By the end of the second week, Nigel had done better than expected.
He had filled roughly seventy per cent of the company’s required allocation, which, according to the messages sent to his phone in their usual dead language, placed him within acceptable trajectory. He had been given a month to make himself fully useful and, with two weeks still to go, was comfortably on course. The work was beginning to arrange itself now. Dog walking, some of it twice daily. Cars, lawns, windows. The small, endless maintenance of other people’s lives. He had started, against expectation, to feel something close to momentum.
Trevor’s house stood at the far end of the estate, where the road widened slightly and the houses became just large enough to be pleased with themselves.
Trevor himself answered almost immediately. He was broad in the shoulders, shaved close, and wore the expression of a man who liked reaching decisions before other people had finished speaking.
Nigel gave him the short version.
Out of work a while. Trying to keep some structure. Happy to do simple jobs. Lawns, dogs, windows, basic cleaning. No charge.
Trevor listened with his head slightly to one side, then smiled.
“Well then,” he said, “I’ve got work for you. My lawn. And the plants need watering.”
Nigel felt, absurdly, a small inward bloom of relief.
“Great,” he said. “Absolutely great.”
He glanced past Trevor toward the side gate.
“I can do the grass now if you like?"
Trevor gave a short laugh.
“No, no. We’ll do better than that.”
Nigel waited.
Trevor stepped out onto the path and lowered his voice slightly, as though they were about to enter into something more serious than lawn care.
“I like your attitude,” he said. “I really do. Coming round like this, after a rough spell, trying to get yourself moving again — fair play. Most people sit at home rotting. You’ve actually got a bit of spirit.”
Nigel nodded once. He had no idea what to do with praise when it arrived at speed.
Trevor went on.
“Thing is, my bloke’s had an accident. Nothing fatal, obviously, but enough to put him out for a while. And I’ve got fifteen properties.”
Nigel blinked.
“Fifteen?”
“Fifteen,” Trevor said, with satisfaction. “Rentals. Nothing glamorous. They just need the usual looking after. Grass cutting. Window cleaning. Basic jobs. The sort of thing you’ve just described.”
He took another step forward.
“So here’s what we do. You do my grass today. Water the plants. I pay you properly. Not charity, not nonsense — properly. And if you’re half decent, I’ll start feeding you the other places. Keep you going for months.”
He smiled again, wider now.
“There you are, Nigel. Back in the game.”
Then he held out his hand.
It was a good hand for a deal. Solid. Confident. Already expecting the shake.
Nigel looked at it and felt, for a brief and ridiculous moment, a pulse of fear.
Trevor kept the hand there.
“Come on,” he said. “Take it.”
Nigel did not.
Something in him had already begun to retreat.
“No,” he said.
Trevor’s smile held, though with effort.
“No?”
“No, I—” Nigel lifted both hands, palms out, as though calming a dog. “No. I only do voluntary work.”
Trevor stared at him.
“Yes,” he said. “I heard that bit. I’m improving the arrangement.”
“I can’t be paid.”
“Can’t?”
“I just can’t.”
Trevor’s hand remained between them another moment, then dropped to his side.
Nigel was already taking a step back.
“That doesn’t sound like a good deal to me,” he said, and even as he said it he could hear how insane it sounded.
Trevor gave a short laugh of disbelief.
“A good deal.”
“Yes.”
“I’m offering you steady work.”
“I know.”
“Paid work.”
“I know.”
Trevor looked at him as one might look at a man who had wandered into the wrong conversation and chosen, on pride alone, to remain there.
“What on earth is it you want, then?”
Nigel had already turned away.
He took two steps down the path before answering.
“Just to do a bloody unpaid job,” he called back.
Then he kept walking.
Halfway down the road, he began to feel the shape of the afternoon collapsing.
Trevor had been, objectively, a gift. More than that — he had been exactly the sort of gift an unemployed man was supposed to pray for. Work. Steady work. Decent money. A hand held out across the void.
And Nigel had recoiled from it as though Trevor had offered him disease.
He walked on, irritated now, not so much with Trevor as with the remaining emptiness of the day.
Most of his regular jobs were already slotted into place. The woman with the three cars had him after four. The old man with the dog preferred mornings. Two lawns were not due until the weekend. The week, which had looked promising at breakfast, was once again developing holes in it.
Then, at the edge of the green opposite a row of houses, he stopped.
A broad strip of communal grass ran between the pavement and the road, untidy in a familiar, municipal way — not wild, exactly, but neglected just enough to suggest the council had forgotten it for another week.
Nigel stood looking at it.
There was quite a lot of it.
He glanced up and down the street.
Nobody paid him the slightest attention.
He looked back at the grass.
It needed cutting.
That, at least, was obvious.
And if a thing needed doing, and no one was doing it, then there was really very little left to discuss.
By the time he got home for the mower, the decision had settled itself so completely in his mind that it no longer felt like a decision at all.