‘Don’t they look wonderful?’ she said to Phil, who was cleaning up dropped plaster from the floor. ‘I can’t believe how they’ve transformed the room. It looks twice the size, really modern and airy.’ It was Sunday afternoon, and two weeks had passed since Phil first brought John, his window man, round to meet her. Like Brian, John was another middle-aged man, tall and skinny with little to say for himself, but he was a fast worker. He had begun the job with his son Rory on Thursday, knocking out the old boarded-up window and door. Even the old sink, cooker and the graffiti didn’t look half as bad with sunshine and fresh air coming in. Eva had watched entranced as he began laying bricks to take the frame for the new doors. Even the weather was on their side, as June arrived with hot sunshine. On Friday they had set the uPVC frame in, returning on Saturday to put on the doors. Eva had been horrified by all the mess, rubble, old cement, dust and bricks in the backyard, but John and Rory had taken away every last bit of it that evening, including all the bags of rubbish and the mattress in the garage.
