My name is John and I don’t know why I’m writing this because nobody will probably ever see it or maybe they will but I reckon that will be long after my time. I’m the builder. One of them. Colin is the other one. We are the ones working on the house. Not that guy Nick. He’s gone. We’ve been here two weeks now. The place was a right tip when we started and we had to shift a load of stuff to the real tip before we could even start knocking through and sanding down and working on the pargeting so we’re only just getting started, but that’s not my problem. The owner of the house doesn’t even live in this country and she’s paying. We’ll be here another month, I reckon, but it would be two at the absolute minimum if she’d told us to go ahead and do all the stuff I said needed doing. I suppose she’s going to sell the place and just wants it looking smart to the untrained eye so she can get shot of it. Like I said, that’s all her business, not mine. I wouldn’t want to live here myself, it’s all a bit too wet and far away from everything. Anyway, it was a right mess and we found loads of stuff we didn’t know what to do with and I didn’t like throwing it away. I talked to the next-door neighbour and she said there were two women living here and one of them died – septicaemia, which I think is some kind of blood poisoning, but as you know now anyway if you’ve read this far she’d been ill in another way before that. There were old socks and this weird doll and loads of smashed plates and when we were shifting this mattress with a big dip in the middle and a spring coming out of it I found this diary under it and when Colin was over at the wholesalers getting emulsion I started reading it and then I just carried on because it was interesting and then I read it again. I didn’t understand all of what it was talking about and why should I when it’s just something someone has written for herself about her life, but it made me sad and it made want to read books, which I always want to but don’t. Anyway, I haven’t really got any more to say because it’s all in here anyway, but I thought I should say something because I don’t like thinking about what happened and the neighbour told me the woman didn’t really have any family to speak of and she seemed nice in what she wrote and I feel like somebody needs to write or do something because if nobody did that’s fucking awful and everything just isn’t there any more. We’re going to put the wall back up tomorrow and I’m going to put it in there, in a gap between the stones, before we make good. I’m not telling Colin. He wouldn’t be interested anyhow.