by Emma Davies
Chloe is in the same class as Jamie, and Lauren is in the one below, and eventually all three children are present and correct and we’re able to make our way to the school gates. It always amazes me how quickly everyone disappears and today the process seems faster than usual, people melting away, eager to get their holidays started. Chloe tugs at my sleeve.
‘Look at what I got, Mum,’ she says. She fishes in her backpack and pulls out a carrier bag filled with presents. ‘And Emily Hewson’s mum made me a cake, but we ate it all at break.’
There’s an assortment of girly wrapping paper but among it are rubbers, new pencils, a pencil case, some lip salves and three little notebooks tied up with ribbon.
‘And Mrs Stenning got me a card.’ She fishes back in the bag, her lip caught between her teeth. ‘Oh… I can’t find it. Never mind, I’ll show you when we get home. Have we got time for an ice cream?’
It’s the first time her sister’s face lights up. Lauren probably has a similar assortment of going-away presents from her friends, but she’s never shared Chloe’s penchant for sparkly new possessions and so the prospect of an ice cream is far more appealing.
‘A promise is a promise…’
The girls squeal, Chloe thrusting her school bag at me and linking arms with Lauren. I throw Rachel a look and she laughs.
‘I’d better let you go,’ she says and we hug again but, almost immediately, her face falls slightly. ‘I’ll see you soon, yeah?’
I nod, realising the girls are already walking away.
‘Yes, soon,’ I reply, knowing that the countdown has begun, the times we’ll be together becoming fewer and fewer until there are none left. I wave as we slip through the gate and then suddenly we’re back out on the busy street.
‘Hold my hand!’ I call to Lauren, waiting until she does as asked, her hot fingers slick in mine. I need a cool shower and a glass of something even colder, never mind an ice cream.
It’s nearly six o’clock by the time we push open our front door and the day still hasn’t relinquished its grip on the heat that has built up. The girls run for the kitchen as soon as we arrive and I juggle with the shopping for a moment before hanging up their book bags on the hallway pegs one last time. Just off the kitchen, the tiny back garden is in full sun but I push open the door to it anyway, hoping that a breeze might find its way into the house. Then I turn on the cold water tap and let it run.
‘Uniforms!’ I shout at the girls’ retreating backs, ten minutes, a glass of water and a biscuit later. It’s our Friday-night routine, and has been for so long I scarcely even think about it. But we are home and my stomach flips in excitement at the thought of the coming day.
* * *
Drew returns home even later than usual. He looks hot and battered, the end of a week which, given the fact he’s leaving, has probably been much worse than normal. His face shows a mixture of things: an overarching tiredness, the release from the enforced patience that the commute requires, the lowering of the shields that life in London necessitates and, perhaps, pleasure at having accomplished all that he needed. Relief is not there, not yet. But it will come. Probably not straight away, but in the next few weeks, slowly, as the realisation of a life left behind steals over him. For now, the house is quiet, the girls away in their rooms, and that is all he needs.
He sits on a swivel chair at the breakfast bar, his leather case on the counter, and I move so that I’m standing beside him. I turn his seat towards me, catching at the ends of his tie, sliding the knot even further down its length until I can remove it completely. I drop it next to his bag. I run my hands through the wavy tendrils of his hair, pressing my fingers into his hot scalp in a way I know brings relief, and gently pull his head towards me so that it rests against my chest.
‘Done?’ I ask.
‘Done,’ he replies. And for a long moment there is nothing else to say.
When he finally raises his head, a small smile has formed on his face and he gets to his feet, sliding a hand around the nape of my neck and kissing my lips. He’s at least a foot taller than I am. There’s a cool drink waiting for him on the side and by the time he reaches it, drinking steadily and gratefully, he is already coming back to life.
‘Where are the girls?’ he asks.
‘Upstairs.’ They’ve already had their tea and a bath and are now cooler in clean pyjamas, waiting patiently for their storyteller to arrive.
He nods, grinning, as he makes his way to the door. He turns at the last minute. ‘Did you manage to get the broadband sorted out?’
‘I did. Pevensey House will be fully connected by the time we move in.’
‘Thanks, love.’ He’s too tired to tick anything else off his mental list, but this is important.
‘And I’ve got someone lined up to give us a quote for the work that needs doing in the studio. Even better is that he has a free couple of weeks so, if everything works out, he can get things underway almost immediately.’
Drew grins. ‘Studio,’ he says, blue eyes twinkling. ‘I like the sound of that.’
I like the sound of it too. Of course, it isn’t a studio yet, it’s just an old garden room that adjoins one side of the house, but it will be. A place to begin work on my new commission. It’s big; illustrating the books of one of my favourite children’s authors, and important too. Getting this right will open all sorts of doors for me and I know Pevensey will be just the place to make this happen.
Drew holds my look for a moment, reflecting my own excitement back at me. And then he is gone, leaving me to finish preparing supper.
It’s only just gone ten when we get to bed, the room muggy and barely even dark. I turn down the sheet and climb in beside Drew, the soft light shading the contours of his body.
‘Did you ring your mum?’ he murmurs, as I lean in to kiss him goodnight.
‘No, not yet… I got busy with something else.’
His eyes open a fraction. ‘Thea…’
‘I’ll do it tomorrow, promise. There’s plenty of time.’
He nods, his eyes locking with mine and, despite the heat and our tiredness, there is a moment when I think that we’re not going to leave it there. And then Drew lifts a hand to the side of my face.
‘I don’t think I can, sorry…’
But I don’t mind because, as I turn, his hand snakes over my hip to rest in the dip of my waist as it always does, and his foot slides against mine. I am home with the man I love, and who loves me.
Minutes later we’re both asleep.
Two
Pevensey House is showing its age a little, but it’s still beautiful. Built during the Victorian era, it spent a good portion of its life as the village rectory but has long since relinquished that role to the much smaller, more modern – and inevitably cheaper to run – vicarage at the other end of the village. I’d no idea as a child, and still don’t, how long ago Pevensey became a family home, but I’m not really interested in its history today, just how it makes me feel.
There’s a whole kaleidoscope of butterflies in my stomach as we navigate the narrow lane beside the church. We’d only made one quick visit to the house before we bought it. A little foolish perhaps, but it really hadn’t seemed necessary given that I could still remember every inch of it. In fact, I think we’d only gone in the first place to check that the estate agents weren’t lying about its condition after all these years. Not surprisingly, I’d taken nothing in on that occasion. I’d been far too excited and overawed to be back and I’d let my memory be my guide. Today, I’m terrified that my eleven-year-old eyes have lent my thirty-four-year old ones an impression of the house that bears no resemblance to reality. But I needn’t have worried, it is just as I remember.
The lane widens just beyond the church, sweeping around the rear boundary of the graveyard to the left, and the beech hedges and horse chestnut trees that border Pevensey’s gardens on the right. At the top of the lane lies Rose Cottage where Drew and his parents used to live. Someone has painted t
he outside a pretty shade of pale pink since his time there, but everything else about the setting is achingly familiar, right down to the row of hollyhocks that peep over one side of our five-bar gate.
Drew brings the car to a standstill just in front of it and we tumble out, stretching and happy to be freed from the confines of the hot vehicle. A breeze lifts a line of dust from the road, scattering leaves as it goes, and the dappled light from the trees overhead paints the lane with moving shadows. But other than that, all is still. There are no other cars and no people, birdsong the only noise. I can feel the tension sliding from me with every breath.
Drew opens the gate and I get to look properly at the house that was home for the first eleven years of my life. It sits at the rear of a gravelled forecourt, warm mellow stone softened even further by a Virginia creeper that will need a very good prune come the spring. There is a wide porch, with two windows to the right – the dining room – and three to the left – the study and the bigger of the two sitting rooms. The roof is slate with a chimney at either end. Away to our left is a timber car port with a shed attached and, to the right, gardens as far as I can see. My breath catches in my throat.
With an excited cry, Chloe streaks away from me, heading for the open space that must seem even more enormous from her child’s perspective. Compared with our tiny garden back in London this is a paradise and the thought of what we’ve given our girls blossoms inside of me. I wait while she runs a wide circle on the grass before returning to us, panting slightly, and gazing wide-eyed at the house.
‘Right then. Who wants to look inside?’ I ask.
We sprint for the door as if the driveway has suddenly become a mass of boiling lava and fidget impatiently while Drew tries to find the right key.
‘Daddy, come on…’ whines Chloe. ‘I want to see my bedroom.’
I look down at Lauren. ‘And how about you, sweetheart?’ I say. ‘What do you think?’ Up until now she’s hardly said a word.
‘Will Scampers be all right?’ she asks. ‘Do you think he’ll like it here too?’
‘I think Scampers is going to love it,’ I reply. What self-respecting rabbit wouldn’t?
Her face lights up. ‘Then I definitely want to see my bedroom.’
Drew pushes open the door and stands back while our two excited whirlwinds make a mad dash for the stairs.
‘And how about you, Madam?’ he asks me, a glint in his eye. ‘Are you wanting to see the bedroom too?’
I feel a surge of warmth at his suggestion, the familiar pull of desire that could so easily consume me, but instead, I skip out of his way.
‘Plenty of time for all that, Sir. Come on, I want to see the studio.’
But even as I say it, I know I can’t go there yet – the house has just pulled me in and I’m enveloped in memories. In front of me is the same wide black-and-white tiled hallway that I remember from all those years ago. In fact… I cross to its threshold with the dining room, looking down as I do so. ‘I don’t believe it, Drew, look…’
The tiles are a little grubby but, given their age, still in excellent condition – all except for one. It’s tucked in the corner by the skirting, and is cracked clean in half. I hear my father’s voice in my ear, telling me a story I’d heard so many times and yet would willingly hear two hundred times more. Right on this spot is where Mum’s waters broke when she was carrying me. She’d been about to serve dinner, carrying a thick casserole dish full of beef stew, which hit the tile with an explosive noise that brought my dad running. There had been gravy, carrots and chunks of potato everywhere, so he’d said, but I can’t believe the broken tile is still here, untouched, marking the very first day I entered the world. There are tears in my eyes before I even have time to draw another breath.
Drew pulls me close and we stand for a moment letting our memories wrap around us. It feels like the very first time he put his arm around me, when we were ten, and he’d come inside to find me crying because I’d dropped the baton during the relay race at Sports Day and my team had lost as a result. He’d hugged me and told me that, even if I had butterfingers, I was still the prettiest girl there. I think that might even have been the very day I decided I was going to marry him.
He slides his fingers into mine. ‘Come on,’ he whispers. ‘Let’s see what else we can find.’
Footsteps thunder above our heads but the girls can’t come to any harm and so we leave them to explore. We cross the hallway to poke our noses into the study and then the sitting room, which is tired and dated but looks out onto the garden from two huge bay windows. Just beyond it is the old conservatory, butting up against the side of the kitchen which runs along the back of the house. Once another door has been knocked through at the far end it will open into both rooms, making it a perfect studio with plenty of space for us both. It makes my fingers itch just looking at it.
Drew goes to stand inside, gazing out into the garden, and I leave him for a moment, retracing my steps through the living room to inspect the kitchen. The front door is still open, the double-height hallway turned golden by the afternoon sun, which gilds the mahogany panelling and staircase. Lazy dust motes float on a beam of light and I watch them for a moment before a faint clicking noise draws my attention. A tentative nose pokes around the doorway as the most beautiful Dalmatian slinks inside, his claws tapping on the tiles. Almost immediately a whistle sounds from outside and the dog is gone, its feet skittering on the forecourt’s gravel. It’s out of sight by the time I reach the door, but our encounter leaves me with a smile on my face. I haven’t discussed it with Drew just yet – one thing at a time – but, now that we’ve moved, I would love to have a dog.
I think it’s fair to say that the kitchen hasn’t fared as well as the rest of the house. When I was a child it was a big, warm and friendly room, with a huge Rayburn, a stone butler’s sink and an assortment of wooden cupboards. It had suited the room and the style of the house, and its unfitted appearance is quite sought after today. However, at some point it has been replaced with an oak monstrosity which is dark, heavily carved and now stained and sticky with grease. There is still a Rayburn but, unlike the lovely cream-coloured one we had, it’s a dreary and sombre green. But, it’s all fixable and remains a huge space which, once it’s had its veil of gloom lifted, will be warm and cheery once again.
‘Oh…’ Drew’s voice comes from the doorway. ‘I don’t remember it being this bad…’
I’m determined to look on the bright side. ‘No, it needs gutting, doesn’t it? But if we’re going to rip a hole in that wall anyway, what does it matter?’
‘No, I guess it doesn’t. But you’re going to have to live with it like this for a little while… until we can get a bit sorted.’
I know what he means of course. The studio has to be a priority – without it there can be no work, and with no work there will be no money coming in, and no new kitchen.
‘Drew… have you seen the size of this room? I don’t really care what it looks like right now because at some point in the future I will be able to cartwheel down the centre of it if I choose. Of course I can live with it,’ I add, grinning. ‘Muppet…’
‘Just checking,’ he says lightly.
I cross the room to give him a hug. ‘This is absolutely, one hundred percent the right thing for us to be doing,’ I say. ‘Don’t you dare doubt yourself.’
And then he gives me that look, the one that still makes me go weak at the knees. He doesn’t say anything, but then he doesn’t need to. We’ve always supported one another – he took the strain financially when I was just starting out and looking for freelance work, and he knows I’ll do the same for him now, if necessary. I glance at my watch.
‘The builder chap should be here soon. Let’s go and suss out plug sockets.’
‘I love it when you talk dirty…’
* * *
Derek is an absolute godsend. In his mid-fifties, wearing a no-nonsense white polo-shirt and a pair of black utility trousers that have so
many pockets I’d be surprised if he can ever remember where he’s put anything. But the fact that most of his work is undertaken in the area speaks volumes. If the locals are happy to keep him in business then so will we be.
We’re standing in the conservatory and he immediately crosses to the windows to stare out into the garden. ‘Crikey, it must be ten years or more since I did any work here, but I’ve always liked this place.’ He flips open a page in the notebook he’s brought with him. ‘So don’t you go believing any of the stories you might hear.’ He looks around. ‘Anyway, what’s the thinking here then?’ he continues. ‘You’re planning on using this as an office, I gather.’
Drew slides a look at me as I frown, but anything either one of us might want to say is immediately lost in Derek’s series of rapid-fire questions. He removes a pencil from his top pocket and starts sketching.
‘So, the kitchen’s that way isn’t it, if I remember right?’ he asks, waiting for the answering nod. He pauses for a moment. ‘If it were me, I’d put a door through there,’ he says. ‘You won’t want to be going all the way around just to get a cup of tea, will you?’
I smile at Drew. ‘That’s what we were thinking, yes.’
The pencil scratches across the page. ‘And both of you will be in here… Only I’m wondering about sockets, you see… You’ll need more if you have separate desks, but if it were me…’
I stand in the centre of the floor. ‘We had wondered whether we could have a work bench right down the middle of the room,’ I explain. ‘That way we could have cupboards along the rear wall and we’d be facing out into the garden. The light is what’s important.’
Derek peers at the tiled squares beneath his feet. ‘And are you wedded to these?’