A Perfect Home (38 page)

When he emerged into the flat he immediately started to purr, he then curled up in front of the gas fire as though he'd lived there all his life.

‘You've made it gorgeous in here,' Sally said as she filled Claire's chipped Denbigh teapot with boiling water. ‘It would make a lovely feature for a magazine. Very shabby chic, I can see the title on the cover now –
Style on a Shoestring
, or would it be
Style from a Skip
– oh, I know,
Skipping with Style.
'

‘Very funny. You are joking about ever doing another magazine feature aren't you?' Claire joined her friend at the table.

‘Sorry,' said Sally. ‘I forgot. I was only trying to say how nice it is in here.'

‘Thank you for the compliment, but I think I've had enough of showing off in magazines.'

‘Been there, done that, got the burned-out shell and ruined marriage to prove it?' Sally gave a cheeky grin.

‘Sally!' said Claire laughing. ‘Though that just about sums it up. Now the house is being repaired I just need to work on the marriage.'

‘How is William?' Sally asked her face suddenly serious.

‘He's being transferred to a spinal injuries unit next week. It's too far away to visit every day but I'll take the children at the weekends.'

‘He'll be lonely.'

‘Its five miles down the road from his parents.'

‘Then he'll probably be desperate to be on his own soon. I'm sure his mother will be at his bedside night and day.'

‘He'll go and stay with his parents when he comes out of hospital. Just until the house is finished.'

Sally looked around her. ‘You have managed to pick a flat with the most steps and stairs and undulating floors I've ever seen, certainly not the most suitable of places for someone who's had a back injury.'

‘It must have been subconscious.' Claire realised Sally was right.

‘It will be odd when you're living back together again,' said Sally. ‘When I look round here I realise how different your tastes are, how much William influenced the house. It makes me sad to think that you liked all this colour and pattern and clutter when William wanted everything so neat and tidy,' she paused. ‘I always envied the perfect environment you lived in but when I look at all the interesting things you've got in this flat and how lovely you've made it already, I realise how dull your house was before.'

‘I really feel myself here, I feel like I can breathe.'

‘You will go back though, won't you, Claire?'

Claire didn't answer but ran her fingers through her hair and tried to sort out the confused feelings she felt every time she thought about the house.

‘One thing's for sure,' she finally said. ‘Things will have to change; William will have to let up on the DIY front for a start.'

‘The house will be like brand new; surely there won't be anything to do?' said Sally.

‘I wouldn't put it past William to decide to build a ginormous tree house in the old oak tree or put an Olympic pool on the lawn.'

‘Ooo; a swimming pool, what a fab idea, Claire!'

Claire shook her head. ‘It's not going to happen, Sally. And another thing I've decided is that I'm having a cleaner and if things aren't as spotless and tidy as William wants then he can complain to her.'

Chapter Thirty-two

‘The perfect country Christmas.'

The week before Christmas, Elizabeth and Brian arrived from France. Poor Buster had been left behind and his space in the side car was packed full with a wonderful collection of antique quilts and bedspreads that Elizabeth had found in a bric-a-brac market.

‘I thought you must need all the vintage fabric you can get,' said Elizabeth.

‘But these are much too lovely to cut up.' Claire held each one up in the living room to admire them. ‘I'm going to use them in the flat; they'll look beautiful on our beds.' She threw a quilt of faded cabbage roses across the sofa, startling Macavity who lay curled up in one corner. ‘And perfect as throws in here.'

For days the children had been decorating the flat with paper chains, arranging holly in vases, and trailing ivy over the windows and along the fire place. Claire had strung up swathes of twinkling fairy lights and made a pretty wreath of winter foliage for the front door of the shop.

Claire and the children dragged a Christmas tree up the twisting stairs and put it up in front of the long arched window. They draped it in lights and together they sat on the floor and made brightly coloured hanging decorations– the resulting mess when Ben tipped over a tub of glitter left the whole flat sparkling well into the New Year.

While Elizabeth spent time with the children in the flat, Claire and Brian started working on the shop downstairs. Now the big department store order was over, Mrs Needles and her girls came in on a rota: four of them a day sat in the warm workshop, singing along to the radio, gossiping, and making up the orders. They were also working on building up stock in preparation for the grand opening of the Emily Love shop on New Year's Eve.

Claire had already started on the shop fittings before Brian had come to help. She'd painted the walls a soft dove grey and with her new-found drilling skills she'd put up lines of shelves and pegs which she painted white. Mrs Needles's neighbour had been throwing out a hideous orange pine dresser; Claire rescued it and soon transformed it by painting it white, picking out its carved swirls and twirls in grey, and replacing its ugly wooden handles with white china ones. As she showed Brian what she'd done she felt ridiculously proud.

‘You've done well, Claire,' he put his hand on her shoulder and smiled at her. ‘You've transformed your business, expanding it in ways you'd never have thought of before the fire, and you've made a fantastic home for those kids – you'd never think they'd been through all that trauma, they seem so happy now. And you've done it all without William. You're better off without him, you know.'

Claire looked at him, taken aback.

‘As far as I'm concerned, we're still together. When the house is finished we'll go back. Of course I want to keep the shop and workshop, but the children will want to go home.'

‘And you?' asked Brian gently. ‘Do you want to go home?' Claire felt confusion swirling in her head again. She closed her eyes and quickly opened them again as a sudden vision of the burning house flashed in front of her.

‘I expect you're still in shock,' Brian said. ‘Things will look clearer in time, you'll see.'

Claire and Brian sanded down the rough wooden floorboards and rubbed beeswax into them until they glowed a mellow amber. They painted the bow window inside and out and cleaned the pretty etched glass door. Brian went with Oliver, in a hired van, to collect a large Edwardian shop counter that Claire had bought on eBay and Claire found an old dressmaker's dummy in a skip and recovered it in calico. Emily helped arrange the cushions and tea cosies on the dresser shelves and to hang the shopping bags from the painted wooden pegs. Claire dressed the dummy in an embroidered apron and pinned on a large ribbon corsage. From a piece of rope suspended across one wall she hung her peg bags and across the ceiling she strung strings of bunting in a medley of chintz and gingham and stripy flags. Brian helped her, holding each end of the bunting as Claire tried not to wobble on top of a rickety ladder borrowed from the café next door.

‘How's Mum finding the Dordogne winter?' Claire asked.

‘Colder than she expected. I think she's had such fantasies about living in France the reality has taken a little getting used to.'

‘She seems very happy being there.'

‘I'm certainly very happy having her living with me but I just wish she'd agree to make an honest man of me.'

‘Are you still asking her to marry you?'

‘Most days I have a go.'

Claire laughed. ‘Maybe you should give it a rest for a while. She might start to miss your proposals and start to wonder if she was right to refuse you so often.'

‘Ah-ha,' said Brian, ‘reverse psychology. You women are so cunning.'

‘Who's cunning?' Claire's mother walked into the room with two cups of tea, Ben proudly followed behind with a plate of star-shaped biscuits he'd just made with his grandmother.

‘You,' said Brian with a smile and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

The little shop bell jangled and a rosy-faced man poked his head around the front door with a cheerful grin.

‘All done now. The signs are up. Do you want to come and have a look?'

Claire scooped up Ben and she and Elizabeth and Brian trooped outside into the fading light of the afternoon. Standing on the pavement they looked up at the shop front. Suspended where the patisserie sign had once been was a dove-grey sign with white letters spelling out
Emily Love.
A longer sign above the window also said
Emily Love
too and had white silhouettes of hearts and birds decorating each end.

‘Oh, love, it looks wonderful,' exclaimed Elizabeth.

‘All you need now is the window display,' said Brian.

‘You'll have to wait for New Years' Eve for that,' said Claire.

Christmas Day arrived with a low grey sky threatening snow. Claire had been too busy to even think how she'd make Christmas dinner. How different it was going to be to the day in July when they'd pretended to celebrate it for the magazine. Claire felt a huge relief that for the first time in her married life she wouldn't be spending Christmas with William's mother; she didn't care if they just opened up a tin of baked beans followed by a box of After Eights, but Brian insisted that he would make the meal and after a boozy night sampling Brian's rhubarb wine (specially brought over from France to toast Claire's new home) Gareth also insisted he was going to help.

‘I got into cooking those few months I lived on my own,' Gareth explained, following Claire's expression of surprise.

‘He's fantastic,' said Sally giving him a squeeze. ‘You should taste his Thai green curry and the venison pie and potatoes dauphine we had for Sunday dinner. He's completely buggered up my diet.'

Brian and Gareth spent a long evening drawing up a menu and writing a shopping list. They bought the last goose in the butcher's shop and the cooking started on Christmas Eve. Claire and Brian brought up two of the trestle tables from downstairs and set them up together in the living room, so that they could fit all the adults and children around them. Claire covered the tables in silver damask and trailed ivy in between little night lights in old jam jars.

As dusk fell, she lit candles all around the room and Brian and Gareth solemnly carried the ginormous bird along with more trimmings than Claire had ever thought it possible to produce from the small kitchen. There were crackers and indoor fireworks and lots and lots of sparkling wine followed by a Christmas pudding and cheese and port and afterwards Mrs Needles and Doris appeared with a bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream. They all grew drowsy and Claire turned on the television and they watched
Dr Who
until Oliver shouted that he could see snow falling outside the window and the party drew to a close.

On Boxing Day, Claire visited William. As she drove the children through the glittering white country side she determined to start the dialogue with him that she hoped would end the uncomfortable limbo they were living in.

Claire took the children to William's parents' house to open their presents from their grandparents. William's father came out to the car to fetch them while William's mother stood, arms folded at the large front door. As the children walked reluctantly towards their grandmother, William's father bent his head and looked inside the car.

‘Happy Christmas, Claire,' he said. ‘Keep your chin up; I think you're doing a wonderful job.' Then he scampered back up the snowy drive to face the wrath of his wife for talking to Claire.

William lay on the narrow hospital bed, enclosed in a back brace. A television positioned high up by the ceiling was silently showing the
EastEnders
Christmas special, which Claire was sure he would hate. She couldn't find the remote control to turn it off and didn't want to disturb the nurses who she knew were short-staffed because of flu. She decided to try to ignore it and concentrate on trying to get William to speak to her.

‘I'm so sorry,' she whispered for the hundredth time since the fire. ‘I'm so sorry about everything that happened.'

William turned his head away.

‘We'll begin again,' she said. ‘The builders are starting to rebuild the house tomorrow; everything will be like it was before.' She reached out to try to hold his hand but he edged his arm away, wincing with the movement as if it caused him pain. Claire saw him glance down and followed his line of sight to her own arm. Beneath the pushed up sleeve of her cardigan the ugly raised red scars of her burns were visible –a reminder of the horror of what had happened to them. She pulled her sleeve down and looked up at the television screen. The actors were mouthing mutely, anguished expressions suggested tragedies of their own unfolding in Albert Square. She hardly ever watched the programme but with a little smile she realised that an unconsummated extra-marital love affair and a house fire started in a jealous rage were the classic fodder of prime-time soap – in fact pretty minor compared to the turbulent lives many of the characters led.

She almost jumped when she felt a slight pressure on her hand and she realised that William had taken her hand in his own; the first time he'd acknowledged her since the fire. She placed her other hand on top of his and when she looked at his gaunt grey face she realised he was crying.

‘Don't cry,' she stroked his head and with her fingers gently pushed his tears away. ‘It's going to be all right. I've told you, it's going to be all right.' She put her head on his pillow, leaning over from her seated position on the chair beside him. A long time passed and finally his tears stopped and he spoke.