It is Saturday morning, and my wife is pulling open the bedroom curtains, in my opinion prematurely.
“A lovely day!” she says.
“Hmmm,” I say, pulling the duvet over my head.
“But cold!” she says, walking out of the room. I flap the duvet back down. She’s right about the cold: it’s one of those days when it looks nicer outside than it feels inside.
I run a bath, then go downstairs to make coffee. The back door is open, and though the morning air holds a chill, it’s still warmer in the garden than it is in the kitchen. I take the coffee upstairs and stick my big toe into the full bathtub. The water is cold.
I go down to the landing and slide back the cupboard door to check the hot water timer. People who are not me sometimes change the settings to suit their own hot water agenda.
“Did you change these again?” I say to my wife, who is sitting at her computer in the next room.
“No,” she says.
“I’m sorry that I can’t find it in myself to believe you,” I say.
At the back of the cupboard the boiler is blinking an error message and the reset button is illuminated. As I reach out to press it, I notice something: a dark circular scorch mark on the face of the boiler, about the size of a cricket ball. Around its circumference burned paint curls outwards in black tendrils, like the petals of a sunflower. Interesting, I think. Interesting, and wrong.
“Come and look at this,” I say.
“This had better not be about that timer,” my wife says as she turns the corner. Her eyes follow my pointing finger to the burn mark.
“This is new,” I say.
“What does it mean?” she says.
“I think it means that at some point last night, our boiler was on fire,” I say.
My wife pulls out her phone, takes a picture of the burn mark and sends it to Mike the plumber. We both stare into the open cupboard for a bit.
“Should you turn it off?” my wife asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I mean, it’s not on fire right now.”
“I’ve got an estate agent coming at 12,” she says. “What am I going to do?”
“I wouldn’t show him in here,” I say.
My wife receives a text from Mike the plumber. It says, “TURN IT OFF!”
I get dressed, and my wife takes the dog out for a walk. When the estate agent gets here, I think, we’ll just have to pretend we like it this cold. As I make a second coffee, my wife’s phone judders on the kitchen worktop. It’s a text from Mike the plumber, requesting a picture of some number on the boiler.
I think he might mean the error code I saw earlier, but to photograph that I’d have to turn the boiler back on. He might think I’m stupid, or reckless, or both. Then I remember: it’s my wife’s phone.
I turn on the boiler, take the picture and send it with a caption reading, “This?” A minute later, Mike sends another text saying he actually wanted a picture of the panel containing the model and serial numbers. When I can’t find the panel, I send a picture of the unmarked side of the boiler and write “???”
He sends another text patiently explaining where the panel is usually located, but I still can’t find it. As I craft another pin-headed reply, I begin to feel a little wicked for being so moronic while also impersonating my wife. But, in another way, I feel more truly myself than ever.
