Chapter 12
Tilly thought nothing more about the man.
Well, maybe a little bit. Mostly, she couldn't have cared less about him, his dog or his opinions. She did quite like the eyes, though, and the shoulders under the jacket hadn’t looked too bad.
What did she care, though? After her previous forays into men, to be quite frank, she couldn’t care less about never seeing any of the species ever again.
There were many reasons she'd come to that conclusion, but on top of coercive control and being cheated on, there was also the fact that she really, really, really could not be faffed to go through it all again. She simply did not have the energy to think about men. Plus, the man with the doggy had been rude, gruff and absolutely gorgeous, but whatever, she didn’t care.
The other thing was the fact that the whole point of the boat shed had been for her to get away from everyone and everything.
She’d planned to revel in its remoteness, live in it independently and carry on as she damn well liked.
It had called to her inner introvert, and she’d intended to roll with it.
No neighbours, no relationships, nothing.
She would be solitary, on her own, and so very much in charge.
Therefore, with that above in mind, she'd not dwelled on the grumpy man. Instead, she’d decided to stay in the shed for a bit, give it a chance and therefore had made lists of lists and got on with the job in hand.
After more black tea and adding a Google doc to her lists, she flipped between raring to get her teeth stuck in, absolute total utter regret and concern that she didn’t really know where to start and what to do for the best. All she could fathom was that the shed was so full of years of clutter and junk that she couldn’t see the wood for the trees.
Where Margery was concerned, Tilly was not a happy bunny, husband in hospital or not.
Bottom line, she was very peeved that Margery had omitted to mention the sheer mess of the boat shed.
As she sat and pondered the whole conundrum, she tapped her phone, navigated to the original Facebook post and enlarged the picture.
It was now clear that the photo had been taken a long time previously.
Pretty much nothing about the image and what she’d found matched up.
The reality was nowhere near as rose-tinted.
The place was desperately in need of a deep clean and a paint job, the main door to the actual boat area itself was dodgy, the flat needed so much doing to it to get it even remotely liveable, and just overall, it was grubby, unloved and quite frankly not very cosy.
Tilly, in the brief twenty-four hours or so she'd had before reality had hit whilst she'd been on the inside of a metal box high above the clouds, had harboured romanticised ideas of her new abode.
In winter, she'd be oh-so cosy beside a roaring fire, smoke would wisp up into the sky, boats would gently bob around her, mist would roll in off the sea.
In summer, herbs would rustle in an ocean breeze, a white linen dress would be worn by all and jugs of homemade lemonade would be at the fore.
Spring came in her rose-tinted daydreams, complete with pots rammed with tulips and floral scents in the air.
Oh, and the delights of autumn with cosy socks, Aran jumpers and conkers doing their thing.
Keep dreaming, Tils. Reality bit back with dodgy pipes, slimy mossy steps, holes in gutters, filthy windows, central heating with a mind of its own and a grumpy but very handsome neighbour who thought she was a trespasser.
Undeterred, on the first day of her new life, Tilly ploughed on.
By way of the old tram that ran up and down the main street of Darling and the joys of online shopping, she'd thrown budget to the wind, set to with her lists and supplies had been brought in.
With jet lag as her friend and tears in her eyes, she'd moved her efforts from the bedroom down the stairs and had gone like the clappers to at least make things liveable.
On first arrival and swirling around in the bitterness of the reality of the building itself, she'd barely registered things about the living area of the place. She’d not taken in much beyond an old sofa, a collection of lamps, a coffee table groaning in clutter, dirty windows and the fact that there were piles of vintage blankets in all sorts of places.
Standing, taking it all in as a little patch of sunlight dropped a square of shadow pattern on the floor, she squinted and tried to see the wood for the trees.
The biggest problem, it seemed, was not the actual bones of the place nor the condition.
The main thing was the complete and utter chaotic amount of clutter.
The sitting room itself a horrid creamy nicotine colour, but it was panelled and showed potential. The stuff in it, not so much.
On every shelf, every ledge and every available inch of the mantelpiece above the small fireplace, things had accumulated.
Remnants of an old business, jugs, old tins, books stacked sideways, a collection of blue and white pottery going along a top shelf.
Framed things on the walls, huge glass jars full of old coins, piles of newspapers, a print of Darling, watercolours of the harbour, what looked like an old game board mounted and hung as if it were art.
Brass candlesticks on a mantel alongside lines of figurines, a little stack of dried flowers tied with string that had seen better days.
What Tilly hadn't been able to get her head around was how much stuff someone had somehow wedged into what was essentially a fairly compact space.
In the middle of the room, an old sofa looked as if it had been sat on many, many times.
Cushions on it in every pattern, the kind of sofa that had been sat on and added to and added to again for thirty years.
She'd slept on it under a blanket she'd found folded over the back, and had, genuinely, had a rather good night's sleep.
The coffee table in front of the sofa groaned under the weight of all sorts: stacks of wavy-edged magazines, ceramic coasters with pictures of a lighthouse, remote controls for long-gone televisions, bunches of keys that didn't seem to belong to anything.
Empty mugs, jars of hand cream, scissors by the half-dozen, and a sewing machine precariously balanced on the far end.
Tilly had decided not to be daunted and had stood analysing the room with a notebook in her hand just as her dad had always done when faced with the premises of a failing business.
As she’d assessed until little ideas had popped into her brain, she realised slowly that mostly it was a matter of effort, graft and time.
Most of the junk could be donated to charity, the sofa would stay, and the coffee table had bones.
Starting with the clutter and abundance of knick-knacks, Tilly had found old boxes in the boat room and had sorted nearly everything into the boxes, save a few lovely old vintage vases, some oversized jugs and pretty dishes.
Once she'd slid the boxes along the floor and shoved them back beside the boat, she'd vacuumed for a long time, attacking every single little orifice and corner she could see.
The sofa's cushions were removed, windows opened, and the old Hoover had performed like a dream.
A cream sofa throw and cushion covers went through the wash and the tumble dryer, and after a while, the sitting room looked on the up.
Having made short work of the coffee table's collection of detritus, the sewing machine had found a new home in the cupboard under the stairs and a white linen runner with delicate pale grey roses Tilly had found in a kitchen drawer had found itself a new home.
Just as she was taking a huge black sack outside, heading for the wheelie bins, a text arrived from Margery.
Tutting, Tilly rolled her eyes. To be frank, where Margery was concerned, Tilly felt as if she'd had wool pulled over her eyes.
Margery: Forgot to say about Darling storms, love. You'll need to make sure to batten down the hatches. Should be okay. It's been standing since we left! Oh, and the café to go to is Darlings. M x
As she shoved the black bin liner into the bin, Tilly tutted and wondered what else Margery had forgotten to tell her.
The grumpy man had also warned her about the storm, and someone in the little corner shop had mentioned a big one was on the way.
Nodding to herself, Tilly grimaced. Perhaps she'd better take heed of what was to come. How bad could it be, though? Were they not all being somewhat dramatic? Try being in a tropical monsoon. In fact, a bit of thunder, rain and wind were the last of her worries. She’d be fine, storm or not, because she didn’t have much choice in the matter. She could but wait and see.