Unzipped (12 page)

When I came home from work BJ’s bike was in the hallway, leaning against the wall, between Mum’s grandfather clock and the bookshelf. I wheeled it onto the porch and went inside to start dinner.

‘Why is Thunder outside?’

‘It’s not going to live inside, is it?’

‘I’m not leaving her out there.’

I’m attempting vegetarian lasagne. BJ’s favourite. Doing my best to impress her. Ruby says she won’t help:
you will always be a mediocre cook if you don’t try.
I’m pressing lasagne sheets onto the sauce, trying to get the ratio of sauce-pasta-cheese right. Kitchen maths combines two of my biggest weaknesses—cooking and calculation—and I’ll agree to anything.

‘God, all right, bring it in.’

‘Her
in. I’ll bring
her
in. Love me, love my bike, babe.’

‘I’ve got a bike. We could go for a ride.’ Why did I
say that? I hate bike-riding. It’s scary and it makes my bum ache.

‘If you’re talking about that thing behind the house—it’s a shitfighter. I’m sorry, but if I was given that bike, I’d be upset about having to find a place to dump it. I bet it hasn’t even got a name. I just thought of one: Cheap Arse Piece of Crap. Also, it’s too big for you.’

Good. Maybe I won’t have to come through with riding it. ‘Just make sure you keep it out of the way. It’s already left a couple of marks on the wall.’

‘She. She has left marks on the wall. They’re love marks. They show us she’s happy.’ BJ pats the handlebar. ‘You’re happy, aren’t you, Thunder?’

She pats her bike’s handlebar frequently. She’ll pass it in the hallway, give it a little pat, squeeze the handle for the brakes, move on. I’m not sure she knows she’s doing it. After a while, I’m patting it, too.

‘So, where is it?’ BJ says.

‘You’re standing in it.’

Surfaces shine. Glass, steel, pure white. The furniture, shelving and computers are minimal. There’s not a book out of place. In the world that’s a cliché, but in my library it’s everything.

‘Where are the books?’ She looks around. ‘Is that it?’

‘Of course not.’ I take her hand and walk her to the compactus, wheel it open. ‘Look. We have ten bays, double bays with six shelves each.’

She doesn’t seem impressed.

‘We wanted a streamlined look.’

‘It’s very streamlined,’ she nods, ‘practically invisible. Where’s the reference desk?’

‘I don’t have one. Most requests come in via email. The library looks like less, well, it is, but the feedback has been that the practitioners find me more accessible.’

Less really is more.

‘So, where is everybody? I thought this place was a hotbed of activity on weekends.’

She’s right. I expected somebody to be here but we haven’t seen one person. I would have liked to show her off.

‘I don’t know. The footy?’

BJ’s back to the compactus. She turns the wheel and a person-size gap opens. She steps inside, pokes her head out, does a come-here with an index finger.

‘Library Lady,’ she says, ‘find me a book about law and shit. Make sure it comes from a low shelf.’

Ruby and I are sitting on the floor in front of the couch, watching TV. BJ’s at uni trying to avoid an extension. I like sitting on the floor, the carpet is yielding and you can’t fall off.

‘Peta, you know how Mark’s been staying at my place?’

Her tone is like the one she used when she broke one of Mum’s teacups last year. I don’t think I’m going to like what she says next.

‘Yes, Mark is staying at yours…’

‘Well,’ she says, she has one arm on the coffee table and she’s put her wine down, ‘we’ve been doing it. It started by accident.’

Yep, I know about accidents. BJ and I had sex on her couch. The sex continued through weeks of my marriage. Serious accident.

I turn the TV down. It’s a cooking show and I only had it on for Ruby. She reckons she could be a TV chef.

‘It started as comfort and turned into coming.’ She shrugs. ‘Happens all the time.’

‘So that’s why you were weird before the dinner party?’

‘Yeah, I felt guilty.’

I have nowhere to go with this. I turn the TV back up.

Who am I trying to kid? As if I’m watching cooking shows just for Ruby. Not when Nigella is on. Drizzle. Juicy. Slice. Plunge. Intense. Nigella Lawson is the antithesis of BJ. But she can park her measuring cups and fancy fencing-mask sieve in my second drawer anytime.

‘You shouldn’t care.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You left him and I’m an adult.’

‘You are.’

Nigella is standing in front of her open fridge. It’s night-time, supposedly. She’s helping herself to leftovers, no plate, she uses her fingers. Naughty girl.

We’re having fish and chips for dinner from our local. We eat in the lounge room off the coffee table. Gin Wigmore is in the background. Music for takeaway. I’ve downloaded four songs, pot luck on a recommendation from the radio.

‘So. Ruby and Mark have been doing it.’

BJ snorts a chip, gags. When she finishes laughing: ‘Well, you left him and she is an adult. Can we talk about important things?’

‘Like?’

‘Like, when was the last time we had sex?’

‘Two days ago. Remember? We went to bed early?’

‘That was five days ago.’

‘Mayonnaise and chips are gross, BJ.’ I think about it. ‘I’ve been too tired. You can’t expect a library to run itself.’

‘That thing? It’s a stupid pretend library. You don’t even have a reference desk.’

I hate it when someone else spells out my fears.

‘It’s not stupid.’

Will not cry about my library.

‘I’m sorry, Pete. You know how if you ever talked about your marriage, it was always about how he spent too much time at work.’

‘And?’

‘I could say the same thing. You are never home. It’s boring here without you. And it’s not my place if you’re not in it.’

‘It is your place, BJ. Look, there are your books.’ Her desk didn’t make the move so we’ve turned the dining room into study central. ‘The hallway cupboard is full of your bike gear and you have more hair products in the bathroom than I’ve had in my life.’

‘I don’t want room, I want you. It was better when we had no time and no space. Toilets, back seats, McDonald’s. I had your attention then.’

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘Spend time with me. Talk to me. Do all that stuff you were doing before we became official.’

She wants to talk? I dust the salt off my hands. ‘Tell me about Serena.’

‘Are you deflecting?’ BJ says. ‘Don’t deflect with a deflector. We’ll be here all night and I’ll never get your clothes off.’

‘Serena. She was a big deal.’

‘Okay. She was married. She looked a little like you. So I have a type? She went back to her husband, said I’d been an escape hatch, a misadventure, a folly, and
she didn’t need me anymore. It fucken hurt. I threw out everything she gave me and screwed every girl who looked twice in my direction.’

‘Did you love her?’

She rolls her eyes. ‘Did you love Mark?’

BJ loved a married woman who looked like me.

‘I don’t love her now. I hate her guts.’

I hate her guts, too. Escape hatch, misadventure, folly. Wanker. I fold the fish and chips paper into itself, squash it into a hard, flat ball.

‘Let’s go to bed. I’ll make it up to you.’

The first Friday of September, four weeks after Ruby told me she and Mark have been sleeping with each other. I call Mark from an empty conference room and put on the voice I’ve practised.

‘May I speak to Mark Boyd, please?’

I’m informed he’s in a meeting and he’ll be back at ten-thirty. Would I like to leave a message? I squeak that I’ll try again later. My hands are shaking. I’m glad of the reprieve; it gives me time to change my mind and leave it alone.

‘May I speak to Mark Boyd, please,’ much better the second time, ‘this is Susan Hilton of Gallagher and Granger.’

‘Hello, Susan?’ That voice.

‘Hello, Mark.’

‘Oh, it’s you.’ The edge to that voice, not that there’s been much edge lately—he seems to have accepted his impending divorce. ‘What do you want?’

‘Why are you fucking my sister?’

‘Before I hang up, did you have anything real to talk about?’

‘Just tell me, why are you having sex with Ruby? Is this a you-can’t-have-Peta-Wheeler-so-you’ll-have-Ruby- Wheeler thing?’

‘You were much nicer before that little deviant got her hands on you, Peta. You had humility.’

‘And you have half of the cutlery, my sideboard and armchair.’

‘I’m hanging up now, Peta.’

‘Please leave Ruby alone, Mark. She’s too vulnerable.’

‘Yes, but Peta, she’s such a good fuck.’ Clunk.

Clunk all right. I’m going home. I want to organise an evening’s entertainment for BJ. I’m thinking an expensive takeaway, some home decoration, and leaving her so exhausted she’ll have to cancel her ride on Sunday. I pack my bag, turn my computer off, wave bye to JJ&T.

Trish’s head turns down and a little to the right. She’s checking the time in the corner of her screen.

‘Where are you going?’ She likes to know what’s happening on her end of the floor. I was hoping to keep my mood to myself.

‘Home,’ I say. ‘I left the washing machine running and I think the plug is in the trough.’

‘Tell us another one, Peta.’ Jacqui is morphing into Trish. Ever since her divorce she’s been super-assertive. All part of the healing process. I don’t have a hope with Jacqui and Trish at work and Ruby a phone call away.

‘I called Mark and accused him of still wanting me—in a roundabout way—I feel a bit stupid and I want to go home.’

Jackie, the one who’s still married, stands up and walks around her partition. She pulls me into her: I’m getting a hug. I didn’t want it but it’s nice.

‘You go, Peta, sort it out. We’ll run interference for you,’ she says. ‘We’ll see you Monday.’

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘See you girls.’

She’s a sweetheart, Jackie. She never forgets a birthday, organises the cake and candles; she runs the firm’s footy tipping; if there’s a baby or a retirement she’s usually the one who takes up the collection and buys the present. She wouldn’t say a bad thing about anyone. Sometimes she’s irritating but it is good to have her on my side.

Two hours later, my phone rings. I answer it in the kitchen. Hope it’s BJ, so she can crack some silly joke, maybe hang it on one of her lecturers—Captain YouTube, she calls him.

‘What gives you the right to speak to Mark about me?’

Loud.

‘Calm down, Ruby.’

‘You fucken calm down. I’m a big girl and I know what I’m doing.’

‘I’m not sure you do, Rube.’

‘It’s just fucking, Peta. Stress relief.’

‘Ruby, I…’

‘Save it.’

And she’s gone.

I send her a text:
I’m sorry Rube.

The phone rings again a minute later. I pick it up on the second ring.

‘I’m sorry, Ruby. It’s none of my business.’

‘It’s not Ruby, Peta. It’s me.’

‘Oh, BJ. Sorry.’

‘Did you and Ruby have a fight?’

‘Yes, just a moment ago.’

‘It was about Mark, wasn’t it?’ BJ’s voice becomes softer. ‘Why do you care? So they’re fucking. He’s single, she’s single. What the hell difference does it make to you?’

‘I’m worried about Ruby.’

‘You need to ask yourself why you care so much. Since you seem so interested in other people, or your pretend library, I’m going out with the girls tonight. There’s a gig at the Tower.’

‘You don’t want me to come?’

‘No, it’ll be a little too high-octane for you.’

‘Oh, I was hoping we could…’

‘Yeah. Look, Peta, I gotta go.’

‘Yeah, see you,’ I say to the she’s-hung-up-on-you sound.

I should ring Carole Smart. See if I can get hung-up on four times in one day. I’m sure she’d oblige.

Friday nights are for something special, aren’t they?

It’s two weeks since BJ made noises about my work hours and I thought I’d been doing all right: coming home earlier, trying to talk about the library less, making sure I ask how her studies are going. Not enough, apparently.

I’ve made us a tent in the lounge room: pushed the chairs and couch into the walls, hung sheets as the sides and the ceiling, filled the inside with cushions, blankets and pillows. It’s womb-like, the colours dark orange, red. There’s not much room to move, but we would have found a way.

This is my big romantic gesture—I’m listening, BJ. And she’s at the pub.

Five o’clock and I send Ruby another text. Press send
three times:
talk to me, talk to me, talk to me.
I sit in the tent for an hour and stare at my phone. Six o’clock, I’m going to bed.

At eight I wake up. Toast for dinner. I go back to bed with a book. Just me and Ali Smith, but I’m in a mood and tonight she’s not funny. I turn the light off and lie in the dark, counting the minutes until BJ comes home. She doesn’t.

My phone has broken: it receives calls but it doesn’t make any sound—no ring, no beep. I check it. No missed calls, no texts. I might call the local hospital. The sun is up; it’s not too early. Hospitals would get calls like this every Saturday morning. I might have to call Carole Smart after all. While I’m at it, I text Ruby:
still sorry Rube.
No answer.

There’s no reason not to trust BJ. Our last conversation wasn’t brilliant, but it doesn’t mean she’d go leaping into someone else’s bed. Someone younger with more energy, who likes loud, loud music and probably rides a bike with an interesting, meaning-laden name like Spirit, or Diablo. A girl with a tattoo, a double-headed axe on her shoulder, or one like BJ’s: a yin and yang inside a chainring on her ankle. Someone she’s met at the gig, all muscles and no baggage, just the toothbrush in her back pocket.

No, BJ wouldn’t do that.

The tallboy, empty of drawers and looking like a broken- toothed mouth, is in the bathroom. The armchair is on its side at the front door. I’m rearranging. It began with packing up the tent in the lounge room and morphed into re-assignment of the furniture.

‘Pete. Peta. Are you here?’

The front door is open but only enough for BJ to get her foot in. Her face is against the doorjamb like Jack Nicholson’s in
The Shining.
She didn’t come home last night and four o’clock in the afternoon isn’t early but that doesn’t stop me letting her in. I shove the armchair out of the way.

‘Where were you?’

‘I needed a break. You were busting my balls.’

‘I’d love it if I knew what you were talking about.’

‘Let’s have a cup of tea,’ she says.

At the kitchen table, BJ is hunched over. Tired? Guilty?

My stomach is sketchy, like the Scenic Railway and the Gravitron and my first job interview. I haven’t felt like this since I was sixteen and Johnny Huggins told me I was only a summer thing.

I can’t drink my tea. Neither can BJ.

She looks like she wants to say something, opens her mouth, closes it again. Her eyes are so dark they betray nothing. I never knew that about her eyes. Mine are easier to read, not as dark—the colour goes to mood or sunlight.

I stand up, push my chair in, take the two untouched teas to the sink, despatch them, rinse the cups.

‘Come and help me,’ I say. ‘Mum used to do this all the time. I’d come home from school and my wardrobe would be in the centre of my room and I’d have a brand new space. It was exciting. Maybe she couldn’t afford a gym membership. You can help me with the bed.’

We lift the bed, take little sideways steps. She’s wearing a T-shirt with cap sleeves and her muscles are taut, fine.

‘I talked to Justine,’ BJ says. ‘She reckons I’ve been giving you a hard time. Bloody hell, is this thing made of lead?’

Seeing Justine wouldn’t take all night and half the day.

The bed is in the middle of the room. Nothing else can fit in here with the bed how it is. A hatstand maybe, but if I can get BJ on it I don’t care; I’ll leave it that way.

‘She says you need the library. It’s your idea of yourself. Said imagine if you’d asked me to drop Ancient Worlds and study something practical. Can you please decide where you’re putting this? Wait.’

The bed is cumbersome, recalcitrant. She drops her end, wipes her brow with her forearm. There’s a flash of bra, the black one with the red stitching. Sweat beads on her upper lip and her hair is sticking to her temples.
Mark was never sexy when he sweated, just sweaty. She licks her lips.

That’s it.

‘Beej, can you take your T-shirt off?’

The dimple to complement the musculature. ‘Say please.’

‘No. Get it off.’

She pulls her T-shirt off, whips it into the corner of the room. ‘Anything else?’

‘Nope. Leave the rest.’

Who cares where she was? Who cares I thought she was dead, or kidnapped, or had eloped with somebody more suitable. She’s here now.

‘Now what?’

‘Stand on the bed.’

She stands on the bed. Perfect. Her fly is almost at eye level. I unbutton it. My hands are shaking. She isn’t wearing underpants. Good. I slide her jeans down her hips. No patience. Hard denim against soft skin. I want to kiss her, all over, kiss her stomach, her thighs, the backs of her legs. No time. I put my mouth on her. She clutches my head. My stomach trembles. She’s whispering, fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. Her hands are pulling and un-pulling my hair and it hurts fantastically.

The bedroom overlooks the street. Anyone could see in. They’d see the respectable woman from No. 9 performing oral sex on her girlfriend. I don’t care. Not today.

Curtains open, BJ’s pants down, her breathing tattered, my jaw sore, the best ache, I’ve lost the capacity to shock myself.

Like there’s a line you’d never cross, but if you make to cross it, you get there (I mean, do the thing) and the
line is further away. And the thing (when you get there) is merely a stepping stone to the next thing you’d never do and only some distance from the new line you’d never cross.

Since I got on the couch five months ago I’m all out of lines.

I’ve closed the curtains. Sex I can show, intimacy is ours. We’re still on the bed. BJ’s hand is between my legs. She pushes. I close my eyes, exhale slowly. She covers my mouth with hers, takes my breath. And pushes. It’s so slow its almost not happening. Push. I can’t kiss and come at the same time.

‘Harder,’ I breathe it, no voice, ‘harder.’

Her forearm is in my grip. ‘Come, baby, come.’

Her lips on my ear, one last push, I’m tight all over, I say fuck and it takes ten seconds to say it.

‘Pete, you’re beautiful when you come.’

She removes her fingers, wipes them across her stomach. I love that.

‘Can we stay like this for a while?’

‘Forever,’ she says.

Forever. Yesterday phoning hospitals was first on my list. I’ve no belief in forever, but if I did it’d have to be like this: quiet, close, a bit sweaty, complete. My eyes sting. She says forever and I’m crying.

‘Beej, I think we expected too much.’

She holds me, her face is in my nape, and her voice is soft. ‘Yeah. I knew there’d be blowback, but I didn’t care. I fucked you that first time, wanting you sooooo bad. God, you were sexy on my couch, your eyes wide open, a “no” on your lips that wouldn’t come out. But the
second time, that afternoon in my bed, I knew it was a mistake. You had Mark and a life, a big heterosexual life, but I wouldn’t look at it. It was your smile, uncertain but so ready to find out, your skin, those curls. I was gone.’

She tugs my hair, wipes my tears with the crook of her finger.

I haven’t let go of her arm.

‘Same here,’ I say. ‘I haven’t told you this but I stole your singlet that afternoon. I stuffed it into my pocket and I slept with it scrunched up in my hand. I tried it on and Mark saw me. It was tight and stretched see-through. He loved it. But I took it off. I was afraid it’d retain my smell and lose yours.’

‘Well, we’re pretty pathetic, aren’t we?’

‘Yep, we’ve got it bad. Am I too awful now? You didn’t plan on getting yourself a conservative librarian.’

‘Pete, a conservative wouldn’t suck me in front of the neighbours. No, beautiful girl, you are not too awful. But I reckon we need some time. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not saying we need to call it quits. If I felt that, I wouldn’t be having this conversation. Thunder and I’d be gone.’

‘Okay. So what do you propose?’

‘Well. It’s been a big day. Justine kicking my head in this morning, and making nice with Carole this afternoon. I have news.’

I sit up. ‘Let’s hear it.’

‘She wants me to go overseas with her for a month.’

‘A month? But…’

‘I’ll miss you too. But we have email. And a month isn’t that long.’

‘So, you’re going?’

‘I’ll visit Dad in Bangkok. I don’t know what Mum will do then—she can’t stand him. And I promise I’ll hate Paris without you. I won’t even see the Mona Lisa. I’ll wait outside the Louvre and perv on French chicks.’

‘When?’

She leans down, drags her jeans up from the floor, pulls a printed e-ticket out of her pocket, unfolds it. September nineteenth. She’s flying out in just over two weeks.

‘But BJ, your birthday.’

‘Babe, I just got my best-ever birthday present.’

That dimple, I’ll give her another birthday present if she’s not careful.

We’re walking down Station Street. It’s the first week of the finals and Collingwood is everywhere. Black and white posters, old women in scarves, kids in footy jumpers, streamers hanging off cars.

‘Well, I bet you won’t miss this,’ I point to a family of four in Collingwood regalia, head to toe. Even their Jack Russell is wearing a Collingwood jumper. ‘Maybe your mother’s decided if she can’t beat those wacky girls she’ll join them.’

‘Maybe she thinks she’ll have a month to work on me when we’re overseas. I’m taking my iPod just in case.’

‘I bet she thinks me in my job, across the road from Mark in his, will have me wanting my comfortable life back.’

BJ stops walking, there’s a tug on my hand. ‘Hey, maybe she’s right.’

‘She isn’t. Maybe she thinks you’ll fall in love with a pretty Frenchwoman. They all smoke, you know.’

‘And they’re all gorgeous.’

‘Yes, but would they do this?’ I snag her cigarette from her mouth, grind it out, press her up against the bottle-shop window and kiss her. I push my knee up high between her legs. Cars beep. Our sunglasses bump.

‘I hope so,’ BJ grins at me, her look tells me I’ve come a long way.

And we’re back to the maybe game.

‘Maybe she thinks she can break us down from inside. My mother is insidious.’

‘She just cares about you. Maybe she realises you can make your own choices.’

‘How quickly you forgive. I’m suspicious.’

‘I wish I had a mother to be suspicious of. Ruby and I are on our own. And since she doesn’t talk to me anymore, we’re even more on our own.’

I send another email to Ruby:

Dear Ruby, I can only apologise so many times (so far, seventeen). Who you have it off with is none of my business. I know that and I’m sorry. Make that eighteen times. Please, please, please talk to me. I miss you. BJ is off to the other side of the world next week. Ruby, you are in my city, but you might as well be on the other side of the world. I’m sorry (nineteen). Peta XXXXX

BJ’s birthday is the twenty-fifth of September but she’ll be away. To celebrate, we’re going for a bike ride and a picnic, if I survive. BJ’s lowered the seat on my bike and oiled the chain. The cane basket on my handlebar is filled with regulation picnic gear—water-resistant blanket, sandwiches, biscuits, fruit and two piccolos of sparkling wine.

‘You don’t have to do this,’ BJ says.

‘I want to.’ I buckle my helmet, get on the bike.

‘I’ll ride behind you to make sure you’re okay and to check out your arse. I haven’t ridden with someone wearing a skirt before.’

I wobble off. It’s not so bad once you get momentum. But by the time we’re three streets away from home, my bum is sore. I had plans of riding to the boatsheds in Kew but I also have a fallback.

We stop for a red light. BJ rolls up beside me. ‘You want to keep going?’

‘Sure. No. How about the park with the miniature train?’ It’s downhill.

‘On Belmore Road? It’ll be uphill on the way back.’

‘Yes, but I’ll be warmed up by then. And there’ll be three kilometres more experience in the legs.’ Proper cyclists talk about their legs like they’re separate from them,
Yeah, nah, yeah. I didn’t have the legs today.

‘No worries,’ BJ says.

Green light.

The downhill bit is fun. BJ beats me by at least half a minute but I don’t mind. We turn into the park and it’s not until I’m almost ready to stop that I lose control of my bike. The front wheel flicks out. I’m off.

Gravel. Basket emptied. Onlookers. Grazed knee, red face. Not much pain.

‘Are you laughing? You’re laughing!’ I’m laughing, too.

‘Let’s see that.’ She crouches in front me.

Nothing’s broken, my skirt is where it should be, blood from my knee is trailing into my sock. BJ has antiseptic wipes and bandaids in one of her back pockets. She wipes the blood from my knee and sticks a bandaid on it.

Kids hoot as the loaded train does laps of its little circuit. Seagulls. The back and forth squeal of the swings. Pairs of cyclists on the bike path, dogs off the leash— freedom.

‘I can’t think of anything I’ve done this year that was better than this,’ BJ says.

Most of the picnics I’ve been on haven’t lived up to my expectations, but today, tucked in under a big old tree, lying on a blanket, stomach full, wine drunk, I’m with BJ, and it’s even better than I planned.

‘Presents,’ I say.

She thrusts out her hand. ‘Gimme.’

I love a girl who knows what she wants.

‘Could this be a book?’ She unwraps it.
‘Street French Slang Dictionary and Thesaurus.
Brilliant.’

‘Couldn’t have you over there unable to communicate.’ I hand her another present, smaller and in tissue paper. ‘Happy birthday, Beej.’

She’s careful and she’s almost never careful. She unfolds the paper.

‘Wow, Peta, it’s beautiful.’ In the palm of her hand is an Ina Barry Spikey Bangle. It’s shiny, silver, reptilian, pointy, but it’s curved. I bought it and wrapped it but I’m as captivated as she is.

‘It’s engraved,’ I point, ‘in that curve.’

‘BJ for Peta forever.’

‘I know it’s cheesy, a little like what you’d find on the back of a toilet door, but it’s what I wanted to say. Anyway, we know about toilets.’

‘Babe, it’s not cheesy, it’s true. Forever.’

She kisses me. This is the best picnic.

‘Put it on.’

‘No.’ She zips it into her back pocket. ‘I’d die if I lost it on the way home.’

The way home. Uphill. Okay. My basket will be lighter and the food will have given me energy and the wine might provide me with some nerve.

‘If you like, you don’t have to, I’m not saying you’re soft, but if you like, I can go home and get the car and come back and pick you up,’ BJ smiles.

‘You don’t mind? My knee…’