The exes, p.4
The Exes, page 4
‘Well, that’s not an opinion I share–’
‘Course not,’ he butts in again. ‘I mean it’s a disgrace. So? Do you want me or not?’
There is something about the forthrightness of Barry Pumphrey she finds oddly appealing.
‘It does need sorting out, but there’s so much to do in the house first.’
‘Not now. I’ll come back in March and take a look.’
‘Well, thank you.’
Why is she agreeing to this? The man is brusque to the point of rudeness.
‘You won’t find anyone who’ll give you a better rate,’ and with these words he turns to leave.
‘Your wife…’
He stops abruptly and looks back at her.
‘Does your wife still offer cleaning services?’
‘My wife died years ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I’ll see you in March.’
She watches him trudge up the road and turn at the corner. He is wearing an old brown overcoat which reaches below his knees. They spoke for only a matter of minutes, and in that time this gruff and abrupt man has more or less told her he’ll be her gardener. She asks herself why she agreed to that, even though she hadn’t actually said yes to him.
Holly watches as Ray pulls on gloves and a face mask.
‘Really?’ she says.
‘Yeah, and if you’re gonna watch put this mask on,’ he says.
She loops the mask over her ears. Ray has contacted a specialist waste company who supplied him with bags marked ‘hazardous waste’. He pushes open the large window and chilly air blows into the room. As he opens the left-hand cupboard she steps back and watches from near the door. There’s still that strange smell from the cupboard. He scrapes at the wallpaper with a tool and the paper comes away in strips, which he bags at once.
‘This bag goes straight to a licensed landfill,’ he mutters through his mask.
She watches for a while until the coldness of the room drives her out. As she puts the kettle on, she considers how lucky she is to have Ray in her life.
Chapter Six
FEBRUARY
PENUMBRA HOUSE
* * *
All week there have been warnings of a great storm heading towards the country and due to make landfall on Sunday. Holly watches the weather bulletins which show vivid maps of the trajectory of the storm. Brighton will be affected. The weather woman advises people to avoid unnecessary travel and to lock away garden furniture.
That night Penumbra House is battered by gale-force winds and rain lashes the windows. Wheelie bins left out on the pavement are overturned, tarpaulins are ripped, and recycling boxes are tossed into the air like toys.
The hollow roar of the wind, a sound like no other, wakes Holly at five in the morning. The roar is followed by a high-pitched whistling, and she lies in the dark with a sense of foreboding. Something crashes into the garden, and she sits up. She pulls on her kimono and goes to the window.
A roof tile sails past and shatters on the ground. Two more follow in its wake, smashing as they land. Gusts are convulsing the fig tree, pushing it back and forth in a frenzy. The thorn bushes by the walls judder and shriek as they scrape the bricks.
Moving into the kitchen, Holly puts on the kettle and hears more roof tiles plucked from the roof disintegrate outside. Surely Ray can’t sleep through this commotion? The tiles are crashing right outside his windows.
As she stands and watches the wreckage in the garden, she wonders what happens to the birds in such a tumult. Do they hide deep in the hedges as their world swoops and heaves around them?
There’s a rapping on the front door and Ray stands there gasping, his hair wet and sticking to his head from the short run from the basement.
‘There’ll be leaks up top and nothing to be done till it’s light, except get the buckets out,’ he says.
They make several journeys carrying buckets and pans to the top floor. The back room has taken the worst hit and rain is coming in through the gaps in the roof. They cover the floor with buckets and pans of all sizes and watch as the rain fills them. The front rooms are largely unaffected.
They settle at her kitchen table, and she makes them mugs of tea. There is a pattern to the storm; a break in the wind and for a moment blessed silence follows and the tree and thorn bushes are stilled. Then the wind roars back with renewed force and the fig tree bends and groans and more tiles are prised from the roof and crash on the paving stones right outside the window.
‘We’ve lost so many tiles,’ she says gloomily.
‘Rotten luck this happening before we’d secured the roof,’ Ray says.
They don’t go back to bed. They empty the pans upstairs and sit in the kitchen.
‘Best we keep watch till sunrise, not long now,’ Ray says.
‘I couldn’t sleep with this going on anyway. I’ll make more tea.’
Holly brings a fresh teapot to the table. Takes a breath.
‘I wanted to let you know that James will be joining us in the house. He’ll be living and practising as an osteopath on the top floor, only for a year,’ she says.
She resisted telling Ray this before, not wanting to put him off moving in and helping her and she is stupidly nervous about his reaction. The two men do not like each other.
‘When is he moving in?’ Ray asks.
‘Sometime in April, he said.’
‘I’m surprised you agreed to that, Hol.’
She looks at him recalling how much she told Ray about James when they got together. It was eighteen months after her separation from James and she was still an emotional mess. Ray helped her put herself back together, but she had told him too much, far too much.
‘Because he was unkind to me?’ she says quietly.
‘Yeah. You’re a far more forgiving person than I could ever be.’
‘It’s not permanent. Just till he establishes himself.’
Ray doesn’t look convinced. ‘One big happy family,’ he says grimly.
He gets up and stretches and clicks his neck. ‘I’m knackered. I need a shower and a shave. Then we can go out and assess the damage in a bit.’
After Ray’s gone Holly sits on at the table. His reaction to James joining the house, while it’s to be expected, unsettles her. It echoes what Laura said. Doubts crowd her mind and peck away at her resolve.
‘I’m tired,’ she says aloud. ‘I always doubt myself when I’m tired.’
By nine the wind drops, and the rain peters out. Ray and Holly pull on wellington boots and go out to survey the damage. The garden is littered with broken roof tiles, severed branches, and roots, and there’s a strong smell of wet earth. Spencer joins them in the garden soon after, and he helps them sweep the debris and stack the larger pieces of tiles at the top of the garden. They gather the broken branches and make a pile.
‘Sodden wood. It will be months before we can have a bonfire with these,’ Spencer says.
They stand at the top of the garden and see the many gaps in the back half of the roof.
‘Oh well, we had to mend the roof anyway,’ Ray says.
Ray has found a scaffolding company who offer good rates. They can start at once as few people are putting up scaffolds in February.
‘Do you want to pay for the scaffold to be alarmed, Hol? There’s an extra charge if you do.’
‘I don’t know. What do you think?’
‘The house is occupied so there’s little threat of burglars. And once it’s up we’d hear anyone climbing on it. I probably wouldn’t bother but it’s your call.’
‘I think we’ll leave it,’ she says.
Two days later a team of three men arrive early with a lorry loaded with tubes, couplers, and boards, and for once it isn’t raining. There follows a day of non-stop clanking and grinding, shouted instructions and their radio playing pop music at top volume as they build the scaffold to reach the roof at the back of the house.
Holly spends the day ferrying mugs of tea and ginger nut biscuits to the men, asking if they’d like to come in out of the cold to have their breaks. All three say they’ll take their breaks outside ta, and Ray tells her that in the building trade scaffolders are known to be the toughest crew of the lot.
By sunset the scaffold is in place and it’s a significant moment for Holly. She watches Ray hand the boss an envelope bulging with twenty-pound notes. She and Ray have agreed Ray will do all the paying of the workmen.
‘We’re on our way,’ she says, cheerful because there is nothing worse than a house that leaks.
‘Do you fancy a drink at The Wounded Hart to celebrate?’ Ray suggests.
It has become Ray’s local, and she agrees, wanting to mark the moment the renovation of Penumbra House has truly begun. There’s no going back now. The house has a hold on her.
Chapter Seven
PENUMBRA HOUSE
* * *
It turns into the wettest February on record. Gardens are saturated with nowhere for rainwater to run off. Roadside puddles grow to the size of ponds. Holly is up and down the stairs emptying the buckets on the top floor. The work on the roof gets going for one day and then has to stop. She frets about the delay, but Ray is philosophical.
‘It’ll get done,’ he says.
There are signs of a good atmosphere developing in the house. Ray settles into his basement and is working through his plan. Spencer arrives early most mornings and spends hours upstairs painting. The two men like each other. Holly is less settled. They both have work to do, but she does not. For the first few weeks she is mildly panicked about how to spend her days. If she isn’t a teacher, who is she?
She spends a lot of time cleaning the house, dusting and sweeping. Ray says the old plaster dust will just keep falling and why not learn to live with it until there’s new plaster on the walls. But she keeps on cleaning anyway.
James calls her and says he wants to move in early, indeed next week, two months earlier than she expected.
‘I really wouldn’t. The back room took a hit in the storm and it’s full of buckets catching the leaks.’
‘How about the front rooms?’
‘They’re dry.’
‘I’ll base myself there to start with,’ he says.
With his arrival imminent, Holly sets herself the task of blitzing the top floor. As she carries the hoover and broom upstairs, she meets Spencer on the landing.
‘I’m done for today. Let me take that.’ He carries the hoover to the second floor.
‘James is moving in next week,’ she says.
They look at the rooms and at each other.
‘I know, but he would not be put off. He told me, finally, that the lease on his flat is expiring and he doesn’t want to sign up for another six months. That’s the reason for his early arrival.’
‘You OK with that?’
‘I think it’s crazy to move in with the room in such a state. But when James gets an idea in his head there’s no shifting him.’
‘We’ll be full house then.’
‘Yes, we will.’ She sounds doubtful, hears it in her voice.
‘A big house like this, plenty of room to get away from each other,’ Spencer says. ‘Can I do anything to help now?’
‘Thanks for the offer but no need. I’m going to give the rooms a clean and it shouldn’t take me long.’
‘At least let me help you take the buckets out of the back room.’
They shift the buckets into the hall, and he leaves.
She tackles the dry front rooms first, hoovering the bare boards and wiping the skirting boards with a damp cloth. The kitchen is old fashioned but perfectly functional. The main back room that overlooks the garden is a different matter altogether. The floor planks are wet and slippery. One of the floorboards in the corner is black and as she steps on it the rotten wood gives way, splinters, and her right foot goes straight through. She thumps onto her bottom, jars her spine and feels something sharp pierce her ankle and lower leg.
‘Damn!’
She tries to pull her foot out but it is caught tight in a lattice of sharp wood splinters, and she feels something moist on her leg. Is she bleeding? Looking down she can’t see her foot. She flexes it hoping to lever it out. The network of broken wood holds her fast, and it hurts even to move her foot. If she wrenches her foot out, she’ll cut herself more deeply.
She manoeuvres gingerly and gets into a kneeling position on her left leg. She rolls up her sleeve and puts her right hand down into the hole which is deep and gritty. She tries to work her foot free from the shards of wood which are gripping her. A long splinter has embedded itself in her leg. She inches this splinter out, gasping with the pain. When she withdraws her hand, her fingers are covered in blood.
‘Shit!’
Her left leg is cramping, from the awkward angle of her kneeling, and she has to straighten it out and jig it up and down till the muscle pain passes. The base of her spine is throbbing where she landed hard. She wipes her bloody fingers on her jeans thinking she is trapped because Ray is in the basement and won’t hear her cries for help. Spencer won’t be back till tomorrow morning. She can’t sit in this room all night, she just can’t. The room is getting dark, and she is already shivering. If only she had brought her mobile with her.
She’ll have to grit her teeth and tug her leg out in spite of the pain. Be brave. Do it. But she keeps delaying the moment, fearful of the damage she might do to herself. Isn’t there a big artery in the leg? She tells herself to get a grip, count to three, and pull her leg out.
‘One, two, three…’
She tugs with all her might and there is a ripping sound and the sharpest pain in her leg as something gives below. But her foot is still caught.
‘Again!’ she says loudly. ‘Come on! One, two, three…’
She screams as her foot finally breaks free and is out of the hole. There is a lot of blood around her ankle. She crawls to the other side of the room, away from the evil hole, and looks at her bleeding leg.
‘OK. It’s OK. Get downstairs and ring Ray.’
He drives her to A&E in his white van. They have to wait, and Ray consumes a cup of machine coffee every hour, which stokes his impatience.
He goes outside for a roll-up and when he comes back, he looks disgusted to see Holly is still sitting there waiting to be treated. She sits slumped on the white plastic chair. She knows he’s thinking she should have been more careful. Her leg is throbbing, her back hurts. And she is thoroughly miserable. It’s as if the house doesn’t want her there and is working against her. I’m not an uninvited guest; I’m the owner she keeps saying to herself.
‘Please go, Ray. I’ll get a taxi back,’ she says, after two hours.
‘I’m not leaving till they patch you up.’
He’s impatient but also chivalrous.
Finally, they call her name. A deep flesh wound, and she needs stitches and a tetanus shot because the wood was rotten and dirty.
Ray drives her home, and they say good night quickly. It is clear he can’t wait to get back to his basement and to bed.
She hobbles into her bedroom and sits on the edge of her bed feeling rattled. Those words in Lillian’s draft letter pop into her mind as they have done many times since she found it.
I have hardly slept since so deep is my dread. I am consumed with the thought I have not done the right thing and should have reported my suspicions.
What information had Lillian kept to herself which tormented her conscience so badly? Holly curses Penumbra House with its dark corners, its rotten floorboards, poisonous materials, and its secrets.
Chapter Eight
BRIGHTON
* * *
By noon it stops raining, and she gets the bus to the clock tower. James is arriving at two and they are meeting at the station. Brighton is looking shabby. Holly does not remember it looking so run-down on her annual visits to Lillian. London Road is a procession of nail bars, pound shops and charity shops. The centre of town shows signs of decay too with faded fascia boards, stained pavements, and the public buildings need a coat of paint. Ten years of austerity has left their mark.
She walks the last brief stretch to the station slowly. Her right foot and leg are healing but are still tender. She passes a pub called The Hope and Ruin, a memorable name and one she hopes does not apply to Penumbra House.
Will the arrival of James, earlier than expected, disrupt the harmony of the house? When she started dating Ray, James referred to him as Holly’s ‘bit of rough’ and ‘a horny-handed son of toil’. She was so angry James has never dared to be snobbish about Ray again. But James has a need to be in control of things, though the shock of the financial crash has knocked the edges off him. Ray is also an alpha male, and the two men might well compete to be top dog. It’s a good thing James will be on the top floor and Ray has his own entrance to the basement, avoiding any awkward encounters on the staircase.
James also has issues with Spencer. During the early years of their marriage, James would complain that Spencer was hovering around too much, ‘sniffing around her’ was the unpleasant phrase he used. But Spencer is not the reason they split up, even if James invoked his name bitterly to cover the truth which was too painful to acknowledge. From tonight her three exes will be under one roof, her roof. She hopes Laura’s warnings turn out to be wrong. What did Ray say? One big happy family!
Standing at the barrier she watches James wheel his large suitcase along the platform with a rolled-up yoga mat slung on his shoulder. Since becoming a student, he has grown a beard and shaved his head. He is three years younger than her so will be a qualified osteopath at forty-six which gives him at least twenty years to practice. James kisses her on both cheeks.
