“Carol is obsessed with money. Before Mum died, she kept coming around, pretending to visit even though she hated my mum and even though she’d remarried because she believes she’s entitled to more. We divorced years ago; she got nearly everything I had back then. It’s not enough, though. I met another woman a few years ago, and Carol fucking haunted her. We had to call the police at one point, but this was before the new stalking laws. She took photos of her all the time, called her work telling lies, and since Demi was a teacher, it caused all sorts of problems. I didn’t want her to think there was even a friendship between us.”
I nodded. “So, it’s not the murderer in you I need to worry about. Joe didn’t give me any hints of what to do with a psychotic ex-wife. I might have to Google that.”
Ronan was unsure, initially, whether to laugh or not. I smiled sweetly, not giving him a hint either way. Eventually, he gave in. The corners of his mouth crinkled, and he let out a relieved laugh.
“It wasn’t nice to hear what you said. And yes, I did hear. I’m a woman of a certain age, Ronan, one that has been through a shit couple of years and one that might like the opportunity to release that anger and frustration. You don’t need to protect me from anyone. Also, I’m not staff, you don’t pay me, and you haven’t offered me a contract. If you want me to just be staff have that contract and a salary idea ready tomorrow. If you want me as a friend, to help you, then from now that’s what you’ll refer to me as, regardless of what your ex thinks.”
I held his gaze. I was done with being kind and nice and understanding. Ronan reached across as if to shake my hand, something quite formal, and disappointment flooded me. Instead of the shake, however, he just held my hand and rested both on the tabletop.
“I’m sorry. It was totally the wrong thing to say, and it won’t happen again. I highly doubt she believed me anyway.”
I fixed him with a stern stare. “Now, affairs, plural?”
He shook his head. “Lies, plural, you’ll hear many. I had every intention of leaving Carol, and when I tried, she’d blackmail me to stay. She told me she had cancer, Lizzie. Who does that? She told me she was pregnant, many times, and each time lost the child but would never go to a consultant or hospital. I stopped believing her. I didn’t love her, but I felt obliged to stay, and I felt sorry for her, which is terrible.”
“What happened to Demi?” I asked.
“That’s a longer story, for another day?” There was a pleading tone to his voice.
“Okay, no more talk about it, for now. Can we do one thing tomorrow?” I asked. Ronan nodded without even knowing what I wanted. I gestured across the kitchen. “Can we get this fucking Aga fixed?”
He laughed. “I fear it needs replacing. I don’t think it’s worked for years. However, tomorrow, you can have the task of finding us an engineer to see if it can be rescued. Or we replace it. This kitchen needs an Aga, for sure. And the boiler needs a service too.”
Ronan held my hand as we carried our mugs of tea from the kitchen. The hallway was warmer, but even there, I could see my breath when I exhaled. I shivered all the way up the stairs.
“What we can’t do is upgrade all the heating in one go, the house would suffer from it, it wasn’t designed for central heating.”
I understood his point. “I don’t think it would hurt to at least light some fires in some of the rooms. Those books in the library are curling from damp. The house needs to dry out,” I said as if I had any clue on such a historic building.
He cringed. “Then we need to add a chimney sweep to the list for tomorrow. I doubt they’ve been tended to in years, either.”
We paused outside Ronan’s bedroom. “I am sorry, Lizzie,” he said.
I nodded. “Just know, I’m not a child, and I don’t want to be lied to or mucked around. It’s already transpired you and Joe had a conversation you failed to include me in so, no more, yes?”
He gave me a wink and clinked his mug against mine. “Agreed.”
There was a moment of awkwardness as he didn’t want to walk into his room, and I didn’t want to leave.
I huffed. “Goodnight,” I said, and I turned.
Although itching to look back because I hadn’t heard the floorboards creak indicating he’d entered his bedroom, I didn’t. Instead, I walked into mine and closed the door. I then punched the air and hissed out a ‘yes.’ Childish, I know, and I wasn’t sure what I’d won, other than to state that he needed to make a decision as to whether I was staff or not.
I deflated—what if he chose staff?
Chapter Twelve
I spent most of the following day spending Ronan’s money, which was quite exciting and also terrifying. I made notes of three of everything and everybody, then checked in with him before I bought or scheduled. It got to the point that he snapped at me, telling me he trusted me not to spend every penny he had and that the credit card had a limit anyway. I chuckled as I organised for an Aga specialist to attend the following day, and a chimney sweep for that afternoon. I bought wooden crates and packaging for the pictures, and I also googled abstract art. It seemed there might have been a market for it. I decided that I might select the better ones and take them to a gallery. I was sure that Joe would have a contact, so I emailed him to ask. His reply came quickly:
Of course I have a contact in the art world. I have contacts in every world, my darling. Now, let me get this straight…Ronan’s mum rolled around on the floor, naked, and in paint? She set up a camera to photograph herself doing that? Mmm, maybe we need to visit that BDSM club. I think it might be more suited there ;)
I laughed at his comment. He had ended his email saying that he would let me know who best to pitch the nudes to. I wouldn’t tell Ronan until I actually had something to tell, of course.
“Maggie, I’ve got someone coming to look at the Aga tomorrow. What do you think? Will it work again?” I asked as I sat munching on a sandwich.
“Oh, it would be magnificent if it did. I remember baking bread and cakes and pies in that. It would heat this room and half the house in its day. It hasn’t worked for such a long time, though. Charlie tried to fix it, but Verity didn’t seem to care. It runs on oil, and that’s not something she was keen on,” Maggie said.
“What about the boiler? Where is it?”
“Outside, in the courtyard, there’s a fuel tank and the boiler. It works; it’s just not man enough for the whole house. We had a delivery of fuel just a week ago but, other than Charlie tinkering, that boiler hasn’t had a service in years.”
“Do you know anyone locally? Or maybe the Aga man can do the boiler while he’s here,” I said.
Maggie shrugged her shoulders. “I used to have a file of who did what, maintenance and all that, but it went out the window to be honest. I should say, it’s so nice to get on top of all those things again. It would be wonderful to see this old house back up to scratch.”
I hadn’t thought of the tasks that she would have done in the past. As housekeeper I didn’t think that scheduling maintenance would have been up to her, but I didn’t want to step on toes, either.
“It would be nice, wouldn’t it? Together we can get this wreck sorted and then it’s got to be so much easier,” I said.
When I returned to the library—a room where I’d cleaned the windows, bashed the curtains to release some of the dust before removing them for professional cleaning, dusted as far as I could reach and had Charlie light the fire—I was ready to roll again.
I found a glazier to come and quote for the cracked windows, and a window cleaner with extendable poles to clean the outside. As enthused as I was, so were Maggie and Charlie. It was as if we were all breathing a little life into the house and into each other. They had decided they were going to take a room at a time, starting at the bottom and working up. Each would have a thorough clean and notes made of what needed to be repaired. There was a lot that Charlie could do himself with the tools he said he had, but I asked him to make a note of what he needed.
/> “I think we ought to set a budget,” I said, as I sat with Ronan. The estimates and scheduled spend was mounting up.
He winced when he saw my sheet of paper. “I do think we need to get the house in order before we tackle the outside, and before we think about any money-making enterprises,” he said. I didn’t disagree. I wanted to get cracking with the film set idea. I’d found a forum of homeowners and the fees were staggering.
“There’s plenty Maggie and Charlie can do, and to be honest, there was always plenty they could have done but haven’t. I don’t know why. It doesn’t matter, but I had an idea you might not totally like,” I said, cryptically.
I had heard back from Joe that a friend of his might be interested in the artwork. I had taken a couple of photographs and emailed them. He’d replied—among the ha ha ha’s—that he would forward them on. But it was the email I’d received just an hour prior to sitting with Ronan that had me excited:
Babe, you’re never going to believe this, but my friend is pissing himself over those photos, and I don’t mean in the weak bladder sense. He loves them! Can you imagine that? All we ever needed to do in art class was roll around naked, and we could have earned millions! You’ll need to get some down here for him to look at, but he seems willing to exhibit and sell, if that’s what actually happens.
I read the email—omitting the pissing part—aloud to Ronan.
He gasped. “No way would someone want to buy those,” he said, his eyes wide.
“Ronan, look at this.” I turned the laptop around so he could see the enlarged version of the photograph that I had sent Joe.
Splashes of vibrant colour filled the screen. Although there was no order to the image it was striking. The more I looked at it, the more joyous it had become and then to discover the naked form of Verity in the middle was a bonus. The concept had certainly grown on me.
I added, “There’s a fellow, I forget his name, and he might be Scottish, but he paints animals using streaks of colour like this, and he’s really successful.” I was exaggerating my art knowledge when all I’d seen was an advert for a print on Facebook.
“Seriously?” Ronan asked. I nodded. “Well, I guess it won’t hurt to show them to him. Do you think Joe might keep it from Rich for the moment? He had a real thing about what our mum did, and if he knows she’s going to be plastered on a wall in London somewhere, he might freak. He does, at the moment, still own half of all this.”
I fired back a quick email to Joe knowing full well it was fruitless. Joe had the biggest mouth and was the worst gossip I’d ever known.
“As soon as the packing material arrives, we’ll take some down to London and see if we can’t raise some funds that way,” I said. “And if they are sought after, what better way than to exhibit them here.”
I laughed as I thought of limp dick and saggy tits, as I’d named them, out in the campsite with the cream of the art world perhaps in a marquee on the lawn sipping Pimms and admiring the photographs and paintings.
“Just dinnae want nae earthers here,” I heard. Charlie had walked in with a basket of logs ready to stack by the blazing fire.
“You need to tell me again about these earthers,” I said. Ronan coughed, choking on the sip of tea he had just taken. He waved his arm, but Charlie ignored him.
“They pump the trees,” he said—or at least that’s what I thought he’d said. He’d gone back to a harsh Scottish accent interspersed with Gaelic. “And they pump the ground, dig holes all over the place, they do, like fucking moles.”
He walked from the room, and it descended into silence.
Ronan, thankfully, translated. “Pump, means have sex.”
I nodded, not that I actually needed it clarified; it was quite obvious what Charlie meant. Yet again, silence descended.
“Bohemian,” both Ronan and I said at the same time and then burst into laughter. I nodded. Of course there were would be earth sexers on this palatial Scottish mansion with its deer, and gatehouses, and naked artists.
When we had calmed down, I said, “They electrocute moles, don’t they?” I was sure I’d read somewhere that it was an effective method of pest control.
He was trying to remain calm and pursed his lips. “I have absolutely no idea.” Then he frowned, probably wondering why on earth I’d mentioned that.
I lost all train of thought and concentration. “I think I might need a little fresh air. The chimney sweep will be here shortly. I might take a walk down to the gate and back.”
“Wait for me. I could do with getting all thoughts of earth sexers out of my mind as well.”
I still had the coat and the boots that I’d borrowed, but I was going to need some thicker socks. I’d doubled up but had only brought a couple of pairs, and my jeans alone weren’t stopping my skin from pimpling with cold and chafing on the denim.
“I might need to find a town for some new clothes, and I need to check in with my bank soon,” I said.
He nodded. “We can head into town later if you want a change of scenery. I can’t promise Harrods, but there are some pretty good shops for hiking and wet weather gear.”
It sounded perfect, and I decided it might be nice to get an idea of the local town. We were going to need their support if we were to put on any events at the house.
“I forgot,” I said as we left the front door. “What do you call this?” I said, waving my arm and walking backwards, gesturing up at the house.
“A wonderful Heritage Castle so the council call it,” Ronan replied.
Although there were no traditional turrets or those slitty windows for arrow firing, I could see where the castle might come into the description.
We walked down to the gate, and I tried my hardest to push one but failed. “Maybe you should consider having these gates repaired as well.” It was half open and very firmly stuck.
He scratched his chin and chewed on his lip. “Add that to the list for Charlie. I’m sure they could just do with a clean up, repaint, and a little oiling. Although they used to be electric when I was a kid. Dad wanted security. Mum believed that everyone should enjoy the property and the grounds. I agree, in part with her, but a little privacy would be nice,” he said. “Follow me.”
We strode along the lane a little way. The only sounds were my feet slopping around in the wellies, and slapping on the tarmac road as if I was overly heavy-footed.
We followed the boundary wall until we came to a small cottage. It was picture perfect or could have been. There was a hole in the roof, broken glass in the windowpanes, and I could see where plants had grown over the front porch. I sighed at its neglect. Joe would have a coronary at all the properties in a dilapidated state.
Ronan pushed through the creaking gate. “I used to live here for a while.”
We walked around the side to the rear of the property, and I cupped my eyes to peer through the glass in a back window. I saw another range cooker, a newer version to the one in the main house, albeit much smaller. The kitchen, although dated, looked cosy, and I could imagine a sofa at one end of the room and a couple of dogs in a basket in front of the range.
“It looks lovely, Ronan, but why is everything so rundown? This could have been rented out, bringing in an income to the estate,” I said, conscious that I sounded scolding.
He shrugged almost in defeat. “My mum just wasn’t that way. She wasn’t commercial at all. She lived frugally, and she still had enough money to keep doing what she did. She didn’t die with millions in the bank; in fact, most of it will go to the government when it’s all finalised. I don’t know—she just didn’t think the same way as us.” He sighed.
“Is renting something you’d consider?” I asked.
“For sure. There are four cottages that we own, and an apartment in town. Maybe, instead of the naked spa, we might turn those gatehouses into holiday lets, or long-term rentals as well? Less work and regular income. I have to think about the times I won’t be here,” he said.
I hadn’t thought of
him not living in the house. I guess I assumed he would. I turned to walk back to the path and found myself crossed legged and very firmly stuck in the mud.
“Fuck,” I growled. I knew I was going to fall. I could see it before it happened, and I knew there was absolutely nothing I could do about it.
Ronan decided to help. He leapt forward and managed to grab one arm as I swiftly descended. I face-planted in the mud, and I didn’t stop there. Both feet left the oversized wellies standing proud and facing the window I had been looking into. I rolled to my back.
“Oh…” Ronan said as he placed his hands under my armpits. I wasn’t sure he was going to lift me. “Ooof,” he said, as he did.
I curled my feet up, not wanting to put them in the mud while Ronan held me at arm’s length, getting redder and redder with the exertion.
“Put me on the path!” I shouted, wincing at the pain in my poor pits.
“I’m stuck,” he said.
“Put me back in my boots then!”
“I’m fucking stuck,” he repeated.
I hung in the air on ever-shaking arms and looked down. I guessed the weight of him holding me had managed to cause his wellies to sink ankle deep in mud that sucked like a professional whore.
“Lizzie…”
He didn’t finish his sentence before he dropped me on my arse with no warning to extend my legs. My feet touched the mud, and Ronan fell forwards. His arms landed either side of me, and I closed my eyes as if it would save the bump on the head I was sure was about to happen.
I opened one eye to see his face just a couple of inches from me. “Oh my fucking God,” I said, and then laughed. “I’m going to pee!”
He joined in with the laughter, which made it worse. I was guffawing so hard I fell backwards. “Mud angels,” I screamed, waving my arms around.
Ronan was on all fours, part way up my body, and when I’d stopped laughing and looked at him, my stomach flipped.
Limp Dicks & Saggy Tits Page 13