CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘You’ll have to help me do some gardening,’ I said to Maisie as we got out of the car at Bogg House the following afternoon and walked through the gate into the tangled chaos of weeds and plants gone to seed. ‘All these shrubs and hedges will need to be cut back.’ I looked around happily, seeing beyond the mini jungle to the beautiful garden it could become.
‘But you can’t just chop everything down,’ protested Maisie. ‘Mrs Iveson says you have to protect the hedgehogs and the wild flowers so that the bees and butterflies can have a safe place to live.’
I smiled down at her. She was growing up. Mrs Iveson was her favourite teacher. ‘Mrs Iveson is absolutely right. Maybe we could plant a wild flower garden over by the apple tree, and we could buy a house for the hedgehogs.’
‘Yes! Or Dad could build one.’ Her eyes shone at the thought.
‘Great idea.’ I nodded, wanting to encourage her enthusiasm for gardening and wildlife, while at the same time thinking that Zak had quite enough on his plate right now without taking time out for a brief spot of carpentry!
She beamed up at me. ‘Can we go in so I can see my bedroom?’
‘Of course. Come on.’
‘It’s all wonky.’ She pointed at the Bogg House sign above the door.
‘I know. We’ll get a new one.’
I was letting us into the house when a rustling behind us made me turn around.
Shocked, I watched as a boy suddenly appeared from around the side of the house and was racing for the gate. He got his foot caught in some brambles and almost fell head-first but managed to get his balance and ran on.
‘Hey, what do you think you’re doing?’ I called in a panic.
‘Nothing,’ he called back, but I could see he was hiding something behind his back.
‘What’s your name?’ I shouted, rushing after him. I was pretty sure I recognised him as one of the teenage quad bike gang.
But by the time I got to the gate, he was already sprinting off at speed along the lane, presumably heading back home to the neighbouring farm.
‘What was that boy doing?’ asked Maisie, as we stared after him.
‘I don’t know, love.’
‘He shouldn’t be in our garden, should he?’
‘No, he shouldn’t.’ I smiled down at her, needing to put her mind at rest. ‘But he’s gone now. And he won’t be back. Not now he knows there’s someone living here.’
‘But we aren’t living here,’ she pointed out, quite rightly. ‘Not yet.’
‘No, but we soon will be. And I’m going to be having a word with his parents if he gives us any trouble.’
She nodded, looking satisfied with that. ‘Dad will tell him off.’
‘He will indeed.’ I put my arm around her. ‘Now, come on. Let’s go inside. You need to choose a bedroom.’
The incident had left me a little shaken. But for Maisie’s sake, I tried to brush it off.
‘Poo, it smells really funny ,’ Maisie was saying as she looked around the kitchen, a doubtful look on her face.
‘Oh, that’s just because it hasn’t been lived in for a while,’ I said cheerfully. ‘But if we open some windows and let in the fresh air, it’ll be smelling sweet in no time at all, I promise.’
I reached over the grungy sink and attempted to open a window but it was stuck fast. And when I rattled it to try and shift it, a chunk of plaster fell down and landed in the sink, making Maisie jump back.
‘Is the ceiling going to fall in?’ she shrieked, gazing up with a stunned expression.
My heart was racing anxiously but I laughed it off. ‘No, of course it won’t.’
‘But what if it does?’
‘It won’t. Honestly, love, the building is sound. It just needs a bit of tender loving care to make it shine again.’ I glanced upwards and my eye landed on a crack etched in the ceiling, and for the first time, I felt a pang of doubt. Who was I trying to convince? Maisie? Or myself?
‘I’m going to find my room,’ said Maisie, dancing out of the kitchen, the plaster incident clearly forgotten already. Hearing her taking the stairs at a run, I had a sudden image of her foot going straight through a rotten tread and I hurried after her in a panic.
But of course the staircase was solid – I’d known that already – and I laughed at myself for allowing Maisie’s melodramatic comments about the place falling down to affect me. She was a typical eleven-year-old girl. Everything in her life was a drama these days.
She was currently in the largest bedroom, which I’d decided would be mine and Zak’s.
It had views over the back garden and I was already visualising a sun terrace – made from those lovely large ceramic tiles, maybe in pale grey – with loungers and a dining table and chairs, where we could sit out and eat on long summer evenings. We’d linger under the stars drinking wine, Zak and I, after the children were tucked up asleep in bed. And maybe we’d have a beautiful pagoda over in the corner of the garden, to provide some shade on hot days...
‘Mum? Can this can be mine?’ Maisie called, having run into the next room.
‘Maybe.’ I joined her, peering out of the window. Zak had already said it would make a lovely writing room, with its view over the back garden. ‘You can’t see much from here, though,’ I pointed out. ‘I think a room at the front, overlooking the road, would be so much better. You’d be able to wave to your friends arriving for their sleepover.’
‘Oh, yes. Good idea, Mum. I’ll go and look.’
Smiling, I followed her as she ran through, wishing I had even half her energy. Sprout was definitely slowing me down, although I was determined to carry on with my normal routine as far as I could.
I glanced around the room Maisie had chosen for her own. There looked to be several layers of wallpaper that would need to be removed, hopefully leaving the plaster intact. But after the slab had fallen into the sink, I was now thinking that all the walls in the house might have to be replastered, as Zak had already hinted.
‘What’s that?’ exclaimed Maisie, pointing upwards at a sagging piece of wallpaper that had peeled away in a corner. I frowned at a suspicious looking patch of damp underneath it.
‘Oh, the builder will fix that for us,’ I reassured her.
Maisie suddenly jumped up and pulled on the loose corner of the wallpaper, and in doing so, a great shower of crumbling old plaster rained down on us.
Shocked, we looked at each other, and then Maisie started to laugh. Her laughter was infectious and pretty soon, I was wiping tears from my eyes.
‘Your hair’s gone all white, Mum. Honestly, you look like a ghost!’
Cue a fresh burst of laughter.
‘So do you, love. Come here.’ I tried to brush the worst of it off her hair, and shook out my own.
‘This house is really weird,’ she announced cheerfully, although I could tell she bore it no ill will after the plaster disaster.
I sighed inwardly. It had been funny, but the crumbling plaster was a real worry.
I’d fondly imagined being able to do most of the painting and wallpapering myself while Zak was busy on his book, but being here today, I was starting to realise what a huge project it would be. There were so many rooms, all with high ceilings. It would take me forever!
We couldn’t afford to get a team of decorators in, as well as plasterers, so we might have to take up Jaz and Milo’s offer of help when it came to the decorating... that’s if we wanted to get the house finished by the time Sprout arrived.
I was determined we would – but was it really going to be possible?
I felt a stab of uncertainty. In my excitement, I’d been na?vely imagining that turning the house around would be fairly straightforward.
But what if it wasn’t? What if the falling plaster was a sign of worse to come?
I forced a cheery smile. ‘How about we go downstairs and get the ginger beer out of the picnic basket and toast our brand-new house?’
‘And the crisps and chocolate brownies?’
‘Of course. Come on. But be careful on the stairs. Don’t run !’ But she was already gone.
Downstairs, I spread out the rug on the living room floor and we giggled as a haze of dust rose up around us.
After it settled a bit, I opened the picnic basket and Maisie poured ginger beer into plastic cups and – as the afternoon light was already fading – I lit some fat church candles and placed them along the windowsills. Then we sat on a couple of cushions we’d brought, with a throw around each of us for warmth, and as we demolished the ‘picnic’ and toasted each other with the ginger beer, we talked about how Maisie’s bedroom would look once it was finished.
Candlelight flickered on her face, which was flushed with excitement, and I felt a warmth creep around my heart.
Buying this house had definitely been the right thing to do. Okay, it might have a few problems that would need fixing, but it was going to make the most wonderful family home–
A roaring sound outside disrupted our cosy cocoon.
‘What’s that noise?’ Maisie shrugged off her throw and ran to the window. ‘I can’t see anything. Is it the farmer in his field?’
My heart sank. I knew exactly what the noise was.
I’d hoped they might have tired of the quad bikes and moved on to something else. But clearly, they hadn’t. They were probably just teenage boys having fun but I didn’t want Maisie to feel anything but safe and secure in our new house. Catching that boy in our garden earlier had set my nerves on edge. What had he been doing?
‘It’s fine, love,’ I said, playing it down. ‘It’s just some boys on their quadbikes in the field.’
‘You wouldn’t let me be out when it’s getting dark.’ She came back and sat down right next to me, and I helped arrange the throw around her again.
‘I think they’re older boys. A lot older than you.’ They’d looked about seventeen or eighteen.
‘Oh. Well, they shouldn’t be making a noise. Would Dad tell them off if he was here?’
I smiled. ‘Maybe. But you know, they’re not harming anyone. And it does look like good fun. Maybe they live on the farm we passed on the way here.’
This seemed to satisfy her. Although a little while later, as I was clearing up the picnic things and the boys could still be heard larking around in the field, she went to the window to look out and I heard her murmur, ‘I wish Dad was here.’
At that moment, there was a crack of lightning and a deep rumble of thunder. And seconds later, rain began splattering on the windows.
We looked at each other in shock.
Maisie shivered. ‘I like the house,’ she said, although I knew she was only saying it to please me.
‘Shall we go home and have a game of Poo Bingo there instead?’ I suggested. ‘We could make hot chocolate with marshmallows and watch a movie later.’
She nodded immediately. ‘Yes. Let’s go.’
I watched her with a feeling of sadness as she gathered up her throw and heaped it into a bundle under her arm, all ready to leave. I suppose I’d wanted Maisie to feel the magic of the house – the magic I’d always felt when I’d walked past it and thought how amazing it would be to live here.
But maybe that would come – once the house was a cosy family home again with smoothly plastered walls and brand-new windows and no random plaster attacks!
‘I left my phone on my bedroom windowsill,’ she said, and raced for the stairs.
‘Careful!’
There was silence and then a call from upstairs. ‘Mum? It’s all rainy up here!’
‘Rainy? What do you mean?’ I hurried up the stairs myself and gazed in dismay at where Maisie was pointing. It looked as if the patch of plaster Maisie had accidentally pulled away had been some kind of temporary repair, because drops of water were now trickling – albeit very slowly – down the wall.
Panicking, I glanced around for something to catch the drips but of course the room was bare. Then I remembered the old towels under the sink in the kitchen so I ran back down to collect them. As I rang Mac, the builder we’d employed, I stared up at the source of the leak, a feeling of dread inside. The towels would soak up the water, but for how long? We couldn’t stay here all night. What if Mac was out and the call went to answerphone?
But to my huge relief he answered almost immediately, and when I explained what had happened, he told me not to worry. He’d come straight over and have a look.
Maisie had been looking at me solemnly while I talked to Mac. When I ended the call, she folded her arms.
‘Dad said we shouldn’t move to a new house with a baby in your tummy.’ She gave a dramatic sigh. ‘And dads are usually right.’