Chapter 42
‘It was a large, handsome, stone building, standing well on rising ground…’
Alice’s cottage was, in fact, a converted stable.
At this stage of life, I couldn’t afford to be fussy, I knew that.
I just needed somewhere that wasn’t my parents’ attic.
Anywhere else. But this? Someone had carved it into four cramped rooms with low ceilings, and laminate flooring that curled up at the edges like it wanted to leave too.
The ‘outstanding view’ turned out to be a high stone wall – bleak, unyielding, the sort of thing that might trigger PTSD in anyone who’d ever seen The Great Escape.
The letting agent tried, half-heartedly, to inject optimism. ‘Nice bit of stone, local quarry,’ he said, as though it might seal the deal.
Then came the clincher: the previous tenant had died in the shower room.
I thanked him politely, walked swiftly to the car, and drove off at speed, back towards my parents’ attic.
A few miles down the road, I veered off towards Foxdown, lured by a ‘coffee this way’ sign.
I found a café housed in what had once been the village post office.
The old sorting hatch still visible behind the counter, had now repurposed as a cake display.
Three quid for a cappuccino in a flimsy polystyrene cup with no lid.
A small financial insult on top of the rest of my life.
Still, caffeine was caffeine. It might, at the very least, slow my slide into existential despair.
I drove on, the rain now coming down hard. Fields blurred past the windscreen in muddy greens and greys. I took a cautious sip. Tepid and bitter.
And then I saw it.
Set back from the road, half-obscured by an explosion of unkempt hedging, stood a long stone building with a sagging thatched roof that looked as though it had been carrying the weight of the world for several centuries. It had presence, though, the promise of something solid beneath the neglect.
The pub sign ‘The Black Horse’ creaked on its chain in the wind, swinging to a slow metronome beat. The car park was more field than gravel. Windows were boarded with rusting, corrugated metal. The front door had been tagged with spray paint that resembled either modern art or ancient runes.
I braked so sharply the cappuccino launched itself into my lap. The murky coffee soaked straight through my jeans, but I barely noticed.
Because there it was.
Not a plan exactly. More like a jolt of pure adrenaline. A surge of something I hadn’t felt in years Potential. Purpose. A derelict pub. For sale. Overgrown garden. Fallen guttering. Moss creeping up stone walls.
My heart started beating faster.
I pulled over, grabbed my phone, and climbed out into the drizzle, shoes sinking into the soft verge. I took photos from every angle – front elevation, roofline, car park, side access – the way Dad used to when he was sizing up a building job. Muscle memory from childhood.
I sent a couple straight to Dom with a single message:
Thoughts?
I was still wandering around when my new pay-as-you-go phone rang.
Of course he called. Dom didn’t text when there was an opportunity to deliver an opinion at full volume.
‘It’s bloody thatch, Flo,’ he said, without preamble. ‘Outside the M25. I did a quick look-up on the old accounts online. Place was haemorrhaging cash. It needs a hand grenade, not a refurb.’
I turned slowly in a circle, passing the collapsed fencing, weed-choked patio, and broken stable block at the back.
‘I think it needs someone who cares. Alice and her friends are saying everyone’s desperate for a decent local pub,’ I added, playing my trump card from the gossip at the book club the night before.
Dom grunted.
‘I can see the potential, Dom, I really can. It’s been years, I know, but you know the business inside out and I could make this place live again.’
Dom exhaled. I could practically hear the cogs in his brain shifting from brother to businessman. ‘Come see me tomorrow tonight,’ he said. ‘We’ll discuss.’
Click. He was gone.
The next evening, I took the train into London.
It was one of those soft, pale English evenings, with light still lingering long past its due, the sky washed in diluted gold.
Out of the window the countryside rolled past, calm and green.
It made me feel oddly weightless, like I was travelling in a dream state.
As we pulled into Paddington, the sunlight caught the glass and lit the carriages in amber. Everything looked momentarily cinematic. Even me.
Dom and Tania’s flat was in Notting Hill in a white-fronted, tasteful building.
Tania opened the door, immaculate in black leather trousers and a sharply tailored blouse that probably cost more than my return flight.
We weren’t close, but there was genuine fondness there.
A kind of unspoken truce between women who orbited the same man.
‘No Rocky?’ she said, already leading me inside.
‘No. He’s guarding the attic.’
She smiled politely. Megan, my niece, came toddling in with sticky hands and flushed cheeks.
All curls and smiles. I crouched to hug her, inhaling that toddler smell of soap and milk.
Holding her gave me a little squeeze in the chest, the nice kind, not the alarming kind; a flicker of one day, maybe.
And, just as quickly, a wave of gratitude that life hadn’t handed me a baby with Chase.
That would have been… complicated, to put it mildly.
We ate dinner together, the four of us, at an oak table that looked like it had been lifted straight from a magazine shoot, with its clean lines, and a bowl of lemons in the centre that felt more like an artistic statement than something edible to pick from.
Conversation was light, the kind that skims easily across the surface: nursery updates, work anecdotes, and family matters.
I let it all wash over me. I was just happy to be back in my home country.
When we were finished Tania whisked off Megan to bath time.
Then it was just me and Dom in the kitchen. The lights low. A bottle of wine open between us.
‘I can’t believe you’re seriously considering this pub,’ he said.
‘I am.’
‘It’s a shambles.’
‘So am I.’ I met his gaze. ‘Match made in heaven.’
He paused, studying me. ‘You’d really do it?’ he asked. ‘Get stuck in?’
‘Yes. I need this. Something I can sink my teeth into. It’s not just a building, Dom. It’s… it’s a future. A direction. A bloody lifeline.’
He didn’t speak right away. Just nodded slowly. I watched him calculate, weighing it up.
‘We’ll book a proper viewing,’ he said finally. ‘Get a surveyor. If it’s not full of rot, we’ll talk.’
‘Promise?’
He smiled. ‘Promise-ish.’
I poured the wine, grinning like I’d won the lottery. He opened his laptop.
We weren’t quite back to the way we used to be. Not the Elliots of old. We were older. I’d come off the Fuller family battleground, and he now had a family of his own. But I sensed we could create something together. Less about who we’d been and more about what could come next.