Abi's House

by Jenny Kane

  Picking up her list of possible temporary accommodation, Abi traced a finger down it, drawing comfort from the words. She wasn’t sure why she knew going to Cornwall was the right thing to do, and she was realistic enough to know that she might get there to find that all her memories were so rose-tinted compared to reality that she couldn’t possibly live there. But she had to travel down there and see. She had to know for sure.

  The arrival of an email from her employers, saying taking a break was no problem as long as she could commit to providing illustrations for one of the next three books due to be finished by November, which Abi knew was their polite way of saying she could take a four-week sabbatical, but no longer, was the final positive push she needed.

  Replying with an agreement that she would indeed be able to honour that commitment, Abi was about to email the first hotel on her list, when the phone rang. It was Simon.

  Abi stared at the flashing screen of her mobile, a knot twisting in her stomach. Tempted to ignore the call, but knowing he’d just keep trying, or worse still, he’d turn up in person, she answered.

  ‘Hello, Simon.’

  ‘I am amazed, Abigail. I had no idea you could be so dishonest.’

  Of all the opening sentences that Abi had been expecting, that had not been one of them.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know full well what I mean!’ Simon’s voice didn’t rise in volume, but it had become gilt edged with a bubble of annoyance that Abi recognised as being like Luke’s tone had been if any of his plans had been thwarted, business or otherwise. ‘You lied to me.’

  Abi thought furiously, trying to think back over every conversation she’d ever had with Simon. ‘I did no such thing.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me you were going away.’

  ‘I told you I was selling up. Beyond that it is none of your business where I go or what I do. I lost my husband, Simon! I have to look after myself now, and I’m damn well going to do just that. I can’t do that here surrounded by memories. Now, was there anything else you’d like to accuse me of, or can I get back to work?’

  Walking through to the studio, Abi flicked open her paint box as she held the phone to her ear, laying out everything she needed to produce the last cartoon-like image required for her latest project as she listened.

  ‘You know how much I care for you, and yet you still led me on for your own ends. How dare you!’

  Fighting the impulse to hang up on him, Abi took a long, audible exhalation of air; responding as sharply as she was being spoken to, ‘I asked you to help me with the valuation of my home. That was all. Nothing else. Not at any time. Ever. I have politely ignored your unsubtle crush on me for years, because, frankly, it was embarrassing, and because I was married to your brother! Take a reality check, Simon! Oh, and for your information, my name, as you well know, is Abi, not Abigail.’

  This time Abi did hang up. After all, what else was there to say? Ignoring the mobile as it immediately rang again, showing Simon’s number on the screen, Abi pulled her large workbook towards her. She was just about to draw the initial line of the sketch when the doorbell rang.

  The first of the day’s estate agents had arrived.

  As Simon had called five more times, Abi knew it would only be a matter of hours before he turned up on the doorstep wanting to know why she was ignoring him. Keen to avoid any sort of showdown, and wanting time to think about the three different quotations she now had from the estate agents, Abi put the finishing touches to the picture before her, gathered up her mobile, the list of hotels, and got into her car.

  Parking in the first available space near the river, Abi walked for a gloriously peaceful half an hour, before sitting down on a bench and ringing her first hotel. It only took three phone calls for Abi to realise that finding accommodation she could have for an unspecified number of days was going to be an awful lot harder than she’d assumed. The fact that the school holidays were due to start any day now hadn’t crossed her mind, nor had the fact that she was heading to one of the most tourist-dependent places in the United Kingdom at the height of the season.

  ‘Idiot!’ She grimaced at a passing duck. ‘So, do I postpone or do I carry on regardless?’

  The duck quacked as if on cue, and taking this as encouragement, Abi phoned the last number on the list, which belonged to the Cairn Hotel in the nearby town of St Just, rather than in Sennen itself.

  Five minutes later Abi was thanking the mallard drake profusely as it peered up at her, an incredibly inquisitive look on its billed face. ‘You were quite right, Mr Duck. Thank you. I’m in!’

  The kindly sounding lady on the other end of the phone, who introduced herself as Barbara, had been extremely helpful. Her rich Cornish accent had infused Abi with hope, as Barbara confirmed that she could certainly accommodate Abi for at least the next two weeks, possibly longer, although Abi would have to move rooms after seven days, if that was OK, due to previous bookings.

  Having assured Barbara that she was more than happy to have a double room for the first week, and then a compact single after that, a little of the anxiety Abi felt over the magnitude of the decision she was making slipping away.

  Looking at the piece of paper she’d written the three house valuations on, Abi knew that, although she hadn’t liked Nigel Davison very much, as his quote was the best she’d have to go with him. She just wished Simon hadn’t got on so well with him. Although, she had to admit to herself, if Simon hadn’t been there, the valuation may well have been lower.

  Calling Davison, Abi told him that she was happy to accept his offer providing the surveyor’s report was good.

  ‘Thank you, Mrs Carter. That is good news. I’ll liaise with Mr Carter about the survey times, shall I?’

  ‘No, Mr Davison, you will liaise with me directly, and on this number, please. I’m going away for a while, so I shall leave a set of keys with you so you can show prospective buyers around the house. Is it OK to just post them through the estate agency door?’

  Sounding a little confused, but good business instincts giving him the common sense not to say so, Davison confirmed they would be happy to act as agents and advisers. ‘But I’m afraid it will add to the fee, Mrs Carter.’

  ‘I rather assumed it would. Goodbye, Mr Davison.’ Abi hung up, wishing she’d been able to sound as brusque and to the point when she’d been dealing with Simon. Then, with a friendly nod to the duck, Abi set off towards home, to finish off her painting and pack. There was nothing standing in her way now. The sooner she got to Cornwall the better.

  Abi was only partly surprised to see Simon’s BMW in the drive when she got back to the house. Fighting the childish impulse to run away and hide until he’d given up and gone home, Abi pulled up next to the flash black car.

  Bracing herself for a landslide of accusations, telling her how selfish she was being in upping and leaving her family behind, Abi was completely wrong-footed as Simon climbed out of his car, his hands out before him in a ‘forgive me’ gesture.

  ‘Before you say anything, I should apologise.’

  Abi said nothing, but her expression didn’t hold back on the fact she was flabbergasted.

  ‘I’ve had a long think, and you were right. We had no right to discuss you as though you were one of Luke’s assets for disposal. And I can see that was how it must have appeared. All I can do is assure you that was never our intention. Rather clumsily, we were trying to do our best by you now that Luke isn’t here to take care of you. All I can ask is that you forgive us.’

  Abi’s hurt at being treated like a disposable object lost out to her hatred of any sort of confrontation, and her keenness to have no spectres beyond the ghost of Luke himself left behind her. ‘It’s OK. You’re forgiven,’ she said curtly, ‘but only as long as you understand that I am not yours for the taking, I am not on the hunt for a new husband, and I do not and never have needed looking after. When I met Luke I was a successful woman in my own right, supporting myself, and I can be t
hat person again. I’m after a fresh start, and for that to work I have to be somewhere else.’

  ‘Will you at least tell me where you’re going?’

  ‘Cornwall.’

  ‘Cornwall?’

  Chapter Six

  ‘Will you look at all that lot?’ Max peered into the large cardboard box that Beth was carrying along the street towards her home. ‘You’ve got to be the most popular teacher in town!’

  Smiling at the welcome sight of Max, Beth shoved the box into his waiting arms, and hooked the large envelope she was still carrying under one arm, while rescuing her handbag before it slipped off her shoulder, ‘With only three teachers in the school there isn’t really a lot of competition. And I can assure you, Max, my colleagues are similarly stocked up with enough smelly candles, soap, flowers, and boxes of chocolates to stock a village shop.’

  ‘A shop like your shop, maybe?’

  Ignoring Max’s oblique query to a use for her retail space, Beth fished her key from her skirt pocket and unlocked the door to the hallway. Ignoring the large white door to their left, which led into the shop space, she headed up the stairs to her flat, Max right behind her.

  ‘I get a few more gifts than the other two staff because I teach the really little ones. It’s always quite emotional for them, and for their parents watching them take the daunting step from nursery to “big school” life. Because I’m the teacher that steers them on that first educational journey, I get loads of thank-you presents.’

  Following Beth into the flat, Max laid the box on the kitchen table, which was full of conflicting scents from various perfumed products. ‘So it’s nothing to do with you being a brilliant teacher then?’

  ‘Not a thing.’ Beth lifted up two mugs to ask if he wanted tea or coffee.

  ‘Coffee please.’ Picking up the large envelope Max asked, ‘Can I peep?’

  ‘Of course.’

  As Beth busied herself making hot drinks, and threw the takeaway menus at him as he sat down. ‘I’m feeling lazy, what shall we have?’

  Max didn’t bother to look, ‘I imagine we’ll have a large pepperoni with extra cheese and a side order of garlic bread, with wine for you and lager for me, like we always do.’

  ‘One day I’ll astound you and say I want something different.’

  ‘No you won’t! Now go and order the food, woman, while I examine what the next generation of Van Goghs have produced.’

  Beth stuck her tongue out at him and went into the living room to make the call. By the time she’d returned Max had spread as many of the large drawings and paintings out across the table as he could fit.

  ‘These are good. I mean, considering they’re by four- and five-year-olds.’

  A lump came to Beth’s throat and tears prickled in her eyes as she looked at the array of painted flowers, happy smiley faces, and various portraits of herself teaching. She always found saying goodbye to the children who’d come to her as little more than toddlers, and (mostly) left as rounded young children ready for the challenges of primary school, rather emotional.

  ‘They are, aren’t they. Look at the effort that’s gone into most of them. They’ve all done one. Even Brandon.’

  ‘Brandon? That would be the lad you’ve mentioned before; the one who has the attention span of a gnat and an attitude like a teenager from a soap opera?’

  ‘That’s the one. Every class has a Brandon – and more often than you’d imagine, that’s what they’re called – but I did my best with him … and look, his picture is excellent. Perhaps I taught him something after all!’

  Hugging his friend to his side, Max said, ‘Of course you did! Come on, cheer up. They’ll all do wonderfully next year, and you’ll be able to watch them develop and grow while you’re teaching a brand new batch of fledglings.’

  ‘Thanks, Max.’ Beth cradled her coffee. ‘Do you ever wish you’d finished your teacher training so that you got presents like this?’

  ‘So that I too could get an annual supply of bath fragrances?’

  ‘Yep! Although the male staff at the last school I worked in tended to get chocolate, handkerchiefs, and ties rather than sickly bath stuff.’

  ‘Makes a change from socks, I suppose!’ Max began to line up the bars of soap and boxes of chocolates on the table while Beth put the bunch of carnations in a jug of water where it would survive happily until she had time to arrange them into a vase.

  ‘You haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘No, I haven’t.’ He added a bottle of lavender bubble bath to the regiment of Beth’s gifts. ‘So when’s the pizza coming, then?’

  Accepting his unspoken request to change the subject, Beth picked up one of her pictures, ‘It’ll be about forty-five minutes.’

  One at a time, Beth studied the pieces of artwork she’d been given, before piling them into a neat stack. A few of them had obviously been created by rushed sweeps of the brush or pencil, but most of them had clearly had taken her young charges some time, and had had a great deal of young concentration spent on them. ‘It seems such a shame to just stick them back in the envelope and let it gather dust, but there’s no way I can hang fifteen pictures up, I just don’t have the room.’

  Max stared at Beth over the top of his coffee at her, as if she was missing something obvious.

  ‘What?’

  He gestured his gaze toward the paintings.

  Rolling her eyes, Beth said, ‘Oh, just tell me, or I’ll withhold your garlic bread.’

  ‘I will put your lack of grasping the obvious down to the fact that it is the end of a busy term and you are emotionally impaired after saying tearful goodbyes to your little ones, and tell you.’

  ‘Max!’

  ‘You have a shop downstairs which is currently doing nothing but providing a useful home for a whole host of spiders. You could display them there, make it into a gallery.’

  Putting her mug down slowly, Beth frowned. He was right of course, it was an obvious use for the space, even if only short-term, but a gallery?

  ‘Are you being serious, Max, or was that you being flippant? I mean, galleries are ten a penny in Cornwall. Does Sennen need another one?’

  ‘I just meant that you could use the space to show the children’s work. They’d love it, wouldn’t they, if they saw that their teacher was so proud of their work she wanted to show the world. I wasn’t really thinking beyond that to be honest, but a gallery is a possibility, isn’t it?’

  Beth stroked the top picture, the thick poster paint rough beneath her fingers. ‘I don’t really know anything about art.’

  ‘Do you know what you like?’

  ‘Well, yes, but that isn’t enough is it. Not in a county where artists and galleries are everywhere.’

  Max glanced at his watch. ‘Come on, grab your cuppa, let’s go downstairs. There is no way you can make a proper decision if you can’t feel the space around you.’

  Beth took a few covert deep breaths as she placed the key in the lock to the shop’s internal door. She knew she had to get past the feeling she always had whenever she contemplated redesigning her grandad’s shop; that she was desecrating his memory in some way.

  They both stood still in the silence. Despite the dust and muddle, neither of which would have been allowed when Grandad had been in charge, it still felt as airy and comfortable as it always had. As the building formed the end of a row of shops, the space had made full use of the corner plot, with two huge picture windows at right angles to each other.

  Her grandad had had two step-like display shelves in each window, but they’d been propped up at the back of the room next to the machine he’d used to buff up the shoes he’d mended. His workbench, which ran along the right-hand wall, was still littered with scraps of leather, pots of congealed glue, laces, tubs of polish, rags, and a vast array of pots containing things that might be useful one day.

  On the wall above the bench was a set of wooden shelves that was formed of dozens of rectangular cubbyholes. Many of them
held the boxes of a vast array of different sized heels or soles that had been his most essential tools.

  There was also a key-cutting machine, an engraver for trophies and pewter mugs, and a large selection of cardboard boxes of shoes that had never been collected, plus stocks of laces, key blanks, and all manner of bits and pieces whose function Beth could only hazard a guess at.

  Breaking the hush that had descended, Max picked up the nearest box and placed it on the workbench, dislodging a cloud of dust which immediately shot up his nose and made him sneeze. Understanding that this was a big deal for Beth, even though her beloved grandfather had been gone for two years, Max spoke gently, but forcibly. ‘Beth, your grandad was a good man. He wouldn’t want you not to waste this space. He’d want you to use it to enhance your life. I’m sure he would.’

  Nodding, but saying nothing as Beth surveyed the room, trying her hardest to picture it as something other than a cobbler's shop, but knowing in her heart that she’d never be able to do that while all her grandad’s stuff was still in situ.

  Sensing his friend needed him to make decisions for her for a while, Max pulled his diary out of his substantial overall pocket. ‘I have two days next week when I can paint this place. If I nip over when I can, do you think you can have it empty by then?’

  The date mentioned snapped Beth out of her nostalgia. ‘Next week? But Max, I’ll never have cleared these by then.’ She pointed to the machine and the wall shelves, ‘and anyway, don’t you have work planned for then? I thought you had two conservatories and a kitchen lined up to paint next week?’

  ‘I do, but not for Saturday and Sunday.’

  ‘I can’t ask you to work all week and then paint this place during your time off!’

  ‘Oh don’t be so darn ridiculous, woman! If I was an accountant and offered to paint this place at the weekend you wouldn’t question it, would you?’