Renovation, Renovation, Renovation

by Nell Dixon

  It was Steve, not Donny leaning on the door jamb with his thumb pressed on the doorbell. My heart lifted.

  “Is everything okay? I came as soon as I read Claire’s text.” His brow creased into anxious lines as he studied my face.

  “You’d better come in. It looks as if we were right to be concerned about Chuck.”

  My mother seemed to have aged ten years while I had been opening the door.

  Suddenly her slender frame appeared shrunken and I noticed silver threads in her curly dark blonde hair.

  Once Steve was in the picture things moved quite quickly. I contacted Jo at the bank while Steve called the police. Mum remained adamant that we weren’t to call Lou because of the baby. I knew my sister would be majorly annoyed but Mum was determined.

  The rest of the day slid by in a kind of blur. Steve and I eventually left Mum late in the afternoon once she’d been interviewed by the police, given information to the bank, spoken to the estate agent in Devon and done a million and one other things.

  I wanted to call one of her friends to stay with her or for her to come back to the cottage but she insisted she wanted to be by herself.

  “Are you going to call Lou?” Steve accompanied me out to my car.

  “I’ll ring her later.” My headache from the morning had returned and my limbs were so heavy with fatigue I could hardly walk.

  “You look exhausted.” Steve touched my shoulder lightly with his hand.

  My lower lip started to tremble at the concern showing in his eyes. “It’s been the most awful, horrible day.”

  He took the keys from my hand. “Jump in the passenger seat, I’ll drive you home. I can come back for my truck later.”

  I opened my mouth to protest but instead I found myself obediently clambering into the car and buckling my seatbelt.

  “Claire is a tough cookie. She raised you and Lou on her own, remember.

  She’ll bounce back.”

  I wished I was as confident. “That creep has taken all of her savings. That money was supposed to give her a nice retirement. Time for her to enjoy herself a little bit. She worked hard for that money.” A tear rolled down my cheek and I dashed it away with the back of my hand. Right now I felt more angry than sad.

  We stopped at a red light and Steve reached over to squeeze my hand. “Jo is trying to see if there is some way of recovering the money. The fraud squad are looking at tracking Chuck down through the bank system and they’re in touch with the US via Interpol. From what they were saying it sounds as if Claire isn’t his first victim.”

  His fingers were warm and the calluses on the tips of his fingers felt rough against my skin.

  “It’s not fair. You read about this kind of thing happening to other people and you wonder how they could have fallen for something like this. Lou and I both thought there might be something shifty about him and neither of us said anything to Mum. We might have stopped him before he could take her money.”

  The lights turned to green and Steve released my hand leaving me strangely bereft.

  “You had no proof and Claire was head over heels in love with him. She wouldn’t have listened to you. All that would have happened is that there would have been a big row and he would have managed to convince her to take his side. It might have made things a lot worse. She could have lost her home.”

  In my heart I knew he was right but it didn’t stop me from feeling that I should have done something sooner.

  Steve shot me a glance. “Stop beating yourself up over this, Kate. You’re not your mother’s keeper.”

  I bit my tongue as I knew he meant well. A few months ago I would have come back with some snarky remark convinced he was having a dig about my tendency to want to control everything and make it all perfect. It had been one of the mysteries about our relationship.

  Steve was laid back to the point of being horizontal. Rules weren’t necessarily to be obeyed; they were more guidelines. I, on the other hand, liked to know that everything was in its place. I liked rules, order, planning.

  It was a big part of why Steve and I had split. I had been planning for our forever home, marriage and babies while Steve had been happily pottering along with life. It wasn’t that we hadn’t been on the same page, we hadn’t even been in the same book.

  Steve pulled to a halt next to his caravan and tugged the handbrake into position.

  “Thanks for coming over today. Mum really appreciated you supporting her.”

  I’d appreciated him being there too. It had made me realise how much I’d taken his quiet support for granted in the past.

  “Your mum has always been good to me, for an Osmonds fan.” His grin was back in place.

  “You know you’d have hated it if she’d been a Danger Line fan like Nasreen.”

  I couldn’t help smiling back.

  “Yeah, that would have been pretty awful.” His smile faded as his gaze locked with mine.

  Every nerve in my body snapped to attention at the signal from my hormones and desire heated low in my abdomen.

  “We were pretty good together, you and me. What went wrong, Kate?” He stroked a long lean finger down my arm making my skin goosepimple with pleasure.

  It was hard to think while he was touching me and making my stupid body respond to him.

  “It turned out we wanted different things, remember?” I tried to keep my tone light.

  His gaze continued to hold mine and I wished I could read his thoughts.

  “Did we?” His question came out as a low rumble as his mouth closed on mine, capturing me in a sweetness so strong it made me want to cry.

  For what seemed like a few delicious minutes I gave in to his kiss, enjoying the taste of his tongue against mine and the heady heat from his body.

  “I thought we agreed that we weren’t going to do this.” I inched my body away from him trying to place a gap between us in the confined space of the car.

  “We need to talk, Kate, about us.” Bafflement mixed with hurt showed for a brief moment on his face.

  “There isn’t any us anymore.” It killed me to say those words but deep inside I knew it was true. We couldn’t go back to where we were before however much my heart wanted me to. I opened the car door and freed myself from the seatbelt, almost strangling myself with it in my haste to escape.

  “I have to go and call Lou. Thanks for bringing me home.” I closed the door before he could say anything and stumbled away towards the cottage, my vision blurry with tears.

  I let myself in through the back door and closed it behind me, leaning against the smooth painted wood. I waited for a moment. To both my disappointment and relief, Steve made no move to follow me.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Lou didn’t answer her phone when I called so I left a message for her to ring me on her voicemail. With impeccable timing, Mr Flibble sauntered into the kitchen as I opened a tin of tuna ready for my supper. I shared the can of fish with him and he allowed me to scratch the top of his head by way of a thank you.

  I took my supper outside and ate it on the patio. The green surroundings of the garden enveloped me in a peaceful blanket soothing my frazzled nerves. The door of the caravan was closed and the blinds were drawn. Steve must have gone straight back out. He might have gone back to Mum’s to collect the truck or he could have gone to the pub to see her. Had Steve been about to ask us to get back together when I’d escaped from the car?

  I pushed the remains of my tuna sandwich to one side, my appetite suddenly gone. My ostrich gene had kicked in at the wrong time. Maybe I needed to face the facts. Our new so-called business only relationship wasn’t working and we couldn’t fall back into the relationship we’d had before. I’d changed a lot over the last few months and even though I still loved Steve I wasn’t sure how much he’d altered Unless and until the cottage was sold we were flat broke. Every penny we had accumulated over the last few years was invested in the house. It should go for almost a decent amount when it was finished and then we’d
have the capital to either reinvest or dissolve the partnership with the profits being split between us. Before the problems with the property market we should have made much more.

  The cottage was in a very desirable area with a sizable garden in a good school catchment area and in prime commuter territory. We were surrounded by upmarket executive housing all of which was priced at the top end of the housing market.

  Myrtle Cottage with its history and land would be much sought after once it was completed. Shame it came with resident ghosts.

  My mobile buzzed telling me I had a text.

  ‘At Mum’s staying night. Have seen G and J. They know abt baby. Chuck is a tosser. L’

  My sister’s message put a brief smile on my face. She must have called into Mum’s on her way home from work and been put in the picture about Chuck. I wondered how Gary and Jamie had taken Lou’s pregnancy news. The women in our family certainly didn’t seem to be having much luck where men were concerned.

  I gazed out over the partly strimmed and rotovated area of garden. There was a long way to go before the cottage would be ready for sale. To get top money we had to finish the bathroom, turn a small dressing area into an en-suite, install a new kitchen, finish all the plastering, wrap up odd jobs everywhere and decorate. Then we had to sort out the outbuildings and finish the garden. We were six weeks behind schedule already and with Mr Poole from planning breathing down our neck we were losing profit with every delay.

  Mr Flibble strolled out onto the patio and sat down a few feet away from me to clean his paws. A pair of white butterflies fluttered past performing their mating dance in the warm evening air while the leaves of the walnut tree whispered and sighed in the gentle breeze. The heady scent of honeysuckle and the sprawling clump of pink roses filled the air. Sometimes on evenings like this I could see why Steve had fallen for Myrtle Cottage, but then I’d go inside the house and the feeling that I wasn’t alone would creep over me.

  It looked as if I wasn’t about to be alone much longer. Jamie was coming along the path towards the patio. Even from a distance I could see he appeared agitated, his usually carefully styled dark blond hair was untidy and his cheeks were flushed.

  “I don’t suppose you know where I could find Steve, do you?” He stood before me, his hands tucked into the pockets of his bleached denim jeans.

  “I think he’s gone out.”

  “Damn.” He flung himself down onto the chair opposite mine and rested his head in his hands.

  “Is something wrong?” Stupid question really.

  “Has Lou told you? About the baby?” His voice sounded slightly muffled where his face was buried in his hands.

  “Yes.” I wondered if he’d remembered that Lou was my sister. My defensive sisterly instincts kicked in and I waited to hear what he would say next.

  He leaned back in his seat, his face tilted skywards. “Shit.”

  For the second time in the space of a few hours I curbed my instinct to snap out a smart retort. Instead I waited to hear where this conversation was headed.

  His cheeks rounded as he blew out a breath before lowering his head to look at me. “I’m sorry. Louise’s news has thrown me for a loop. I don’t know what to do.”

  “I can understand that.” It had blown the rest of us sideways as well. I couldn’t help feeling an inconvenient pang of sympathy for the man opposite me when I read the confusion in his eyes.

  “It’s not even so much that she’s pregnant, but there’s this other bloke.” He shook his head as if trying to put his thoughts in order.

  “Gary, yes, I know.” It felt surreal to be sitting with my unborn niece/nephew's possible father talking about his feelings.

  “Shit.”

  Clearly this conversation was going to take a while.

  “It’s just, I can’t get my head round it, you know. Damn, I need a beer.”

  Steve still had a few cans left in the fridge so I fetched two – one for me and one for Jamie. I needed alcohol too but we were all out of wine. He popped the tab on the tin and took a long pull of beer.

  “I really like Lou, she’s a great girl but this is just …” He stared morosely at the can in his hand.

  “You do know she’s my sister, don’t you?” I thought I should remind him before he said anything too damning.

  A fleeting rueful smile appeared on his face. “Yeah, I know. Crazy.”

  We sat in silence for a couple of minutes.

  “So, how serious is it with this Gary bloke and Louise?” Jamie asked.

  “It’s not, at least not on Lou’s side. It was all over between them when she met you.” I didn’t know what else to tell him and as far as I knew it was the truth.

  “Hmm.” He took another swallow of beer. “We were just having fun, me and Lou. Now it’s all messed up and I don’t know what to do.” Suddenly he looked sad and forlorn. It didn’t seem the right time for a lecture on the use of condoms and responsibility.

  “There isn’t anything you can do. If you like Lou then be there for her. The baby is going to need to know its dad.”

  He placed his can down on the table. “Yeah, you’re right. I just need some space, you know, to think this all through.”

  “Its okay, it’s taken all of us a while to get used to the idea.”

  He sighed again. “Thanks for listening and for the beer. I appreciate it.”

  “You could try the Coach and Horses to find Steve. He might be there.”

  “Ta, I forgot about the pub, he might be at Chloe’s. I’ll see you around.”

  I swear he almost said 'mate' on the end of that sentence before he remembered who I was. It smarted to have my suspicions confirmed that Steve might have gone to see her. Clearly Jamie knew that there was a strong possibility of finding him there. I watched him wander away out of the garden before I collected the empty tins and went back inside the cottage.

  The air in the kitchen felt thick and oppressive after the fresher breeze on the patio. I looked around for Mr Flibble but he had long disappeared into the garden. A prickle of unease teased its way across my shoulders and small pinpricks of light danced through the air in front of me. The honeysuckle scents from outside were replaced with that lavender perfume.

  The skin on my arms pimpled and, much as I yearned to make a bolt for the open back door, my feet were rooted to the spot. An icy chill swept through me, replacing the earlier warmth of the day, seeping deep into my bones. My teeth began to chatter and my heart rate speeded. I was powerless to move.

  * * *

  What little news I can glean of the war is not good. Dorcas returned from market to say the gossip in town was that the King’s forces had been stronger than expected and the rebel army had been routed. I pray Joshua is safe and has not been killed or captured in the fight.

  The baby seems to sense my disquiet, moving and kicking in my stomach as if sharing my fears. Mother thinks I am further along than I thought but that the baby is small. Perhaps this means the birth will be easier. I am sore afraid of what is to come, my only comfort is that the baby is part of Joshua and the thought of holding my child in my arms gives me strength.

  * * *

  Somewhere in the distance my brain dimly registered my mobile ringing. The air in front of me fogged and grew thicker. I could no longer see the old, white butler's sink and beat-up temporary aluminium draining board. Instead a grey misty shape swirled and formed, solidifying and shaping until a young woman of about my age stood before me. I could see the coarse thread material of her long grey, brown dress covering her rounded stomach and the neat hand-stitching on her white bonnet in curious detail.

  My fear faded as she faced me. Dark chestnut curls framed a slender oval face and I barely had time to notice the sad appeal in her eyes before my world turned black.

  “Kate! Kate!”

  My face was wet, my head hurt and someone was calling my name. I forced my eyes open to find Steve kneeling on the floor next to me with a worried frown.

  “
Why is my hair wet?” I tried to sit up only to have Steve place his arm around my shoulders to guide my head from the hard tile floor onto the softness of his lap.

  “You frightened the life out of me.” He smoothed my damp hair from my face and his fingers trembled against my skin. “I came in and saw you on the floor. I thought someone had come in to rob the place and attacked you.”

  I lay still for a moment trying to remember how I’d ended up lying on the kitchen tiles.

  “I think I must have fainted. It was the woman. The ghost woman, she was here, right in front of the sink and then I don’t remember anything.”

  Steve looked at me. “Did you bang your head when you fell?”

  Indignation flooded through me and I struggled upright, pushing aside all his attempts to make me lie still.

  “I might have known you wouldn’t believe me. Perhaps after Saturday night when the paranormal people have been here then you’ll see for yourself!” Water trickled from my face down the back of my neck. “Why am I so wet?”

  “I splashed cold water on you to try and bring you round.”

  Steve tugged at the towel that was draped on the edge of the draining board and passed it across to me.

  “I came in here to find you spark out on the floor. It’s taken me a good couple of minutes to get you to come round, all the time I’m thinking the worst and wondering if I should call an ambulance. Then when you do open your eyes you start rabbiting on about ghosts.”

  I rubbed at the wet skin around my face and neck with the towel. “I fainted, and the reason I fainted was because I saw someone standing by the sink. A pregnant woman in an old-fashioned dress and a white bonnet. The same woman I’ve seen here before and each time she looks at me as if I’m supposed to do something.”

  Steve rubbed at his face with his hand. “So what do you think this mythical woman wants? Who is she?”

  “I don’t know who she is. I haven’t managed to get that far back yet. I thought she might be Isabella but she isn’t. I can’t explain any of it. I don’t know why I see her and you don’t, or anything. I only know this house scares me.”