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4 days ago
8
I’m sitting on a terrace overlooking a sparkling bay. Directly in front of me fishing boats rock gently on the water and tidy white houses are piled on the hill opposite. I’m looking at my phone.
The video I’m watching is narrated by Michael the roofer, who has just sliced away a section of the flat roof at the top of our house.
“That is roughly where your leak is, where them two dips are,” he says, indicating an area of damp, rotten wood. “Obviously there is an issue of water getting in.”
It was inevitable that after delays caused by his many prior commitments, the roofer would suddenly contact me to say he could start in the morning while I was lying in a deckchair in Croatia .
Another video arrives, this one just six seconds long. In it the whole flat roof has been peeled back to reveal the delaminated plywood beneath. A gloved hand pulls at the layers, as flaky as pastry. In a subsequent phone call Michael explains that we are now some way beyond the worst-case scenario laid out in his original quote.
My wife emerges from the sea, picks up her towel and climbs the stone steps to the terrace.
“How’s it going?” she says.
“Do you know the difference between a warm and a cold roof?” I say.
“No,” she says.
“Me neither,” I say. “But it’s my understanding that a cold roof requires ventilation, and a warm roof doesn’t.”
“What kind have we got?” she says.
“An unventilated cold roof,” I say. “The worst kind.”
“The water’s lovely,” she says.
“And there are other problems to do with scaffolding,” I say. “The primary one being the cost of scaffolding.”
“Well, it’s got to be done,” my wife says.
Just before lunch I get a text with a revised quote, which leaves me a little short of breath. My wife, meanwhile, remains firmly on holiday.
“Oh well,” she says. “That’s what we thought it would cost originally.”
“It’s what we thought when we were guessing,” I say. “Then when we got the first quote, that became the new what we thought.”
The next day I’m again lying in a deckchair, listening to the chat floating across me. We’re on holiday with several friends, one of whom possesses first-hand knowledge regarding the true nature of famous people.
“Lovely man,” he says. “Cannot be trusted.”
I receive a text that says, simply, “The soffits are vented.” I think about contributing this sentence to the general conversation, but I can’t find a way in. I lean over the next deckchair and show the text to my wife. She looks at it, and then at me.
“Is that good news?” she says.
“What part of ‘the soffits are vented’ don’t you understand?” I say.
“All of it,” she says.
“Excellent actor,” our friend says. “Colossal wanker.”
Later I call the roofer for an update, steering the conversation in a particular way that avoids me having to ask: what are soffits? He asks if I have any architectural plans that might indicate if, or how, the roof is meant to be ventilated.
“The loft extension was done before we moved in,” I say. “So no.”
“I have the plans,” my wife says when I update her. “They’re in a red folder somewhere.” She calls a son, who finds the plans, who turns them over to the roofer, who texts me to say they’re no help.
On Friday morning I receive another text from Michael asking if I have time for a video call. I examine my surroundings: a boat moored off an island beach, benign clouds rising into the blue sky behind my head. I tell him I can’t ring before 3pm.
In the meantime the restaurant where we have reservations cancels us. It takes a while to find another restaurant that will seat eight people at short notice, and by the time 3pm rolls around we’re only just tying up at its boat dock.
We’re shown to our table on a shaded terrace. I immediately leave the restaurant in search of a less scenic backdrop. When I video call the roofer, my head is surrounded by a blank concrete wall.
“How are the soffits?” I say. He shows me on his phone: vents that run along the gutter line of the roof, allowing air to travel between the joists, preventing the buildup of condensation. But he can’t find the place where the air is meant to exit. If the roof is sealed up without one, the problems may persist.
“Honestly, this has been the worst job ever,” he says.
Above me on the terrace, I hear the faint clinking of wine glasses.
