Chapter 32
THIRTY-TWO
The respite didn’t last long. On Wednesday, Matt got a call from the solicitor who’d handled the purchase of Trade Cottage. He was up in the attic room, working from home, but he came down with his phone on speaker so she could hear.
‘This is unbelievable,’ he told her. ‘Anwar, say that again.’
‘I’ve had an email from your vendors’ solicitor,’ Anwar said. ‘They’re claiming you’ve impeded an easement benefiting their property.’
‘What does that mean in English?’ she asked.
‘An easement is a right of way. When they sold themselves the tennis court, they put a covenant on Trade Cottage giving the owners of their new property access to its garden and orchard, specifically to gather fruit from the latter. The sale was done back-to-back with the sale of Trade Cottage – literally, the same week – which was why it didn’t show up in my searches. ’
‘But what does this actually mean?’ she asked again.
‘In theory, they can force you to keep the right of way open.’
‘What?’ she said, outraged. ‘And just come into our garden whenever they like?’
‘We must be able to fight that,’ Matt said immediately. ‘The fact it was done so sneakily, without telling you – that must be some kind of misrepresentation, surely.’
‘Well, possibly,’ the solicitor said. ‘But, in the meantime, they could get a court to grant them an injunction. And you need to think very carefully before getting into a legal dispute with a neighbour – you’re obliged to declare it when you come to sell, and that could knock a substantial chunk off the value of your house. ’
‘In other words, this is a trap,’ Matt said heavily. ‘They want us to sue them.’
‘It looks that way,’ Anwar agreed. ‘It might be wiser to unseal that door again, at least for the time being. In the meantime, document their use of it, along with any other nuisance activity. In neighbour disputes, the party with the most evidence usually wins, regardless of the actual rights or wrongs.’
At lunchtime, Matt went and took out the nails he’d hammered into the gate. Then he came back and got a saw from his toolbox.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘I’m going to cut down most of those fruit trees,’ he said grimly. ‘It’ll serve them right, and who needs a whole tree of cooking apples, anyway?’
But it was a bigger job than he’d anticipated – after a couple of hours, he’d only managed to fell a single tree.
‘I need a chainsaw,’ he said, coming back inside and throwing down the saw. ‘This thing’s blunt.’
He went online and ordered an electric chainsaw. He wasn’t going to run amok with it, he promised her, just take out the trees that were surplus to requirements.
Together, they went down to the orchard and chose which ones to get rid of, tying tags around the ones they didn’t want. As they fastened the last one, Kate glanced up and saw the telescope in The Old Tennis Court’s window dip towards them.
The next morning, there was a knock on the door. When she opened it, a young man with a shock of curly black hair nodded politely at her. ‘Hi. I’m Tom Nichols, the council’s tree officer. We’ve had a report you might be doing some arboreal work?’
‘We’re cutting down some old fruit trees,’ she said. Already, there was a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.
‘Mind if I take a look?’
She showed him the trees they’d marked. Once again, she was very conscious of the telescope over their heads.
‘As you can see, there are way too many for one family,’ she told him. ‘And we’ve had a problem with rats.’
‘OK,’ he said slowly. ‘But this is a conservation area. You have to give at least six weeks’ notice before you carry out work on a tree, in case there are objections.’
‘What – even pruning?’ she said, startled.
He nodded. ‘And the tree surgeon would be expected to submit details of what pruning they were going to do and when. Fruit trees like these are best cut back in spring, for example, when they’re dormant.’
She gestured furiously at the woods. ‘The farmer’s been felling trees down there all last week. You’re not telling me he got permission.’
‘There are different rules for farmers.’ Tom Nichols looked up at the hedge separating Trade Cottage’s garden from The Old Tennis Court. ‘For leylandii too, come to that. If your neighbours complain, we’d have to issue an enforcement notice requiring you to trim the rest of that hedge.’
‘This is crazy!’ she said, appalled. ‘What happened to “an Englishman’s home is his castle”?’
‘I don’t think there’s a castle in England that isn’t a grade-I listed building these days, and probably a scheduled monument as well,’ Tom Nichols said mildly.
He eyed the fruit trees. ‘You can download the tree-works form online. It’s pretty straightforward.
Although, in the case of these particular trees, there’s been an application for a Tree Preservation Order, so we’ll have to consider that, as well. ’