Fraud

She answered the door to a cheery looking fellow who was wearing blue overalls. “Evening, ma’am, is your ‘usband in?”

“No,” she replied, and she didn’t expect him to be home for some hours yet. “Can I help?”

“Sorry, love, that was awful sexist of me weren’t it? Traditional bloke, me, didn’t mean any offence or ought.”

He hadn’t intended offence and she hadn’t even realised that she should have been offended until he mentioned it, but now that he’d mentioned it it was all she could think about. Just what had he meant, anyway? Poor little woman can’t deal with whatever it is? What an odious little man he was, she decided, and she resolved herself to be as short with him as possible.

“What do you want?” she said. “I’m awfully busy.” A complete lie.

“Sorry, love, sorry, right, what it is is I’m from the gas comp’ny and we’ve had reports of people in the area smelling gas is all, so we’re just doin’ the rounds and makin’ sure that everything’s ship-shape.”

“Does this require my husband?”

“No, not at all, sorry again ‘bout that. Didn’t mean ought by it. Mind if we come in and have a quick shufty at your boiler?”

The mention of ‘we’ had taken her somewhat by surprise, and it was only then that she noticed a shorter, thinner man who was standing behind the sexist and was rendered almost completely invisible by the man in front’s dimensions. The man behind took a short step to the left as if to make his presence known, but didn’t speak.

“That’s Jimmy, that, don’t mind ‘im, bloody brilliant gas man if a little weird.”

Jimmy smiled.

“Well,” said the woman eventually. “I suppose you’d better come in for your… shufty.” She wasn’t entirely sure what the word meant, having done her best to separate herself from people who worked in what she called ‘the trades.’ Their manners of speech would always be lost on her.

“Where’s your boiler, love?

“Oh, I’m not sure, my husband usually deals with things like that.”

“No problem, d’ya ‘ave an airin’ cupboard?”

“Yes, it’s on the second floor.”

“Right you are, you lead the way,” he said, before turning to Jimmy. “I’ll have a quick sniff around up there and you check the pipes down ‘ere, lemme know if there’s ought going on.”

Jimmy nodded, and she led the sexist upstairs. Jimmy was standing in the hallway when they returned ten minutes later, during which time she’d watched the man perform all manner of tests such as knocking on the boiler and writing down some numbers from somewhere before calculating something else with them. She couldn’t smell gas, though. Jimmy was leaning on the wall and she imagined there to be a man-shaped black stain on the wall behind him from where his grime had rubbed off. That was her afternoon sorted.

In fact, her afternoon was spent giving descriptions of the men to police, while she was made to feel like an idiot for leaving one of them alone downstairs.