Chapter 19
NINETEEN
The pest controller came the next morning. Kate took him down to the fruit cage and left him to it. Just thinking about the rats gave her a horrible, creepy feeling of being invaded.
He came back to the house twenty minutes later. ‘You need to get rid of their food source,’ he told her. ‘Rotting fruit and veg are a rodent’s favourite meal. Once that’s done, I can put out bait boxes. But you’ve still got the problem of where they’re living.’
‘Which is where?’ she asked with a shudder.
‘Your cesspit,’ he said succinctly. ‘At some point, someone likely shoved a crowbar down there and made a few holes in it – they used to do that, in the old days, to make a septic tank behave more like a soakaway. But the rats have got in, and now they’re living in your drains.’
She stared at him, appalled. ‘In the house’s drains? You mean, they could come inside?’
He nodded. ‘Until the infestation’s cleared, you’d best keep all the toilet lids closed.’
‘Ugh,’ she said, horrified. ‘That is gross.’
So Matt went out and bought a huge rat-proof composter, which he and Robert assembled near the fruit cage and filled with wheelbarrow-loads of rotting fruit.
‘We need to reduce the number of fruit trees, too,’ Matt said when he came in. ‘There are way too many.’
Next, a drainage contractor came to take a closer look at the cesspit. His news wasn’t good, either. It would have to be replaced.
‘Septic-tank regulations have all changed now,’ he explained. ‘You’ll need a completely new set-up, with a soakaway and a drainage field to deal with the run-off.’ He gestured at Trade Cottage’s lawns. ‘Basically, we’ll have to dig all that up and install porous pipes under it.’
It was unfortunate in terms of their budget. But she felt slightly better now she knew they were getting on top of it. Rosemary and Paul couldn’t have managed this, she told herself. This is the proof Trade Cottage needed younger, more energetic owners.
She hadn’t seen or spoken to Rosemary since she and Paul made their offer, so she hadn’t told her about the cesspit yet.
But when she, Matt and the contractor were pacing out the lawn, deciding where the new drainage ditches would go, she caught a flash of light in the corner of her eye and saw the telescope in the window of The Old Tennis Court, dipping in their direction.
Days went by, and there was still no reply to her letter.
She waited in a state of nervous agitation – Rosemary had apologised so swiftly about the leylandii, and then again after the upset over the fireplace, that a part of Kate was certain she’d see the Popemobile pulling up to the house any moment, a repentant Rosemary at the door, bearing a card perhaps, or flowers, along with fulsome apologies.
But she didn’t.
Finally, five days after Kate had written to her, she found a thick cream envelope on her mat, bearing Rosemary’s handwriting. She opened it.
Dear Kate,
Like you, I would very much like to stay friends. I also hope you and Matt will reconsider our offer, which we believe is already very generous, if only for the sake of that friendship.
R
P.S. Just a reminder to the children not to walk through the wood on Saturday. The beaters will probably come through TC’s garden about noon, unless you’ve any objection. Would Will and/or Tilly like to join them?
Saturday? What was Saturday? Then she realised. It must be the first day of the shoot.
Of course, it was good that her letter had been at least partially successful, and Rosemary hadn’t completely withdrawn the hem of her garment.
But she couldn’t help feeling disappointed.
The tone of the reply was cordial, but chilly – the very opposite of Kate’s letter to her, and indeed of the intimate, informal emails they’d exchanged earlier that year.
But perhaps this was how it was going to be from now on.
She told the children about the invitation to go beating as they ate tea. Tilly was predictably horrified at the idea of living creatures being blasted out of the sky – rightly, in Kate’s view – but Will instantly said, ‘Yeah, I’ll go.’
Matt came home with a crumb of good news.
The plans for the outbuilding conversions, on which their architect had been working since mid-August, were ready to be submitted.
They debated whether to delay the application because of Rosemary and Paul’s offer – or rather, Kate wondered aloud if it might be a bit tactless, rubbing salt in the wound of ownership as it were, and Matt pointed out that, if anything, it proved how committed they were to being at Trade Cottage for the long term; besides, it wasn’t as if Rosemary and Paul didn’t know what they intended to do.
So they gave Nikolas the go-ahead to upload them, which felt like another milestone, putting their own stamp on the place.
‘We should celebrate,’ Matt said, when the architect emailed confirmation it was done. ‘Do we have any champagne?’
‘No.’ She’d gone off champagne since Paul had tried to push a glass on her along with his unwelcome proposal.
Matt gave her a glance. ‘Not following the house rule, then?’
‘We make the rules here, now,’ she said shortly. ‘I’ll open some beer.’