by Lucy Dillon
‘At least you know what you’re paying for.’
‘Yeah. Um, on that note . . . I know you’re on your way home, but do you think you could possibly come over and have a chat on Skype with Amanda? She’s got a free hour between meetings and wants us to walk her round the house so she can see what’s been done so far.’
‘OK,’ said Gina. They’d managed to do a fair bit, but the work at this stage was slow-going preparation, and most of it wouldn’t be visible to Amanda’s eye. It certainly wouldn’t tally with the amount of money it had cost. At least when clients were on site they could feel damp plaster and see the skips filling outside the house. ‘When’s she calling?’
‘She’s going to ring when she’s free, but she’s aiming for lunch her time.’
‘And where is her time this week?’
‘New York.’
It was several weeks now since Amanda had been in Longhampton for longer than a flying visit, although she’d replied to Gina’s updates and queries promptly by email. The meetings in New York had expanded, she explained, but she made no mention of her daughter or her ex-husband. It was another strange aspect of Gina’s growing friendship with Nick that she knew one Amanda from what he told her, and a very different Amanda from the emails and brief phone conversations. And, more worryingly, while Nick seemed to be settling into the house, it was harder, from the dispassionate way Amanda talked about the ‘project’, to imagine her living there at all.
Gina pushed those thoughts aside: none of her business. ‘So six, seven?’
‘If you could come over about six, it’d be brilliant.’
She glanced at the car clock. ‘Nick, you do realise it’s a quarter to six now?’
‘Is it?’ He sounded surprised. ‘God, so it is. Sorry, the electrician had the Wi-Fi down most of the afternoon so I’ve been trying to catch up with some work. Can you come over now? Is that too soon?’
Gina looked over to the back seat where Buzz was curled up in his harness, braced for the journey. He was quite a good traveller, lifting his grey muzzle up to the open window and closing his eyes in the breeze.
‘It’s going to take me . . .’ she did some rapid mental calculations ‘. . . about twenty minutes to get home from Rosehill, then another ten minutes to feed Buzz, then get back out to you, so . . .’
‘Bring Buzz with you,’ he said easily. ‘If you think he wouldn’t mind a bit of mess.’
‘You don’t mind?’
‘No! What’s to mind? I’d quite like the look of a greyhound around the place. I’m sure it was on one of Amanda’s mood boards, a pair of greyhounds. And they’re quite heritage, aren’t they? Elizabethan? They’re probably on some council list of approved dogs for the building.’
‘Yeah, you’d never get a Labradoodle past Keith Hurst.’ Gina smiled. ‘Fine. I’ll be with you in about twenty minutes, then.’
‘Thanks. I really appreciate it.’ Nick paused, and she could see him pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘Just so you’re prepared, Amanda was talking about the latest invoices and the rental idea again.’
‘I’m always prepared,’ said Gina, but she was glad she still had all the files in the boot.
Lorcan was still there when Gina arrived, rehanging the heavy back door on its hinges with one of his apprentices.
‘Shouldn’t you be at home by now?’ she asked. It was gone six. ‘Won’t the lovely Juliet wonder where you’ve got to?’
‘She’s baking a million cupcakes for someone’s wedding. I’ve been told to stay well away till the icing sugar’s settled.’ Lorcan stood back and gestured to the doorway. ‘How’s that, then?’
The door hadn’t been much to look at a few days ago, but now, with the layers of thickly applied paint stripped away, the fine details of the beading had reappeared. It was a classic Regency door, with six beautifully proportioned oak panels, and Lorcan had had it sanded in his workshop, ready for painting. Under the layers of cheap white paint there were traces of a rich holly green, the original door that had been opened by butlers and dashed through by girls in petticoats.
‘I’ve sent the knocker for cleaning,’ he added. ‘That’ll look grand, nice big lion’s head, it is.’
‘Looks fabulous.’ Gina ran a finger over the newly smoothed wood. ‘But haven’t you got more important things to be doing than doors?’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘I’ve heard Nick on the phone, telling Mrs Rowntree what we’ve been doing, and I reckoned something she can actually see might give her a better picture of how things’ll be when they’re finished. You can flash your iPad all round that roof space and she’s going to have no more idea than Nick about how much better it all looks. At least with this there’s a bit of interest.’
‘I know.’ Gina had been going over the past weeks’ work in her head, searching for interesting nuggets to spice up the rather dull insulation facts. There weren’t many. ‘And we can’t start any of the big plans until the consent comes through – and from what I’ve managed to find out, they’re going through the application with a fine-tooth comb at the council, which isn’t going to make her very happy. It’s not going to be finalised for at least another fortnight at the earliest.’
Lorcan gave Gina a look she’d seen many times before. ‘Whatever they’re paying you, Gina, sure it’s nowhere near enough.’
‘Ah, so now you want to go home,’ she said. ‘No, honestly, it’s fine. Go on.’
‘Nick can explain it perfectly well.’ He handed a bag of tools to Kian the apprentice and sent him to tidy up outside. ‘He’s asked me if I’d give him some plastering lessons. Says he wants to feel like he’s had a hand in putting the place straight.’ Lorcan rubbed his chin. ‘Normally the last thing you want’s some random client let loose on their own house, but you know what? I reckon he’d actually be pretty good.’
‘What’ll I be good at?’ Nick appeared behind them, carrying the builders’ crumb-strewn tea tray. He smiled at Gina, but he looked tense already: she’d noted a faint line between his eyebrows.
‘Plastering,’ she said. ‘Look, Lorcan’s already letting you carry the tea tray. Took Kian three months to be allowed to do that.’
Lorcan patted the sanded door. ‘What do you reckon? It’s come up really nice.’
‘Perfect,’ said Nick. ‘Exactly what a back door should look like. Well, apart from the paint. Maybe needs a bit.’
‘See? He’s an expert already,’ said Lorcan, at the same moment as the incoming FaceTime tone rang out on the iPad Nick had balanced on the tray.
Amanda’s face flashed up – not her red bikini, Gina observed. This looked more like a business headshot: she was glaring sternly from a grey background, her hair pinned into a Hitchcock ice-blonde pleat.
‘Ah. I believe that’s my cue to depart,’ said Lorcan. ‘I’ll see you two tomorrow.’ He gave a quick salute to the pair of them before striding off towards his van. To make sure he wasn’t dragged into the conversation, he got out his phone and started making a call.
Nick glanced at Gina, flashed a quick smile, and pressed the answer button.
‘. . . you can’t see properly here but we’ve re-insulated, and replastered all the attic space with the eco insulation the architect recommended,’ said Gina. ‘I’ve got photos of the work in progress that I can email. And some of the wool, if you want to see it?’
Nick wafted the iPad in the general direction of the sloping ceilings in the attic. There wasn’t much to see, apart from the smooth pinky-grey plaster that was now dry and ready for painting. To Gina it looked like a big ‘done!’ tick; to Amanda, she knew, it would look like a flat nothing.
‘Wait? Is that scaffolding all round the house?’ asked Amanda.
Nick stopped wafting the iPad.
‘Yes,’ said Gina. Her voice echoed in the cavernous empty space around them. ‘The roofers are up there sorting out the lead valleys. There’s plastic sheeting covering the bits of rotted woodwork where they’ve taken off the tiles and started r
eplacing the joists. It’s repairs mainly – we need to wait for the official go-ahead to tackle that ornamental skylight because it’s part of the consent application.’
‘Still no word on that?’
‘No, sorry. But I’m on it.’
‘Can’t you hurry them up?’
Gina pressed her lips together. It was all very well Nick standing behind the iPad at all times: it wasn’t giving her much chance to relax her face between bouts of impatient questioning from Amanda. Her tone was polite but even brusquer than normal; she obviously hadn’t had a very good morning so far. ‘It tends to work in the opposite direction,’ she said. ‘The more you hurry them up, the slower they like to go. They think you’re trying to hurry them past some dodgy detail.’
‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Sadly not. I used to work with these people. It’ll take as long as it takes, but while we’re waiting Lorcan’s getting a lot done. The first-phase jobs are well under way, and I’ve got the specialists lined up, including the electrician.’
‘Yes, I wanted to talk to you about the electrical quote Nick mentioned this afternoon. It seems extraordinarily high.’
‘That’s not final,’ said Gina. ‘Stephen’s going to send me a breakdown, so we can discuss it, maybe with the architect as well. He quoted a ballpark figure because there’s always going to be some margin for unknowns in a renovation like this, but with a house this size, and the amount of work you want to do on it, you really need to start from— Hello?’
She thought Amanda was being unusually quiet, and realised the screen had frozen. Then it went black.
Gina looked up at Nick. ‘She’s gone.’
‘What? She’s hung up?’ He turned the screen round, and groaned. ‘Oh, you know why? The power’s off again. The Wi-Fi’s down.’
It was still light outside, the sun slowly fading out of the pale blue sky, leaving the bare floorboards bathed in a sweetish yellow, streaked with shadows from the scaffolding. They were like bars across the room.
‘Has it been doing that all day?’ asked Gina.
‘To be honest, it’s gone off a few times since I moved in. But then that electrician bloke did have a good meddle with the fuse box this afternoon.’ Nick folded his arms, tucking the iPad underneath. ‘He may have disturbed the three particles of dust holding the connections together.’
She reached for her phone. ‘I’ll call Lorcan. He might not have got home yet. He’s not an electrician but he knows how to fix fuses.’
Nick reached out and touched her arm lightly. ‘No, leave it. The poor guy’s been here since eight this morning. Let him get some supper. It often comes back on by itself.’
‘Shouldn’t we ring Amanda’s mobile?’
‘No. Let’s not ring Amanda’s mobile.’ He tipped his head towards the stairs and started walking towards the landing. ‘Let’s go downstairs and have a drink, and wait for the power to come on again. She’ll be back in a meeting at two her time, so if she doesn’t call by seven, she won’t be calling at all.’
‘Well, I suppose it proves the point about needing to rewire from scratch.’ Gina followed him towards the staircase. ‘I was hoping I could put that electrician’s quote into perspective for her. It must seem like a hell of a lot of money for nothing you can see.’
‘You should see the figures Amanda deals with every week,’ said Nick. ‘Millions of dollars, bandied around like loose change. Come on, I need a glass of wine. It’s been a long day.’
As they descended, Gina trailed her hand down the polished oak rail that swept round in a sinuous curve above slender wrought-iron balustrades. She loved the idea of the thousands of hands that had trailed along it, just like hers was now. Natural polish smoothed by thousands of fingerprints.
‘These are going to be breathtaking stairs,’ she said, ‘when you get the disgusting carpet off them, and have them treated. Proper your-carriage-awaits stairs.’
‘Or sliding-down-the-banister stairs. Into the eight-foot Christmas tree at the bottom . . .’
Nick turned the corner on the landing part of the staircase. As he glanced up, his eyes twinkled from the shadows, and something moved inside Gina’s chest. There was an energy in his plans for the house that she couldn’t help responding to: he wanted to live here, to make the rooms sing with activity, the way she had when she’d looked around it herself.
It came into her mind with perfect certainty: I’m going to give Nick the witch-ball.
She could already picture it, suspended like a green moon in the hall. Its mysterious glamour fitted this house so much better than her own calm, white flat. What could creep up on her in that modern flat, compared with the fabulous spirits and shades here?
‘What are you smiling at?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ said Gina, and smiled more.
Buzz was waiting for them in the kitchen, where he’d been shut for his own safety.
Gina could tell he’d been pacing round and round, and when she appeared he whipped his skinny tail round like a helicopter and looked pathetically relieved to see her.
‘I was going to have a pizza, but clearly that’s not going to happen now.’ Nick opened and closed the fridge door. ‘Do you fancy some cheese and biscuits?’
‘I’m staying for supper?’
‘Well, I’m going to open a bottle of wine, so we should probably pretend to have something to eat with it.’
‘Um, OK. Thanks. That’d be great.’
‘Do you want to sit down?’ He gestured towards the kitchen table, which was piled high with interiors magazines, paint cards, letters, pens and coffee mugs. The jumble felt jarring to Gina, after the cleared spaces of her own home. She fought an instinct to go through it with a recycling bag.
‘Don’t tidy up,’ he added, putting a wine glass in front of her. ‘Just sit.’
‘I have no intention of tidying up. I’ve clocked off for the day. And I have to drive back, don’t forget,’ she pointed out, as he half filled her glass.
‘Then don’t drink it all. Or let me get you a minicab.’ Nick twisted the bottle expertly to stop the drip. ‘At least Amanda liked the door, eh? Smart move. Maybe that’s the tactic – get Lorcan started on the windows as a diversionary tactic for the electrics.’
Something in his voice made Gina feel she had to say something. ‘The whole point of having a project manager is that you and Amanda don’t have to do the good cop/bad cop thing. I’m on your – plural – side. I want this house to be right for both of you. But it’s quite hard, if you both want different things from it.’
Nick didn’t reply at once. He moved around the kitchen, getting plates out, knives and forks from the dishwasher, placing them at the end of the table with the least mess on it. Cheese (expensive, from the deli in town, wrapped in greaseproof paper), oatcakes, farmers’-market tracklements, pickles. ‘I’m sorry if we’re making you feel uncomfortable,’ he said, after a while. ‘I didn’t realise that was how it was coming across.’
Already Gina was regretting what she’d said; once it was out of her mouth she realised it wasn’t really about the house at all. It was edging into territory that wasn’t her business. ‘Look, she’s busy,’ she said. ‘I can tell. Maybe we should have another regrouping meeting about this rental idea. A proper chat.’
Nick looked at the food, then at the disorganised table. He began piling the cheese and plates onto the builders’ tea tray. He indicated towards the main house. ‘Let’s go and eat somewhere I don’t have to look at any interiors magazines.’
The library had been covered with dust sheets, ready for the panelling to be removed from the walls for treatment, but in the meantime Nick had clearly chosen it as his escape room, possibly because of deep red walls and the cosier proportions. A squashy sofa had been placed in the centre of the room, with a coffee table in front of it, and in front of that there was a stack of black technology: a huge flat-screen TV, a DVD player, speakers, camera chargers. The multi-coloured wires snaked around t
he dust sheets, like a map of the London Underground.
Nick put the tray on the coffee table, picked up his wine and settled himself in a corner of the sofa. It was huge, and even though Gina sat at the other end, she didn’t feel awkward about their nearness. Three other people could have fitted between them and, anyway, there was no other chair in the room.
Buzz had followed them in and, after a moment’s observation, lay down at a safe distance, his muzzle resting on his paws.
‘That’s the first dog I’ve ever seen that didn’t try to get up on the sofa,’ said Nick. ‘Or go for the cheese. It’s smelly enough. Ah, hang on.’
He got up and returned with a couple of altar candles, which he lit and placed on the carved wooden mantelpiece, set over a more manageable fireplace than the ones in the main rooms. ‘So I don’t have to get up again if the lights don’t come back on,’ he explained.
‘And your iPad? If Amanda calls back?’
Nick checked his watch. ‘She’s not going to now. She’ll be in her afternoon meetings.’
Gina stopped slicing a piece of Cheddar. ‘Seriously, though, I can make some calls and get someone out to have a look at the electrics, if you want. Last chance?’
‘Yes. I’m sure. I’ve got torches.’ Nick sank back into the sofa with a sigh. ‘And if they don’t come back on, it can wait until Lorcan gets here in the morning. I’ve had enough for today. Could you please cut me some Cheddar too? On an oatcake?’
Gina passed some cheese over and sank back into the sofa. It was extremely comfortable, and she felt her whole body relax into its cushiony embrace. The wine helped. As did the softening light from the windows, the candles’ brightness intensifying in the dusk.
This is nice, she thought, surprised by the happiness wrapping around her. She hadn’t felt happy like this in a long time. Not actively happy-happy, as she’d been in the park with Buzz at the weekend, a different sort of happy. More . . . content. Like there wasn’t anything else to worry about.