surprised, expecting a Mormon or Jehovah’s Witness, the young evangelists in striped shirts and suit pants, black wraparound sunglasses, pineapple hair. This guy was slim, with prune-coloured smudges under his eyes. He’d come from a local mechanic’s. Was on the hustle for new work. ‘We already have a mechanic,’ Dot whispered.
‘I beg your pardon?’
She cleared her throat. ‘The baby’s sleeping. We already have a mechanic.’
‘Thank you. I won’t take up any more of your time.’ He didn’t move. The sky cracked and rain drummed on the trees in the street, shattering over the parked cars, pooling on the ground.
She stepped out from behind the door. ‘Do you have an umbrella?’
‘Sorry, goodbye.’
He was halfway up the path, his woollen hat already plastered, when Dorothy called after him, her voice raised over the roaring rain. ‘Excuse me? Do you want to come in?’ She held the door open – he smelled of wet suit cloth – and when he crossed the threshold she said, ‘Oh my god, the washing.’
In the back garden she tipped the red laundry basket upside down to shake out the water and unpegged the washing, hands stiff and fumbling, casting pegs aside, bright pink and yellow legs fallen on the slushy grass. The man helped, throwing half-folded sheets, towels into the basket. Andrew’s gym gear, his underwear, her nursing bras, Grace’s shorts, Amy’s rabbit, Donald’s dinosaur pyjamas, Hannah’s tiny striped T-shirt. The man followed her up the back steps into the house where she said, ‘I’ll put these in the dryer, please sit down.’
His eyes were bloodshot and he dabbed at them with the tissue Dorothy handed him once they were sitting opposite each other at the kitchen table. ‘Feel free to take off your jacket.’
She passed him a towel. The front of his white shirt was soaked through, and droplets of water glimmered on the woollen ridges of his hat. A leaflet from his plastic shopping bag sat on the table in front of her, the cheap paper splodged with rain. He only made money on commission. Nobody wanted to change mechanic or to hear about his offer, his deal. The deal involved tyres but already Dot was waning, regretted inviting him into the house. She listened out for the rain to ease. Grace and Amy were at school and Donald at nursery and Hannah was sleeping. She was meant to rest now too, which was infuriating enough that it pleased her all over again to have this strange, sad man sitting at the kitchen table. ‘Me?’ he said. ‘Two children.’ Neither at school yet. She imagined the scene when he left his house each day, kissing his wife goodbye as she stood there with a baby in her arms. That morning, Dot had been in the shower when Andrew left. Donald, four, had stood to one edge of the shower curtain, just staring, boring a hole in her body. Before long Hannah would be old enough to pull herself up to standing and she would notice when Dot left the room and balance at the side of the bath holding onto the edge, crying while Dot washed herself, away from her. This was one of the stages that would happen, just as now she was at the stage of crawling confidently, briskly, towards cigarette butts whenever they were in the park. When she sat up it was a miracle of posture, her back beautifully erect, her big round head a weightless balloon.
That morning Dot had asked Andrew whether he was angry with her and he had been genuinely surprised. It was unclear whether he was walking around enraged but not knowing it, or whether she was projecting. Dot wished she didn’t know the word projecting. Latent. Trigger. Someone in the house was angry, it must be so, even though the cake tins were full. Maybe it was both of them. Angry at the out there. Angry at the chance. ‘Do your children go to playgroup?’
‘Yes.’ He named one Dot hadn’t heard of, just as she hadn’t heard of the mechanic’s. While she stayed indoors the neighbourhood was rearranging itself.
‘Does your wife work?’
‘She’s at the bank.’
‘Right.’
He was sweating, water dots the size of ladybirds glistening on the sides of his nose. Perhaps there was a cultural reason he didn’t remove his hat, or perhaps that was a racist assumption. Dorothy liked to keep the house hot. She liked not having to put on a jumper. It was wasteful but temperature was one of those things now like