Chapter 25
TWENTY-FIVE
She went to say goodbye to the builders.
Since Annie hadn’t actually seen how much they’d done, Steve had offered to spend a couple of hours making everything functional before they left.
So at least Tilly and Will had a working shower, loo and sink, even if the pipework was exposed and the walls were a mixture of broken tiles and chipped plaster.
‘By the way,’ Steve said, ‘we found this under the bath.’
He handed her a cardboard box stuffed with papers. ‘It was behind the inspection hatch,’ he added, ‘so it looks like someone put it there deliberately. Maybe the previous owners?’
She knew immediately what it was, even before she saw the old title deeds and other dog-eared documents on top.
She pulled a page out at random. Pelham then trained at Dartmouth before joining HMS Curlew as a midshipman .
. . Yes – Rosemary’s famous notes. Her handwriting hadn’t always been as spidery as it was now: here, it was clear and beautiful, an elegant sloping italic from an era when schoolgirls were taught such things.
‘If they put it there for safekeeping, it might be important,’ the builder added. ‘You should probably let them know.’
‘Yes,’ Kate said, ‘I should.’ She gave him a smile. ‘Leave it with me.’
It was very quiet without Steve and his men there. She took the box to the study and sat in the captain’s chair, under the gaze of the man himself, to look through it.
She quickly realised that Rosemary hadn’t been wrong when she’d described the manuscript as being mostly notes.
There were a couple of finished chapters describing the captain’s early life, and one about the history of the house before his arrival, but everything else was just a jumble of scribblings, maps, newspaper cuttings and some completely unrelated material – recipes, lists of dinner-party guests and what dishes they’d been served, even Jamie and Tessa’s old school reports and photographs.
Everything that had seemed too important to throw away from a lifetime at Trade Cottage.
She should give it back, she knew. It might even thaw some of this terrible frost between them. But she wasn’t feeling very generous towards Rosemary at the moment. And besides, another thought had crept unbidden into her brain, beguiling her with its wickedness.
What if she wrote the history of Trade Cottage herself, using Rosemary’s material? What if this was the spur she’d needed to kickstart her writing? It would serve Rosemary right for everything she and Paul were putting them through.
She was still considering that when there was a loud knocking at the front door.
She jumped – she hadn’t heard a car. Going to the oriel window, she saw a battered old Land Rover, similar to the one Rosemary and Paul used to have.
On the doorstep she glimpsed a waxed jacket and a mop of sandy-coloured hair, and recognised Guy Pelham.
‘Hello again,’ he said when she opened the door. ‘Got a minute?’
She led him into the kitchen. He glanced around thoughtfully, but only said, ‘I wanted a word about this Rosemary-and-Paul situation.’
‘Sure.’ She assumed he was going to say they must have taken leave of their senses.
Instead, he said, ‘My understanding is, they’ve made you a pretty decent offer. I just wondered what your thinking was about that.’
‘We’re not selling,’ she said flatly.
‘Ah.’ He stroked his chin. ‘You see, my worry is, if Jamie doesn’t get this place back, they might all decamp somewhere else entirely.’
She refrained from saying, Hooray. ‘What would be so bad about that?’
He looked surprised she’d even asked. ‘We might lose them from the village completely. And – well, it may be hard for you to grasp, not having lived here all that long, but they’re the absolute mainstay of this community.
Paul’s given me some very useful pointers about the business side of Pelham Park, for example.
And Rosemary is . . . well, Rosemary. It would be devastating for us if they went. ’
Annoyed, she shrugged. ‘You’ll just have to persuade them not to.’
‘Paul wants to spend some time with his son and grandchildren before he dies,’ Guy said quietly. ‘That’s not so unreasonable.’
‘It was his choice to put this place on the market!’ she snapped.
Then, softening her tone – she didn’t want it getting about that she was a heartless cow, on top of everything else – she said, ‘Obviously, I’m desperately sorry about his condition.
But Rosemary told me he was diagnosed two years ago.
Jamie knew the timescale, presumably – if he’d wanted to move his family back sooner, he could have done. ’
Guy Pelham said flatly, ‘So, basically, nothing I say will persuade you.’
She shook her head firmly. ‘And no amount of money. My children love it here and they’re my number-one priority.’
He nodded. ‘Right, then. I’ll see myself out.’
And, later, going over the encounter in her head, she realised there was something in his tone as he said those last words that hadn’t been the least bit pleasant.