Chapter 74
SEVENTY-FOUR
Later, when the pesto was made and she had Trade Cottage to herself again, Kate went around opening all the doors, letting the pale sunlight in.
Taking a knife, she went outside and cut daffodils from the garden, and some magnolia blossoms, and a few crimson hellebores from the front of the house, where they’d miraculously survived the cascade of scaffolding.
She’d give a jar of pesto to Sally, she decided as she wandered, and another to Liv, and perhaps one to Jason.
Relations with her neighbours were quietly mending, now she had Rosemary’s seal of approval once more.
Guy Pelham studiously ignored her when their paths crossed in the village, which she was perfectly happy about, but Gordon usually nodded; once, in the shop, he’d even muttered something about the children helping with lambing.
There was still much she didn’t know – she never did discover who those strange horseshoe nails belonged to, for example, or who had dumped the slurry on their drive, and suspected she never would – but that was all right: least said, soonest mended.
Coming inside, she got out vases and placed her little explosions of spring all around the house, brightening up the kitchen, the loo, the front hall. The very last vase she took through to the captain’s study and placed on the desk, next to her laptop.
She was writing, now – or perhaps it was fairer to say, she was preparing to write. She had a document of half-ideas, jottings, notes for characters that might or might not coalesce into something. She had no idea yet what the plot would be, only that it would be set here, in Trade Cottage.
She touched a button and the laptop came to life. Sitting down in front of it, she took a breath, waiting for the house to come and whisper its secrets, and for the secrets to turn into a story; and in some strange way, it felt as if she and the house were one.