Bricking It (9 page)

I turn to stamp back out to the garden, when out of the corner of one eye, I spy a tool that may well make my job outside much, much easier.

The nail gun is even heavier than the drill, but it looks like quite a simple contraption. It also looks ancient. There’s grease and other substances I can’t identify covering the thing, and a strong smell of oil emanating from it. There’s every chance I’ll need to disinfect myself once I’ve finished using it, but I’m sure as hell going to give it a go on the studwork, as it might save me a lot of bother.

I walk back out to the patio and over to my bits of wood.

‘Right then, you bastards,’ I whisper to the nearest two pieces. ‘Let’s see you put up such a big fight when I use this.’ I shake the nail gun triumphantly over the wood, as if they weren’t completely inanimate and totally unable to appreciate the import of my words.

With renewed resolve, I put the two bits of wood at right angles to one another, bracing one with my left foot. I place the bracket between them, put the end of the nail gun where the bracket hole is, and grit my teeth.

I press the trigger and . . .

WHAMP!

A six-inch nail shoots through the hole, into the wood, out of the other side and right into my foot.

There’s no pain.

Not at first.

Just shock.

‘Mib,’ I exclaim in a weird squeak. ‘Mib mib,’ I repeat, my bottom lip quivering.

I can see the nail’s grey steel entering the side of my dirty white trainers. Judging from the size of the nail, a good two inches of its length are now inside my body.

Are now
inside
my body.

The world starts to go fuzzy at the edges.

‘Mib,’ I say for a fourth time. Quite what this means I have no idea. Maybe in my state of shock I’m channelling some long-dead language of my ancestors, and ‘mib’ is what they used to say when they accidentally drove a foreign object into the side of their foot.

I pull my foot away from the wood, and feel the nail sliding out as I do so. As soon as the nail is free of my shoe, I instantly see the edges of the trainer turn from mucky white to bright red, and the world goes even fuzzier. I stumble, and plant my injured left foot hard on the ground to stabilise myself.

Ah, there’s the pain.

A bright, lancing spear of agony shoots up my leg, through my body and out of the top of my head. I let out an involuntary scream.

Sadly, that’s not the only involuntary action the shock of the pain hitting me causes. My finger also flexes on the trigger of the nail gun.

WHAMP! WHAMP! WHAMP!
goes the infernal machine, sending nails ricocheting off the patio. Two cracks appear in the flagstone beneath my feet, and somewhere I hear the sound of breaking glass as one of the flying nails finds a target.

With another scream – one of terror – I throw the nail gun across the patio. When it hits the ground, another four nails come spitting out of it in quick succession. Luckily – oh so very
luckily
– the gun is pointing away from me as it does so. Not so luckily, it’s now skidding along the concrete paving stones and will very soon hit a bank of earth. When it does, it will rebound, and there’s no telling where the nails might end up if it fires any more off.

‘What the hell’s going on?!’ I hear Danny exclaim from the extension doorway.

I spin around and in full-on commando style I screech, ‘Get down now!’ As I do, I crouch, ignoring the fresh burst of pain from my left foot.

‘What do you mean, get d—’

WHAMP! WHAMP!

The corner of the brick to the left of Danny’s head explodes as another ricocheting nail flies from the gun, hits one of the lengths of wood I’ve been wrestling with for the whole day and shoots past my brother’s head.

‘Jesus Christ!’ he screams, and assumes a crouching position.

I look over at where the nail gun has come to rest. It’s not spitting out six-inch death bullets any more, but it is making an ominous clicking noise, indicating that if it finds another nail in the magazine, we could still be in serious trouble.

‘Fuck me!’ Fred Babidge roars, striding past both crouching Daleys. He grabs the nail gun, immediately flicking a switch on the side that makes the thing silent. ‘What the hell were you
doing
, Hayley?’ he spits at me.

I instantly go shamefaced. Fred has never once raised his voice to either of us, but here he is, doing it now while holding an implement that nearly killed both my brother and me.

It’s all my fault!

‘I was . . . I was trying to get the studwork done,’ I say in a meek voice.

His eyes bulge a bit. ‘With a bleedin’ nail gun? Christ, girl. What do you want to do next? Prune a few rose bushes with a chainsaw?’

My face falls. ‘The screws wouldn’t go in properly,’ I complain.

He looks at me for a moment, words forming on his lips. Then he appears to remember that I am in fact a client paying him a great deal of money, so he breathes deeply, and obviously thinks better of voicing his opinions about my DIY skills. ‘Well, at least neither of you got hurt.’

‘Ah,’ I say, holding my finger up. ‘That’s where you’re wrong.’

I lift up my foot to show him the damage. A few drops of blood hit the patio and I immediately go fuzzy again. ‘I think I’m going to faint . . .’

And indeed, I do.

Thankfully, Danny is there to catch me. Otherwise I’d be adding a heavy concussion to severe foot trauma.

The world goes black – and not a moment too soon.

‘It’s no good, the stretcher’s too heavy with her on it,’ I hear one of the paramedics say as I swim in and out of consciousness.

I grab him by the shiny yellow coat. ‘Are you saying I’m fat?’ I drawl at him, trying not to drool from the pain medication he’s just pumped into me.

‘What?’

‘Are you saying, Mr Paramedic, that I am
fat
?’

‘No, Miss Daley! It’s just that we could carry the empty stretcher across the lounge, but there are too many floorboards missing for us to wheel it back with you on it.’

‘Because I’m
fat
. Correct?’

Danny appears at my side. ‘Just ignore her. She gets like this when’s she’s not feeling well.’

‘Not feeling well?’ I snap. ‘I’ve just stabbed myself with a six-inch nail!’

‘Only a tiny bit of it, sis. I had a look.’

‘Oh, bugger off, Danny. You once cried for a week when a bee stung you on the bum.’

Danny’s face flames red as the paramedic tries to supress a smile.

‘We can carry it for you,’ Fred offers, the rest of boys standing around him looking muscular.

Bless them. They want to help me in my hour of need, even though my hour of need was scheduled entirely by my own stupidity.

The paramedic shakes his head. ‘We can’t do that. Health and safety. If anything happens to her, it’ll be on our heads.’

I grab his jacket again. ‘What could possibly happen to me that’s worse than getting a six-inch nail through my foot?’

‘Inch and a half . . . Two at most.’

‘Shut up, Danny!’

The paramedic gives me an apologetic look. ‘Sorry, we just can’t let them take you.’

Fred grunts in disgust. ‘Well, how about round the side of the house then?’

I look at him wide-eyed. ‘What? Across the battlefields of the Somme, you mean? That’ll be even worse!’

To explain: both sides of the garden have been mud bogs for the past few weeks. When you have heavy machinery trundling across them every day, the soft earth and grass doesn’t stand a chance, especially with the usual amount of summer and autumn rain you get in the UK. While I was pleased to see the back of the gigantic bramble bushes and overgrown trees, the uneven hills and troughs of mud have not been much of an improvement. I’m amazed none of us has come down with trench foot yet.

In fact, the job I should have been doing today – instead of being the DIY disaster I quite clearly am – was to find a decent landscape gardener to come and fix all that mess once the house is finished.

Getting me across that mud bog on a big ambulance stretcher will be a nightmare.

‘We can lay down some planks to get you over the worst bits,’ Fred suggests to the two ambulance men. ‘It won’t be a problem.’

Another fresh wave of pain emanates from my foot. It seems the medication isn’t as strong as it could be. ‘Oh, whatever!’ I say, trying not to faint again. ‘Just get me somewhere clean and smelling of Dettol!’ I lie back down on the stretcher properly and cross my fingers.

What follows could easily be filmed by Pete the cameraman and released on YouTube to the delight and edification of anyone who enjoys watching others in extreme distress.

The two paramedics start to wheel me across the mud, with my brother, Fred and the rest of them all watching on with nervous expressions on their faces.

At first things don’t go too badly. We edge around the side of the house until we are in view of the ambulance. It’s only when the muddy ground starts to get really uneven that we encounter difficulties.

‘Watch the wheel on the edge of that plank!’ Danny warns – sadly too late.

‘Ow! Bloody hell!’ I cry as my foot bangs painfully against the stretcher’s side.

‘It’s okay, I’ve got it!’ Paramedic One assures me as he wrenches the stretcher back onto the precarious track that Fred and the boys have constructed across the muddy battlefield. He gives me a reassuring smile as he does so.

Then he instantly disappears from view as he steps into the mud and his leg goes out from under him.

‘Oh bugger!’ Paramedic Two shouts. ‘I don’t think I can hold the—’

And he’s gone too. It’s like they’ve both been sucked under by a bog monster, leaving me high and dry on a stretcher in the middle of no-man’s land. I crane my neck round to the small crowd gathered off to one side. ‘Aren’t any of you going to bloody help me?’

‘No, no!’ A muddy hand appears, waving frantically. ‘We’ve got everything under control!’

Paramedic Two is back upright again. He is also now covered from head to toe in mud. Those shiny cuffs are well and truly in need of a good hosing down.

‘Are you alright, Alistair?’ he asks the other guy.

‘Not really. I think I’ve sprained my ankle,’ Alistair replies in a reedy voice, still out of sight.

‘Do you think you can help me with the patient?’ Paramedic Two asks.

‘I don’t think so . . .’

‘Oh.’

Silence descends. I look up at Paramedic Two, getting a really good view of his nasal cavity.

‘Do you think you could get me to the ambulance?’ I ask, trying to stay calm. ‘I am in rather a lot of pain, you know.’

He looks down at me. ‘But what about Alistair?’

‘I DON’T CARE ABOUT ALISTAIR! My foot is about to fall off!’ It’s not, but it certainly feels like it might if I have to lay here on this stretcher for much longer. ‘Let them help you!’ I order.

‘But health and safety . . .’

I don’t grab his jacket, because I don’t want to get any mud on me. ‘I’m marooned in a bog with one foot bleeding all over the place, with one paramedic down and the other resembling a fresh turd. I think health and bloody safety have gone right out of the window! Danny! Fred! Get over here and get me to the ambulance!’

Thankfully, the paramedic makes no more objections when the boys slip and slide over to me, picking the stretcher up between them and carrying me over to the ambulance. They then go back and pick up Alistair, who has gone very grey. That sprain might well end up being a break.

In no time at all, I am loaded into the ambulance and awaiting departure.

‘I’ll ride down behind you,’ Danny says.

‘Thanks.’ The anger is gone from my voice again, now it’s all about the pain.

Paramedic Two fires up the ambulance as Alistair limps in and sits next to me. He looks down at my foot again, checking the temporary dressing.

‘So, how exactly did this happen?’ he asks in a tight, pained voice.

‘Well, it was like this,’ I reply, matching the tone of his perfectly. ‘My grandma left me a house, and I thought it would be a good idea to fix it up. So now I have a giant hole in my foot.’

‘I see.’

‘No, you don’t. You really, really
don’t
,’ I disagree, closing my eyes and trying to ignore the throbbing coming from my lower left extremity.

I expected Daley Farmhouse to throw up a lot of difficulties, but I was rather counting on being able to tackle them without bleeding everywhere.

In the end, I get two stitches in my foot for my troubles, a tetanus injection and a big box of lovely painkillers. Danny offers to ride me home, but I wisely decide to take a taxi instead.

That evening I am feeling decidedly miserable, and very sorry for myself. My foot aches like mad, and the painkillers are making me woozy and fuzzy-headed, which is horrible. I’m about to limp up to have a bath (with a plastic bag round my foot so the dressing doesn’t get wet) when my phone rings.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello, Hayley? It’s Gerard. I heard about what happened. Are you alright?’

Well, this is unexpected.

‘Not really. My foot hurts,’ I reply, voice treacherously quivering somewhat.

‘Ouch. Tell me all about it.’

So I spend the next twenty minutes explaining what happened to Gerard, who listens quietly until I am finished, and then sympathises with me in that soft tone of voice he has no doubt practised a thousand times in interviews with people as incompetent as I am at house renovation.

By the end of the chat I am actually feeling a lot better.

I put the phone down and allow myself a little smile. What a nice thing for him to have done.

Hang on.

Oh no.

Oh no, no, no.

This is an utter
disaster
.

The last thing I want right now is a charming, rich, famous man being nice to me. That way madness lies. I swore off men for life after Simon ruined me.

How could I be any different after what happened? I got swept off my feet by the best-looking man in the nightclub, found myself married to him a mere three months later because he was the most exciting person I’d ever met, spent five years thinking I was living with the man of my dreams, and then had everything torn away from me when that bitch turned up on the doorstep in her stupid plastic high heels.