By the fifth week, Nigel had stopped being an event.

He had become part of the neighbourhood’s weekly grammar: lawns, dogs, cars, windows, Nigel. People no longer said Are you sure? They said Are you free Thursday? The company’s messages had grown less frosty too. He was now, according to one of them, within expected range. He had hit his full quota three days ahead of schedule.

The cake arrived on a Tuesday.

There were six of them at the door, smiling with that slightly assembled look people have when they’ve agreed in advance to be thoughtful.

“Nigel,” said Yvonne, holding out the box, “this is just a little something from all of us.”

“For everything you do,” said someone behind her.

“You’ve been a godsend,” said another.

Nigel took the box.

“Well,” he said, “that’s very kind.”

“It’s nothing much,” said Yvonne.

Nigel smiled.

“Come in,” he said.

They all came in at once, as if refusal had never been among the possible outcomes. Nigel set the box on the kitchen table and saw, neatly stuck to one corner of the lid, the price.

£4.99
Greggs

For a moment he found himself absurdly pleased it was not from Poundland. Then, almost immediately, ashamed that this distinction mattered to him at all.

He opened the box. A modest frosted thing sat inside, trying its best to suggest occasion.

“Tea?” he said.

A small chorus of approval.

While the kettle boiled, the room rearranged itself around him. They had come bearing a thank-you cake, yes, but they had also clearly come with other business.

“No, I’ve got him Monday,” one of them was saying. “Because the front needs doing before my sister comes.”

“Tuesday,” said another. “My car has to be Tuesday.”

“He can do both,” said Yvonne, taking the first slice with surprising confidence. “Can’t you, Nigel?”

Nigel, at the counter, turned slightly.

“I could probably do both.”

“There you are,” said Yvonne.

She bit into the cake as if she had personally baked it.

“Not Wednesday,” said someone else. “He’s usually tired by Wednesday.”

“We don’t want to overdo him,” said Yvonne, now somehow on her second slice.

Nigel looked at her.

She was speaking of him with the careful concern one reserves for a borrowed lawnmower.

He laughed, briefly.

Nobody noticed.

By the time he set the mugs down, they had moved on to Friday.

“If he does ours after four—”

“No, because he’s at ours after four.”

“Well, Sunday then.”

“He doesn’t usually do Sundays.”

“Well, not usually,” said Yvonne, swallowing the last of her second slice, “but if it’s only the windows…”

Nigel stood very still for a second.

If he had really been doing this for free, he thought, this was what gratitude looked like: a £4.99 cake from Greggs, currently eaten by other people, while they divided up your remaining daylight.

He ought not to have cared. He was being paid indecently well to take this sort of thing in stride. The cake was theatrics. The cake was garnish. The cake was not, in any meaningful sense, payment.

And yet something in him winced.

Not deeply. Not tragically. Just enough to register the bruise.

They left a little later, cheerful, warmed by tea, with most of the following week more or less arranged.

Nigel closed the door behind them and stood in the hallway a while, listening to the quiet return.

He went back into the kitchen.

Most of the cake was gone. Nigel had yet to have a slice. A tiny sliver remained.

He looked at it for a moment, then put the lid back on and slid the box an inch or two across the table, as though that settled anything.

He sat down.

The house felt oddly used.

He realised, with a faint and almost academic surprise, that not one of them had asked how his job search was going. Not a single enquiry, not even the polite fiction of one. It had not come up. It had not even hovered. The thought settled in him slowly. If he were to find work—proper work, paid and inconvenient—it would not be good news for them. It would be a disruption. A loss. The arrangement, such as it was, depended on his continued availability, and his availability depended, rather neatly, on his continued failure. He found this less offensive than he might have expected. It was, if anything, clarifying.

By the time the bell rang again, the light had changed.

Nigel did not move at first.

Then it rang a second time.

He closed his eyes.

“Please,” he said softly, to no one in particular, “not another booking.”

He opened the door.

It was the police.

Two of them. Both looked as though they would rather have been dealing with nearly anything else.

“Mr Ellis?” said the older one.

Nigel nodded.

“That depends what you’re selling.”

The younger one almost smiled.

“We’ve had a complaint from the council,” said the older officer.

“The council.”

“Yes.”

Nigel waited.

“It concerns the communal grassed areas on the east side of the estate.”

Nigel looked from one face to the other.

“I cut the grass,” he said. “You can say it. We’re all adults.”

The older officer inclined his head.

“The council’s view is that you interfered with scheduled maintenance.”

Nigel let that sit there.

“Interfered,” he said. “By mowing it.”

“Yes.”

“Because it needed mowing.”

“We’re not questioning your intention.”

“That’s generous.”

The younger officer glanced down, then back up.

“Look,” he said, “we do understand this is… unusual.”

“It’s one word for it.”

“We’re not here to charge you with anything,” said the older officer. “This is a warning. The council would prefer that you not carry out further work on land under its responsibility.”

Nigel folded his arms, silent.

The younger one gave the tiniest movement of the mouth, as if the phrase had gone closer to the bone than procedure allowed.

“Can we assume the matter is understood?” said the older officer.

Nigel looked out past them at the evening street: clipped hedges, parked cars, curtains beginning to glow.

“Yes,” he said. “I think I’m beginning to understand quite a lot.”

They thanked him and left.

Nigel shut the door and locked it.

He went into the kitchen, took the last sliver of cake, and opened his laptop.

For a while he only looked at the screen.

Then he typed:

The neighbours brought a cake today. Greggs. £4.99. Yvonne had two slices and spent most of them scheduling my week.

He stopped.

Then:

It is beginning to dawn on me that people can be warm and mercenary at the same time.

He sat back, read that over, and added one more line.

The police came later to tell me I had overstepped some invisible boundary by making myself useful in the wrong direction.

He looked at the empty cake box again.

He clicked 'send' - his latest dispatch from a world unsure of him, but very sure of his use.

The Paid Volunteer

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