Free The One by Diane Lee Page B

work, and I’d really like to have it painted. Do you do that? Paint, I mean?’
    He hesitated before replying. ‘Not usually.’
    ‘Oh.’ Paton wanted him to be available, hoped that he needed the work. She got up from the table and found his dark eyes on her. He was watching her, as if seeing her for the first time.
    ‘But I need the work… so… I’ll paint.’
     

- 4 -
    The lounge room finally looked like it could be lived in. Tom and Paton had worked together stripping wallpaper, damp mops soaking the walls, tearing down the mottled paper in long, wet strips. They patched up holes and cracks, sanded back rough spots, and painted on the undercoat. Then they painted the walls a soft blue, pale and delicate, and the pulled carpets revealed honey-coloured floorboards, which added more warmth to the room. Tom was putting the finishing touches to the skirting boards, and crouched panther-like in the doorway, his body lithe and lean.
    It had taken only ten days to transform the room. Tom arrived at Paton’s house at 8.30 every morning, and left at 3.30 each afternoon. He wasn’t too sure about her helping him; he said he was used to working alone. But it didn’t take long for Paton to show him that they could work well together, and that she wouldn’t get in his way.
    And it didn’t take long for Tom to start talking. Slowly, at first, he started telling her about his work, and the many gardens he worked on. He talked about how he loved animals and spent much of his time alone. He told her his mother and father died when he was young, and he was raised by a much older brother. He told her he was considered bright, but didn’t do well at school and that he travelled the world when he was younger, playing squash. Paton listened while they patched and painted, gleaning the details of his life as if they were precious stones mined from a barren and unforgiving earth.
    Every day they would eat their lunch in the back garden, thick sandwiches of ham and pickles, home-made lemon cordial, ice-cold from the fridge. This was where Paton talked. She laughed about her friends, and about her work, her life, her family. Tom listened, eating, drinking, comfortable now in her presence.
    Some days, though, they would just sit, not saying a word.
     

- 5 -
    On the last day Tom worked for Paton, the sky was angry and threatening rain. Even with a naked window, the curtain not having been rehung, it was gloomy inside the lounge room. The soft blue of the walls had become a dull grey, and the floor absorbed the mottled light. Paton was washing up the last of the brushes in a nearby bucket, their short bristles clumped with paint, unwilling to come clean. She watched Tom over her the top of her glasses; his overalls spotted and streaked with dried blue paint, as he packed up the ladder, and pulled drop sheets from the floor.
    ‘I don’t think we’ll be needing these anymore,’ she said.
    ‘No.’
    ‘That’s about the last of it, then. I’ve run out of things for you to do. Things I can pay you for anyway.’ Paton laughed at her own joke. ‘Pity. Because we sure made a good team.’
    He looked over at her and smiled. ‘Yeah. We did. Looks like a different place now. I’ll miss coming here. It’s been…’
    Paton waited for him to finish the sentence, but he didn’t. It hung there, unspoken, like a spider’s fine web, and while she wanted to know what he was going to say, she realised it would remain unsaid.
    ‘You don’t have to be a stranger, you know.’
    ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I know.’
    Paton pushed the point. ‘Anytime. I mean it. Call in. Anytime. And I’m not just saying that.’ She needed for him to understand the urgency, that it was the end of the work, but maybe the beginning of something else.
    He smiled as he started ripping masking tape from the floor around the skirting boards.
    ‘I might just do that,’ he said.
     

- 6 -
    About three weeks after Tom had stopped working for Paton, he came to