Chapter 23
‘It’s so beautiful, isn’t it?’ Danny sounded like a child on Christmas morning as he hugged me tightly, his voice full of excitement.
‘It is,’ I said truthfully, because it was. Cherry Tree Cottage was a cute, semi-detached three-bedroomed cottage, with a decent-sized garden complete with the titular cherry tree.
It was in a pretty village just a ten-minute drive to the nearest market town where the railway station was situated.
‘But our commute will be over twice as long,’ I reminded him as we pulled apart. ‘You have to take that into consideration.’
‘But so what, when we’d be coming home to this?’ His eyes shone with happiness and hope.
‘It’s not very big,’ I pointed out. ‘That third bedroom’s just a box room really, and the kitchen’s very small.’
‘I know but it’s a starting point,’ he said. ‘We could knock the dining room into the kitchen and make a big kitchen-diner. And the box room will do for a nursery.’
I swallowed. ‘A nursery?’
‘What I was thinking was, we could stay here for – I don’t know – say five or six years.
By then we’ll probably have two children, and the eldest will be in the bigger back bedroom and the baby in the nursery.
Then we’ll look for a larger house. If we’ve made the kitchen into a kitchen-diner and improved the place in other ways the value’s sure to have gone up, and then we can move into a more suitable property. Maybe even our forever home.’
He gazed around the poky little galley kitchen, clearly not seeing it as it was but as what he imagined it could be. ‘The village is stunning,’ he said wistfully. ‘And the primary school’s got very good ratings. Something to think about.’
‘Wow, you’ve done your research,’ I said weakly.
‘You have to think about these things if you’re going to be a parent,’ he said wisely. He gave me a broad smile, which faded slightly when he saw that I wasn’t exactly jumping up and down with excitement.
‘What is it? You do like this place, don’t you?’
‘It’s – it’s very nice,’ I said. ‘But I just don’t want you to get carried away. Like I said, the commute is so much longer. I know you think that won’t matter, but when you’re doing it every day twice a day, I reckon it will start to matter more than you imagine.’
‘The reward of coming home to this place will make up for it,’ he said determinedly. ‘Oh, imagine it at Christmas! Imagine the garden covered in snow. Imagine a Christmas tree in that living room, and our children running downstairs on Christmas morning to open their presents.’
‘I thought you said one of them would only be a baby by the time we left here,’ I said wryly.
‘Well, you know what I mean.’ He hurried through to the living room, practically dragging me with him. ‘I wonder if we could unblock that fireplace and have a real fire?’ he mused. ‘We could hang the children’s stockings from the mantelpiece and—’
‘Danny, steady on,’ I protested. ‘We don’t even know if we can have children yet. It’s not a given, you know. Lots of couples struggle and it might never happen.’
‘Why would you even say that?’ he asked. ‘Stop being such a pessimist and let yourself dream for a minute.’
He slipped his arm through mine, and we stood together in silence, gazing round the room and imagining…
I could guess only too well what Danny was imagining.
After a smooth commute (both ways, naturally), he’d arrive home from the office to his chocolate box cottage to find his smiling wife (me!) in an apron, baby on hip, greeting him with a kiss at the door as she told him all about her fulfilling day baking scones and arranging flowers at the church.
Me? I was imagining fighting for a seat on the train, arriving at work already tired and harassed, repeating the whole horrible process at the end of the working day, arriving at the train station then having to drive to the village, only to have to start cooking dinner because there were no takeaways in the area.
And that was before I had to worry about collecting a screaming baby from a childminder or a whining child from school.
It just wasn’t for me and I knew it. Oh, the village was pretty, I couldn’t deny it, and I could well understand why Danny loved it.
It had very similar vibes to his own Lincolnshire village.
If we had jobs nearby it might have been a different thing all together, but we didn’t, and I wasn’t about to leave Rochester’s to work out in the sticks somewhere.
As for children… The plain fact was, I’d never seen myself as a mother.
As far as I could tell, motherhood meant nothing but sacrifice and a curtailment of any chance of fun and freedom for the rest of your life.
I had friends and family with children, and their time was never their own. I just wouldn’t have the patience.
Danny and I had never really discussed the issue, which, now that I thought about it was a stupid mistake.
We should have done. Now I could see that he’d just assumed I wanted them, because wasn’t that the normal thing?
And maybe I hadn’t brought up the subject because I didn’t want to get into that whole discussion.
I suppose, somewhere in the back of my mind, I’d just thought that when the day came I’d deal with it then.
And maybe I was worrying about nothing, because maybe he wouldn’t want them anyway?
Well, any hopes of that had vanished. Danny had dreams of a traditional family life, much like his own family’s. He wanted to be a dad. He wanted to live in a village and breathe the country air.
How was I going to tell him that this wasn’t for me?
I didn’t know how to do it, and I felt miserable and cowardly and full of despair.
‘So what do you think? Should we make them an offer?’ he asked.
I turned away from the hope in his eyes, unable to bear it any longer.
‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘I think we should have a look at some other places first.’
‘Kirsty, we’ve been looking at properties for four months now and talking about it for nearly a year! Come on, this is perfect!’ he protested. ‘And if we wait it will get snapped up.’
‘We’ll put it at the top of the list,’ I said weakly, ‘but I still think we shouldn’t rule out other properties, other villages. This is a big deal, Danny. A major investment. We have to get it right.’
He slumped and I hated myself, especially when he nodded stoically.
‘You’re right of course. It’s a big decision. Well, we’ll leave it for now, but if we haven’t seen anything better by the end of next week I think we should put in an offer.’
‘We might not have much time for house hunting before then,’ I reminded him. ‘We’ve got that retirement do in the Cotswolds at the weekend, remember?’
He wrinkled his nose. ‘How could I forget that? Bloody Adam Ant! I don’t know why I let Brooke talk me into it.’
‘I’m sure you’ll look great,’ I said, glad to get him onto another subject. ‘Adam Ant’s a very sexy look.’
‘So is Debbie Harry,’ he said, putting his arms around my waist and kissing me lightly. ‘I can’t wait to see you all dressed up.’
‘Shall we go home then?’ I asked. ‘It will be dark soon.’
‘I suppose so. I’m just sad to leave here.’ Danny sighed and pulled away from me. ‘Come on then. The poor old estate agent will be fed up.’
Mr Blackstock of Blackstock and Jones Estate Agents, had kindly left us alone to look around after an initial tour. He’d been waiting outside for the last ten minutes and it wasn’t exactly summery out there.
‘I’m surprised he hasn’t come back in to warm up,’ I added. ‘Let’s go.’
Danny gave the cottage a final longing look. ‘It would be amazing, though, wouldn’t it? To live somewhere so pretty and be part of a village community, where everyone knows you and there’s always someone to say hello to?’
I nodded, forcing a smile. ‘It would yes. Come on, we’d better go before Mr Blackstock freezes up.’
I took his arm and led him outside, where I explained our thoughts to the estate agent while Danny gazed at Cherry Tree Cottage, a misty, faraway look in his eyes.
As we headed back to our car, he almost toppled off the kerb as he kept insisting on having ‘one last look’ at the place.
Me? I didn’t turn around once.
* * *
The door handle rattled.
I sat quite still, frozen, not even knowing what I was going to say any more. This was all such a mess, and I was still in shock that Rory had been meeting up with Danny and hadn’t told me.
‘Kirsty? Kirsty, are you all right? Why have you locked the door?’ The door rattled again and then he knocked loudly. ‘Kirsty, open up! I’m worried about you.’
I stood and tried to collect my thoughts as I walked to the door and opened it. Rory rushed into the room, his expression one of confusion and concern.
‘You’ve been ages. What’s wrong? Why did you lock the door?’
I closed my eyes for a moment. Okay, time to confess.
‘Shut the door, Rory. There’s something we have to talk about.’
Now he really looked worried. He closed the door and followed me to the sofa where we sat side by side, not touching.
‘Go on,’ he said. ‘What’s the matter?’ He gave a short laugh. ‘You’re really scaring me now.’
I turned to look at him, at his dear sweet face that I’d grown to love more each day, even though I knew I had a funny way of showing it.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d been speaking to Danny?’ I asked quietly.
Honestly, for a moment I thought he was going to have a heart attack. His face went grey and he clutched his chest as if he was having a terrible pain there.
‘Wh-what do you mean? I mean, bloody hell! How did you know that? He said only blood relatives could see him.’
‘I can’t see him,’ I explained. ‘But I can see Brooke. Have you forgotten she’s my cousin?’
‘Brooke!’ He groaned. ‘Of course. Why didn’t that occur to me? So you’ve seen her?’
‘She was here a few minutes ago. Actually, she was outside with us earlier. She wanted to talk to me alone, which is why I made the excuse about the shoes and came up here.’
‘Right. Well…’