Page 4 of One Last Try

“Yep.”

“Do I need to book?”

She frowns at me like I’m asking the dumbest question to have ever been asked. “No.”

“Okay, well, what time should I come round? I’m not sure when I’ll be finished here.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she says, already out of the house.

“But what if it’s late?” I call out.

“Doesn’t matter.” She’s at the gate, looking left and right for traffic, crossing the road. “I can’t wait to tell my dad about you and your pygmy shorts.” And she’s gone.

2

Tuesday 25th March 2025

Mathias

By nine p.m. I’d still only unpacked half of my boxes. My gadgets were the first things to find their new homes:

My consoles and my sixty-five inch OLED in the living room—I had to rejig the sofas to make a big enough gap against the wall—and my forty-two inch OLED in the master bedroom.

My assortment of cameras—my GoPro, my drone, my Instax—to the study.

My telescope at the window of the south-facing spare room, the Echos in the kitchen and the master bed for now, and my bedroom toys to, well, the bottom drawer in my bedroom.

The combination of being terminally single, a tech addict, and having a fair amount of disposable income means I’ve amassed a . . . sizable collection of solo sexual aids. Dildos, fleshlights, butt plugs . . . If it has some kind of remote control or companion iPhone app to sync it up with music, it would’ve already been “added to cart.”

There isn’t enough wardrobe capacity in my room at the front of the house, so I also commandeer the closet in the smaller guest bed at the rear. Not that it matters. I won’t be having guests over anyway.

At one point, this space had probably belonged to kids. Twin single beds sit against the far wall, the white and grey bobbled evidence of old, peeled-off stickers litters the wooden headboards.

I cross back to the master bedroom, puff out a long sigh, and begin dissasembling boxes. Another thing on my agenda is to find out when the bin days are; I’m gonna have so much recycling to dispose of. Though on second thoughts . . .

Maybe I should stash the empty boxes in the loft. I won’t be around in this stupid house in this stupid hamlet in this stupid part of England for much longer. The end of the season is only three months away. I’ll be gone long before my tenancy agreement’s over.

Hopefully for next year, my agent will negotiate a contract somewhere else. Preferably back to the Bengals, but it doesn’t have to be. Doesn’t even have to be Wales, I don’t care, I just need it to not be Bath.

Not be the Centurions.

The name Mathias Jones doesn’t carry the same veneration this side of the bridge.

Sim’ll get me a better gig. I’m certain of it. I’m not paying her all that money for nothing. I just need to finish the season in Bath to fulfil the contract. Half a season and I’m out.

Fernbank Cottage’s loft hatch is super inconveniently located directly above the master bed. As in, I have to stand on the mattress to open it, and duck my head so it doesn’t smush against the ceiling. No ladder awaits me, which I’m in equal measures annoyed by and thankful for. I throw the empty, collapsed boxes into the dark space—definitely a ghost or two up there—puff out a sigh, and glance out the window. From my elevated position, I can see into The Little Thatch opposite. Into the sash windows of the pub.

Well, sort of into the windows. The downstairs ones are fogged with what I assume is breath condensation, and some have those bumpy round bits in the middle—glass boobs as they’re technically known—but beyond that there are warm orange lights and the peach-coloured blobs of old white people’s faces. Nothing distinct. Possibly the glow of a big screen TV. Possibly the glass-warped lines of a bar.

The upstairs of the pub is an altogether different matter. Someone’s left a couple of lamps on, and the windows there are newer—big PVC rimmed expanses of flat, unblemished panes. An entire mini apartment is sitting right there in front of me like a scale model doll’s house or a Tracey Emin installation.

It’s more of a bedsit than an apartment. There’s a two-seater sofa—a cuddler as Mam calls them—pointing toward a smallish flatscreen, a kitchenette with a fifties-style cream Smeg fridge, and through the window parallel with the one I’m currently gawping out of, a double bed. The duvet has been dressed in a green-and-white-striped linen set and sits in a haphazard pile in the middle of the mattress, as though someone woke up that morning, tossed the covers off themselves, and immediately started their day.

It feels eerily intimate, almost voyeuristic. I tear my gaze away and glance at my Garmin watch—fuck, nearly nine thirty.

Daisy said it didn’t matter if I was late for food, and I have nothing else in the house, so pub tea it is. I jog down the stairs, grab my new key on the way, and—

THWACK!

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