If you can't help with the engine, just go lie down

Geoff was in (he claimed) the final stages of getting the new inverter installed so he went back to the engine room.

. . .

[After an hour] 'How's it going?' I asked the soles of his feet. The opposite end stopped swearing for long enough to tell me exactly how it was going in full and colourful detail. 'O...K," I backed off, 'I'm going to read in bed, do you want anything before I go?' I'd like to believe that what he said was, 'No thank you, darling, thanks for enquiring, you go and have a bit of a lie-down, you deserve it' but I don't think it was. I went for that 'bit of a lie-down' anyway.

Marie Browne, Narrow Margins (Mid-Glamorgan: Accent Press, 2009),  p. 61