Chapter 2 Elise #2
“Are you coming?” Robbie prompted, and Elise left the sense of clucking and pecking and warm, feathered bodies behind and headed with him towards the front door.
While Robbie used the knocker to rap on the door, Elise inhaled the sweet scent of the honeysuckle poking through a ramshackle trellis and gazed along the flint-covered walls of the cottage.
They’d passed similar houses on their way here, and the traditional workmanship was pleasing, the black-and-grey flints gleaming in the sunshine.
Judging by the sounds coming from the house—hammering and an intermittent power tool—it seemed that more modern-day workmanship was currently taking place inside, and Robbie’s knock went unanswered.
“I don’t think they heard you.”
Robbie knocked again, harder this time. Then, without waiting, he said, “I’ll take a look around the back.” And headed off.
Which was why he wasn’t there when the hammering stopped, footsteps sounded inside the hall, and the door opened.
A large, blond-haired man dressed in shorts and a T-shirt looked out with a welcoming smile. “You must be Elise.”
Sylvia had said the joiner assigned to the project would be there to let her in. Elise smiled back. “Yes. And you must be Sam?”
He shook her hand. “That’s me. I hope you haven’t been waiting for ages? I was working in one of the back rooms. Come on in. Did you have a good journey?”
“Yes, thanks.” Elise glanced over her shoulder, but there was no sign of Robbie. “My husband just went round the back.”
“He won’t get far. The back garden’s even more of a jungle than the front. We’ll leave the door open for him. Come on in. I’ll make some tea.”
Later, when Elise was to think back to her first meeting with Sam, it was like a jumble of snaps and video clips, all mixed up with her first impressions of Marsh House.
Sam’s tall man’s stoop as he led her through the low door to the kitchen.
The red of the pencil stub stuffed behind his ear.
The kitchen—tatty but homely, the sunshine streaming in through the mullioned window, turning the terra-cotta floor tiles to copper, highlighting the faded turquoise of the walls.
Sam was smiling, talking, telling Elise he lived further up the coast in Cromer.
And all the time, as she told him she’d never lived by the sea but had always wanted to, Elise was registering a sense of home.
Of happiness and busyness. Homemade jam, casseroles, and cakes.
Warmth, both from the house and from Sam.
And she found herself letting out a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding, her shoulders relaxing.
Then Robbie was there, face flushed and hot, moving towards Sam with his hand outstretched to introduce himself, but only after shooting Elise a resentful glance that clearly said, Why didn’t you tell me you’d been let in?
Sam poured the tea and pushed milk and sugar towards them so they could help themselves. “So, have either of you been to this part of the world before?”
“We came a few weeks before you made your application, didn’t we, Elise?
” As he spoke, Robbie’s gaze raked around the room, lighting dismissively on the Belfast sink and the ramshackle cupboards.
A rickety-looking table beneath the window bearing a vase of cut flowers and the remains of someone’s breakfast.
“To check the place out? I gather you liked what you saw then?”
The question was addressed to Elise, but Robbie answered for her. “It wasn’t my cup of tea—all that mud and empty marshland—but you liked it, didn’t you, El? It was just a shame we couldn’t get inside to take a look at this place. It looks as if it needs a heap of work to get it to rights.”
“I did see the videos Sylvia made, though,” Elise said, speaking up, embarrassed by Robbie’s dismissiveness.
The interview had taken place online because of what Sylvia had described as a health setback for her husband.
“As soon as I saw those wall paintings, I knew I had to have the house,” Sylvia had said.
“I couldn’t bear the thought of them being painted over and lost forever.
I wasn’t looking for another business concern—Lord knows, I have my finger in quite enough pies as it is—but I really think the Marsh House project will draw the crowds once everything’s finished, and I’m confident that you and Sam are the people to do it. ”
Sylvia had talked at length about Sam—a genius with wood with a great deal of insight and imagination—and Elise wondered now how Sylvia had described her to Sam.
“I’ll give you a proper tour straight after we’ve drunk our tea, if you like?” Sam said.
Elise glanced in Robbie’s direction. “A bit later on, perhaps. After I’ve settled in. If that’s okay?”
“Sure, no problem. I’m here until about five. I’ll show you where you’ll be sleeping.”
“Thanks.”
Sam put his mug of tea down, and they followed him out into the hallway.
“The place is definitely safe, isn’t it?” Robbie said. “No dry rot? I won’t get a phone call to say my wife has gone through the floorboards and broken her leg?”
Elise was suddenly glad she’d suggested Sam save the tour of the house for later on.
Robbie didn’t often refer to her as “my wife” instead of using her name, and somehow the fact that he’d done so now felt as if he’d held up a placard saying, Keep off.
She’s mine! It was embarrassing. Slightly insulting too.
Sam was undeniably attractive, but she was hardly intending to have an affair with anyone while she was here. Robbie should know that.
Sam directed his answer to Elise, not to Robbie. “No need to worry. Your room, and the kitchen and bathroom are all fine. Basic, as you’ve seen, but all safe and in working order. This is you, straight ahead. Only a single bed, I’m afraid.”
“That’s okay, Robbie has to get back. Don’t you, Robbie?”
Robbie looked at his watch. “I do. Important meeting first thing in the morning. I’ll have to head off soon.”
Sam nodded. “Okay. Well, it was nice to meet you. Come and find me when you want that tour, Elise.” And with that, he clumped back downstairs, leaving Elise and Robbie alone together.
Robbie crossed to the window. “He seems a bit . . .”
“What? I thought he was very friendly.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
She sighed. Bit back an irritated response.
“And did you see the state of that kitchen?” Robbie went on. “Are you sure you want to bury yourself away down here? You don’t have to, you know.”
He sat down next to her on the bed, his thigh touching hers, one hand pushing her hair back from her face. “You can change your mind. Tell them you made a mistake.” He put his lips where his hand had been, against her neck. “Come back home with me.”
She moved away slightly to look at him. “I don’t think I have made a mistake, though.
In fact”—her gaze travelled around the room, giving her an impression of jade-green walls, a pretty patterned carpet, and a dressing table somebody had painted white—“I think I’m going to like it here.
That it will be good for me. Just like you said it would be. ”
Robbie sighed. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
She smiled. “You did. Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Thinking of me.”
He took her hand. “Of course. You’re my wife.”
That word again. She wasn’t sure why it was suddenly making her feel like some kind of possession today when most of the time it was just a word to describe their relationship.
She got to her feet. “Shall we fetch my bags from the car?”
“Desperate to get rid of me?”
“Don’t be daft. We can eat at the pub before you go, if you like. Book a room there for the night, even.”
He pulled a face. “I don’t fancy getting up at the crack of dawn to get to my meeting. And I wasn’t that struck by their food when we stayed, were you? No, I’d better get off. Don’t listen to me. I’m just going to miss you, that’s all.”
“I’ll miss you too,” she said, but after she’d waved him off and let herself back into the house, she wondered if that was really true or not. Whether it might actually be a relief for them to be apart for a while. Some distance might help to smooth things out between them.
Sam appeared in the hallway, startling her. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you jump. It’s my silent steel-capped work boots.”
He was teasing her, but Elise didn’t mind.
“Sorry, you’ll find I’m often off somewhere else in my head.”
“Artist’s privilege. Ready for the tour now?”
Apart from the kitchen, there were three other rooms downstairs.
Sam led the way into the first one, at the front of the house. “I think this must have been used as a front parlour—you know, for when the family had visitors.”
Elise had seen the room on the video Sylvia had shown her, but it was completely different from actually standing in it, and she looked around with pleasure, taking in the deep-green tiled fireplace and the bay window with its window seat.
The faded Prussian-blue wallpaper with its Art Deco–style fan pattern.
She went over to stroke it, as if her fingers might tell her about the family who had first pasted it onto the wall.
“I get the feeling the old lady who lived here before Sylvia bought the place only used a few rooms,” Sam said.
“It certainly looks as if nothing’s been changed here for decades,” Elise agreed, looking at the threadbare rug which covered most of the floor. “But it’s still lovely.”
She crossed to sit in the window seat, turning to face the room, wondering what the shelves on either side of the fireplace had once held.
Books? Knickknacks? The house must be over two hundred years old; generations of people had used this room.
In that time there had been two world wars. No doubt many births and deaths.
“No murals on the walls in this room, as you can see,” Sam said. “But there’s some lovely painting on the door and the shutters.” He reached out to close the door, and Elise gasped with pleasure at the trompe l’oeil painting of a garden on the back of it.