Page 48 of The Matchmaker
Don’ttellhim that??
Embarrassed pink blotches bloom over my chest as I stay very, very still as if, that way, he’ll somehow just forget I’m in here. And honestly, it kind of works because after a long second, he finally leaves, and I listen intently to the unfamiliar sound of his footsteps going down the stairs.
I’m going to kill Granny. I am going to double-check her will and then I am going to kill her.
I drop the towel and take a prolonged rinse in the shower to give Callum ample opportunity to leave. This time, I make sure I’m covered and announce my presence before stepping back into the hall. There’s no sign of him, and I can’t hear anything other than the faint noise of the construction site, but I still scurry to my room and throw on the first clothes I find before heading downstairs to find Granny sitting in her usual spot at the table.
She doesn’t look up when I come in, so I stand there, my hands on my hips, until eventually she deigns to acknowledge my presence.
“What?”
“What do you mean, what?” I snap. “What was Callum doing here?”
“Who?”
Oh, for the love of— “Callum! The man who was just in the house and saw me topless!”
“Is that why you were making such a racket?”
“Why was hehere?”
“He’s clearing out the garden,” she explains. “Like you told me to get someone to do.”
“I meant some sixteen-year-old looking for pocket money.”
“Well, when they knock on the door, I’ll be sure to give them a job. I don’t see what the big deal is,” she adds, when I go to argue again. “You said so yourself: you’ve been meaning to get someone out to clear it. He stopped by with one of those leaflets and asked if we had any more issues, and I said as a matter of fact, we did.”
“The big deal is you should have told me someone was in the house. And he didn’t mean issues with the garden. He meant about the traffic and—” I break off with a gasp, ducking behind the table as someone walks past the window.
Granny returns to her newspaper. “Honestly, Katie, you’re starting to worry me.”
I keep to my crouch as I head to the sink and peek out to see Callum pushing a wheelbarrow toward the far end of the yard, Plankton following him like he’s got a hamburger in his pocket.
“He’s still here?” I hiss.
“He said he had the afternoon free.”
“To do what?”
“Gardening. Aren’t you listening to a word I say?”
“We can’t afford a gardener. How the hell are we going to pay him?”
She gives me a strange look. “Pay him?”
Oh no. “Granny, you didn’t.”
“Didn’t what?” she asks innocently, and I groan.
“There’s no need to pay him,” she continues. “He’s helping an old lady. It’s good for the soul.”
“Clearing up that mess outside is not good for anybody’s soul. We’ve talked about this.”
“At least let him finish!”
I don’t bother to respond as I head out the front door. She started doing this in the last few years when we realized we couldn’t afford to fix the place up properly. While I didn’t mind having the odd person around to help me rewire a plug or move some furniture, Granny started guilt-tripping people into whole days’ worth of jobs. I once came home to find Bridget clearing out our gutters after Granny lamented at length about how I was simply too tired at the end of the day. Nush once painted my bedroom ceiling. Badly. Once I cottoned on to what was happening, I quickly put a stop to things, and everyone knew now to check with me before listening to a sob story about how the only thing that would make Granny happy was if someone would regrout the bathroom tiles.
But Callum wouldn’t know that.
