"I just don’t fancy the idea of a second-hand mattress"

HOME, 8.30am. Our house has been denuded of certain essential items.

My son’s 10-year-old Manchester United toaster- that for a decade singed the lettering “M.U.F.C” onto our morning toast — has disappeared into student accommodation, along with several other domestic comforts, including an expensive memory-foam mattress from the spare room, which we need to replace.

“Just buy a second-hand mattress from Paul’s in town,” my husband says at the breakfast table, “I mean no-one really uses the spare room anymore.”

“My sister sleeps there whenever she comes over,” I say, typing “cheap mattresses” into Google, “and she’d book herself into a hotel rather than sleep on a mattress of uncertain origin. And I have to say I feel the same.”

“What do you think you sleep on in a hotel?” my husband says, retrieving burnt toast from under the grill and chucking it into the compost, “besides, she needn’t know.”

“I just don’t fancy the idea of a second-hand mattress,” I say, in my best Princess and the Pea voice, but change my mind when I look at prices.

I think of Paul’s second-hand and antiques furniture premises, and of him — infamously bold, with a tongue like a scalpel — and take a deep breath. “I’ll try Paul’s,” I say.

“Ask him if he’s got a toaster, while you’re at it,” my husband says, picking up his bike helmet. He looks at me and laughs silently.

“Are you laughing at my new red trousers?” I say suspiciously; I am still undecided about their unusually long, flared cut.

“I’m laughing at something Paul said last time I was in,” he says, wheeling his bike through the kitchen into the conservatory, “he’d kill you with a sentence, that man.”

“Wish me luck,” I say, at the front door.

“You’re well matched,” my husband says; a comment which, since he’s pedalling away fast, I’m forced to ignore.

11.40am. I drive to Paul’s and park outside his premises. Crossing the road, I wonder if the peculiar trousers are a mistake.

4.30pm. My husband returns home from work. There is a double mattress standing up against the dresser.

“Howd’it go?” he says, removing his bike helmet and looking at the mattress, “that mattress looks brand-new.”

“I think it might be” I say. “Though we’ll never know. After I said I’d take it, I asked Paul about its provenance. After all, my sister has to sleep on it.”

“What did he say?”

“He kept looking at my trousers and then told me to mind my own ******* business, do I want the mattress or not? And when I persisted he said if I must know, it belonged to an old hoor.”

“He was in usual form then.”

“I said never mind all that — just so long as the hoor took regular baths and was clean.”

“How did that go down?”

“He said she never took a bath in her life and nor did any of her clients — she was old and dirty, and her clients older and dirtier. Then he pointed at my trousers and said, “anyway, what would you know about taking regular baths? You were wearing those same rotten red trousers when you last came in a week ago.”

“If I’d told him I’d had seven baths in the interim,” I say, “it wouldn’t have made any difference. So I just said, hoor or no hoor, I’d take the mattress. I mean it’s immaculate. My sister will never know.”

“How does he get away with it?” my husband says smiling.

“I think the trousers weakened my position,” I say.

“He’s unbelievable,”my husband says.

“It’s the accent,” I say, “it’s very forgiving. Everything sounds nice in a West Cork accent, even ‘dirty old hoor’.”

“Did you ask him to deliver it?”

“Yes. But the very second I asked, he pretended to get that nervous twitch in his eye and twitched at me the whole time I was helping him carry the mattress down those lethal stairs. Then I tripped over my trousers on the last step and fell flat on my face.”

“What did Paul do?”

“He dropped his end of the mattress so he could laugh in more comfort.”

“He’s something else.”

“I knew those trousers were a mistake.”