Melissa Kite
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‘Who was that?’ asked the boyfriend as we walked away.
‘Stefano, the guy who does everything for me.’
‘Not any more,’ said the boyfriend. ‘I’ll fix that spare room for you now.’
But he never did have the time. And now, a year on, we have broken up and I am on my own with my DIY nightmares again. Naturally, I phoned Stefano to tell him about the break-up even before I rang my mother with the news. It was emotional. He was so pleased to hear from me he could barely speak. His voice cracked with joy, or possibly he was up a ladder. ‘You want spare room done now?’
Within days we were back to our old selves. It was as if the weird, year-long hiatus when I was in a proper grown-up relationship with a man who could just about look after me had never existed.
Stefano was in the spare room with two of his men within hours, whistling along to wacky sounding music on Islamic radio and gnawing at boxes of southern fried chicken as he ripped up laminate and stripped paint. He helped me take the furniture to the storage place in his van and within seconds he was arguing with Big Yellow company policy: ‘No lock. I don’t buy lock.’
I tried to rein him in. ‘We have to buy a padlock. Or produce one of our own. You have one in the van?’
‘No.’
‘Then we have to buy lock. I mean, a lock.’
‘Sign here,’ said the girl behind the desk. ‘You need to give us a week’s notice when you want to leave.’
‘No week’s notice,’ said Stefano, with considerable menace. ‘We tell you day before. Yes? Day before? Is good?’
‘No,’ said the girl, chewing gum and staring into space.
‘Please! Stefano! Leave it to me!’ My hair was standing on end, but in truth I had missed this. It was just like the good old days. Stefano trying to do business Albanian style and me getting mildly hysterical.
Next we went to B&Q to buy the knobs and handles for the wardrobe doors. ‘Knobs? Knobs?’ he mused, as we wandered up and down the aisles. ‘Is funny word this knobs. What mean?’ Then he argued with the trade counter over returns policy. It was glorious, like we had never been apart.
Back home, I made tea and Stefano sat on my kitchen sofa drawing fitted wardrobes. Not just any old wardrobes. These were reunion wardrobes and as such they would be the best wardrobes a girl could hope for. After a while he stopped sketching and looked up. ‘What happened to the man?’ he said, but he didn’t wait for me to try to explain. He got up and made a motion with his foot as if to boot a football. ‘You kick…’ he said, smiling grimly.
He knows me too well.
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