For a second, he sees terror has exploded across her face. She dips her head and shuffles off to the kitchen, gently closing the door. Niall is left panting, surrounded by shards of wood and snowy flakes of plaster. ‘Fuck,’ he breathes. The clouds are moving fast outside. He switches the radio off. Shadows leech through the filmy window. He can feel the blood pumping in his ears. ‘Fuck.’

He begins to tidy up his tools carefully. Catriona is the kind of no-nonsense woman who wears corduroy trousers and pays him cash in hand. When he first started the job, he had to arrive at 7.30 a.m. as she was leaving for work. She always looks so fresh-faced in the morning, with smartly ironed shirts that give him a clean, warm feeling as he lays down his tool bag on the terracotta hallway tiles.

He had no idea she would be home this early. They have fallen into a pattern on the days that Niall works on the house. When Catriona is home from the surgery and he is finishing up, Niall will switch off his radio and look up towards the hallway. Usually the milk-white kitchen door is closed, but sometimes it is a little ajar. He doesn’t usually hear her arrive, only the fuzz of the radio and the rumble of the kettle. He always waits for a few moments behind the door with its cold brass handle before entering the pristine kitchen. The smell of fresh paint will be hanging in the air and he will tell Catriona he is popping out to grab more adhesive or pipe surrounds, or simply that he is heading home. She never seems to take much interest, or minds how sporadic he can be. A few times he has gone into the kitchen to say he needs things when he does not. She will barely look up, her laptop open like a clam on the wooden table, its flat screen illuminating her clear-skinned face.

This has fucked up everything.

‘Catriona,’ he says quietly against the closed kitchen door.

He hears a murmur in return and lets himself in. She looks up in her round tortoiseshell glasses. Her caramel foot is high on the table’s newspapered edge and she is stretching forward to paint her toenails peach. He notices her hand is shaking. A glob of polish is stuck to the newsprint over a story about a car crash. He can’t think of what to say. Every time he opens his mouth he remembers how loud his voice was and how the plaster was hanging off the walls. She has untied her black curly hair, bringing out the smooth curve of her eyebrows.

‘That’s me off,’ he says.

‘Excuse me?’ The eyebrows raise.

Niall clears his throat. ‘That’s me off.’

She stares at him hard. ‘Right. That’s it, is it? You’re off. Charming.’