‘This is a New York strut,’ said the builder boyfriend as he wedged in place a steel bar, bracing shut our bedroom door to prevent us being murdered in our beds.
We had been settling in for the night. The BB had been about to close the farmyard gates when a car swept inside them in the pitch dark and a man wound down his window and started chatting.
My heart racing, I realised she might have read what I wrote about her – and she had come back for revenge
After a while, the BB said this was all very nice but who was he and what did he want? The man said he was booked in here to stay the night. The BB said that could not be right as we were shut for a week while he did some decorating. ‘But come in anyway and we’ll try and sort this out.’
The builder b burst through the back door shouting for me as the man parked and I began running around getting fresh bed linen and making up a guest room.
I assumed I had got the dates wrong, but then, I thought, as I made up a bed, the booking software we use is infallible. It reminds me with a text when a guest is due to arrive.
I could hear the BB downstairs chatting to a man and a woman. He had evidently sat them in the drawing room and made them tea. He was holding the fort beautifully, styling out our mistake.
I raced round getting the room ready but, before I went downstairs, I checked the booking site and there was no mistake by us. They had arrived a week early.
All we want is good reviews, so as I entered the drawing room I affected a smile. I nearly fell over from shock when I saw who was sitting there.
The woman lounging confidently in my armchair by my fire as her squeeze talked to the BB was… the anger management counsellor.
You may remember, this lady stayed one night and was so rude to me, and left her room in such a state, that I concluded she was angrier than her customers.
Now, my heart racing, I realised she might have read what I wrote about her – no names mentioned, but she could have seen it and worked out it was her – and she had come back for revenge.
Why else would she return to the place where she had made nothing but unreasonable demands a few weeks ago when she visited alone? And why would she not book it herself this time, instead letting her male friend book it in a different name?
And why turn up a week early, plonk a bottle of Jameson in a gift bag down, and demand I do it off the books for cash? Which is what he said and did to me now.
When I recovered myself, I decided to point out that while the room had been made ready for them, I must insist he change the dates on the booking site for insurance purposes.
‘Oh, I’ll just give you cash,’ he said nonchalantly. So I fiddled with the software myself and managed to amend it. ‘Happy now?’ he said, sarcastically. Not a word of apology or embarrassment about arriving on the wrong day.
The conversation then circled around the following: ‘Are you away a lot? Are you here alone a lot? Is the house often empty?’
They were acting very suspiciously. He was a huge man. He said he was a policeman, but when I looked him up all that surfaced was a court case in which he had been done for drink-driving.
‘She cased the joint, then brought her heavy back here!’ I shrieked after they went out. ‘They’re going to rob us blind! We could be murdered in our beds!’ He had remarked on the antique French boudoir settee on the upstairs landing…
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said the builder b, but ten minutes later, as I lay in bed in my pyjamas watching re-runs of The X Files, he clattered back into the bedroom with a long metal prop, a hammer and a saw, and started fashioning this New York strut, which wedged the door implacably shut in the face of violence.
As we waited for them to come back from their meal out, which she described to me as a meal with friends and he described to the BB as a quick takeaway, I searched her credentials online and found that she was advertising couples counselling weekends at…
‘Oh for heaven’s sake!’ Couples counselling weekends at country houses. They were looking for a venue for their business idea.’
‘They’re a pair of absolute dreamers,’ said the builder b, disgusted. Next morning, the bloke came down in a brand-new shooting waistcoat, dressed like a country squire. I felt a bit sorry for him as the pair of them spent an hour very cack-handedly questioning us about our plans for the house, the cost of renovating Georgian piles and the state of our finances. At one point she said: ‘So you’re not desperate for money then?’
If they had just come out and asked me straight, I would have been more amenable. As it was, I was fuming that we had spent an evening cowering in our bedroom with the door braced, waiting to be riddled with bullets by West Cork’s answer to Bonnie and Clyde.
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