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“And why did you choose to live here?”
Bob laughed and took several swigs of his beer. “Long story.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s fine. Well, I was born here, but like most teenagers, I left as soon as I could. University, then a job in London, marriage, the prospect of kids on the horizon. But when life doesn’t work out how you expect, sometimes all you want is to come home.”
“What went wrong in London?”
“My wife died.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have pried.”
“It’s fine, don’t worry, it’s been ten years now. I like talking about Ellie. It keeps her memory alive.”
“Yes, I understand that. There’s no one around who knew my mum, and sometimes I just need someone to remember her with. How did your wife die, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“An undiagnosed heart condition. She was far too young to go, but life’s crap sometimes and she was dealt a bad hand. I stuck it out in London for a couple of years after she passed, but my parents were getting frailer and it seemed a no-brainer to come home.”
“How long have you been back here?”
“About eight years. It’s embarrassing really. I’ll be forty soon and I’m still living with my parents, but it suits us all for the moment.”
Kate choked on her wine when he mentioned his age, but disguised it with a cough. She’d placed him in the fifty to fifty-five bracket. It must be the grey hair and beer belly. Either that or she was less perceptive than she thought.
They chatted a while longer before Bob announced he really must get back to the office. After the informality of their drink, it surprised Kate when he reached out to shake her hand. He promised the paperwork would be completed within a week, but left her with the keys in case she wanted to get quotes from builders in the meantime.
Kate waved him off down the road and let herself into Nanny Cornwall’s house. It felt strange calling her Nanny Cornwall, but stranger still to think of her as Moira. Kate couldn’t think of the house as her own yet despite the papers in her bag proving that yes, it really was. Her stomach rumbled, and she realised it had been hours since she’d eaten. The Indian takeaway was so close Kate could almost smell it. In twenty minutes she was back in the house, curled up in an armchair, eating food from tin containers and drinking a bottle of Tiger.
With a full belly and mind dulled by beer, Kate began idly picking at a loose piece of wallpaper. She gave it a gentle tug and it came away easily in her hand. Too easily. Her hand rubbed against the wall, coming away cold and damp. It was no surprise the house was damp. This was Cornwall, after all. Pound and dollar signs flashed in front of Kate’s eyes as she heaved herself up and began inspecting the walls more thoroughly. There were patches of mould on almost every wall. She’d hoped to live on the thirty thousand pounds of savings her grandmother had left with the house, but that figure was slipping away fast as she added up all the work needed to make the house habitable. How had her grandmother coped for so long? On top of the cigarettes, the damp must have played havoc with her lungs. Once again, Kate felt a creeping guilt at her lack of contact with the old woman.
Kate pulled a notebook and pen from her backpack and began jotting down all the things that needed doing. She went from room to room, floor to ceiling, and by the time she’d finished, three pages of her notebook were full on each side. The only room not in need of a complete refurb was the kitchen. If Kate was the one living in it, nothing would need changing. People paid thousands to get a retro-style kitchen just like the one she already had. It needed a good clean, though.
Underneath the sink, Kate found more cleaning products than she could possibly need in one lifetime. It took a while to get the boiler to work, but once it did, she had hot water running from the taps in no time.Electric, gas, water, phone and broadband. She noted the utilities down in her notebook so she’d remember to contact the providers the following morning. Then she set to work.
Three hours and four beers later, the kitchen was clean enough that it was no longer an attractive fly habitat. With their scrubbed fronts, the Formica cabinets and worktops looked pretty cool in her opinion, and glasses sparkled from their wall-mounted cabinet. Pleased with her progress, Kate found her phone in the bottom of her backpack and decided she needed to hear another human’s voice. With no signal or Wi-Fi Kate wandered outside.
“Hello?”
“Hi Maddie, you OK?”
“Yes, I’m fine, but what the hell are you doing calling at eleven at night? Is everything OK?”
“It’s eleven? Shit, I’m sorry, time has flown today.”
“Where are you? What are you up to?”
“You know that letter I told you about? It was genuine. I’m officially a home owner.”
“What? But I didn’t think you had family?”
“Well, I had a Nan, and it turns out she liked me better than I thought as she left everything to me in her will.”
“Everything? How much are we talking?”
“Don’t get too excited. I’m not a millionaire overnight. She left me a small, damp-riddled house in a town everyone hates, and thirty grand, that will probably all be swallowed up making the house less of a death trap.”
“You sound pretty ungrateful to me. I’d be jumping for joy if I’d been left a house by a long-lost relative. It doesn’t matter if it’s a state. When you sell it, you’ll have enough to buy a nice flat.”
