Starter-motor blues
I stood in the kitchen nursing a mug, as though steam might lend backbone, and recited my talking points for Frankfurt’s ten-o’clock Zoom: be crisp, be credible, no stray engine noises in the background.
Emma padded in, dressing-gown sash trailing like a reluctant kite, the fabric slipping just enough to show sun-warmed skin. “You’re actually driving to the yard before the call?”
“Need to grab some reference notes,” I said, before mumbling something about a throttle linkage that had begun squeaking like a bed-spring. “Five minutes, in and out. Besides, I’ll only be pacing around the office otherwise.”
She cocked an eyebrow. “Car repairs with less than two hours to spare? Live dangerously, why don’t you.” Murphy, orbiting for toast crumbs, paused to study us — dog as marriage counsellor.
I saluted with the mug, slid out of the house and clattered the Land Rover door. The V8 caught on the third churn — promising — and I trundled toward the nearby harbour yard, enjoying the empty streets and the illusion of competence.
Inside the lock-up the air smelled of petrol vapour and late-summer dust. The tweak took ten minutes; rummaging for a copper washer I might need took twenty. By the time I’d organised my meeting notes it was nearly half-nine. Still plenty of time to zip home, swap shirts, calibrate persona.
Key in. One bronchial cough, a tortured whirr, then silence so final it felt rehearsed. Second try: click, nothing. Murphy — on shotgun duty — tilted his head, sympathetic but unqualified.
I rang Emma.
“Starter’s dead,” I said.
“Honestly, Alex — first day of the new contract and you’re under the bonnet playing Meccano? I’d rescue you, but Jill from work still has the Golf. Can Ronnie give you a lift, or are we improvising again?”
Improvising again, evidently: Ronnie’s nicotine-coloured Transit was nowhere in sight. I phoned him — straight to voicemail.
Impending doom tightened its tie. The yard’s mobile signal hovers between faint and folklore, so tethering was out. Plan C: hijack Ronnie’s workshop Wi-Fi. He’d once scrawled his password, “WOOD4U2”, on the base of my press drill, insurance for exactly this sort of emergency. I keyed it in with flustered thumbs and joined the call moments before Florian launched into his deck on synergised phase onboarding.
Two minutes in, Ronnie’s network dropped like a trapdoor. My screen froze on a grimace that looked alarmingly like indigestion.
“Alex, are you still with us?” Florian asked from the audio void.
“Ab—so—lutely,” I crackled, but we both knew the jig was up. We rescheduled for eleven. Florian’s polite Kein Problem couldn’t hide the corporate clock now ticking twice as loud in my head; one false start you can style as agile, two looks like amateur hour.
I sprinted the hill home, lungs rasping, thoughts skidding across worst-case headlines: Freelancer Fails to Launch, Retainer Revoked Before First Invoice. Sweat darkened the collar of the only decent shirt I owned.
Back at the house, feeble Wi-Fi bars winked like a dying firefly. Last week I’d moved the router so Emma’s tablet could stream Scandi crime drama in the bath; from my office the signal now glimmered like candlelight. I yanked it back to my study — trailing cable like intravenous tubing — killed every other device on the network, including Emma’s crime drama mid-autopsy. A pointed “thank you” echoed from the bathroom.
Ten-fifty-nine: deep breath, join call. Florian reappeared, immaculate headset, indulgence depleted. My video feed stutter-blinked; somewhere an invoice sprouted the tag “risk factor: flaky”.
But the packets held. I delivered the roadmap, voice an octave higher than rehearsed, mouse gripped white-knuckled. When Florian finally nodded — “Sounds aligned” — relief hit like seawater in November. I clicked Leave and sagged back, noticing the damp half-moons my armpits had printed on the shirt: evidence of a battle narrowly won.
Downstairs, Emma pressed a victory coffee into my trembling hands.
“So we survived the morning of needless peril?” she asked, stirring with theatrical innocence.
“Hero returns,” I said, then winced. “More like fool narrowly avoids bankruptcy.”
“Mm-hmm.” She tapped the router now coiled at her feet. “Maybe curate a sensible cable plan before the next synergised phase?”
“Redundancy is unromantic,” I muttered, but made a mental note to order a reel of Cat-6 anyway. Somewhere between sofa and skirting board she softened, ruffling my sweat-plastered fringe. “Proud of you — just try not to explode anything else before lunch. I’m still filing this under avoidable chaos.”
While cables disappeared behind bookcases, I noticed the trumpet phrase from Jazz on the Green had gone silent — an absence I felt only when the room hushed. Anxiety, it seemed, could drown melodies as thoroughly as applause.
The Landy dozed in the yard, starter broken; Frankfurt milestones were intact, but only just. Somewhere between those facts lay a faint wobble — like spotting the horizon tilt a degree then right itself. Late-summer days do that: everything still warm, everything suddenly brittle. Murphy thumped his tail, unbothered by seasons or solenoids, and for a moment I envied him completely.