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‘I can see how much you love this place, Walter,’ said Finn when we’d eventually finished the tour and were once again in the hallway, preparing to take our leave.
‘My daughter, Chrissie, keeps saying I should move in with her.’ Walter sighed as he looked around the hallway, as though searching for something – or someone. ‘But as lovely as it would be to spend more time with the grandbabies, I can’t see me ever leaving this house.’
I reached for Walter’s hand, holding it warmly rather than shaking it. ‘I understand. I think I’d feel exactly the same way if it was mine.’
‘On the very small chance that you do ever think about selling up, Walter,’ Finn said, reaching into his wallet for a business card, ‘we’d love to be the ones to take care of this house for you.’
Finn made no mention of how much we’d be willing to pay, and I think that impressed Walter almost as much as it did me.
At the doorway I impulsively kissed our host on the cheek, and he looked so delighted, it made me wonder how long it had been since anyone had done that.
‘Thank you so much for showing us around your home,’ said Finn, shaking the old man’s hand. ‘But, please, Walter, be careful in future. You really shouldn’t go inviting total strangers into your home. It isn’t safe.’
Walter gave a cackle that only those on the wrong side of eighty can pull off effectively. ‘Bless you, lad. I know that. It wasn’t my idea to let you in, I can tell you. But Alice said you looked like good folk, and I still trust her judgement.’
*
We waved Walter goodbye from the bottom of the path, before climbing back into the car. I kept my eyes on the house until the trees and bushes once again swallowed it from view. Even with Walter’s slightly worrying final words, Mushroom Cottage had lost none of its charm.
‘We could do something really amazing with that place, if Walter ever decides to sell it,’ I said, my head already filled with ideas. ‘Did you notice that cute little room beside the master bedroom, the one with the deep bay window?’ I asked, summoning up an image of how it would look with an antique rocking chair in the bay and a crib in the corner of the room.
‘I did,’ Finn said with a happy grin. ‘It would be a perfect spot for a desk. I could just see myself writing there the moment I walked in.’
I bit my lip, momentarily worried about our conflicting ideas. But as the cottage wasn’t currently for sale, it was a moot point.
But two days later, a number Finn didn’t recognise appeared on his phone screen. It was Walter. Apparently, he’d been thinking about it very carefully, and if we were genuinely interested, he’d like to sell us his home. In all the excitement, the small second bedroom seemed unimportant. It was only later that we came to realise it was actually the most important room in the whole house.
23
We didn’t put up any more flyers that day. To be honest, given the mood Hannah was in, placing a hammer in her hands didn’t seem a particularly good idea right then.
Instead, we stayed in the pub garden, talking in circles that carefully skirted anything to do with weddings, empty bank accounts or missing fiancés. It was only when I dropped her at her car that Hannah gently steered the conversation back towards the topic we could no longer avoid.
‘What will you do now?’
I looked through the windscreen. The temperature outside was high; so hot, the air seemed to shimmer like a mirage, or maybe that was just the tears that had sprung to my eyes at her gentle tone. I held back a blink, to keep them hidden behind my sunglasses.
‘I’ll carry on,’ I said simply.
I didn’t expand on whether I meant carry on posting flyers or carry on looking for Finn or carry on holding a torch for the man everyone believed had left me. In truth, I was probably going to do all three.
*
I filled what was left of the afternoon with chores and errands. To any casual observer, no doubt everything appeared entirely normal. But I spent fifteen minutes at the supermarket meat counter, trying to decide if I should buy one piece of steak or two. And then another ten deliberating whether Finn’s favourite chocolate biscuits deserved a place in my trolley. They came in and went out four times, before I defiantly placed not one but two packets on top of my other shopping.
I stopped at the dry cleaner’s to collect a couple of my work dresses that I wouldn’t be needing for a few more weeks, completely forgetting that a suit of Finn’s was also on the ticket. I was quite proud of the way I held it together in the shop, but considerably less so of my behaviour back at the car, when I ripped open the protective plastic cover and pressed my nose against the lapel, searching for a lingering trace of his familiar smell. All I got was a strong hit of perchloroethylene and a strange look from a woman passing by.
‘Enough, Gemma, enough,’ I told myself firmly as I got back into the driving seat and headed towards home.
*
I didn’t see his car in the car park. It wasn’t in my designated bay, where he sometimes parked, or even in my visitor one, which to be fair could sometimes be a bit of a free-for-all. He wasn’t waiting for me by the lifts. So it threw me completely when I rounded the corner and saw him sitting on the floor of the communal hallway beside my front door.
He got to his feet with the kind of stiffness that told me he’d been waiting there for some time. I immediately dropped the dry cleaning and the supermarket bags and hurried to help him up. His arms tightened around me in the kind of hug I needed most right then. He’d always given the very best of hugs.
‘What are you doing here, Dad? Why didn’t you phone and let me know you were coming?’
He gave a shrug, looking shamefaced. ‘It was a bit of an impulse decision. I was halfway here before I realised my phone was flat, so I had to take a chance that you were home.’
