Chapter Two
The hallway was wider than he remembered from the viewing, the red-tiled floor patterned on the edges in faded blue and cream. Light fell through the coloured glass of the door panels, casting bright geometric shapes over the walls.
“Whoa,” nine-year-old Ollie breathed.
Even Ethan stopped moving.
To the left was the sitting room with its tall windows looking out over the front garden.
To the right, the dining room featured a fireplace almost big enough to stand in.
Ahead, a corridor led towards the back of the house, where a strip of bright light hinted at the kitchen and whatever lay beyond it.
Jake, who was four, pushed past everyone. “Mine,” he announced, claiming the hallway as if that settled something.
William let out a laugh before he could stop himself. “That’s not how houses work.”
“It could be,” Ollie said.
“It isn’t.”
Mia wandered into the sitting room, fingertips brushing the doorframe. Ethan set down his plastic tub and did a slow turn, taking the space in with the practical eye of someone already calculating where furniture would go. At thirteen, nearly fourteen, he was the self-appointed leader.
“Does Grandma know how big it is?” Jake asked, his voice echoing toward the high ceiling.
“She does,” William said. “She and Grandad have been here every day for two weeks getting it ready for us. They’re the ones who made it look like this.”
“Did she do my room?”
“Every single corner. You’ll have to thank her and Grandad when they come over later.”
Jake chewed his lip for a second. “What about Granny and Grandad Vance? Did they see it too?”
The question hung in the air, heavier than the others. William thought of the strained phone call with Eliza’s parents the night before—the way her mother’s voice had cracked when he mentioned the sea. They were five hours away now, left behind in the city where every street corner was a memory.
“Not yet, Jake,” William said softly. “But we’ll send them lots of photos tonight, yeah? And they’re coming to stay as soon as we’re settled.”
Six-year-old Sophie had not moved far from the front door. She was staring up the staircase, where the banister curved out of sight, gleaming from the fresh beeswax his mother had clearly spent hours polishing.
“What if I don’t like my room?” she asked.
The room went still in that small, sudden way families do when the real question appears wearing different clothes.
William crouched until he was closer to her height. “Then we sort it.”
“What if I hate it here?”
He could feel Ethan listening. Mia too. William chose his words carefully, because he knew how much rested on ordinary answers these days.
“Then you tell me,” he said, “and we sort that as well.”
Sophie’s face tightened. “Can we go back if it’s awful?”
A pulse of pain moved through him. Back. To the old house with the pencil marks on the kitchen wall where Eliza had measured the children every birthday. To the life that no longer existed.
He kept his voice steady. “Let’s give this a chance first, yeah?”
She looked at him for another second, then nodded once. It was not agreement; it was acceptance.
“Right,” William said, straightening up. “Room inspection. Bags can wait five minutes.”
That restarted everyone at once. Ollie took the stairs two at a time, his palm sliding fast over the smooth, polished wood of the banister, until Ethan grabbed the back of his hoodie.
“No one’s choosing rooms till Dad says.”
“You’re not the police.”
“No, but I’m bigger than you.”
“That’s not a legal system.”
“It is in this house,” Ethan said.
William let the bickering wash over him. They reached the first-floor landing, where the walls were a pale lilac and the scent of fresh gloss paint on the skirting boards was thick in the air.
This floor held four bedrooms and a bathroom with a claw-footed tub that immediately won eleven-year-old Mia over. The front bedroom, with a glimpse of grey-blue water between the sand dunes, became Ethan’s. He tried to refuse it, but William saw the way his eyes had gone straight to the view.
“Take it,” he said quietly.
Mia chose the room next door, smaller but bright, with a deep window seat. Sophie hovered until William showed her a room at the back overlooking the garden.
“This one’s nice,” he said, pointing to the lawn below.
She stepped inside and dropped her rucksack. It was enough.
William’s room was next, complete with an en suite bathroom.
It was the largest in the house, the ceilings high and the windows wide.
Through the glass, he could see the sea, silver and restless.
The double bed and wardrobes stood just as his parents had arranged them, but there was still so much space—space where Eliza wasn’t. And where Rosie would never grow up.
“Let’s go upstairs,” William called, leading Ollie and Jake toward the final flight of stairs.
On the second floor—the attic level—the air was warmer. Jake claimed the little bedroom tucked beside another bathroom. It had enough floor space for his toy cars and a low view of the back garden.
Ollie, outraged for roughly ten seconds, claimed the larger attic room at the front and declared himself king.
“It leaks,” Ethan said, pointing to a faint water stain near the chimney breast that their grandad had not quite managed to hide.
“Every kingdom has flaws,” Ollie replied grandly.
William went back down to his room, stood in the middle with his hands on his hips, and felt the emptiness press at him. In the old house, their bedroom had become a place he entered only when he couldn’t avoid it. Here, there were no memories yet—and somehow, that hurt just as much.
He let out a long, slow breath, his eyes tracing the line where the wall met the ceiling. You’re here, he thought—not a formal prayer, just a stubborn anchoring of his mind. You must be here, because this kind of empty is more than I can carry.
He turned away before the silence could swallow him, his boots heavy on the new carpet as he headed back toward the noise of the children.