Eight Weeks
Ruth’s spare bed had an opinion about movement.
Every time I turned over, it announced it to the house. At five in the morning I gave up, lay on my back and listened to a pigeon throwing itself at the gutter.
There were tulips on the dressing table, tulips on the windowsill and three short ones in a mug beside my water. Ruth had found enough vessels for everything in the bucket. She had also fed me two pieces of toast, taken my phone off me when I began reading Richard’s messages and put a clean towel on the bed without asking what he had said.
I had told her anyway. Most of it. By midnight, she knew about the baby.
Now her cat sat outside the door making a sound like someone trying to start an elderly car.
“Come in, then.”
He couldn’t. I had shut the door.
I laughed once, unexpectedly, and then cried so hard I couldn’t reach the handle.
By seven we were at her kitchen table. The cat, having gained admission, had immediately lost interest in me. Ruth pushed a cup across the table and opened her laptop.
“Start with today.”
I pulled the business diary out of my bag.
“The Baxter funeral. Three collections. Nina’s consultation at eleven. I have to order for the weekend.”
“I meant what you need.”
“I need the Baxter funeral to happen.”
Ruth looked at me, then moved the laptop so we could both see it.
“Right. The funeral first.”
We worked through the diary. Her glasses slipped down her nose, and she pushed them back with the side of her hand because she was eating toast. I had known her since I was fourteen. I knew her preferred knife, her dislike of lilies in confined spaces, the way she could coax a broken stem into an arrangement with wire and a muttered insult.
I had never slept in her house before.
At half past eight we drove to the estate in her small car, my bag wedged between trays of empty jam jars she had promised Nina. I had expected to feel sick when the gates came into view. Instead, I was preoccupied with an approaching delivery lorry. If it parked across the narrow drive, Ruth couldn’t get through.
I jumped out to guide it back.
The driver waved. “Morning, Elena. Lovely day for it.”
“For reversing?”
“For anything.”
He was so cheerful that I wanted to climb into his cab and leave with him.
Inside the conservatory, Nina stood at the workbench with a roll of green ribbon between her teeth. Her dark hair was tied up with a pencil. She took the ribbon out when she saw me.
“Ruth said—”
“I know.”
“I didn’t know what to say.”
“That makes two of us.”
She came round the bench and hugged me. She smelled of coffee and eucalyptus. I held on for longer than she expected.
Then she stepped back and said, “The funeral pieces are ready. Except the card. I wasn’t sure about the spelling.”
Work, thank God, contained questions with answers.
We checked the card against the order, loaded the van and sent the flowers away. The door closed behind the driver. I stood in the suddenly spacious workroom and looked up.
Morning light caught the ribs of the roof. There were cobwebs in the high corners, a brown stain beneath the faulty gutter and a line of condensation on the panes nearest the boiler. Mum had called this place the palace when we first moved her business here. She had stood precisely where Nina now kept a plastic crate of cable ties, turned in a circle and laughed at the waste of so much lovely light on someone else’s potted palms.
I put the photographs of the clearance drawings on the bench.
“I found these last night.”
Ruth bent over my phone. Nina stayed very still.
“Does he think we disappear when you do?” Ruth asked.
“Apparently we become a terrace.”
“There won’t be any shade.” Nina enlarged the drawing. “That tree’s ornamental. They’ll roast.”
I stared at her.
“Sorry. That’s not the main problem.”
“It may become his.”
Ruth looked at the bookings pinned above the desk.
“What have we got in May?”
We took them down. Deposits, deliveries, installations; jobs that needed the van, jobs that needed all three of us, jobs I had agreed to price and had not yet priced. Nina made piles on the floor because the bench was wet.
“If we had to move next week,” I said, “could we work out of a garage?”
“Whose?” Ruth asked.
“Anybody’s.”
“With cold storage? A drain? Somewhere to unload at six in the morning without starting a feud?”
I crouched beside Nina. There were too many cards in the May pile.
“We can cancel things.”
“Which things?” Nina asked.
She was looking at a wedding order. A bride had drawn little daisies in the margin during the consultation. Her mother had kept trying to add roses, and the bride had kept drawing daisies, fiercely, as if they might eventually outnumber her.
“Not that one.”
“Then we need somewhere to do it.”
I phoned the solicitor who had handled Mum’s business papers. Her assistant found me an appointment that afternoon with a colleague, Harriet Cole. I asked if I should bring anything.
“Anything that explains what you own and what you’ve agreed.”
“Those might be quite different things.”
“Bring both.”
While I waited, I called the bride with the daisies.
My mouth had gone dry before she answered. I could arrange two hundred table flowers without fear. Telling a woman that the location printed on her paperwork might change made me feel like a fraud.
“Nothing’s happened to your date,” I said too quickly.
“Oh. Good?”
I slowed down. Explained that we were looking at new premises, that her flowers and delivery arrangements remained booked, and that I wanted her to hear from me before any change of address.
“Will you still do them?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“You personally?”
I glanced through the glass partition. Nina was cutting another length of ribbon against a ruler, her forehead creased in concentration.
“Our team will. I’ll still be your contact.”
“Then that’s fine.” She hesitated. “My mum might ring you.”
“About roses?”
“Probably.”
“I’ll make a note.”
She laughed. When we hung up, I had to sit down.
At Harriet Cole’s office, I laid out so many documents that she moved her water glass to a windowsill.
She read without supplying sympathetic noises at every page. I liked her for that. I liked her less when she stopped me describing exactly what Richard had said and asked whose name appeared on the business account.
“Mine. The business’s. It’s separate.”
“And the invoices for the equipment?”
I found them.
The afternoon became piles of paper. Some things belonged clearly in one pile. Others did not. There were arrangements we had never written down because Richard was my husband, and Mum had been alive, and nobody at a family dinner wanted to ask what happened if it all went wrong.
Harriet circled a paragraph with a pencil.
“I can help you secure a temporary arrangement while we look at the rest. I cannot promise, from these papers, that you can take the building away.”
“I haven’t asked anyone to promise that.”
She looked at me over the papers.
“No,” I said. “All right. I wanted you to.”
She asked what I needed for the next eight weeks.
We made a list shorter than I expected. Access for staff and deliveries. No clearance work in our working area during that period. A record of what was there. Somewhere for me to sleep that did not involve crossing Richard’s landing.
“There’s an annex beyond the kitchen garden,” I said. “It’s separate. It has its own little gate.”
“Can you work from there?”
“No. It’s barely large enough for a person.”
“Can you live there temporarily?”
I thought of Ruth’s spare bed. The tulips occupying every surface. The cat waiting for an invitation.
“Yes.”
“Then we can propose it. Temporary terms, not a final settlement. And no informal promise to provide services in exchange.”
I gave her the first real smile I’d managed all day.
“That part won’t be difficult.”
It was more difficult than I’d thought.
Richard didn’t object to the annex. He objected to putting the rest in writing.
He called while I sat in Ruth’s car outside her house, too tired to unfasten my seat belt.
“Was all this really necessary?”
“Yes.”
“We could have agreed it between ourselves.”
“Then agree to it.”
“Your solicitor has made it sound as if I’m going to send men round with hammers.”
I could still see the neat red line through the western link.
“I’m not discussing the wording on the phone. Send your comments to Harriet.”
“It will cost a fortune if we communicate through lawyers about every little thing.”
“Then don’t make this take longer.”
He went quiet. Across Ruth’s windscreen, a child rode past on a scooter, one foot doing all the work, the other held out behind like a flag.
“I didn’t want it to be like this,” Richard said.
I almost asked him how he had wanted it. I could have kept him on the phone until we were both old, asking variations of that question.
Instead I said, “Neither did I,” and ended the call.
The next afternoon, Harriet sent the temporary terms. Richard had agreed to the access provisions after a change about notice for non-urgent visits. The departure date was thirty-first May. No construction work in the conservatory before then; staff and deliveries to continue using the yard. The annex was mine to occupy for the intervening period. The arrangement left the disputed permanent matters open.
I read it twice and phoned Harriet about the line I didn’t understand. Only after she explained it did I sign.
Then I took my bag to the annex.
It had once housed a gardener who apparently never sat down. There was space for a bed, a kitchenette and a small table with two chairs, provided nobody needed to open the cupboard at the same time. A climbing rose had pushed a thin branch through the bathroom window frame.
Ruth looked around from the doorway.
“Cosy.”
“Don’t.”
“At least the bed’s quieter.”
I pressed a hand down on the mattress. It squealed.
We looked at each other, and then Ruth laughed so hard she had to put my bag down.
I laughed too. I couldn’t help it. The noise filled the little room, went out through the ill-fitting window, and for a moment there was enough space.
She helped me carry over two boxes of clothes from the house. Richard stayed in his study. I didn’t see Iris. We passed the closed nursery door, and Ruth glanced at me but didn’t slow down.
When she left, I put the cardigan on the shelf above the bed. There was no drawer deep enough to keep it away from my shoes.
At six I ate a sandwich standing by the sink, because I had covered the table with estimates for commercial storage. At seven I called a number Harriet’s office had given me for a building survey. They didn’t handle historic dismantling but suggested someone who did.
By the third call, I had stopped apologising before explaining the job.
The man who answered the last number sounded as if he was outside.
“Adam Reeves.”
“I’ve been given your name about a conservatory.”
There was a clatter, then a pause. “One moment.”
I heard him say, away from the phone, “Put it down. No, the other end first.”
Another clatter.
“Sorry. What sort of conservatory?”
I described the roof, the ironwork, the length. He asked when it had last been surveyed. I told him I didn’t know.
“And what are you hoping to do with it?”
“Move it.”
“All of it?”
“Yes.”
He didn’t immediately tell me I was mad. I found that encouraging.
“Send me photographs. Outside as well as inside. Especially the base of the uprights. I can come and have an initial look tomorrow morning.”
“What would that cost?”
He gave me a price for the visit and short written assessment, then explained what it would not cover. Dismantling plans or a detailed salvage schedule would be separate work. I wrote the figures on the back of a storage leaflet.
“I need to know whether there’s anything worth saving before I pay for the bigger survey,” I said.
“That’s what the first visit is for.”
I gave him the estate address.
“Hart’s place?”
My fingers tightened on the pen. “You know it?”
“I’ve driven past. Your conservatory’s visible from the lane in winter.”
“Do you know Richard?”
“We’ve met at a local meeting. Is he commissioning the work?”
“No. I am.”
“I’ll address the estimate to you, then.”
I told him the trading name and email address. His written terms arrived that evening. I paid the initial visit fee from the business account, sent the photographs and spent half an hour worrying about whether I had photographed the right things.
The next morning I unlocked the yard gate at half past eight.
There was no Richard. No suitcase. No bowl of hyacinths. There was a delivery note I needed to check, a damp patch beneath the north gutter and a man getting out of a grey estate car with a tape measure clipped to his belt.
He was taller than I’d expected. Dark hair, a little unruly in the wind, a navy jacket that looked as though it had actually been used outside. He closed the car door with his hip while opening a notebook.
“Elena Hart?”
“Yes.”
He offered his hand. His was warm and there was a small rough place beneath his thumb.
“Adam Reeves.”
His eyes went past me to the conservatory. He stayed quiet for a moment, taking in the roofline. Then he looked back at me.
“Show me what you want to keep.”
I opened the gate wider.
“You’ll need a larger notebook.”
Under Glass
Adam followed me into the conservatory and immediately stopped looking at me.
I ought to have preferred that. I’d paid for his attention to the building. Nevertheless, when he walked straight past the nicest arrangement on the bench to crouch beside a patch of flaking paint, I felt a small, unreasonable disappointment.
“How long have you worked here?” he asked.
“Eight years. The business was my mother’s before that.”
He touched nothing. He took a photograph, moved sideways and took another.
“Do you have older photographs of this corner?”
“Probably.”
“Anything from before the last painting.”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s paint. I’d like to know what it’s covering.”
I looked at the fat white ridge around the base of the upright. I had painted that corner myself, kneeling on an old towel while Richard held the tin. He’d got paint on his trousers and blamed me for laughing.
“I can find them.”
Adam made a note.
Nina appeared from behind the tall foliage buckets with a pair of secateurs in one hand.
“Are we in your way?”
“Not yet,” he said. “I may need access to that end later.”
“We can move the bench.”
“No,” I said. “It weighs a ton.”
Nina looked at me. “We moved it last month.”
“Four of us moved it last month.”
“I wasn’t suggesting I balance it on my head.”
Adam bent over his notebook. I couldn’t see whether he was smiling.
“We can work around it,” he said.
I showed him the three bays, the high opening lights and the double doors at the yard end. He measured the doors twice.
“Will you have to make them bigger?” I asked.
“To get what through?”
“The pieces.”
He turned towards me.
“How are you imagining this happening?”
I had imagined a lorry. Several lorries. Men carrying numbered pieces, laying them on blankets and making the same shape again somewhere else. I’d imagined something expensive and possible. I had tried very hard not to imagine anything else.
“You take it apart,” I said. “Carefully.”
“Some of it may not come apart carefully.”
“That’s what you’re here to find out.”
“Yes.”
“Then perhaps find out before telling me it won’t.”
He put the tape measure down.
There was a wet snip from Nina’s secateurs at the other end of the room. I could feel her listening.
“I haven’t said it won’t,” Adam said. “I asked what you expected. If you’re expecting three intact bays on the back of a lorry, we should talk about that now.”
I looked through the glass towards the annex. From here I could just see its chimney beyond the hedge.
“I’m expecting not to lose the whole thing.”
He was quiet for a moment. Then he picked up the tape.
“Let’s start with this end.”
He didn’t make the examination less unpleasant by being gentle about it. He showed me a joint that had opened, a section of timber soft enough that his probe sank farther than I liked, a long narrow crack beside a repaired pane. He explained what he could see and what would need another specialist’s opinion. When I asked whether he was saying the roof might fall on us, he said he was saying he wanted a closer look at one particular bay before anyone used the old ladder beneath it.
I went cold.
“We use that for the vents.”
“Don’t use it there for now.”
He moved the ladder out of reach, asked Nina to keep the area clear while he checked it, and phoned a colleague about coming to inspect the connection properly. No one announced a catastrophe. No one gave me a reassuring guarantee either.
I fetched the old maintenance file and put it on the dry end of the bench.
“The roof was repaired before we moved in.”
“Do you know who did it?”
“It should be in there.”
He found the invoice. I watched him read it and wished I could read his face as easily.
“Useful,” he said.
“You could sound more enthusiastic.”
“An invoice with a name and date. I’ll try not to get carried away.”
I almost smiled.
He saw it. That was worse.