It was the end of his last day; he’d been working at the house for just over a month. It was still really hot, especially up there, even with my new Velux windows open. Covered in sweat, he climbed down the newly installed pull-down ladder. I gave him a pint glass of lemonade rattling with ice cubes, which he drank in one go, the muscles in his throat moving as he swallowed. I think I must have sighed out loud at his sheer gloriousness because he looked curiously at me. I laughed and shrugged, and he smiled and then looked at his boots. I poured him another glass of lemonade and went back to my last box – Caitlin’s things – yet another box of stuff I couldn’t bring myself to throw out and that I knew I’d be clogging up the garage with instead. It was then that I sensed him looking at me. I touched my hair, expecting to find something there, and ran my tongue over my teeth.

‘Everything OK?’ I asked him, wondering if he was trying to work out how to tell me that my bill had doubled.

‘Fine,’ he said, nodding. He was – is – a man of few words.

‘Good, and are you finished?’ I asked, still prepared for bad news.

‘Yep, all done,’ he said. ‘So …’

‘Oh, God, you want paying. I’m so sorry.’ I felt myself blush as I rooted around in the kitchen drawer for my cheque book, which wasn’t there – it was never where it was supposed to be. Flustered, I looked around, feeling his gaze on me as I tried to remember where I’d last had it. ‘It’s around here somewhere …’

‘There’s no hurry,’ he said.

‘I had it when I was paying some bills, so …’ I just kept wittering on, desperate, if I’m honest, for him to be gone and for me to be able to breathe out and drink the half bottle of Grigio that was waiting for me in the fridge.

‘You can pay me another time,’ he said. ‘Like maybe when you come out with me for a drink.’

‘Pardon?’ I said, stopping halfway through searching a drawer that seemed to be full only of rubber bands. I must have misheard.

‘Come out with me for a drink?’ he asked tentatively. ‘I don’t normally ask my clients out, but … you’re not normal.’

I laughed and it was his turn to blush.

‘That didn’t quite come out the way I thought it,’ he said, folding his arms across his chest.

‘You’re asking me on a date?’ I said, just to confirm it, because the whole thing seemed so absurd that I had to say it out loud to test I’d got it right. ‘Me?’

‘Yes, you coming?’

‘OK,’ I said. It had all seemed so perfectly plausible to him: him and me, ten years between us, going out on a date. ‘Why not?’