“With the electricity.”
“Sorry. That. Um, the trip-switch keeps tripping, and when I untrip it, it goes straight back.”
“Probably a short. If you tell me where you are, I’ll be right over.”
“Are you sure? I mean, it’s nearly seven and . . .”
“Nah, it’s fine. I was just trying to self-sauce my pud, but it’ll keep.”
God, what if he was eliminated because she’d made him do an emergency call-out at an unsociable hour on a Tuesday? “I don’t want to interfere with your practice. And I can, you know, pay you.”
Assuming he didn’t want a couple of hundred quid.
“No need, mate. Us bakers gotta stick together. I reckon I’ll be there in about an hour.”
“Okay. This is . . . kind of you. I really appreciate it.”
He hung up after that, which was fortunate, because Rosaline only had a minute or so left of battery, and vanishing without saying goodbye or thank you after someone had volunteered to do some quite highly skilled labour for free would have wiped out what little remained of her pride.
“Right.” She turned to Lauren and Amelie, who had been watching the call with equal curiosity. “He’ll be here by eight. So if you want to get back to your wife now, I’ll totally understand. And you”—she pointed at her daughter—“need to have a bath, wash your hair, and get ready for bed.”
“But I want to see the Viking,” said Amelie. “I want to see the Viking fix the electrics.”
“I’m not sure there’ll be anything to see. He’ll probably just want to walk around and poke plug sockets.”
“I still want to see. I might want to fix electrics when I’m older. It’s important for more girls to fix electrics.”
“Well, then I’ll buy you a book on it for your birthday.”
“I don’t want a book for my birthday. I want a bike or a laser or a robot.”
“And I want,” said Rosaline firmly, “you to go upstairs, have a bath, and put your pyjamas on. If Harry’s here when all that’s done, then you can say good night to him.”
“And I,” added Lauren, “should be getting back to Allison. So you can say good night to me now if you’re not too bored of my company.”
Amelie went to give Lauren a hug. “Good night, Auntie Lauren. Sorry I said I saw you too much. You’re very nice to me.”
Not being great with affection at the best of times, Lauren patted Amelie awkwardly on the head.
Harry arrived at about ten to eight, which meant Amelie did indeed get to see him before bedtime.
“’Allo, princess,” he said, kneeling down in front of her and putting his toolbox on the floor.
Amelie thought about this for a moment. “I’m not a princess. Princesses are undemocratic.”
“All right.” He paused. “’Allo . . . Prime Minister?”
“I’m Prime Minister of Sloths.” Amelie proudly showed him her pyjamas. “Although these say ‘so sleepy’ and I’m not sleepy so they’re lying sloths.”
“Maybe the sloths are sleepy.”
“Oh. That makes sense.”
“All right.” Rosaline tried to shepherd her child vaguely bedwards. “You’ve said hello to Harry. Now go and clean your teeth.”
“I’ve already cleaned my teeth.”
Rosaline gave her a look. “Have you?”
“Well, not tonight. But I have.”
“You have to clean your teeth every night. And every morning. Or all your teeth fall out.”
“My teeth are falling out anyway and then a fairy gives me money. So, I shouldn’t brush my teeth because then I’ll get more money.”
Still kneeling on the floor, Harry grinned at them. “The tooth fairy only pays for clean teeth, Prime Minister.”
“Okay.” Amelie gave a tragic sigh. “I’ll go and brush my teeth and go to bed even though I’m not tired and will never go to sleep ever. Night-night, Mummy. Night-night, Mr. Viking.”
Now that Amelie was gone, Rosaline was suddenly aware that she and Harry were alone in candlelight. And by candlelight, it was somehow easier to admit how ridiculously . . . everything he was. Those cheekbones. The trace of stubble along his jaw. The way his face looked so sculpted in repose. But then softened—came alive—when he smiled or laughed or talked. He was so blatantly the sort of man you were supposed to fancy that Rosaline felt deeply uncomfortable about fancying him.
It felt . . . shallow, somehow. Like she was giving in to social conditioning.
“Well.” Harry stood. “Better take a look at the circuit breakers then.”
So he took a look at the circuit breakers, while Rosaline hovered somewhat uselessly. One of the many, many bits of etiquette she’d never worked out for having somebody fix your house was whether you were supposed to hang around to show interest, and risk making it look like you were worried they were going to steal the furniture. Or else leave them to it to signal trust, and risk looking like you didn’t give a shit. And this was about a billion times worse when it was someone you knew.
“Can I get you,” she offered, “a cup of t—Actually, forget that. The kettle won’t work.”
“I think”—a series of clicking sounds and the lights came back on—“the problem’s upstairs.”
“How did you . . . ?”
Emerging from the cupboard, he smiled up at her. “Do you really want to know?”
“Are you suggesting it’s too complicated for me?”
“Nah, mate. Just a bit boring.”
“Boring or not, it would probably be helpful if I didn’t have to call you for a problem I could fix by pressing some buttons.”
“Ain’t fixed yet.” He stroked his chin. “What’s going on is, you’ve got a short on one of your rings.”
“One of my rings?”
“Yeah. You got your downstairs ring, what’s all your plugs downstairs. And your upstairs ring, what’s all your plugs upstairs, and your lighting ring, what’s your lighting, and some people have others—depends how their house is put together.”
“Okay?”
“And the lights are fine, and the downstairs is fine, but if I put the upstairs on”—he reached into the cupboard, flicked a switch, and everything went off again—“that happens.”
This sort of made sense. “Then I’m fine as long as I don’t want electricity upstairs?”
“In general, when I come round to fix someone’s electrics, they take it pretty bad if I say ‘Well, don’t use the upstairs.’ So no, this is step one. Step two is I use one of these”—he pulled out something that looked a lot like the multimeters that Rosaline remembered from her A-levels a lifetime ago—“to find out where the short is and then I replace the socket. And if you did want to make tea, it should work now.”
“How do you like it?”
“I reckon you’ll look down on me for this, but milk, lots of sugar.”
Rosaline squirmed. “I don’t . . . look down on you.”
“Come off it, mate. You’re a nice middle-class girl. I bet you never had a sweet tea in your life. I bet you was raised on caramel macchiatos.”