She raised the blade.
Back in her car, she tore the sleeve open.
She drove to the bramble-choked lane behind her rented cottage. The ivy had swallowed the fence. The blackberry canes had reached out like claws across the path to the shed where the fuse box kept tripping. A tree surgeon had quoted £400. She had £47.
She opened the Screwfix app again. Scrolled past the machete listing— 64 reviews, 4.7 stars —and added a pair of thorn-proof gauntlets and a head torch. machete knife screwfix
Thwack.
The Screwfix trade counter at seven a.m. smelled of instant coffee and wet cardboard. The man in front of her was buying a cement mixer. The woman behind the counter, whose badge read Deb , had the efficient, unfazed look of someone who had seen a plumber cry.
The first cane went clean through. Not a chop—a slice. The steel whispered through the green heart of the thing. She swung again, and again, and within ten minutes she was sweating, grinning, her forearms striped with tiny scratches. The path emerged like a drowned road returning to land. She raised the blade
She clicked ‘reserve for collection’ before she could talk herself out of it.
That night, she wiped the blade with an oily rag and set it on the kitchen table. It looked less like a weapon now. More like a key.
She thought of the other things she could order from Screwfix: a drain rod, a sledgehammer, a respirator. Tools for the living. Not for fighting, but for clearing. For carving a way through the mess that had grown up around her since Mark left. The ivy had swallowed the fence
“Order for Jenna,” she said, her voice steadier than she felt.
Jenna stepped out of the car, the machete in her right hand. It felt heavy in a way gym weights never did. Heavy with potential. Heavy with the knowledge that she could, if she swung it wrong, remove her own shin.
Deb tapped a keyboard. “One machete.” No raised eyebrow. No question. Just a barcode scan. It came out in a flat, tamper-proof plastic sleeve. Jenna paid with her debit card, receipt spitting out with a thrrp .