Chapter Three
By the end of their first week, the house had begun to develop its own chaotic rhythm, anchored by the practical routine of William’s parents. Every morning at eight o'clock, the rattle of his mother’s small hatchback on the gravel became the family’s new alarm clock.
The heavy removal boxes still formed cardboard fortresses in the corners of the dining room, but the kitchen was already functioning, driven by the formidable efficiency of his mother.
“Eat up,” Jean said, sliding a plate of toast in front of Jake, who was currently trying to make two toy tractors race across the freshly wiped pine table. And keep your fingers off the walls. Your dad’s just put the first coat on.”
“Morning, Mum,” William said, kissing her cheek. “Where’s Dad?”
“Out front with Ollie,” she replied, nodding toward the window. “He decided the brambles by the gate were a personal insult to the family name.”
Through the glass, William watched his father, Sam, working with Ollie. Sam was seventy but moved with the steady, unhurried strength of a retired carpenter. He had given Ollie a pair of thick leather gardening gloves that swallowed the boy’s forearms.
Jake finished his toast in three enthusiastic bites, slid off his chair, and bolted for the back door. Moments later, William saw him outside too, happily filling a small plastic bucket with loose stones from the overgrown flowerbeds.
He couldn’t remember the last time Ollie had stayed in one place for more than ten minutes. The boy was hacking at a dead elderberry bush with a pair of loppers, his tongue caught between his teeth in deep concentration.
“Ethan!” William called up the back stairs. “Mia! Tools are out.”
Ethan appeared first, already wearing an old T-shirt of William’s that was splattered with grey paint from their old house. Mia followed more slowly, her hair tied up in a messy bun, looking at the roller tray with mild suspicion.
“You’re on cutting-in duty,” William told her, handing her a two-inch brush. “Go steady around the window frames.”
For the next three hours, the kitchen filled with the clean, sharp smell of fresh emulsion and the steady sound of light bickering.
Ethan rolled the high sections with an aggressive, systematic focus, while Mia worked in silence by the window, her strokes careful and precise.
It was during a break, while waiting for the first coat to dry, that Ethan leaned against the wide bay window and looked out across the dividing hedge.
“Dad,” Ethan said, wiping his brow with the back of his wrist. “Who lives next door?”
William walked over, a mug of tea in hand. The house to the left was similar to theirs but slightly smaller, its stone walls covered in a thick tangle of ivy that had grown completely over the lower window shutters. The gravel drive was choked with weeds, and the iron gates were chained shut.
“Nobody, I think,” William said, squinting through the glass. “The estate agent mentioned it’s been tied up in probate for a couple of years. An old sea captain’s family, or something like that.”
“It looks haunted,” Ollie said, sticking his head into the kitchen from the back door, his face streaked with dirt from the garden. “Me and Grandad found an old greenhouse at the bottom of our garden that looks right into theirs. There’s a swing set over there covered in weeds.”
“It’s not haunted,” Mia said, though she peered over Ethan’s shoulder to look. “It’s just sad.”
Sophie appeared from the hallway, holding a half-unpacked box of her old storybooks. She didn’t look at the empty house. Instead, she looked at the bright, clean square of green paint William had tested on the wall.
“Is my room going to smell like paint too?” she asked.
“Your room was painted before we came so it doesn’t need doing again,” William said, crouching down to her level. “Grandma put the nice lavender bags in your wardrobe yesterday. Does it smell okay in there?”
Sophie adjusted her grip on her box. “It smells like Grandma’s house.”
“Is that a good thing?”
She hesitated, then gave a small, rare nod. “It means it doesn’t smell like a hospital.”
The words were quiet, but they cut right through the hum of the kitchen. Ethan stopped looking at the empty house next door. Mia dropped her paint rag.
William took the box from Sophie’s hands and set it on the table, then pulled her into a brief, firm hug. “No hospitals here, sweetheart,” he murmured into her hair. “Just fresh air and too many stairs.”
As the days blurred into weeks, the sharp edge of the move began to soften into a routine. February swung wildly between hammering rain and thin, surprising bands of sunlight that turned the sea beyond the dunes a pale, cold green.
The house changed by degrees. The dismal brown kitchen vanished beneath three coats of pale green paint.
The cardboard fortresses in the dining room slowly shrank as clothes found drawers, books found shelves, and the familiar, battered furniture from their old life settled into the larger, unfamiliar rooms.
Outside, the passage of time was marked by the steady clearance of the garden. Nearly every afternoon, Sam would reappear with his toolbox and his spade, working alongside the children while Jean kept the kitchen stocked with hot meals and endless pots of tea.
By late February, the wild front garden had been tamed. William stood on the front steps as dusk settled over the sea, the brambles gone and the soil dark and neat beneath the fading light. Jake’s castle of rejected stones sat proudly by the path, undisturbed by anyone.
Sam straightened up from the flowerbed, leaning briefly on his spade before wiping his forehead with a handkerchief.
He nodded toward the boundary line where the wild hedge met the empty property next door and spoke of the land and the neighbours long gone, but William’s gaze drifted back to the house behind him — imposing, pale, and now threaded through with the familiar, messy signs of his children’s lives.
Toys on the porch. Muddy football boots by the door.
Mia’s voice carrying faintly from upstairs.
They were still a family of broken pieces, and the emptiness in his own room hadn’t lifted.
But as February drew to a close, the weight of it all had shifted.
It was becoming something they carried together, day by day, in the quiet, steady rhythm of this new place by the sea.