He tipped his head to one side, considering. ‘Would that tray be carried by the faithful old retainer butler with the hunch? Or by the parlourmaid who is secretly in love with the youngest son now in a million pieces at the Front?’
Gina laughed, and glanced across at him. He was good-looking: dark hair, flecked with early silver streaks at the temples, and grey eyes framed with dark lashes and thick brows. He looked a bit like Lorcan, and Gina wondered if they were cousins. There were a lot of cousins in Lorcan’s family, most of them builders of some description. Or roadies. Or both.
‘Or am I thinking of Downton Abbey?’ he added, with a pretend frown.
Gina smiled back. It made it so much easier to deal with contractors if they had a sense of humour.
‘It’s nicer than Downton Abbey,’ she said. ‘It’s big, but it’s manageable without butlers. It’s going to be lovely.’
‘You reckon?’
‘It needs a lot doing to it, sure,’ she said, ‘but I hope they’re not going to use that as an excuse to start hacking it about.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Oh, you know, some architects claim it’s impossible to repair, so they might as well knock things down and put in glass extensions and sunken rooms and that sort of thing. Not that they’ll get permission,’ she added, in case the architect had been getting ideas and promising the builders extra work.
‘No?’ He seemed interested.
‘It’s on a list of significant local buildings so the council will have strong opinions about anything that damages the historic fabric. Hopefully I can find a way around it so everyone’s happy, but to be honest, I’ll be advising them to renovate sensitively. Don’t want to dislodge the ghosts of any bereaved parlourmaids. Or disgruntled butlers.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘You’re the project manager. Of course. Sorry, for a minute there I thought you might be from the council.’
‘Nope. What gave it away?’
‘The sense of humour?’
‘Ha,’ said Gina. ‘Busted. Well, hopefully I’m the project manager. I’m just here for a preliminary meeting to discuss the job.’
‘It sounds as if you already know quite a lot about this house.’
Something in the man’s voice made Gina look at him properly, instead of the house. He was shading his eyes with his hand, and suddenly a penny dropped.
The hands were smooth, not coarse and nicked like a builder’s. He was dressed like a builder, but there was a chunky submariner’s watch on one tanned wrist and his fleece didn’t have the usual company logo on it. Or much brick dust. Historic buildings tended to attract the more artisan specialists – gentleman lime plasterers, cabinetmakers who only worked on Duchy estates – but even so . . .
‘Sorry, I don’t think we’ve met before,’ said Gina. ‘Are you with Lorcan?’
He smiled, and pushed the hair out of his eyes, squinting into the light. ‘I didn’t realise I carried a bag of tools so convincingly. No, I’m Nick. You’re going to be helping me not to ruin this house. Well, I hope you are, anyway. Nick Rowntree. Hello.’
Gina felt the blood drain from her face. How long had she been off work to start making unprofessional gaffes like that? What had happened to her brain? ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to sound rude. It’s just that I’ve worked with clients before who bring an architect up from London with ideas about . . .’ Her gaze dropped to the notes she’d brought with her: they had a London architect. Of course. Probably a London audio specialist and a London lighting specialist too.
Gina closed her eyes and counted to five. She was running on three hours’ sleep as it was. The previous evening she’d opened the first of her three wardrobe boxes to start sorting through stuff she’d never wear again, and handling clothes she’d forgotten she even owned had shaken out memories like bats. Shoes she’d danced in at other people’s weddings. Dresses she’d worn on early dates with Stuart. Jeans still stained with beer from student gigs. Old skins that didn’t fit, but that she’d kept because throwing them away felt like throwing away part of herself.
Three. Four.
Her wedding suit. Her apricot bridesmaid’s dress.
Five.
When she opened her eyes, Nick was looking at her, amused. He offered her his hand, and this time she spotted the gold wedding band, the fine plaited leather bracelet. ‘There’s really no need to be embarrassed,’ he said, seeing her awkwardness. ‘I completely agree with you. This house needs someone who understands old properties. That’s why Amanda wanted to get in a proper project manager, instead of struggling through it ourselves.’
Gina fumbled with her files, trying to free up a hand to offer him. ‘Gina Horsf—’ The name stuck in her throat. Again. She’d done it again. ‘Gina Bellamy.’
Nick grasped her hand, shaking it firmly. His own was warm and dry, and she focused on it to distract herself from the blush spreading across her face. ‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘Just married?’
‘The opposite, actually. I’m in the process of getting divorced.’ She winced. ‘Sorry. This really isn’t going well, is it?’
‘No, no. I’m sorry now. Although . . .’ there was a faint twinkle in the grey eyes ‘. . . maybe the congratulations still stand?’
‘Maybe,’ she said politely, and glanced down at her watch. Twenty-five to ten. ‘Sorry, I was supposed to be meeting Amanda at half past so we should go in. I don’t want to make a bad impression so soon. Well, another bad impression . . .’
‘Why? Our meeting started at half past, outside, with a discussion of the exterior.’ Nick swung the tool bag back over his shoulder and they set off towards the house.
‘You haven’t started knocking anything down already, I hope?’ she said, with a nod to the bag. ‘Before you’ve got permission and all that?’
‘This? Just digging the foundations for the swimming pool in the cellar. I’m thinking it’s easier to let the damp take over properly. Deep end’s going to be where the champagne cellar is now.’
Gina opened her mouth, then realised he was winding her up.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m putting a table together so I’ve got something to set up my printer on. I’m joking.’
‘Don’t try joking with the conservation officer,’ she said. ‘That’s my first piece of advice. He doesn’t respond well to humour.’
‘He doesn’t respond well to anything as far as I can see.’
‘He responds well to logic and reason,’ said Gina. ‘And detailed knowledge of building regs.’
She knew Nick was looking at her with a wry smile, but she didn’t turn her head. Instead, she concentrated on getting her face together and getting this job.
They didn’t go in through the front door (‘There’s something wrong with the hinges. It’s rotten, basically’). Instead Nick showed Gina round to the back of the house, over a paved courtyard garden to the long stone-flagged kitchen. The little herb beds were neglected, but she spotted ancient shells marking out patches for vegetables, old copper labels, a few cracked pots. Some cook had once filled the kitchen from the beds.
Gina could see figures through the musty windows: a man, whom she knew immediately from the tweed jacket was Keith Hurst, and a pale woman in a long cream cardigan with honey-blonde hair swept off her face in a perfectly straight fall. Film-star hair.
‘Amanda, sorry, I’ve delayed your project manager.’ Nick pushed open the kitchen door and ushered her inside. Most of the furniture had been removed, but the room was dominated by a massive oak table that looked as if it had been made in the house, and a black triple Aga at the far end. ‘My fault. I was sharing my croquet visions.’
‘Croquet is so far down our list of priorities,’ said Amanda, at the same time as Keith Hurst said, ‘Of course we do have records that croquet was played here before the war . . . Oh, hello, Gina.’
‘Hello, Keith.’ Gina smiled at him. ‘Nice to see you again.’
He made a grunting noise that wasn’t quite yes,
and took a red hanky out to blow his nose loudly, a habit that Gina had almost forgotten until now.
Amanda Rowntree stepped out from behind the table, and Gina felt her attention sweep over her, from her knitted hat to her green boots. Amanda had assessing eyes. Cool and blue, with immaculate brown flicks of eyeliner, perfectly angled at the ends. ‘Hello, Gina, I’m Amanda Rowntree,’ she said, holding out a pale hand, with a chunky diamond ring that slipped round her slim finger as she shook Gina’s. ‘Thanks for coming. It’s good to meet you.’
The voice was the one Gina remembered from the phone conversation but she hadn’t pictured Amanda like this. She’d imagined a rather hard-faced executive with a grey suit and sleek bob, not a yoga blonde in cashmere and skinny jeans.
‘Who are we waiting for now?’ asked Keith, with a self-important check of his watch. ‘I’ve got several sites to visit today.’
‘Just the builder,’ said Gina. ‘Lorcan said he’d be here as soon as—’
As she spoke, there was a brisk knock at the front door.
‘Perfect timing,’ said Nick. ‘Or psychic ability.’
‘Which is exactly what you want in a builder,’ said Gina, and Keith snorted.
‘Good,’ said Amanda, with a smile. She felt in her back pocket for a phone, checked it, then turned it to silent. ‘Why don’t we start the tour of the house at the front door? Seems logical. I’ve got to be at the airport by two, so let’s get on.’
She swept out of the room, leaving Nick, Gina and Keith to glance at each other, then follow her like ducklings.
Amanda might not be wearing a suit now, Gina decided, as she hurried down the hall after Amanda’s retreating back, but she almost certainly did when she wasn’t there.
The Rowntrees’ plans for the house were the usual mixture of common-sense renovation and wildly ambitious let’s-chance-it punts that Keith intimated very firmly would not be permitted by the council.
The proposed extension to the kitchen, with state-of-the-art eco-glass and solar panels, met with sharp intakes of breath, as did the wooden guest chalet where the orangery had stood. The architect hadn’t been able to make the meeting, which meant that Keith and, to a more diplomatic extent, Gina were able to be completely honest about his plans, something that she could tell amused Nick much more than Amanda.
Keith led the way round the house, photographing everything he deemed to be of historical interest, and making it plain to Gina, if not Amanda, that he’d noticed the single-glazed windows, the moulded details on the ceilings, the awkward beams – anything, essentially, that they might try to sneakily remove. Meanwhile Lorcan was honest about the structural work needed to fix various problems with the exterior; Gina already knew about the damp on the west side of the house, and the rotten battens under the oak panelling. And then there was the roof, the up-rated plumbing, the complete rewiring of the ancient (‘possibly quite dangerous, to be honest’) electrical system . . .
She watched the Rowntrees out of the corner of her eye, trying to get a sense of what they’d be like to work with. Amanda listened, occasionally asking for clarification of some term, and nodded, her blue eyes narrowed, as the information was laid out before her. Gina could tell this wasn’t the vacant, panicked nod of the uninformed owner: this was someone who already half knew the answer. Detail-focused clients could be useful, in that they knew exactly what they wanted and didn’t need to have all the options carefully laid out, but they could also be a monumental pain, if what they wanted didn’t exist.
Nick, on the other hand, hung behind, apparently not listening, only to ask a question out of the blue, or to take a photograph on his phone of something Gina hadn’t seen. He spotted interesting details, a shelf she’d missed or a sealed-up door, and when he snapped the picture, she noticed the ghost of a smile pass over his face.
It took them two hours to go through the house, from front door to back gardens, and by the time they’d finished, Gina knew she’d never have had the money to do what the Rowntrees had in mind. The house, though, would be transformed. In a positive, historically sensitive way, Gina stressed to Keith, who made no promises but didn’t put up the brick walls he might have done, had she not been there to smooth over some of Amanda’s more blunt suggestions.
Keith excused himself shortly after, leaving Gina and Lorcan to return to the kitchen with the Rowntrees to deconstruct what he’d said into some sort of workable plan, which Gina could then put into a draft schedule of works, and costs.
Nick ambled over to the espresso machine to make coffee for everyone except Lorcan, who had tea, while Amanda shuffled her papers at the table, her intelligent face furrowed with concentration as she processed the vast amount of information.
‘So,’ she said, and something in her voice made Gina uncap her pen automatically, ready to take notes, ‘what do you think?’
It was a deliberately open question, and Gina forced herself not to leap straight in with too much gushing. ‘I think you could make this house sing,’ she said slowly. ‘It’s not going to be completely straightforward to carry out some of your ideas, on account of the listing, but sometimes that’s good. It makes you think laterally.’
Amanda pressed her fingertips together and stared at Gina over the top. ‘But be honest. Is that man going to make our lives a living hell, telling us to preserve every loo-roll holder in the place?’
‘Keith? He’s just the conservation officer. The final decision will be with the planning officer in charge. But it can be tricky, yes . . .’
‘That’s for the project manager to worry about, eh, Gina?’ Nick put a professional-looking cappuccino in front of her. ‘Sorry, no silver salver.’
‘There are ways around things,’ she said. ‘But the bottom line is that if you wanted an old shell to put a modern house in, then this might not have been the one to pick. But I suppose it’s a bit late now for that.’
‘Yes,’ said Amanda. ‘About six months too late.’
‘It’s my fault,’ said Nick drily. ‘I fell in love with the wine cellars. And the potential. It’s a project, isn’t it?’
‘It’s a dream house,’ said Gina. ‘It needs owners with a bigger vision than just changing the wallpaper, and you’ve certainly got that.’
She wondered if there was something between the cracks in Nick’s comment from the way Amanda stirred her coffee with a sort of grim determination, not meeting his gaze.
Without warning, Amanda looked up, fixing Gina with her piercing interview eyes. ‘Is there a reason it was so cheap?’ she asked. ‘The survey didn’t seem too bad, but if there’s some inside track on it with the council, then it’s better if you tell us now.’
Gina shook her head. ‘Nope. It just needs a lot of love. You can’t cut corners with planning applications, and you’re going to have people like Keith crawling all over the project, checking you’re using sympathetic materials. That adds up. People round here don’t have that sort of cash. Or time. It’s nothing more sinister than that.’
‘Shame. We were hoping for a ghost,’ said Nick. He slid into the chair opposite Gina’s. ‘Nothing major, maybe a friendly cat.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Amanda started, but it was Lorcan who spoke, taking everyone by surprise.
‘I wouldn’t rule it out.’ He’d been leaning against the Aga, doing some calculations and sipping his tea. ‘All old houses have a ghost or two, especially round here. Eh, Gina? Just depends how sensitive you are to them, I reckon. I wouldn’t be surprised if you get a rustle of something upstairs.’
Amanda’s head spun round. Gina spotted the half double-take when she met Lorcan’s gaze, as if she’d only just noticed him. Despite his scruffy appearance, Lorcan was unusually lyrical for a builder: his best mate was a tour manager, and when he wasn’t building houses, Lorcan was off all over Europe building stages for heavy metal bands, and lurking around Irish blues festivals.
‘That’s usually mice, though,’ she said quickly, not wanting to put Amanda off.
‘We can sort that out.’
‘I hope not,’ said Nick. ‘What’s the point of an old house without a bit of a chequered past? Might as well be living in some soulless new-build penthouse.’
He was looking at Amanda as he said it, but she was making notes and pretending she hadn’t heard him. If Gina hadn’t spent the last six months walking on eggshells herself, she might have missed it, but it was there, the echo of a stale row.
She didn’t want to see it. That was the trouble with these projects; you often had to see the ragged plaster of the owners’ relationship, as well as their house. ‘So, would you like me to email you a rough schedule, with some projected costs?’ she asked instead. ‘If you’ve got meetings lined up with other project managers, that’s fine.’
‘There are no other meetings lined up,’ said Amanda. She clicked her pen closed and picked up her coffee. ‘I think you’re just the woman for the job.’
‘Brilliant,’ said Gina, and realised it wasn’t a very professional thing to say.
Nick smiled, and, after a tiny pause, so did Amanda. It was a friendly smile but it didn’t fool Gina into relaxing.
Chapter Six
ITEM: lucky knickers from La Perla, black silk bikini briefs with tiny silver embroidered stars and black lace trim, size label cut out
Longhampton, 2005
Gina leans on the wall by the drinks table, nursing her glass of warm white wine, and wonders how much longer she has to stay at Naomi and Jason’s housewarming party before she can leave without seeming rude. For a pair of twenty-five year olds, they’re having a very grown-up party. The crisps are in a dip tray, and Naomi’s coasters are much in evidence. But then everyone in Longhampton seems more grown-up than the flatsharers Gina’s just left behind in Fulham.
If I stay here another hour, she thinks, I’ll be in serious danger of having a conversation about mortgage rates. There isn’t enough wine in the kitchen for that.