"Not at all! I've brought you some tools," I replied. The words were just barely out of my mouth when I decided it sounded kind of absurd, but Lucas didn't seem amused so much as grateful.

"Thank god," he answered, and untied the rope from around his chest. He walked carefully to one edge of the roof and, before I had time to be surprised, he dropped over the eave and was hanging with one hand on the guttering, measuring the distance down with a glance. The roof was only about fifteen feet off the ground to start with, and he fell into the soft soil below with hardly a grunt. It wasn't graceful, but he did land on his feet.

I held up the bucket by the handle. He let out a short, sharp bark of laughter, startling me.

"That's not what I expected," he said, and then blushed. "I mean, thank you. Would you – uh, come inside? Out of the rain?"

He gestured to the back of the house and I followed him, through a weather-battered door and into a bright yellow kitchen. We stamped the mud off our boots on the mat just inside and Lucas removed an enormous ragged coat, revealing a corduroy shirt buttoned up over a turtleneck underneath, the collar and wrists dark where they'd gotten wet. He threw the coat on a chair next to the little breakfast table and invited me with another spare gesture to set my umbrella out to dry.

The kitchen didn't look exactly lived-in. There was nothing on the walls but a few pans hanging on hooks, and no visible food on the counters. The only personal touch was a small planter box filled with green sprouts. They didn't look like they'd survive another week, let alone the winter. The door to what I assumed was the living room was closed tightly.

Lucas went to a high shelf at the back of the kitchen and took down two mugs, back turned to me as he spoke.

"I telephoned the shop to ask what I was missing," he said. "I was told someone would bring out what I needed. They didn't say you would do it."

"I volunteered. I wanted to see what you'd done here," I answered.

"Not much," he said, taking a pan off a hook and setting it on the stove. "I have cocoa or coffee."

"Cocoa?"

"Yeah. I...like cocoa?" he ventured.

"That's fine then."

He nodded and took a bottle of milk from the fridge, pouring it into the pan. "Sit down if you want."

I pulled out a chair and sat, stretching my legs towards a heating vent while he lit the gas on the stove.

"Live alone out here?" I asked.

"Yep," he answered shortly. He took a makeshift hammer out of his belt, a wooden mallet wrapped in leather, and set it on the counter, replacing it with the hammer from the bucket I'd brought. Next he studied the caulk-gun for a while, then picked up the tube of caulk and fitted it in with a single, efficient gesture and a soft snap.

"Not your first time fixing a roof?" I asked.

"Oh, yes it is," he answered. "It's not something I've run into a lot, in my life."

He disappeared into the living room and returned with a wide piece of thick cloth, wrapping it around the aluminum snips before shoving them in his pocket.

Is this the first time you've lived alone?" I asked. He stopped and looked directly at me.

It wasn't that he seemed particularly malicious. There was a touch of innocent surprise in his stare. At the same time, however, it was almost as if he were trying to look past me – searching for another version of me, another kind of Christopher who had asked a different question altogether and had gotten a much more satisfactory answer than I was likely to get.

"This is the first place that's been mine," he said finally. He jerked the pan's handle lightly and the milk hissed as it slapped against the hot dry sides. He turned off the heat and added spoonfuls of dark powder to the mugs before pouring precisely half the milk into each. He passed me one and leaned on the counter nearby, hip hitched just over the edge, blue light through the window picking out shine in his wet hair.

"The leaks don't seem to be serious," I said, to make conversation. "Did you need to be up there fixing it in the rain?"

"They aren't so bad," he allowed. "They'll rot the ceiling, though, and they come through here and there." He opened a cupboard by way of example. Water was dripping from the top of it down into a bowl on the highest shelf.

"Rain can't last that long, though," I answered. "You could have waited until it was clear, couldn't you?"

"It's better to do it this way. At least then I know if I've actually stopped the leak or not," he answered.

"And have you?"

"Stopped the leaks? Two so far. Some need sealing from the inside."

"You didn't climb up to the roof to begin with, then."

"There's a trap-door into the attic, and a gable-window on the far side lets out onto the shingles. I would have come to get the tools, you didn't need to bring them all this way," he continued. He seemed more confident, in his own kitchen and on relatively solid factual ground. "That could have waited until the rain was over."

"I like the rain," I said.

"Who's minding your shop?"

"Nobody. I closed it before I came."

"Will you lose business?"