by Jude Knight
Reluctantly, the man accepted his dismissal, cancelled his order for tea, and strode off down the footpath, hitching the belt that curved under his belly as he went.
“The apartments in Brayden Street?” Nikki prompted as she watched him walk away.
“Pokey’s investment and a builder he brought in from the South Island. They cut corners from the first. Designed to use minimum materials, built on the cheap, breached code when they could get away with it. Within two years they were being sued by purchasers.”
“Serves them right,” Nikki said. “I suppose they walked away with a slap on the wrist with a wet bus ticket.”
Becky shrugged, her focus seemingly on the tea she was pouring, only the grim set of her jaw indicating her irritation. “The builder went bankrupt and started up again under another name. Pokey managed to slither out from under—convinced a judge his only role was funding the project, and he was as much a victim as any of the house owners.”
Nikki accepted the cup Becky passed. “Slippery as ever. What’s he still doing in Valentine Bay? You’d think somewhere like Auckland or Wellington would offer him more scope. Or over the ditch in Sydney or Brisbane.”
“He spent several years across the Tasman,” Becky confirmed. “The story is he came home because his father needed him. There are other stories, but let’s not waste a perfectly nice day thinking about Pokey Kenworth. Are you really thinking about staying? And what do you plan to do with the house? It isn’t as bad as Pokey says, but it does need work.”
“Dave is sending the Luscious Lodger over to take a look,” Nikki said. “I’ll have a better idea once I know what needs to be done, and how much it might cost.”
Zee turned the tight u-bend into Cliff Road, which was as precipitous as the name implied, narrow and winding, with cars parked half up on the sidewalk that hugged the side of the hill, so that he had to edge uncomfortably close to the concrete lip and a few inches of grass bank that topped the steep slope to the houses below.
The place he was looking for was nearly at the end of the road. Only the letter box with a painted number hinting that a dwelling waited at the top of the stairs running in a zig zag up the hill. That, and the bright yellow Kia hybrid car nosed into a parking space cut into the hill.
Zee parked the Masterson & Son van as close to the bank as he could get, blocking the sidewalk but leaving plenty of room for passing vehicles. He took a clean notebook from the stack on the back seat and tucked it into his briefcase with his tablet, pencils and laser measure. The rickety gate looked as if it might disintegrate if he opened it, but he was tall enough to just step over. The path climbed steeply between overgrown banks where a few summer flowers struggled to compete with rampant grasses under straggly bushes. The remnants of a garden remained, obscured but still discernible. Beyond the first turn, the path devolved into steps, and the pattern continued, each turn almost level and then the path climbing steps across the slope. The third turn had a bench seat, its support posts rotting so it slumped to one side. Zee didn’t risk sitting, but he did stop to take in the view—the whole heart shape of Valentine Bay laid out before him, with a glimpse of the ocean beyond the heads.
Three more bends had their own seats, two other rotting wooden benches and one in rusting wrought iron. After that, the slope gentled, and he was not surprised when it led him out onto a broad platform where a once grand old house dozed in the sun.
It was wooden—the most common building material in New Zealand. At a glance, he’d guess it had been built in several stages, the second story a more recent addition with windows that did not quite match the ground floor. Very likely the large veranda that wrapped the front had been added later, too. Even from the top of the path, twenty yards away, he could see the place was in need of some loving care, with the paint almost worn off in places and one corner of the veranda drooping below the rest.
He’d not know the worst of it standing here. He took the path across the lawn and mounted the three steps to ring the brass bell that hung beside the front door. Nikki must have been close by, because he barely had time to step back before the door opened.
“Hello, Nikki.” In cut-off shorts and a tee, Nicola Watson looked even more delicious than she had in slacks and a knit top on the day she arrived, or in the light summer dress she’d been wearing when he spied her out to lunch with Becky while he’d been walking his dog.
“Zee. Nice t-shirt.” Today’s had been a Christmas gift from the Mastertons—the words ‘Keep calm. I am a builder’ topped by a crown.
She moved to one side, smiling as she waved him inside. “Come in. Come in. I’ll show you ’round.”
The hall was dark and narrow, with little natural light and shelves piled with books and bric-a-brac lining both sides. He tried to take it all in while still listening to Nikki. “It’s quite run down. Gran and Poppa haven’t been out here in five years, since the slope grew too much for them.”
“Nothing that can’t be fixed,” so far, anyway. Depending on how big a budget she had. “How long since you were last here?”
Nikki led the way into a sitting room, generously proportioned but cluttered with furnishings and ornaments. “I’ve been out three times since I came home, but just quick trips to check on the place. To stay? It must be twelve years. We spent Christmas here, me and my grandparents, before I left for Columbia. It was getting a bit run down even then. Poppa said he’d have to get some repairs done, and some painting before next time I was here. I guess once his health deteriorated…”
A door led to a kitchen that had not been updated since the 1970s, except for some new appliances on the sorry excuse for a bench top. Nikki was clearly eating whatever could be cooked in a microwave, a bench top grill, or an air cooker.
“I am sorry for your loss,” Zee said. “Bev said they died within a few days of one another?”
“Yes.” Nikki stopped to run a finger across the table—metal legs and Formica top, with matching metal-framed chairs whose vinyl upholstery was cracked and peeling. “Nobody expected Gran to go first. She seemed well, and she never complained. It was an aneurysm in the brain, they said. And Poppa just slipped away a few days later. He has been having heart problems for years, so that wasn’t a surprise.”
Zee made a commiserating noise, and she rushed to reassure him. “It’s a good thing. They would not have wanted to be parted.”
“I like that.” He smiled. “It’s reassuring to know that some people get their Happy Ever After.” Certainly no one in his family, but he liked that it was possible. He followed her back through the sitting area, where she stopped to point at a photo that took pride of place on the wall.
“That’s them. And me. I’m the scrawny kid.”
“You spent a lot of time with them,” Zee said, more a statement than a question.
Nikki nodded. “They raised me. My mother... she was just a kid herself. Sixteen. She gave me to Gran and went off to her own life. And I don’t know why I imagine you might be interested in such ancient history. Let me show you the rest of the place and tell you what I want to do.” Suddenly crisp, she led the way back out into the hall and waved for him to precede her up the stairs.
Zee took the hint and backed away from family history, but wasn’t quite ready to stop finding out more about this fascinating woman. “So, this is your home town, then.”
“Back when I was a child, it was still a fishing village, with just a few summer folk like ourselves coming here from Wellington.”
“There’s still a thriving trade in fish, but tourism is the big thing now,” Zee commented.
Zee somehow managed to look piratical in his jeans and joke t-shirt. He was far less kempt than the men she knew in her New York days, with hair long enough to be tied back and the heavy workers boots he wore scuffed. The t-shirt clung in all the right places, as did his jeans. Following him upstairs had induced all kinds of naughty thoughts, which she firmly repressed. She didn’t need those kinds of complications.
After they’d visited every room in the house, and Zee had poked around in cupboards and climbed up through hatches into the ceiling, he’d taken his laser measure and his notebook outside and subjected the walls, foundations, and roof to the same careful consideration.
“I’m limited to what I can see on the surface,” he warned as he put his figures into an app in his tablet. “In a house of this age—or ages more like, since it has been added on to a number of times—we can expect unexpected problems to show themselves when we start demolition for the repairs and alterations.”
“The original two-room cabin is over 100 years old,” Nikki told him.
Zee nodded. “I believe it. Has it always been in your family?”
“Only the past fifty years. By the time my grandparents bought it, the first veranda had been built, extended, and enclosed as a living room, and two bedrooms and a bathroom added on the side. Poppa put a new veranda right around, and later built the upstairs.” Rooms for their two children: Philip, who died young, and Sarah, Nikki’s mother. “He was the local builder, till he retired.” Dave’s father had once been his apprentice.
“So, they lived here year-round?” Zee was taking another measurement in the sitting room and typing the results into the tablet. “Not just in the summer?”
“Yes. Until I started high school. They moved into Barnsley to be close to me, and after that we only came home in the holidays.” She was blathering again. But this man was remarkably easy to talk to. “They knew I loved it here.”
He put his measure into the briefcase he carried, and looked at her, his head tipped slightly to one side. “What do you want to see happen to the house? Repairs, you said? But how far do you want us to go? Clear out any rot? Repile, rewire, and replumb? Bring the kitchen and bathroom into the twenty-first century?”
She should have an answer to those questions, but somehow, she hadn’t thought that far. “I haven’t decided.”
He accepted that without any sign of impatience. “I guess the key question is what do you plan to do with it?”
Another excellent question she had not thought about. “Would you like a cold lemonade? Fresh made?”
“Lemons from that massive tree out the back? Sure thing.”
Nikki sent him out to the veranda beyond the kitchen while she found two glasses, and filled them with ice and lemonade. If she was staying, she’d need to get rid of the old fridge and replace it with a new one.
Zee was leaning against a post, looking out over the north curve of the bay, where regrowth bush grew almost to the beach.
Nikki came up by his shoulder. “That’s a lovely spot. Bev and I used to go skinny dipping down there.”
She laughed when he waggled his eyebrows. “What! We were ten! You. Here,” she shoved his glass into his hand, “have your lemonade and cool down.”
A moment later she could feel her cheeks heat as she realized she was visualizing this near stranger naked. Thankfully, he ignored her blush, still looking out over the bay as he sipped his drink.
“What do you think of the plan to build a hotel there?” he asked.
She thought any project with Pokey behind it was likely to be terrible for the town. “Beks and Dave say the place needs accommodation for tourists, but this development worries them.”
“As it stands? The developer’s track record is for sloppy work and bad relationships with the locals. It’s a bit of a worry.” He shrugged. “Shouldn’t much affect your view, though. So where do you want to go with your house?”
She sat down on the edge of the veranda, letting her legs swing in the weeds where Gran used to have a rich productive herb bed. “How much does it matter?”
Zee dropped to sit beside her. “Look at it like this. If you’re planning to sell, most of your value is in the land and the view. So, we pack up anything you want to keep, ditch the rest, pull down what is going to cost more than its value to fix, repair anything that’ll improve your return, slap on some paint, and buy some bright furniture.”
That sounded awful. A shoddy job on the place that was Gran’s and Poppa’s pride and joy? “Let’s behave as if I’m not going to sell.”
Zee gave a short nod. “Fair enough. Then decide whether you’re going to holiday here from time to time, maybe renting it out when you’re not here, in which case you’ll want to set it up to suit yourself, with secure storage for stuff you don’t want tenants to have access to. Or maybe you want to rent it all year round, in which case we set it up for tenants, which means durable finishes, maybe not top-of-the line in quality or price.”
Nikki considered the two options, but there was a third, of course. “What if I want to live here myself? All the time?”
“Really?” Zee turned to look at her. “You could do worse. It’s a nice town.” With his eyes back on the bay, he went on, “In that case, think about what you need in a home, and what sort of money you want to spend, and we can make it work.”
That was the problem. Nikki had no idea what she needed in a home, or even whether she planned to stay in New Zealand. “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I was just thinking of making it back the way it used to be when I was a child. But no. You’re right about the kitchen and the bathroom. They’re old fashioned and inconvenient. And if we’re having to rewire and replumb, we might as well make other changes, too.”
He clearly sensed her ambivalence. “You don’t have to decide straight away.”
But the more she thought about it, the more she wanted to bring the house back to what it could be. “According to Beks, Dave is run off his feet. If I don’t get into the work schedule, this job is toast.”
His smile warmed his eyes. “True, but I’m sure he’ll make an exception for his wife’s best friend.”
“What would you do with the house?” Nikki asked. “If it was yours?”
It was the right question. Zee pulled out his notebook and opened it to a fresh page.
“I’d push the kitchen back to the end of the veranda to take advantage of that view.” A few lines with his pencil, transformed the space where they sat into the outer wall of a new kitchen. “Open concept to dining and lounge,” he continued, his pencil turning his words into a sketch on the next page, “and a big hall that doubles as circulation space when the pocket doors are open. Leave the stairs where they are.” A few lines and some shading miraculously turned into stairs disappearing into shadow on the far side of the hall. “Make one of the downstairs bedrooms into an office and leave the other as a guest room. Upgrade the Jack and Jill bathroom.”
“I like that,” Nikki commented. New appliances in the kitchen, some more modern furniture and certain pieces from her childhood refinished.
Zee kept sketching, turning from page to page to illustrate his ideas, and Nikki moved up closer so she could see more clearly, her head almost touching her shoulder.
“Upstairs, you could consider cutting off this side of the house and making it a separate apartment. Bedroom, sitting room, bathroom, veranda here over the new kitchen, with an outside stair to give access.”
He turned his head to smile at her, his eyes warm. “That way, you can have a tenant or a holiday let, but they don’t come into your space or you into theirs.”
“If I wanted to do that,” she mused, “I could make the entire upstairs a separate let.”
“You could,” he agreed, turning to another page. “In that case, I’d turn this other bathroom around and make it an ensuite for this bedroom. Three bedrooms and two bathrooms, and views to die for. You might want to take that one and let the downstairs!”
“More room downstairs.”
“True,” Zee agreed, and sketched the floor plans they’d discussed on facing pages.
Nikki reached over to take his pencil, and he held the notebook for her while she added a kitchenette to the upstairs sitting room, and a second upstairs veranda across the front of the house.
“Yes. Nice,” Zee agreed, taking the pencil from her hand to wrap the downstair
s veranda all the way around the house. “Folding doors from the kitchen, so you can take your coffee—or your lemonade,” he indicated their empty glasses with a tip of the head, “into your outside space.”
And what is all this going to cost? “Is this the Rolls Royce version?” Nikki asked.
“The top of the line?” Zee was getting to his feet. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t I do a bit of assessment of the work required on the basics like fixing rotted timbers and replacing electrical and plumbing, and give you an estimate for that, then work out the upgrade costs above and beyond that basic work?”
“Could you give me a breakdown for the different parts of the house?” She rose, too, scooping up the empty glasses before Zee could. He followed her through the house.
“Yes, sure,” he said. “I’ll set it out for you. Downstairs, upstairs, verandas? Three stages?”
The phone in her pocket buzzed. She ignored it, seeing Zee to the door and confirming that his suggested division of the estimate would work for her. Already, though, she was imagining the house as sketched by his creative pencil. Too big for one person, but she could rent out part of it, as Zee suggested. And what better purpose for the money Gran and Poppa had left than to put it into restoring their home?
The message was from Beks. “What did you think of Hot and Handsome?” it read.
She thought for a moment. “Might be bad sailor, but not bad builder. Seems to know his stuff.”
“Hot stuff!” said the return message.
Nikki sent back a winking face, and moments later the phone buzzed again. “Get over here and tell Beks all. Have biscuits. And cake.”
“Had lemonade with Z,” she sent.
“No excuses,” came the reply. “Have coffee with Beks.”
At the big old Masterton house down by the beach, Nikki was greeted by the smell of warm vanilla and spice, and followed it into the kitchen where Bev was sliding cookies off an oven tray onto a cooling rack. No. Not cookies; biscuits. She was back in New Zealand now. Nikki snagged one then tossed it from one hand to the other when the hot melted chocolate burnt her finger.