By the next afternoon, the written acceptance and deposit were in. I printed the confirmation and pinned it above the desk. There was nothing beautiful about it. I enjoyed looking at it more than the roses I’d arranged that morning.
Ruth waited until Nina had gone to buy supplies before asking if we could talk.
I was sitting on the floor, sorting hire containers into things we actually used and things I had kept because somebody might one day want a wedding that looked like a brass band had exploded.
“Of course.”
She didn’t sit. That worried me.
“I’ve been offered a job at Merefield.”
I put a trumpet vase down.
“The garden centre?”
“Their floral studio. Thirty-two hours. Set days.”
I had a sudden, vivid image of Ruth in a green apron bearing somebody else’s name. Someone else’s radio playing. Someone else asking where the good scissors had gone.
“You applied for a job?”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Before any of this happened.”
I looked back at the containers. An absurd little brass bowl had a dent in its rim. Mum used to put chocolate eggs in it at Easter.
“How long have you been unhappy?”
“I’m tired, Elena.”
“You should have told me.”
“I have.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it.
She pulled out a chair and finally sat down. I stayed on the floor.
“I like the work. I like working with you. But my finishing time can’t be the moment everything’s done, because there’s always another thing.”
“I can change the rota.”
“With who?”
I hated the question. It was the correct one.
“We’ll have more room once we move.”
“Room doesn’t answer the phone at five o’clock.”
For a moment I wanted her to be less reasonable. If she had demanded something outrageous, I could have been angry with a clear conscience.
“Is it the money?”
“Some of it.”
“I’ll look at it.”
“I need you to look at all of it.”
She took a folded sheet from her bag and put it on the table. Not a resignation letter. The offer, with her name at the top and a number I couldn’t dismiss as an insult.
“They’ve given me until the second of May. I asked for time because I didn’t want to leave you in the middle of this.”
“That’s generous of them.”
She heard the ugliness in my voice. I heard it too.
“They’re opening the new studio at the end of May,” she said. “It suits them.”
I stood up. My knee clicked, and I pressed my palm against it, grateful for something to do.
“I don’t know what I can offer until I know where we’ll be.”
“I understand.”
“But I can work it out. By the first.”
“Work out something you can actually do. Not something you can manage for a fortnight if you stop sleeping.”
I picked up the offer. Thirty-two hours, fixed days. A finish time that meant she could book a dentist or go swimming or simply go home without checking whether my face had fallen.
“Would you stay?” I asked.
“I haven’t decided.”
It was not the answer I wanted. I knew her well enough to know it was the useful one.
We went back to sorting the containers. She took the dented bowl out of my keep pile and put it into the sale pile. I moved it back.
“We use that,” I said.
“For what?”
“Things.”
She left it where I’d put it.
That evening I carried the bowl to the annex, put an apple in it and ate a piece of bread straight from the bag. I had three commercial premises to look at on paper, one promised survey and no idea what my own wage would be if I paid for every hour the business needed.
I took out the new wedding quote. Beside it I laid Ruth’s offer and a blank sheet.
Then I wrote the first of May at the top.
Names on the Paper
On Sunday morning, I was trying to make the annex table hold four futures and a bowl of apples when Adam knocked on the open door.
I had invited him to bring the survey there because the conservatory wasn’t open to customers that day. It had seemed straightforward on the phone. Now he stood outside my temporary bedroom, and my bra was drying over the back of a chair.
“One moment.”
I snatched it up, put it in the cupboard and shut the door on one of the straps.
He looked very carefully at the rose growing through the bathroom window.
“Persistent,” he said.
“It pays half the rent.”
I opened the cupboard, freed the strap and shut it again. “Come in.”
He had brought a printed report as well as the copy he’d emailed half an hour earlier. I had read the headings on my phone while burning toast, then stopped at the photograph of the north bay. I wanted somebody there when I read the rest.
He waited while I cleared a chair. The table was so small that when he sat down, his knee touched mine.
“Sorry.” He moved it.
I wished he hadn’t, which was inconvenient.
“Tea?”
“Please.”
I found two mugs, one of which advertised a gardening company Richard had stopped using years ago. I gave Adam that one. It seemed appropriate.
We went through the report.
Some of it was what I’d expected. The freestanding arch could come apart. The decorative panels needed repairs but offered possibilities. Other pieces were too damaged or too uncertain to include in a dependable relocation budget. The full structure would require a project considerably beyond the dismantling-and-lorry arrangement I had entertained.
He had separated what he had seen from what he was recommending. There were photographs beside each item. The temporary support recommended by his colleague was now scheduled for the following day; I needed to keep the restricted end clear until it was fitted and checked.
“So the whole room is a no,” I said.
“Not as a straightforward move within your time and likely budget.”
“That’s a long no.”
“It’s an accurate one.”
I turned to the photograph of the arch. The ivy was tucked out of the way, exposing Mum’s crooked caps. In the small printed image, it looked like a thing in a catalogue. Salvageable decorative assembly. I could hear her objection to being described that way.
Adam let me turn the pages without talking over them.
At the back he had included a short list of questions for any receiving site. Door heights. Loading. A suitable place to use the pieces. Not a picture of the life I should have, just things that might prevent the next building becoming another expensive mistake.
“Can I send this to the agents?”
“Yes. Though I’d tell them you’re looking for a place for a flower business, not somewhere to put an old room.”
“I’ve learned that much.”
“Good.”
He said it too briskly. I glared at him.
“Sorry,” he said. “That sounded like a school report.”
“Must try harder.”
“Frequently told to me.”
I turned over the last sheet. We had reached the end of the paid work, and I wanted him to stay.
Fortunately, I also had three property listings and a talent for prolonging things with questions.
“You said there might be somewhere.”
He set down his mug.
“There is. But before I tell you about it, I need to explain my connection.”
Something in his voice made me straighten.
“Your family owns it?”
“A company I control owns it. The old laundry buildings at Wren Park.”
I knew Wren Park. Everybody in Alderwick knew it: the long wall, the lodge gates, the houses beyond the western boundary that cost more than a person ought to spend on a roof.
“You mean you manage it.”
“I own the controlling share in the group. Reeves Property.”
I looked at him, then at the report, where his surname had been printed in perfectly legible type all along.
The name was on signs outside half-finished buildings. On a board beside the new offices near the bypass. On the programme for the public winter garden fundraising appeal I’d thrown away because I couldn’t bear one more request for a free arrangement.
“That Reeves?”
“Yes.”
“I thought it was a common name.”
“It is.”
He did not smile. I was grateful for that.
The kettle clicked behind me as it cooled.
“How much of a group?” I asked.
He paused, considering the question rather than pretending not to understand it.
“The last valuation was a little over two billion. That’s the group, not money sitting in my current account.”
I laughed. Once, sharply.
“Well, that’s a relief. I’d hate to think you’d have to sell a building to cover your sandwich.”
His mouth moved. He stopped whatever answer he’d been going to give.
I stood up to fetch the milk, although neither of us needed any.
My annex suddenly seemed very small. It had been small ten minutes earlier, but then it had been small in a way I could joke about. Now I noticed the chipped mug, the cupboard door and the folded blanket I used because the bedspread smelled faintly of long storage.
“Are you actually a restoration specialist?”
“Yes.”
“You do the work.”
“Yes.”
“Not just when you fancy an afternoon out.”
His face changed then.
“I’ve spent most of my working life doing it.”
I put the milk down.
“All right.”
“The company came through my family. My share grew when the ownership was reorganised. I have people who run its daily operations. I still choose the projects I work on.”
“Including mine.”
“You called me about an old conservatory.”
I could hear that conversation. His questions about the uprights. My relief when he didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. He hadn’t told me anything that was false. I had supplied the size of his life myself, neatly, to make it fit beside mine.
“Do the agents you recommended work for you?”
“No. They’re independent local firms. One has let property for our company before. Both handle buildings we have nothing to do with.”
“And the place at Wren Park?”
“Would make my company your landlord. That’s why I’m telling you now.”
He took a folded sheet from his notebook but kept it on his side of the table.
“Would you like to see it?”
I sat down again.
The old laundry was beautiful. Of course it was. Brick walls, big windows, a paved yard with enough room for deliveries. A photograph of the interior showed pale light slanting across an empty floor. I could see a workbench there so easily that it irritated me.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“It needs services updated for your use. Customer access is through the park entrance, which might not suit you. And it belongs to my company.”
“You’ve mentioned that.”
“It seemed worth repeating once.”
I studied the plan. The loading entrance was excellent. The customer route was not. I could imagine spending the next year answering the phone while people asked whether they had taken the wrong turning through the gates.
I could also imagine asking Adam to fix it.
“No,” I said.
He nodded and put the page aside.
“Just like that?”
“You said no.”
“I thought you’d tell me about the roof.”
“It’s a good roof.”
“I can see that.”
“Very good guttering.”
I narrowed my eyes. He smiled at last, and some of the strangeness went out of the room.
“I’m still saying no.”
“Then show me the others.”
I slid my listings across the table.
One was already too expensive. One had no usable delivery access. The third was at the old station yard, where workshops had been converted from railway stores. I had arranged to collect the key from the agent’s lockbox that afternoon; the agent had sent a code and a warning that the electricity was off between tenants.
Adam looked at the plan.
“I know those buildings. They’re not ours.”
“You could save time by marking a map.”
“It would be an unattractive map.”
I grinned before I remembered I was still unsettled.
He glanced at his watch.
“I can walk round it with you if that’s useful. I’m due elsewhere at three.”
“What would you charge?”
“For looking at an empty room on my way through town? Nothing. If you want a professional assessment of it, that’s different.”
I hesitated.
He put the listings down. “You don’t have to decide with me sitting here.”
“I’m not deciding whether to marry you. I’m deciding whether you can come and look at a drain.”
The silence afterwards was so complete that I could hear a bird landing on the roof.
Then he said, “I have a reasonable record with drains.”
I covered my face with both hands.
He laughed, and I laughed into my palms, and when I looked up his expression had changed in a way that made me want to say something even more foolish.
We took separate cars. I needed to collect supplies afterwards, and Adam had his appointment. I was glad of the ten minutes alone. At the traffic lights I looked at my own face in the mirror and found a woman who had actually considered flirting in front of a billion-pound property portfolio while her bra hung out of a cupboard.
The lights changed. Someone behind me sounded their horn.
At the station yard, Adam waited beside a dark blue door. The building was long and square, its windows high, its brickwork marked where a sign had once hung. A line of stubborn little plants grew between the paving slabs.
I entered the code wrongly twice.
“Don’t,” I said, without looking at him.
“I haven’t said anything.”
“You were going to.”
“I was going to say the bottom button sticks.”
It did. The lockbox opened.
Inside, the air smelled of dust and bare plaster. I found the large front window on the street side, then the loading entrance at the rear. The two approaches were separate. That could be useful. It could also mean a customer standing at one door while we all worked behind the other.
“We’d need to see how people find us,” I said.
Adam nodded.
The main space was less romantic than the photograph of the laundry. It was also easier to divide. I paced out the length of a workbench while he stood where I pointed, representing a cold store. He was a rather handsome cold store and took up more room than necessary.
“Move left.”
He moved left.
“Other left.”
“You mean right.”
“I mean where I’m pointing.”
He obeyed with an air of suffering that made me laugh.
I put Ruth by the sink and Nina near the loading doors, in my head. Then I moved them. Then I realised I hadn’t left anywhere for myself.
“What’s that face?” Adam asked.
“I’ve designed a room without my own bench.”
“Maybe start with that.”
I did. Beside the large window, where the light was best. I could see the colour of things there. I could set out a long spray of branches without having to move a telephone or somebody’s coat.
For a few minutes, I forgot the conservatory entirely.
Then a lorry reversed into the adjoining yard and filled the room with the sound of its warning beeper.
“There goes the enchantment,” I said.
“Worth hearing before you sign.”
We inspected the small back room, which contained a sink, a battered cupboard and an abandoned plastic spoon. Adam opened the cupboard and immediately closed it.
“What?”
“Nothing structural.”
I opened it. A spider the size of an ambition sat inside.
“You’re frightened of spiders.”
“I prefer to give them privacy.”
“You work in old buildings.”
“A constant source of regret.”
I fetched an empty flower sleeve from my car and used it to usher the spider towards the open door. Adam stood a useful distance away and provided no assistance whatever.
“Two billion,” I said as the spider escaped, “and you couldn’t buy courage.”
He took the sleeve from me by its clean end.
“No, apparently that’s charged separately.”
His fingers brushed mine. This time neither of us had to move immediately. He looked down at my hand, then back at my face.
I wanted him to kiss me. The realisation was so clear that it frightened me less than I expected.
He didn’t. We were standing in an empty commercial unit holding rubbish, and he had not been invited to do anything else.
I let go of the sleeve.
“I need to bring Ruth and Nina,” I said.
“Yes.”
“And ask about the drain.”
“You can put that in the same email.”
Outside, I locked the door and checked it. Adam waited by his car.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You’re welcome.”
He started to open the door.
“Are you busy on Wednesday?”
His hand stopped.
“In the evening?”
“Unless you prefer dinner at eleven in the morning.”
“I’m not busy.”
“The film society’s showing something at the old cinema. I saw the poster. A comedy.”
“Do you know which one?”
“No. I was mostly noticing the word Wednesday.”
He looked at me for a moment, then put his keys in his pocket.
“I’d like that.”
“We could eat afterwards.”
“Somewhere with structurally sound sandwiches?”
“I’m not making any promises.”
He took out his phone so we could confirm the time once I found the programme. We already had each other’s numbers. The absurdity of that struck us at the same moment, and he shook his head, smiling, before putting it away again.
When he left, I stayed beside my car to send two messages.
The first went to the agent: I wanted another visit with my colleagues and details of a possible short trial use before any long commitment.
The second went to Adam.
Seven. And I won’t bring a floor plan.
His reply came before I reached the main road.
I’ll leave the tape measure at home.