All That Mullarkey (17 page)

If she’d stayed, if she’d tried, they could’ve sorted everything out. Almost.

If she was pregnant, it could be tricky. Bastard, bastard Klinefelter’s.

The coach was held up by glinting lines of traffic stretching away up the motorway. Other passengers tutted and fidgeted, checked their watches every five minutes and explained to their seat-neighbours about connections they were going to miss or people who would be waiting.

Cleo didn’t care.

It was as if she was encased in an icy bubble, which separated her from her sighing fellow passengers, whether the coach was whistling along in the middle lane or inching up a queue. Her thoughts were all about how the solid ground on which she’d thought her marriage was built could have trembled and so easily cracked. How rapidly it had exploded into a shower of wounding stones and bitter-tasting dirt.

She wiped her eyes; they kept refilling. She thought of the cemetery in which they’d laid Pauline, her favourite in-law. Lilies, chrysanthemums. White, cream, sherbet lemon and baby pink. ‘She would’ve loved the flowers,’ George had said.

Yvonne had wept fresh tears. ‘What use are flowers?’ Her husband, Allen, stolid in a dark grey suit and black tie, had rocked her and stroked her hair and not minded the mascara on his lapel.

By leaving, Cleo was isolating herself from people she’d considered family. Running out on them when they were in trouble, which went against her grain. She just couldn’t see how it was better – or even possible, in view of her missing periods and Gav’s confessed infertility – to perpetuate the illusion that their marriage was OK.

Her heart shrank to remember Gav’s face when she’d finally kissed him goodbye. A gentle peck on the cheek that mocked all the hot, full-on tongue-thrusters they’d shared. Their future together had gone west, and, horribly, so had their past.

What was life going to be like without him? Too big a thought.

Funny how still the house seemed when she let herself in: empty, although she hadn’t yet removed a thing.

Throwing open the windows, she stood in the bedroom to gaze out over the familiar view, the fields, many ploughed under now after the harvest. Shivered. Chilly for September. Down to the kitchen, she tried to organise her whirring brain. She needed to move out of this house. She needed to pack. But she needed somewhere to go. Maybe Liza …? She shoved the thought away. Surely she was too grown up now to cram all her possessions into the miniature spare room belonging to her kid sister.

There was lemon pepper chicken in the freezer; she slid one portion – one portion! – into the oven, stirred pasta into sauce.

One of Gav’s favourites. There was half a jar of sauce left.
Oh, wouldn’t it be simple to stay, to give in to the enormous compassion she felt for him?
Easy to make things easy for the man she’d once loved, who’d been perfidious in so many, fundamental ways.

The time had come for her to think of herself as single. Possibly a single parent – which would be tough.

Chapter Twenty

In the morning, over breakfast – biscuits dunked in black coffee because she’d had to bin the bread, milk and fruit they’d left behind – Cleo tried to identify a starting point. In order to pack her things, she needed boxes and bin bags. And she could do with somewhere to go.

Pausing at the front window overlooking Port Road she was struck by a sudden unhappy thought – there probably wasn’t much property to rent in Middledip. Her heart sank at the thought of leaving the village. She needed to do some research.

Cleo began at the village shop at the Cross. But Mrs Crowther, in her neat grey overall, couldn’t be much help. ‘Sorry, duck, the remainder of yesterday’s evening papers went back when the morning papers came. But, as it’s Saturday, today’s will be in about lunchtime. I’ll save you one if you want to call back for it?’

Cleo nodded gloomily and paid for a bar of wicked, dark Bournville, along with rolls of bin bags. ‘Thanks. I suppose the property supplement was in Friday’s?’

Gwen Crowther nodded. ‘Moving, then?’ She was famed for keeping customers talking while she wheedled out their news, casually squaring up her display of Polos or Fisherman’s Friends. ‘There’s plenty for sale up the new village.’

‘I was thinking more of renting. But I suppose rentals are few and far between in Middledip.’

Moving on to tidy the Tic-Tacs, Mrs Crowther tipped back her head to look through the correct part of her bifocals. ‘Have you tried Ratty?’

Intrigued, Cleo returned to the counter. ‘Have I tried what?’

Mrs Crowther nodded in the direction of the shop door. ‘Have you tried asking Ratty, at the garage? He’s got a few places hereabouts.’

Cleo’s spirits stirred slightly. She knew the men at the garage to nod to in the pub. ‘To rent?’

‘Yes, duck. One of his tenants has just left, I believe, and I don’t know as anyone else took the house.’ Cleo shoved the chocolate into her pocket and, clutching the four empty brown boxes that Mrs. Crowther had kindly slotted inside one another, made the shop bell clank as she barged awkwardly through the door.

On the garage forecourt across the road, five small old sports cars lined up as if on the front of a Brands Hatch grid. Cleo knew the business dealt mainly in classic cars. The garage doors were folded back to show an interior of tool chests and a ramp, a man bent over a beautifully kept, but ancient, yellow saloon and two others welding in masks under an equally elderly sports car on the ramp behind.

Yellow-car man looked up through black curls as Cleo stepped into the oil-scented interior.

‘I’m looking for someone called Ratty?’

‘Yep. That’s me.’ He shook his hair out of his eyes and stretched deeper under the bonnet, craning under an inspection lamp and fiddling with a wrench. His voice came back hollowly. ‘What can I do for you?’

She moved round to the side of the vehicle so that she could see his face. ‘Mrs Crowther at the shop said you rent out some property in the village.’

She hopped out of the way as he backed out, grasped the front of the car and began to rock it. When he’d inched it forward he tucked himself back under the bonnet again, made an adjustment with a screwdriver and straightened up.

‘I do, but I’ve nothing vacant. Sorry.’ He wiped his hands on a well-used rag.

Cleo’s hopes settled back towards her boots. She sighed and shifted the boxes uncomfortably in her arms. Even though they were empty, the rigid edges dug into the crooks of her elbows. ‘Mrs Crowther thought one of your tenants had just left.’

He nodded. ‘Cleared off owing rent and left a disgusting mess behind, presumably the result of a party and several people being very poorly. The key money didn’t even cover the cleaning company costs. So I’ve pretty much decided to sell.’

‘Right. I see.’ She bit her bottom lip hard to stop her disappointment showing. She could’ve used a bit of luck. Her voice sounded thin as she said thanks and goodbye.

She was walking away when she heard him call after her, ‘Got a problem?’

She turned back. He was in the driver’s seat now, looking at her through the windscreen. She trailed back to stand in the open doorway. ‘A bit. I need somewhere to go, quick, and I want to stay in Middledip.’ The engine coughed into life. The car vibrated then settled down.

Ratty’s eyes stayed on her face, although his tilted head suggested he was listening to the engine note. ‘Live up Port Road, don’t you?’

She nodded, swallowing the lump in her throat.

‘But you’re moving on?’

She nodded again. ‘This week, preferably.’

He switched the ignition off and on again, listening. ‘Just you?’

It seemed a kind way of asking if she was leaving her husband. ‘’Fraid so. Well …’ She hesitated, felt a sudden scalding of her face. ‘There might be a child. In a while.’

He raised his eyebrows. Easing out of the car, he tore blue paper towel from a roll on a wooden shelf, wiped his hands then rolled down his sleeves over tattooed forearms. ‘OK, you can have a look at the house.’ He called towards the rear of the garage, ‘Back in ten minutes.’

Two muffled voices shouted, ‘OK!’ from behind welding masks.

He strode off across the Cross and up Port Road.

Cleo beetled along beside him, wrestling with the light but cumbersome boxes, which the wind kept trying to snatch – until he took them off her. It was easier to talk, then. ‘Where is the house?’

‘Ladies Lane, just round the corner from where you are now. Will being that close cause trouble?’

‘Don’t think so.’ They crossed Church Close, passed 11 Port Road without comment and cornered into Ladies Lane. A real lane with no kerbs, just narrow unedged tarmac between hawthorn hedges and overgrown verges that would froth with cow parsley, come spring, but were now just dandelion and nettle.

Three ironstone long houses spaced themselves out along the left-hand side, facing a hedge and a ploughed field on the right, and Ratty made for the third. Two black gates, one wide for cars, and one narrow for pedestrians, fastened together. He unlatched the narrow side and Cleo followed him to the front door.

He dropped the boxes on the path and put an iron bootscraper inside to keep them from blowing away. ‘This is it.’ Two steps and they were under the porch and into a tiny hall with the stairs straight ahead. He opened the right-hand door. ‘Kitchen with cooker, sink, cupboards, washing machine.’

Cleo stepped in behind him, taking in plain wooden doors and drawers. The kitchen had a window at each end, the one at the back tiny. He rattled a locked door in the side wall. ‘That takes you through to the barn.’ Cleo opened cupboards and gazed at the kitchen table and two chairs. The floor was laid with lovely uneven quarry tiles; the walls were cream, the ceiling white and the beams black. The windowsills were broad enough to sit on.

The sitting room, the other door from the titchy hall, had the same two-window arrangement. The walls were pale pink. ‘Not my idea,’ Ratty observed. ‘Blame the last tenant.’ A cottage suite stood beside a small table and a tall lamp. A black wood-burning stove squatted in the centre of the long wall on a stone platform topped with a granite flag.

‘I’ve never used a wood stove.’

‘It’s easy.’

Upstairs, the bedroom was above the sitting room with a double bed, two wardrobes, a mirror, and a chest of drawers. ‘You’d need all your own linens, including bedclothes.’

‘Right.’ Excitement was beginning to rise. She liked 3 Ladies Lane. And surely somewhere in the last few minutes, even if he hadn’t put it into so many words, Ratty had decided to let the house to her?

They moved across the landing. ‘Bathroom.’ he pushed the door and let her step in.

‘Wow! It’s nice in here.’

For the first time he smiled, as if he’d been reserving it until he decided whether he liked her. ‘Not bad, is it? I liked it, when I lived here.’ The glossy white of the big shower cubicle and the bath contrasted with the black tiles. Cleo admired the mirrors, heated towel rail and thick blue carpet.

Outside, he showed her the garage doors in the end of the single-storey part of the building. ‘This bit would’ve been for the animals, originally.’ They stepped inside. A pile of logs huddled in one corner of the oil-stained floor. ‘I used to keep a couple of cars here. You can use it for storage, garage, or both.’

Cleo walked out into the garden and frowned. ‘I suppose the tenant’s responsible for the upkeep of this?’

‘That’s about it. Of course, the tenant can keep on the lad the landlord presently pays to do it for three hours a week.’ When he smiled it was as if the sun came from behind a cloud. He showed her a bench made of split logs, twisted with age, where they could sit.

‘OK. If you want this place I’ll rent it to you. It’s a small house and it comes with the furniture as is, it’s got no gas and the heating’s oil, which is a pain if you don’t remember to order it on time.’ He suggested a monthly rental that was less than Cleo and Gav were paying for the house in Port Road. But of course she’d be paying this one alone. He looked very directly at her. ‘Before I sign anything I need to hear you say you can pay the rent and bills and you can keep the house nice. I’m responsible for any maintenance and repair, but the dust and fingerprints are all yours.’

She felt a sudden billow of happiness. She’d like to live in Ladies Lane, facing the flat fields. ‘I can pay that. And keep the place nice.’

‘And there won’t be any bother from your ex-significant other?’

She shook her head, her smile fading at the thought of poor old Gav. ‘He’s not like that.’ Or not often. She thought of the writing on the bedroom wall.

‘When do you want to move in?’

‘Straight away? I can transfer the first month’s rent and the key money to your account today.’

His blue eyes rested on her for several moments. ‘Fair enough – I’ll run an Agreement off on the computer.’ He offered her an oily hand and she shook it. She got the impression that the handshake meant more to him than the written Agreement would.

He dropped the keys into her hand. ‘Be happy.’

She sat on the twisted bench and watched him leave. Then she looked up at the house. She could be sleeping in her new bedroom tonight!

‘Well you’d better shape yourself,’ she said, aloud. ‘There’s a shitload of stuff to move and, from today, you’re officially single.’