Chapter Fourteen
W ith the door closed, she leaned against it and closed her eyes before sinking to the floor. She could feel the grittiness of the plaster dust and debris beneath her, but she didn’t care. She just needed a moment to gather her thoughts. A moment to come to terms with the end of her short-lived move.
Her mobile rang from her pocket, shaking her from her thoughts and filling the small living room. Opening her eyes to pull her phone out, she realised darkness had encased the room. Looking down at the illuminated screen, she inwardly groaned as she read her sister’s name. She couldn’t ignore this call. She’d already forgotten to ring her back. Nina would send out a search party if she didn’t speak to her.
‘Hi, Nina.’ Her voice was croaky after the crying.
‘Hey, sis. Is everything okay? You sound weird. Have you been crying?’
Biting down on her bottom lip, Lynsey wiped her face with the sleeve of her top. Nina suddenly felt very far away. ‘I think I might have a bit of hay fever or something.’
‘Aw, that’s rubbish. On your first week in your new hometown, too.’ The other end of the line became muffled, and Lynsey could just imagine Nina covering her phone mic with her hand as she spoke to her husband, Gary. A few seconds later, she was back again. ‘Sorry, I’ve just asked Gary to take Oscar up to bed. I’ve been trying to call you and you never pick up, so now I actually have you on the line, bedtime duties can go to Gary.’
Lynsey spluttered a feeble laugh. At least one good thing would come out of this horrible mess – she’d be back living in her dad’s office cabin in his garden and be only a ten-minute walk from Nina, Oscar and Gary.
‘Lynsey?’
‘Yes?’ Lynsey drew her knees up towards her chest and picked at a piece of thread from the hole she made in them when after falling on the ice at Christmas. She didn’t like the sound of Nina’s voice. She had that motherly tone, the one she saved just for Oscar and sometimes for Lynsey. Ever since their mum had passed away when Lynsey had been only eight, Nina, fourteen at the time, had taken on the role of Lynsey’s cheerleader and confidant. She’d heard that tone many times before and it usually involved Nina dragging whatever problem Lynsey was carrying on her shoulders out of her.
‘Tell me. What’s going on?’ Nina inhaled a quick breath before continuing. ‘And before you say nothing, remember that I know you too well to believe a lie. Remember that time I found you in the car park at that pub when you were just fifteen and you told me you hadn’t been drinking?’
Lynsey nodded, a small smile fighting its way through her tears. ‘I remember. You marched me right back in there and demanded the landlord to admit he’d been serving me.’
‘That’s it. If you don’t tell me what’s really going on, then I’ll get to the bottom of it somehow, even if it means me abandoning Gary and Oscar for a few days and driving down to Cornwall myself.’
Winding the thread around her finger, Lynsey shifted position against the cold, hard floorboards. She might as well come clean. She knew Nina wasn’t exaggerating when she said she’d travel down. ‘It’s the cottage I bought.’
‘You don’t like it?’
‘It’s not that. I do. I mean, I know I could, but...’ She sighed. ‘You were right. Everyone was. You, Dad, Gary. It’s a mess and I don’t think I can change that.’
‘Oh, Lyns.’ Nina’s voice grew soft. ‘Surely, it’s not that bad? A little bit of elbow grease and time and I’m sure you’ll have it looking beautiful.’
‘No, I mean it’s a mess as in a mess.’ Gripping the doorhandle behind her, she pulled herself up to standing before switching on the lights. Zac’s advice to get the electrics tested echoed in her mind, not that there was any point now she was selling. She’d take the risk tonight and leave that job to the next owners. With her back still against the door, she took in the abandoned building site in front of her. ‘The previous owners got halfway through a renovation and gave up. They’ve knocked half the plaster from the walls. You can see the upstairs floorboards from the living room as there’s no ceiling, the kitchen... the kitchen is basically non-existent. It’s...’
‘Okay, deep breaths, Lyns. We’ll work this out.’
‘How? I got an estate agent round today, and he’s valued it twenty grand below what I paid for it and then there are the selling fees, the solicitor fees, the...’ A loud sob escaped from her lips. ‘I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid, so na?ve. I should have listened to you all. I should have realised I couldn’t do it on my own. I mean, I can’t do anything, can I? I can never make the right decisions. Just look at me and Ross. I trusted him. I made the decision to change my life to suit him, my job, my home, everything. And look how that turned out. I...’
‘Hey, don’t you dare blame yourself for what happened with Ross. Do you hear me?’ Nina cut through her sentence. ‘Ross is an utter lowlife of a human being. What he did, trying to set you up for a crime he’d committed, it was awful but it wasn’t your fault. He was charming, certainly the most charming person I’ve ever come across and we were all drawn in by his lies. All of us. Dad loved him. Gary too. If you’re going to blame yourself, then we all have too. You did nothing wrong.’
‘I still let it happen. I should have realised he was stealing from the company; I should have seen what he was like.’ She tiptoed across the floor, shifting the bigger blocks of plaster with the toe of her trainer until she had made her way to the staircase leading up from the corner of the room. Sinking down onto the first step, she held her palm over her forehead. ‘And now I’ve got to come home. Live back in the town where everyone either looks at me with suspicion or pity.’
‘No, they don’t.’
‘They really do. And you know it.’ She knew she was right and even though she won’t admit it, she knew Nina had noticed too. After dragging her out to their favourite coffee shop in the centre of town a handful of times after Ross had been charged, Nina had begun to suggest they travel further afield to ‘check out some new places’. Lynsey had known what she’d been doing, her sister had been protecting her, and she was grateful to her.
‘What do you want to do?’
Lynsey shrugged. ‘I don’t have a choice. I have to sell and come home, attempt to find a job in a place where people still believe I knew what Ross was up to and hide away again.’
‘Forget what you feel you have to do. What do you want to do?’ Nina insisted.
Lynsey gave a small, sad smile. ‘I want to stay here. I want to do up this cottage and live in Penworth Bay, where people are already beginning to accept me into their community. I want to have a fresh start where I can be myself again. Relearn who I am without having people point, stare and judge.’
‘Then do it. I’ll speak to Gary, and we can re-mortgage. We’ve not got much as we borrowed against the house for that damn holiday caravan, but it’ll be enough to make the cottage lovable, at least.’
‘I’m not doing that; I’m not having you and Gary risk little Oscar’s home for me. No chance.’ Lynsey ran her fingers through her hair. ‘I’m grateful, but I won’t take money from you, and I mean that.’
‘I can’t persuade you?’
‘You really can’t.’
‘Okay.’ The phone went quiet.
‘Are you still there?’ Please don’t go, Nina. I need you.
‘Sorry, yes. I was just thinking. I can send Gary down to help but you know what he’d like. He wouldn’t know one end of a hammer from the other and then he’d probably break a thumb or two just trying.’
Lynsey let out a short laugh. It was true. Gary had put up a set of shelves in his and Nina’s kitchen. The only problem had been that anything Nina had put on them had kept sliding off onto the floor. ‘I think this job might be a little too big for Gary.’
‘By the sounds of it, I think you might be right. If you gave him any free rein, you wouldn’t have a cottage at all left standing.’ Nina’s voice was serious again. ‘In that case, can you do any of the work yourself? Is there anything you can do and then pay someone to just do the bits you can’t?’
She looked at the wall opposite her, the bare brickwork showing through where patches of the plaster had been knocked off. ‘I think it’s beyond that, if I’m honest.’
‘Sleep on it, Lyns. Don’t make any decisions straight away. Like you say, this is your chance to have your fresh start, so make sure there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop you having to throw that away.’
‘I will.’ Lynsey nodded.
‘Okay, I’ve got to go and rescue Gary from the nightmare of bedtime, but ring me if you want to talk. Anytime. Day or night. And don’t make a final decision until you’ve exhausted all over avenues.’
‘Thanks, night.’ Lynsey lowered her mobile to the threadbare carpet on the step next to her. She was surprised that hadn’t been ripped up already, but maybe the previous owners had been planning to keep it in place until the rest of the works had been done. Pulling her mobile from her ear, she tapped it against the leg of her jeans. Nina had surprised her. She’d been so worried about telling her sister about admitting her mistake in buying this cottage. She’d been worried about letting her down, about admitting everyone but herself had been right.
But Nina hadn’t judged. She hadn’t scolded. She had supported. Her sister wanted her to succeed. Her sister wanted this new life for her just as much as Lynsey wanted it.
But Nina hadn’t judged. She hadn’t scolded. She had supported. Her sister wanted her to succeed. Her sister wanted this new life for her just as much as Lynsey wanted it.
Leaning back, the step behind her digging into the small of her back, she took a deep breath in before standing up. Yes, she couldn’t take Nina’s money – she wouldn’t, but just having Lynsey’s support meant the world to her. It meant she could move back home without feeling quite so much like a disappointment.
She turned and climbed the stairs, a little weary in case the previous owner had done something to them too. But Zac had gone upstairs, hadn’t he? So they must be safe enough. A professional builder wouldn’t have risked climbing them if he’d thought anything was overly wrong with them.
When she reached the landing, the first thing she noticed wasn’t the plaster lying in piles – yes piles, not strewn across the floor as downstairs – but the light of the moon shining through the small window at the front of the landing. She walked past the two open bedroom doors and the bathroom and paused in front of the window. The light was up here and looking outside, she would see views of fields illuminated by the magic of the moonlight.
The landing window looked out onto the back of the cottage, with the main bedroom situated at the front of the cottage and the small boxroom and bathroom on either side of the landing. Leaning her elbows on the dusty windowsill, she smiled her first proper smile since she’d stepped inside. This was what she’d been after. The peace and tranquillity that view offered. Even in the moonlight, she could see the glimmer of ocean beyond the fields standing between her and the seaside. The cottage had been built just outside Penworth Bay, on the opposite side of the village to the bakery, but from here she could see the beam of the lighthouse. It was stunning.
A warm feeling stirred inside her, igniting a determination she hadn’t felt in a very long time, not since years before she’d even met Ross. It ignited a determination she hadn’t felt since she was a teenager, before her passion for life had been sucked out of her by work, failed relationships, and the drudgery of everyday living.
It was in that very moment, with the light from the lighthouse and the glow of the moon highlighting the waves of the ocean, that she decided that she needed to change her luck. She needed to do all she could to be able to stay on in Penworth Bay and if that meant getting the renovations on the cottage done bit by bit, heck, room by room, then that’s what she’d do.
The only choices she had was either to give up and sell her chance of a lifetime or to stay and fight, to try, and that’s what she’d do. It might not work. It might not be feasible, financially or otherwise, but if she gave it her best shot and then was forced to sell up, at least she’d known she had tried. Plus, the more work she got done, the better the state of the cottage was in when she sold, the higher the price tag and the more money she’d be able to pocket to find somewhere else to live. But one thing she was certain of was that she didn’t want to return home. She wanted her fresh start, and she was ready to take it.