?’ Her face pinches and I see in it all the disappointments of her self-centred days.

Because I’m deaf, you thoughtless git. A telephone is as much use to me as a Tampax. ‘I didn’t get the message. I’m sorry. My colleague should have called.’ A too-gentle rebuke, which passes unnoticed. ‘What seems to be the problem?’ Usually I have an easy, ursine charm, which disarms the disgruntled. But in Psychobitch I know I’ve met my match. Knew it the moment that I came to the house for the first time. Knew it when I stood in the hallway and met the Harpys — Harpies? — and smelled for the first time the astringent atmosphere of their expectations in the air.

She laughs mirthlessly. ‘The problem? There’s more than one.’ She beckons me with a beautifully manicured finger and I follow her as she embarks on an exhaustive litany of regrets on their part. She points to nails and screws set askew, scratches on the rendering on the side of the house where planks have been carried through, empty cement bags that have been piled below the deck’s frame. She ushers me into the kitchen and points dramatically to a film of dust that has billowed around the bottom of the door. I am slack-jawed, I am disbelieving, I am, I suddenly realise, absolutely fucking exhausted.

I touch her arm and she shies away from me. Am I that alarming? I catch sight of the two of us reflected in the kitchen window. We’re so mismatched we’re a Chaplinesque joke. Her silk-lined coat slips from her shoulders, we both reach for it and she backs away as my hand dips near hers. I may be six feet seven inches tall, with a piratical beard and hands the size of a Spode dinner plate, but no customer has ever flinched from me before. I pick up the coat and, amazed by the tenderness of it against my skin, I keep it in my hand. I am — unexpectedly — overwhelmed by a desire for intimacy. I want her to reach out and touch my ugly, scarred hand and smile. I want her to hold me, want her to stand in the kitchen and just hold me tight, stroking my back, kissing my neck.