‘Shall I tell her?’ Elly asked him.
‘If you want.’
‘We’ve got a treat for you tomorrow, Nell, which includes being out for lunch. All right?’
‘Great,’ Nell said, thinking: Houseboat? One of the Eely creek ones? That would be a happy coincidence.
Sunday morning was sunny. The tide was at its lowest and the river had retreated to a wide stripe of water in the middle, beaching the houseboats and revealing a tatty causeway: Eely Isle’s connection to the rest of the world. The Tozers’ houseboat turned out to be the red and green one that Nell had admired previously, and she was more than delighted to be shown around it. Inside it was neat and cleverly constructed with wooden panelling, shiny brass, and red velvet cushions. Everything, including the sink and cooker, could be shut away into its own small cupboard. Seats metamorphosed into extra beds. Tables folded up and down. There was even a solid-fuel stove with a long black chimney stack, but it plainly wasn’t lit because no warmth emanated from it.
‘It’s wonderful!’ Nell exclaimed. She had expected it to be more like camping, but Elly pointed out facilities at the mooring she hadn’t had occasion to notice before: an ablutions block with hot water only yards away, bins for rubbish, electricity lines, and water hoses. ‘Does anybody live on these boats all year round?’
‘No,’ Paul said. ‘They’re rented out to holidaymakers, so we’ll probably never see the same people twice. Suits me very well. I have quite enough of the social scene in London.’
Nell wondered if Elly felt the same.
Elly obviously felt cold. ‘Is there any possibility of heat,’ she asked, ‘or are we all supposed to freeze heroically to death?’
‘Give me a chance,’ Paul said. ‘I’m just about to light the damn stove. All right?’
‘How about us two going for a walk while he does that?’ Elly said to Nell.
Nell glanced at Paul. He made a ‘Please, get her off my back and out of here before she drives me barking mad’ sort of expression with screwed-up nose and pursed mouth. ‘Good idea,’ she said quickly. ‘Upstream or down?’
‘Down towards the sea.’
They set off over the Eely bridge and along the path on the south bank of the river.
‘Right,’ Elly said. ‘Ten walking steps, followed by ten running ones, followed by ten walking ones, and so on. That way, we’ll soon get warm. OK?’ She set off without waiting for an answer, dodging the puddles nimbly to preserve the shine on her expensive leather boots.
Nell was relieved to be away from the tension that Paul’s presence always seemed to generate.
‘… Nine, ten!’ Elly chanted, slowing down.
‘It’s a lovely houseboat,’ Nell said, catching her up. ‘Sibyl will adore it too.’
‘Good isn’t it?’ Elly said. ‘I can’t quite work out why Paul’s buying it, but I’m sure there must be an ulterior motive.’
‘You don’t seem to like each other very much at the moment,’ Nell ventured.
‘That must be the understatement of the year!’ Elly shoved her fists deep into her pockets. ‘When the boys are older, I’m definitely going to leave him. I’ve made up my mind.’
‘Oh, Elly!’ Nell was distressed. ‘I’m so sorry …’
‘… Eight, nine, ten!’ Elly counted. ‘Come on, run! One, two, three …’
After half a mile of this, they stopped and walked normally.
‘So, how’s Rob?’ Elly panted.
‘Dunno.’
‘Why? Haven’t you seen him lately?’
‘Not since New Year, no.’ The trees around Bottom Cottage were coming into view. In a few minutes the cottage itself would be visible too. Nell wondered whether Rob would be at the window with his binoculars, and whether they should turn round now before he could see them. She didn’t want him to think she was mooning after him. But Elly kept going, and it was already too late, so she followed.
‘But why ever not?’ Elly asked.
‘Because he hasn’t phoned. Simple.’
‘The bastard!’ Elly said indignantly. ‘After all your hard work too.’
‘I didn’t do it for a quid pro quo.’
‘No, of course not. I didn’t mean that.’
They walked in silence for a while. Then a high-pitched wailing sound reached their ears. It was travelling across the water from the cottage.
‘Listen!’ Elly said, stopping and staring across the river. Nell stopped reluctantly beside her. She hadn’t got her binoculars with her, but she could see three figures in the garden behind the stone wall, one tall and two small. The taller of the two children appeared to be making the noise, and keeping it up apparently effortlessly in spite of the entreaties and promises the man seemed to be making. Then the smaller child joined in.
‘Oh dear,’ Nell said. ‘Poor things. I wonder what’s wrong?’
‘Sounds to me,’ Elly said, ‘as though you’re well out of it.’
By the time February came, Nell had hardened her heart and accepted the fact that Rob Hayhoe was not interested in her. Even Elly had stopped pestering her for news of him. It had been a disappointing nonevent and it was now over. Yet somehow she still hadn’t had the heart to do any serious house-hunting, nor to burn her boats by putting her own place up for sale. She decided to wait until spring, the season when many people’s fancy rashly turns to thoughts of a move.
She sat indoors during the extended winter evenings doing tapestry and watching television. She told herself she would have been better employed in her usual habit of reading intelligent books, but soap operas were unchallenging and provided a necessary distraction from too sharp a consciousness. So when the telephone rang one weekday, just as she was cosily settled on the sofa, she didn’t rush to answer it, but got up rather casually, laying her tapestry frame down carefully so as not to lose her needle.
‘Hello?’ she said.
‘Nell? It’s Rob Hayhoe.’
‘Oh… hello.’ Only five weeks and three days late! Nell thought resentfully. I hope he isn’t expecting enthusiasm.
‘Um … sorry I haven’t been in touch. I don’t seem to have had a moment to myself lately.’
‘Oh?’ Lucky you, she thought.
‘But… well, something’s come up that may interest you. Have you found another house to buy yet?’
‘No.’
‘Right, well…’
He seemed to be finding her monosyllabic replies somewhat unnerving. Good, Nell thought.
‘Er … I don’t know why I’m doing this really. It might be considered to be a great stroke of luck for me – well it would be if Cassie weren’t on at me all the time about money. I mean, I never wanted to get rid of the place anyway.’
‘Sorry?’ Nell said, confused.
‘No, it’s me. I’m not explaining myself very well, am I?’
‘Not really, no.’
‘Well, I wondered whether you might still be interested. You see, at the very last moment, just when we were on the point of exchanging contracts, my house-buying chain has been broken. It seems my buyer’s buyer has unexpectedly lost his job and can’t proceed, so my buyer has had to drop out too, at least until he can find another punter to buy his house. So the upshot is – Bottom Cottage is on the market again.’
Chapter Six
The more Nell admitted prospective buyers (PBs) to her old parental home, the more she worried that no one could possibly want it. It was now March, and it had been for sale for a month without even the sniff of a taker. She was beginning to develop an appreciation of house-purchaser-speak, and could now translate most of the comments carelessly dropped by the affectedly casual strangers who trailed round after her estate agent, Mr Block.
Kevin Block was a curious mixture of the pompous and the innocently upbeat, and lavished positive appreciation on every part of the house. ‘Spacious kitchen,’ he would announce. ‘Great potential for modernisation.’
‘Oh,’ the PB’s wife would say. ‘Not fitted then?’ (I
can’t believe people still live like this!)
‘Front dining room,’ enthused Mr Block, ‘with hatch to kitchen, and gas fire with original period tiled surround. Quite a selling point that!’
PB himself: ‘Really? (That’d be the first thing I’d rip out.)
PB’s wife: ‘What a good thing you haven’t had it decorated. Much better to let the buyer do it up in their own taste.’ (You naive fool! You could have covered over all those cracks and that damp patch.)
Mr Block: ‘Lovely views of the garden from the lounge at the back. It’s been particularly well maintained, I think you’ll agree?’
PB: ‘Mmm. You’d need a heavy-duty mower here, that’s for sure.’ (No way! More like a concrete mixer.)
After a while, Nell ceased to follow them upstairs but stood in the hall mouthing the commonest remarks like a mantra to keep herself amused. ‘Only one bathroom then?’ ‘Is the roof fully lined?’ ‘Are all the light bulbs included? Ha ha!’ ‘No fitted carpets? Oh dear, that brings the price down a bit then.’ ‘Oh well, of course we’re used to built-in wardrobes.’
To entertain herself further, she wrote out an honest description of the house – Large, ugly, detached, unmodernised, 1930s 4-bedroom house, with 3 naff stained-glass windows, ostentatious double garage, and 100ft long high-maintenance garden. Situated in upwardly mobile area, close to local shops (selling ‘antiques’ but no food). On bus route to centre of boring Boxcombe. Would suit nostalgic, style-challenged Fat Cat, or sad, undiscerning DIY enthusiast with long-suffering partner.
She gave it to Mr Block who read it through slowly and carefully. ‘Just as well you’re not in my profession,’ he said seriously. ‘You’d have a lot to learn.’
‘You’d have a lot to learn!’ Nell mimicked his prissy voice on the phone to Elly, and they both dissolved into giggles. ‘How can anybody be so totally humourless?’
‘No luck so far then?’
‘No. Another couple are coming tomorrow evening. I suppose sooner or later someone is going to be deluded enough to want it.’
‘Could take years,’ Elly said soberly.
‘Thanks! You are so encouraging.’
But the young man and woman who arrived with Mr Block at 6 p.m. the following evening were clearly impressed. ‘It’s so rare to find a place that hasn’t been the victim of refurbishment,’ the man said, stressing the word as though it were the ultimate crime. ‘We’ve been trying to find a genuine period house like this for far too long, haven’t we, darling?’
‘Oh, yes,’ the woman said eagerly. ‘And that fireplace in the dining room is quite marvellous, isn’t it? They certainly knew about tiles in those days.’ Nell stared at them in fascination.
‘You see,’ the man said, ‘we’re getting married soon.’ He said it with exaggerated modesty, as though he might be going to add, ‘although I say so as shouldn’t.’
‘And we want our first house to be perfect,’ the woman said, laying her hand on his arm and smiling up at him girlishly.
‘Ah well,’ Mr Block said, ‘wonderful, wonderful! Look no further!’ He rubbed his hands together in a frenzy of enthusiasm that Nell considered a bit over the top, until she realised why. Of course – first-time buyers – no chain! She allowed a modicum of optimism to be released into her bloodstream, and begin to diffuse… Maybe the fates were about to be kind.
Cassie Hayhoe felt as though everyone was conspiring against her, especially Rob. She was sure he had sabotaged the sale of the cottage on purpose; his story of a broken chain was too convenient for words.
She wanted the divorce – of course she did. What was the point of being married to someone you despised, a man who never asked you how you were or how you felt; who never noticed anything about you; never encouraged you? But she worried about how she would cope. She supposed she would have to get a job, but her secretarial skills were all but forgotten, and the chance opportunity she’d had years ago to present a clothes show on television was very much a thing of the past. If only she hadn’t fallen out with that stupid producer woman, she might have been asked back … Cassie sighed deeply. At thirty-three she was still young, but … She examined herself critically in the bathroom mirror. A cross, pinched face looked back at her. She tried smiling, but it didn’t come naturally to her and appeared more like a rictus, so she snapped it off again quickly.
I’m not well, she thought. I can’t cope with the children. I can’t bear the loneliness. I’ve lost all my confidence, so how will I ever get a job? And anyway, how can I work with Rosie still at home, and Josh finishing school so early? God! Sometimes I wish they were grown up and off my hands altogether … I don’t know what to do. I need help. I think I must be about to have a nervous breakdown.
She managed to get a cancellation appointment at the health centre for late that afternoon, and trailed off there with both children in tow. Sitting in the waiting room, she tried half-heartedly to keep them from annoying the other patients. She sat Josh on her knee, but Rosie wanted to sit there too and they began, as ever, to whine and hit each other. Cassie thought: Why do I have to have such difficult children? It’s so unfair!
‘Stop that, Rosie!’ she said sharply, knowing that this would precipitate a major sulk, but unable to do anything about it. The child’s lower lip trembled. She stumped over to the children’s play corner and began throwing the toys about. Josh was fidgeting on Cassie’s lap, playing with her silk scarf and pulling it too tight around her neck. ‘Don’t do that,’ she said to him. ‘Rosie? That’s naughty. You’ll break it!’
She looked round rather desperately, hoping that someone else would step in, but most of the people also waiting were elderly and they looked uniformly disapproving, hitching their feet and handbags stiffly out of Rosie’s way as she shuffled round the waiting room on her bottom with a wooden toy train, having as many accidents as possible. Josh wriggled off Cassie’s lap apparently to go and interfere, but just at that moment another boy of about his own age came in with his mother. To Cassie’s relief, Josh went over to talk to him. The young woman sat down next to Cassie.
‘Bin waiting long?’ she asked her. She was short and plump, with cropped pink hair, and dressed entirely in black leather.
Cassie was too exhausted to be critical. ‘About ten minutes.’
‘It’s always bad. Dunno why they bother wif an appointments system. It’s a joke, innit?’
‘Seems so.’
Cassie saw with relief that the extra child seemed to have diverted her two away from their inveterate squabbling. They even appeared to be playing a game together. Twenty minutes went by. Every now and again the woman beside her went over and sorted her boy out, keeping Josh and Rosie in order at the same time.
‘Thanks,’ Cassie said, looking up briefly.
‘No bovver,’ the woman said. ‘I’m good wif kids. I’d like to set meself up as a childminder. I know I could make a go of it an’ earn enough for meself and Gav to live off, but I haven’t got nowhere to do it, so I can’t get started. You don’t know a place, do you? Trouble is, I can’t pay any rent until I’ve earned enough dosh. Hopeless innit?’ Her brief smile was surprisingly endearing. Cassie felt an uncharacteristic urge to confide in her.
‘I’m in a difficult position too,’ she said. ‘I’m not well, and I desperately need a nanny for these two, but my husband’s walked out on us, so I can’t possibly afford to pay for one.’
‘You got a job though?’
‘Not now.’
‘But you got a house?’
‘Oh yes, a large one. Too large really; the children and I rattle about in it, now Rob’s gone.’ She could hear herself manufacturing a sob story to match the one the woman was telling her. It didn’t strike her as dishonest, just polite; a way to reach across the divisions of class and privilege to say: I understand how you feel. We’re both wronged women fighting against the odds.
‘Well then,’ the woman said, hopefully. ‘Now c’rect me if I’m wrong, but you’ve gotta big ho
use and you need a childminder, right? And I’ve got nowhere to live, and I am a childminder, yeah?’
‘Well… yes.’
‘So, you get my drift?’
‘Well…’
‘How about you let me and Gav have a room in your house rent free? Then weekdays when Gav and your boy’s at school, I can mind free or four kids (including your youngest for nuffink, of course) and make a bob or two, which wif income support’ll pay for our keep. Then we’ve got a roof and food, and you’ve got your kids looked after, and the house ain’t so big no more! I’d need me weekends off, but that’s all. Me name’s Mic, by the way. So, what d’you say?’
‘Well…’ It was perfectly logical, Cassie had to admit that … ‘But I don’t know anything about you,’ she prevaricated.
‘Well, I’m not going to nick the silver if that’s what’s bovvering you,’ Mic said. ‘I wouldn’t be that stupid. And I don’t do drugs or nuffink – well, only ciggies.’
‘No, of course not. I didn’t mean –’
‘Tell you what,’ Mic said, ‘we’re OK where we are for a bit, so you have a fink about it, yeah?’
‘Yes… all right, I will.’
‘Michaela Potton and Gavin,’ the receptionist called out. ‘To Dr White please.’
‘Looks like our doctor’s quicker’n yours, dunnit?’ Mic said, getting up. ‘So, give us your phone number, OK? I’ll leave it a week, and then ring you. You can always say no.’
‘All right,’ Cassie said, delving into her handbag. ‘I’ve got some stickers with my name and address somewhere … Yes, here’s one.’ She gave it to Mic.
‘Cheers. Come on then, Gav. Let’s get your ears sorted.’ And off they went.
When she got home with the prescription she’d gone for, Cassie worried about giving Mic the sticker. I’m just not thinking straight. My health must be even worse than I thought. I won’t tell Rob; he’d say I was mad to have done it. What if she’s a thief? She now knows I’m a woman living alone in a big house. She mentioned silver – perhaps she’s part of a gang? She’s got my phone number too. What if she plagues me with nuisance calls asking for money, or keeps coming round and pestering me? What was I thinking of?
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