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‘Better eating it than pushing it up!’ his housekeeper shot back as she headed for her kitchen.
Ten minutes later Emily was still stammering in shock as she wandered around the room at the back of the Dutch barn, trailing her hand over the pristine workbenches and fitted shelving. Perfect light poured in from the big, north-facing windows illuminating her stunned features as she took in the textbook layout. A double sink was installed under a row of cupboards and a dedicated air extractor sat above a small, square, perspex spray booth fixed to one of the benches. Next to a long, foam-padded table sat a wheeled trolley with a variety of tools and materials laid out on the wooden surface—craft knives and scalpels of different sizes, files and needles, artists’ brushes, spatulas, tweezers and boxes of tape, cotton wool, white ceramic tiles, abrasives, tissues, fixatives, powders and plasters.
It didn’t have quite everything that a restorer might use, but it was more than just a basic kit. There was even a packet of disposable gloves and a pair of safety glasses.
‘W-when you said you’d give me somewhere to work until the insurance paid out, I thought you just meant a spare room, I never expected a fully equipped studio,’ she stuttered faintly, opening one of the full-length metal cabinets to see shelves of unopened containers of detergents, distilled spirits, and fixatives.
‘You should know by now that I never do things by halves,’ said Peter, hugely pleased by her reaction. ‘That’s fireproof, by the way. And I have smoke and heat detectors.’ He pointed at the ceiling. ‘And air-conditioning, too, so you don’t have to open a window and risk anything blowing in.’
Everything looked and smelt brand-new. ‘There was only a tiny window there before!’ she realised. ‘How on earth could you get all this done in under a week?’ she squeaked, thinking of the snail-like pace of the insurance company.
‘I was in the hardware trade for over thirty years,’ he told her smugly. ‘With the will and the right contacts anything is doable. And there are plenty of tradesmen who’ll squeeze in a rush job if they get cash in the pocket rather than having to wait on an account.’ He was self-made man with no formal qualifications, it was just such a can-do attitude that had seen Peter Nash build a one-man business into a multinational franchise.
Emily shook her whirling head, overwhelmed by his generosity, secretly dismayed at what she feared was an extravagant whim. ‘I just can’t believe you built this all just for me. This is way too much, Peter. I can never pay you back—’
‘Who’s asking for repayment?’ he scoffed. ‘This isn’t just for your sake—I get to benefit, too, remember. You’re going to be cleaning up all those pieces that Rose never got around to having done when she was alive. And that Chinese jar—you said that would take at least a month from start to finish. I couldn’t have you doing all that work in some poky little corner without the proper tools—the Health and Safety people would have been down on me like a ton of bricks! And Rose would turn over in her grave. She always liked you, you know…thought that you would turn out to be an even better craftsman than your grandfather—said you had a real feel for the work, and the right delicate “touch”.’
Emily swallowed a hard lump in her throat. As often happened when he mentioned his wife, his expression lengthened and grew wistful and she felt the strong empathetic tug that had fostered the firm friendship that had sprung up between herself and Peter over the past couple of years.
After Rose’s death, Emily’s grandfather had gloomily predicted that Peter would sell her valuable collection of Chinese and European hard-paste porcelain or donate it to a museum, as he had had little personal interest in ceramics. But Emily had believed that he hadn’t bankrolled his wife’s expensive hobby out of disinterest but out of love, and that he would not want to put something that had meant so much to her out of his life. So it had proved, and after emerging from the depths of his mourning Peter had continued to send commissions to Quest Restorations according to a preservation plan that Rose had recorded in her collection diary.
‘I still think you’ve spent too much,’ she said uneasily.
‘I’ve got the money, haven’t I? Why shouldn’t I spend it on whatever I want? I can’t take it with me. And it’s not as if I have anyone else to spend it on…’
Emily knew it had been a source of continuing pain and disappointment for the couple that Rose had been unable to have children. ‘There’s your nephews—’ she began.
‘Huh! The elder doesn’t need it, and the younger would just blow it on high living and wild schemes! They’ll be getting enough of my money when I die—they don’t care what I do in the meantime.’
Emily had never met the West brothers, who were the sons of Rose’s dare-devil younger brother, but she had often heard him talk with pride or exasperation about their fast-paced lives, and knew from Mrs Cooper that one or other of them regularly phoned or visited, most often thirty-two-year-old Ethan, a high-end property developer, whose bedroom was always kept aired in anticipation of his unexpected comings and goings. His younger brother Dylan was more likely to show up when he was in between occupations, or to show off a flashy new acquisition. He apparently had lofty dreams but a short attention span—‘ambitious in spurts’ was how Peter drily described him.
‘Of course they care,’ she protested. ‘You’re their only living relative.’
He shot her an oddly intent look. ‘Only by marriage, not by blood,’ he muttered, surprising her with the caveat. He had never before suggested that it made any difference to the strength of the bond. Had he had an argument with one of his nephews? She felt a clutch of anxiety, remembering the hurtful ways in which her grandfather had lashed out at her in the last few years of his life. In the end she had done them both a disservice by trying to cushion him from reality.
‘Rose’s blood,’ she reminded him. ‘They’re family, and family naturally like to know what’s going on in each other’s lives—’
‘That’s true. So have you told your parents about the extent of the fire?’ Peter asked, turning the tables. ‘You did say you were going to try to call them?’
‘Oh, yes…well…’ Emily produced a half-hearted shrug. ‘I rang the aid agency head office in Switzerland but they could only promise to try to pass a non-urgent message on. Communications are pretty difficult in that part of Africa at the best of times, and, with the relief teams being constantly on the move, I doubt I’ll hear from them any time soon. I just said that there’d been a fire but that I hadn’t been hurt. There didn’t seem any point banging on about losing the studio. It’s pretty small potatoes compared to the grim life-and-death stuff they’re handling every day.’
Peter opened his mouth and then closed it again. He had only met her parents once, when they had flown briefly home for James’ funeral, and he had been appalled when they had left again almost immediately afterwards to resume their refugee work in Kashmir, barely sparing the time to acknowledge their daughter’s grief.
She knew that he didn’t think much of Trish and Alan for abandoning their seven-year-old child with Alan’s parents so that they could roam the world as humanitarian aid workers. But Emily had preferred the settled existence with her grandparents to the constant travel, hardship and deprivation that her parents embraced with self-sacrificing fervour.
‘Anyway, it’s not as if they could do anything from where they are,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘I was the one who inherited the house and business, so they have no legal responsibilities to uphold…’
Only an emotional one—to their daughter—Peter could have said, but kindly didn’t, happily assuming the supportive role he’d assigned himself since her grandfather had died. ‘Let’s go and have that cup of tea.’
The muffins were as splendid as everything else that came out of Mrs Cooper’s oven and after tea in the sun-filled blue and white lounge Emily tried again to express both her thanks and discomfort over his largesse.
‘As you said, your parents aren’t in a position to help you, but I can,’ Peter said, brushing aside her attempts to discuss payment for the materials he had bought.
Unfortunately, with few savings in the bank and all her plans dependent on the insurance report, she could only offer an alternative to cash.
‘If I was in trouble I know you’d rush to help in any way you could. In fact you did—you kept coming around to cheer me up in the months after Rose died, when all the other sympathy visits had dwindled, encouraging me to take an interest in something other than my own misery. I’d be a poor friend if I didn’t return the favour, wouldn’t I?
‘Tell her not to be so stubborn, Coop,’ he appealed to his housekeeper, who had come to clear away the cups and crumbs. ‘Emily’s upset over how much my surprise must have cost, and is trying to persuade me that she should work on Rose’s wish-list for nothing in order to reimburse me
