The Present. Charlotte Phillips

safely in the corner among the cobwebs.

      No way was she was going through this humiliating experience and still not have the box to show for it.

      Jack watched as she negotiated the loft ladder and then walked downstairs, clearly trying to give the impression that she was completely unscathed when the graze on that leg must hurt like a bastard. She clearly had no clue how close she’d come to breaking her bloody neck. The crash had sounded as if half the roof had fallen in. He stood by until she hobbled into the kitchen, by which point he could no longer help himself.

      ‘Sit down, will you?’ he said, exasperated, taking her firmly by the shoulders and pulling out the nearest chair with his foot. ‘That leg obviously needs looking at, and you’re fooling no one with the gritted teeth.’

      She frowned up at him, but didn’t argue. He pulled out a second chair and lifted her foot onto it. Half the right leg of her jeans was hanging off and he could see a bleeding scrape underneath.

      ‘I can either cut these off or rip them,’ he said.

      ‘That’s a bit brutal, they’re my favourite jeans,’ she protested. ‘Isn’t saving them an option?’

      He held up the enormous ragged flap of denim that was practically hanging by a thread.

      ‘Seriously?’

      She made a huffing noise and sat back, resigned, while he grabbed the Stanley knife out of his tool belt and cut the fabric away. Her shin was one long graze, fortunately not too deep.

      ‘Where does Olive keep her first-aid stuff?’

      She pointed at the high corner cupboard. He found antiseptic wipes and dressings, and she held her hand out for them impatiently.

      ‘I don’t have time for this, I’ve got tons to do,’ she grumbled as she scrubbed the wound with an antiseptic wipe. ‘That attic up there is like something from “Hoarders: Buried Alive”. I’ve got four weeks off work to sort the house out, and as if that isn’t enough, there’s bloody Christmas to organise.’

      Since he didn’t do Christmas, not any more, he couldn’t really relate to that as a major problem to be reckoned with.

      ‘I was sorry to hear the house is going,’ he said, watching her stick an inadequate plaster haphazardly over the graze. He was, too. Not all of his customers were as long-term or as friendly as Olive Jackson. This had been an easy gig, close enough to his house to fit around his other commitments, happily flexible if he needed to move workdays around at the last minute.

      ‘We haven’t put it on the market yet,’ she said. ‘How did you know?’

      He crossed the kitchen and filled the kettle. Grabbed a couple of cups from the hooks above the sink.

      ‘Got a list of jobs sent my way last week from someone called Rod,’ he said. ‘Getting the place to look “shipshape for sale”, I think was how he put it.’

      He caught her closing her eyes briefly.

      ‘Rod’s my partner,’ she said. ‘I’ve decided to move Gran in with us.’

      He noticed that Rod, whoever he was, apparently wasn’t included in that decision.

      ‘Obviously care services don’t come cheap, and we’ve had to talk through all the options, but …’ She glanced around the room and out of the window at the frost-covered walled garden, and didn’t finish. He followed her gaze. The house was a beautiful 1930’s detached place in Canterbury. The kind of place they didn’t build any more. Rambling, full of memories and character, with big bay windows, and a mature garden that had been loved for years.

      ‘But selling it doesn’t come easy?’ he finished for her.

      She nodded.

      ‘I spent a lot of my childhood here,’ she said. ‘I lived with Gran and Grandad on and off right through my teens, only moved out properly about five years ago.’ She nodded towards the kitchen door, held open by a wooden doorstop. ‘On that doorframe over there, my grandad marked my height every year until I stopped growing.’

      ‘I know. It’s on my maintenance list to paint over it.’

      She fell silent at that, and he immediately regretted telling her.

      ‘There must be other options to selling,’ he said, trying to take a positive spin instead. ‘I mean, I know Olive is getting a bit frail, but her mind isn’t, if you know what I mean.’

      ‘I know exactly what you mean.’

      ‘I got the impression she intended only to leave this place in a box. Her words, actually.’

      ‘Tell me about it.’ Leg-dressing finished, she put her foot down on the floor and leaned forward to pick up a sheaf of leaflets from the corner of the table. ‘She’s been putting up a fight for months. She had a couple of minor falls a while ago, just cuts and bruises, you know.’ She held the leaflets up. ‘This was her latest attempt to fob me off. Stairlifts. Like a stairlift is the bloody elixir of life. The stairs are the least of her problems. She needs to be able to get around everywhere else, never mind the stairs. There’s the outdoor steps. The uneven floors. The tiles in the bathroom are a slip hazard. This whole place is an accident waiting to happen.’ She paused. ‘Except that it already has.’

      She looked strained, and he felt a pang of sympathy. The email had mentioned that Olive had fallen and was in hospital, but that was the limit of it. He put a cup of tea in front of her and grabbed the milk from the fridge.

      ‘Thanks,’ she said.

      He nodded.

      ‘How is she?’

      She added a spoonful of sugar to her teacup and stirred.

      ‘Well, she fell in the hallway onto her right side and broke her arm and a couple of fingers. She’s really badly bruised.’ She bit her lip. ‘They thought she might have broken a hip, but thank goodness she hadn’t. The worst part of all is that she hit her head. She’s not been able to talk very much yet. She’s just so tired and frail.’

      ‘That’s awful.’

      She took a deep decisive breath.

      ‘The house sale is the right thing. My stupid sentimentality about some bloody doorframe does not affect that decision. She’s going to need someone on hand 24-7. Plus there’s the massive garden, and the house needs tons of upkeep.’

      ‘What I’m here for,’ he remarked. Admittedly he had to factor his other life into that statement, but with pretty regular trips away he was careful to schedule his work around his travels, and he had a local kid who covered basic garden upkeep if he was away for longer than a few days at a time. ‘And I’ve been keeping tabs on Olive over the last few months. My place is only five minutes away, and I programmed my number into her speed dial.’

      She laughed.

      ‘I’m not sure Gran knows what speed dial even is.’

      He grinned at her over the rim of his coffee cup. In that moment of laughter, the stress had disappeared from her face. She was very pretty, he decided, in an unkempt kind of a way, with her messy waves of dark blonde hair, and wide brown eyes. A thin film of grey plaster dust clung to her skin, and, as he watched, she unknowingly rubbed her forehead and smudged it.

      ‘She does now,’ he said. ‘I put your number in too. And her hairdresser, she asked specifically for that one.’

      She was staring at him as if he was some new and interesting life form.

      ‘Seriously?’

      He nodded.

      ‘Of course, she’s only ever used it to ring me up when I’m feet away in the garden to tell me to come in and eat my bodyweight in cake. She falls in the hallway and I don’t hear a bloody thing from her.’

      ‘That’s