He adopts a French accent, which doesn’t work at all with his deep Scottish tone, and sings a few lines of ‘Be Our Guest’ from Beauty and the Beast. It makes me laugh so much that I nearly overbalance yet again. Disney songs and imitating singing candlesticks are the last things I expected from him, and his French accent gets progressively worse as he goes up the stairs and strains of the song filter down through the floorboards.

The mattress is starting to take shape, and I manage to switch legs without falling over when my thighs start to burn. I listen to the creaking floorboards as he crosses the landing and goes into the rooms above me. I like that he thought to ask if I wanted to show him around, even though he undoubtedly knows this house better than I do, and I’m strangely comforted by the sound of his footsteps upstairs.

‘So, what do you think?’ I ask when he comes back into the kitchen.

He cocks his head to the side. ‘It’s not that bad.’

‘Not that bad? There are more bits of the house missing than still in existence.’

‘Your main problems are the roof and the windows. Everything else is superficial. Things will look better once you have electricity, water, and some cleaning products, but the windows all need replacing.’

Considering there are no windows left to replace, even I could’ve guessed that. ‘How much is that likely to cost?’

‘I don’t know. A few thousand, at a guess. You haven’t got one whole bit of glass in the house.’

My eyes widen in shock. ‘I can’t afford that.’

‘You could afford this place,’ he says with a shrug.

‘Yeah, exactly. That was it. I put everything I had into buying it.’

‘And you didn’t think you might need to set aside some of your budget for essential repairs?’

‘Well, yeah, but I have a very limited amount left and it has to be prioritised.’

‘And there was me thinking you were just another rich city girl with more cash than sense and enough money to wake up one morning and say “I think I’ll be a Christmas tree farmer today” while dear old Daddy pours money into your trust fund.’ He must clock the look on my face because he looks suitably guilty. ‘Sorry. That wasn’t meant to be as offensive as it sounded. I’ve met people like you who come up here thinking it’ll be an easy get-rich-quick scheme in a film-worthy setting. They’ve seen the size of the land and dollar signs appear in their eyes. I assumed you were the same.’

‘The last thing I thought about was getting rich. I bought it because my parents would’ve loved it.’

‘Would have?’ he asks gently.