Chapter 2
TWO
She was still reeling as they went back to the car, intoxicated by the house’s loveliness and the possibility it might become theirs.
Matt shot her a questioning look, but she was too wrapped up in her thoughts to say anything.
It was like when they left a cinema after a really good film, and that interval – the silence before one turned to the other and said, ‘What did you think?’ – was too precious to break.
Besides, she wanted to drink in Trade Cottage’s exterior one more time. It was funny, she thought, turning to look at it again, how regular, even symmetrical it seemed from here, the even spacing of its windows giving no clue to the higgledy-piggledy warren on the inside.
Matt saw her looking, and glanced back too. The smile he gave her told her all she needed to know. But there was still the faff of getting the children into the back of the car and settled before they had a brief moment to themselves.
‘Shall I cancel those other viewings?’ he said in a low voice.
‘No!’ There were still too many things that could go wrong – a higher offer, a bad survey, a mortgage withheld for some reason. ‘We’ve come all this way. And besides, we might need a backup.’
As if to underline her words, another car was already coming up the drive – a smart Range Rover, ninety grand’s worth of metal if it was a penny.
Damon was striding towards it, a welcoming smile on his face.
Estate agents deliberately scheduled viewings so they’d overlap, she knew, to give the impression of a queue of eager buyers all ready to put in offers.
But, to be fair, she and Matt had spent nearly an hour looking round and chatting to Paul and Rosemary about the village – which sounded lovely: there was a community-owned pub that did wood-fired pizzas, a shop, a thriving book club, an active parish council from which Paul had recently retired as chair – and why should Damon be expected to leave long gaps between his viewings on a weekend?
‘I said we’d call him this evening,’ Matt said, following her gaze. ‘He knows we’re interested, but I told him there are a couple of others we might make offers on. Just to keep him on his toes.’
She nodded. Of the two of them, Matt was the one more used to handling negotiations. He’d recently sold his start-up to a giant French gaming company, in a lucrative but incredibly complicated deal that had taken months to broker.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t let us lose it,’ he added quietly.
Tilly and Will asked if they were going to buy it almost as soon as they drove off, of course, and of course they had to say, ‘Well, possibly; nothing’s certain yet.
’ But it meant every other property they looked at was viewed by the children with grudging suspicion: surely their parents weren’t going to be so stupid as to favour this dumb place over Trade Cottage?
Will started groaning every time they turned into a new driveway, and even Tilly became quiet and morose.
Some of the other places did have advantages.
One was within walking distance of a station, for example.
For Matt – required by the terms of his deal to be in the office at least three days a week for the next eighteen months, after which he’d receive another, even larger, lump sum and be free to walk away – that would shave twenty minutes off an arduous commute.
Another had a swimming pool; another, a Smallbone kitchen.
But none of them came remotely close to Trade Cottage’s dilapidated charm, or those incredible views.
Matt’s mind, like hers, was clearly still running on it; all their conversation, as they slogged along the Hampshire roads to look at other properties, was actually about Trade Cottage.
So when she asked, ‘How was the garden? I didn’t get to see most of it,’ he knew immediately she didn’t mean the garden of the house they’d just visited.
He pulled a face. ‘A bit sad, unfortunately.’
She glanced at him, concerned. ‘In what way?’
‘It’s got out of hand. Paul told me a gardener comes one day a week, but he only does grunt stuff, like mowing and clipping. Some of the borders are turning into jungles.’
‘Could it be rescued?’
‘Absolutely. Paul’s done a beautiful job with the design.’
She smiled at him. ‘You liked him, didn’t you?’
Matt slowed down to let someone into the traffic.
‘Yes. I mean, there’s all that jovial hail-fellow-well-met stuff.
But he’s also sharp as a tack. You know he had his own educational-publishing business?
He sold out to a big conglomerate too. I told him about our set-up with the French, and he asked some very astute questions.
I bet he was a really effective chair of that parish council. ’
‘What about the outbuildings? Did you manage to get a look at those?’
Matt nodded. ‘Loads of potential. We’d need permission – it’s a listed building – but Damon said, if we use the right architect, it shouldn’t be a problem to convert a couple. Plenty of other people round there have done something similar.’
‘Would you want one? For an office, I mean?’ She kept her voice neutral; she was dreading him saying he quite fancied the captain’s cabin.
He glanced at her. ‘I thought, maybe, the attic room? If that’s OK by you. The views up there are to die for, and it’s not like we’d be short of bedrooms.’
She smiled at him, relieved. ‘Perfect. And I bagsy the study.’
‘Incidentally,’ he added, ‘I don’t think we should mention the Airbnb thing to Damon just yet.’
‘Why not?’
‘Paul told me one of the viewings was “a bloody developer”. He sounded quite indignant about it. Admittedly, the guy was talking about hiving off most of the garden for two new houses, but I don’t think they like the idea of too much changing.’
‘OK. So now there’s the million-dollar question: how high do we go?’ They’d gone to view Trade Cottage on the understanding it was over their budget, and that, even if they liked it, they’d need to offer under the asking price.
Matt checked on the kids in the mirror. They were both asleep, worn out by the sheer number of viewings.
‘I think we give them the full amount,’ he said quietly. ‘Fuck it. We can’t risk letting it slip through our fingers.’
She felt a surge of amazement. ‘We can do that?’
‘It’ll be tight,’ he admitted. ‘But I can probably leverage some more out of the company. We might have to renovate in stages, though. Maybe do some of the work ourselves.’
‘I’d be up for that. Bringing a house like that back to life – it’d be fun.’ She’d been feeling guilty about giving up her admittedly rather uninspiring part-time job in HR when they moved out of London, and the Airbnb enterprise was going to take ages to set up.
‘Shall I call him now?’ Matt indicated the car’s phone controls. ‘Or do you want to think about it?’
She never made big purchases quickly. Whether it was a holiday, a sofa, or a gadget for the kitchen, she invariably spent days researching the different options, looking at reviews, driving herself half mad trying to work out what the right decision was.
Matt used to joke that she’d needed to make a spreadsheet before she said yes to marrying him.
But, for some reason, this – probably the biggest purchase they’d ever make – seemed like a no-brainer.
She’d fallen for Trade Cottage hook, line and sinker, a coup de foudre quite unlike anything she’d experienced before.
She nodded. ‘Go on, then.’
He tapped at the controls. She felt a sudden pang of nerves as the ringing tone filled the car. Then she heard Damon say cheerily, ‘Hello, there.’
Matt explained that they were offering the full asking price for Trade Cottage. There was a slight pause before the estate agent responded.
‘I was just about to call you, actually. The last viewing has also offered at the asking price. Did it right then and there. The vendors are pleased, naturally, but they specifically asked that I let you know.’
She felt as if she’d fallen off a cliff. Next to her, Matt mouthed a furious, ‘Fuck.’
When they didn’t immediately say anything, Damon added, ‘In the circumstances, I think the best thing is to go to full and final offers. With a cut-off in the middle of next week, in case any more potential buyers come out of the woodwork.’
‘Sealed bids, in other words,’ Matt said resignedly.
‘Exactly. It’s the fairest way, in a situation like this. Everyone submits their maximum, and the vendors make a decision based on that.’
‘These other buyers,’ Kate interjected, ‘have they sold their own house yet?’
‘Yes. Like you, they should be able to move pretty quickly.’
Damn. ‘Have they got a mortgage in place?’
‘An in-principle one, yes, also like yourselves. But they have the benefit of being in a smaller chain, and they’ve already got a solicitor.’
‘We’ll get on to ours first thing Monday,’ Matt said immediately.
‘Great. Well, I’ll obviously let you know if anything changes—’
‘How much would it take,’ Matt said desperately, ‘to take this whole sealed-bid thing off the table? Some kind of pre-empt?’
When Damon spoke again, it was with a touch of froideur, as if Matt was suggesting doing something faintly improper with his filthy lucre.
‘I really don’t think that’s the best way forward, certainly not as far as the sellers’ interests are concerned.
And you should know that the other party just asked me the exact same question. ’
They drove the rest of the way home gutted.
Kate could feel Trade Cottage slipping from her, like a mirage of a life that would now never be lived.
If only those other buyers had come down with food poisoning and cancelled, or had a blowout on the way to the viewing, or been in a crash .
. . She suddenly realised she’d just wished some perfectly innocent people into a traffic accident, and felt bad about that; but, really, what were the chances?
‘We should write a letter,’ she said suddenly.
Matt glanced at her. ‘Who to?’
‘The sellers. Alice and Ted did it. Their house went to sealed bids, and they’d reached their absolute limit, so they added a letter saying how much they loved the place and all the things they could picture themselves doing there, plus how important it was to live close to Ted’s elderly parents. And it worked.’
‘Really?’ Matt was frowning. ‘If I had to choose between a nice letter or another ten grand, I know which I’d take.’
‘Maybe. But what if the difference was less than ten grand? Besides, Paul and Rosemary are sentimental about that house – they want it to go to a family who’ll enjoy it the way theirs did.
And, yes,’ she said, raising her hand to forestall his objection, ‘those other buyers probably have a family too. But I think they really liked us – Paul and Rosemary, I mean. After all, we liked them, and things like that are often mutual, aren’t they?
“The house has found its rightful heirs” – you can’t get plainer than that.
And the fact they straight away asked Damon to tell us – I think they want us to have it. ’
‘So much they’d knock a chunk off their old-age savings?’ Matt said dubiously. ‘I think we just have to bid as much as we can afford.’
‘Yes.’ Kate nodded. ‘As much as we can afford, and then a bit more. But I’ll write a letter, too.’