Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
They struggled on towards the planning committee meeting.
Unable to do any more painting until the retrospective applications were approved, Kate busied herself with getting builders’ quotes and making sure that, this time, all the paperwork was in order.
If they won, they’d start work straight away.
Steve would come back to finish the bathrooms; the drainage contractor would get machinery in to dig the drainage field; roofers would erect scaffolding and start work on the rotten beams; and a second, larger firm of builders would get cracking on the barns.
Five days before the hearing, she got a call from the broker who’d arranged their mortgage. ‘I’ve just been emailed by the lender,’ he told her. ‘They’ve got a concern you might be operating short-term lets at the property.’
‘We’re not, but we are planning to, one day,’ she said, puzzled. ‘Why?’
‘There’s a clause in the mortgage that says you can’t do that without their permission. And that comes at a price, in the form of a higher interest rate.’
More expensive bureaucracy she hadn’t known about. ‘All right, send me the forms,’ she said resignedly. A thought occurred to her. ‘How did they even know?’
‘Hang on.’ There was a pause while he consulted the email. ‘It says here they were sent a link to the listing.’
‘Well, that’s nonsense. Those outbuildings haven’t even been converted yet, let alone listed online.’
‘Odd. I’ll tell them they’ve got it wrong.’ He rang off.
She sat there for a moment, thinking. Then she opened the browser on her phone and, already nervous of what she might find, typed in ‘Trade Cottage Pelham letting’.
It came up straight away, at the top of the search results, on some booking app she’d never heard of, let alone signed up for. The photographs had been copied from the Rightmove advert. Even more strangely, this non-existent letting already had a dozen reviews.
Then she realised. All were one star.
She read the topmost one: Whatever you do, stay away from this place. The host is arrogant and rude . . .
She scrolled down to the next: The sheets hadn’t been changed. I found a hair in my bed . . .
She knew she should stop, that reading more would only make her feel even worse, but she couldn’t help herself.
Shower was dirty . . . Hot water didn’t work . . . Toilet hadn’t been cleaned . . . Mouse droppings in the closet . . .
She felt sick. Back when she was Airbnb-hosting, her five-star reviews had been her pride and joy. The fact these were fake almost made it worse – things like this could hang around on the internet forever.
She tried to delete the listing, but it required a username and password. She used the Report button instead, and got an automatic response informing her that the site aimed to process complaints within ten working days.
She wondered who on earth had done this. It was surely well beyond the capabilities of Rosemary or Paul. But it wasn’t illiterate, like the poison-pen letter. And that word ‘closet’ was an Americanism.
She recalled Rosemary saying that Jamie’s children had American accents now. Paul couldn’t possibly have got his grandchildren involved in this campaign, could he?
Something else occurred to her. She got up her Instagram account. She’d been posting the occasional picture of life at Trade Cottage – some jars of home-made gooseberry jam, a bowl of blood peaches, the downstairs loo after she’d colour-drenched it in silky cocoa-brown paint.
Beneath the pictures of the loo were fourteen comments. HORRIBLE COLOR, someone had written. HORRIBLE PEOPLE, another had added. Gross and tacky, a third had said, while Looks like someone’s smeared shit on the walls had received seven likes.
She was still working out how to change her account settings when there was a brisk double knock at the front door. It was probably one of the builders she was getting a quote from, she thought – one had said he might pop round. She went to let him in.
On the doorstep was a tall, good-looking man of around fifty, wearing a quilted green jacket. She recognised him from somewhere. Perhaps he’d been at the party. But, of course, that didn’t mean he couldn’t be the builder as well.
‘Stuart?’ she said tentatively.
The tall man shook his head. ‘I’m Jamie. Jamie Finch.’ He looked up at Trade Cottage, then smiled at her. ‘I’m the man whose house you’re living in.’