glad we’re in agreement about that,’ she said. ‘That’s a starting place. But you can’t hustle me out of here. I want to see everything. I want to know everything.’ She turned and looked up the design pinned to the corkboard, not quite able to trust herself to keep up the cool act if she continued to look at him. She was so angry. So unhappy. So…sad. How could he have hidden this from her? Pretended? ‘Did you make that for me, or was it just surplus to requirements?’ she asked. She couldn’t believe that was her voice. She sounded so distant. So cold.
‘No.’
She spun round. ‘No what?’
‘I didn’t make it for you. I made it before I met you. I was working on it when I had the call that my father had been taken ill.’ He moved to her side, unpinned the design and laid it on the bench, smoothing it out with his hands. ‘It was a development piece. A new design. It was sitting here when I came last week to shut up the workshop, waiting for the final polish.’ She was very still. ‘I thought, well, what’s one afternoon stolen from a lifetime? So I polished it. Finished it so that there would be no loose ends lying around to trip me, bring me down.’
‘Last week?’ This was where he’d been when she’d gone to his office, seeking reassurance. ‘I was looking for you. I even wrote a text message to ask you where you were. The way you used to send them to me. Remember?’ Mike heard the change in her voice. The sharp challenge had become softly wistful. ‘The way you did on Saturday night.’
‘I remember,’ he said. ‘It would seem I’ve lost the touch.’
She shook her head. ‘Not just you. Both of us.’
‘I didn’t get your message.’
‘I didn’t send it. Maybe I sensed that it was all slipping away from us.’ She looked up at him. ‘Would you have answered me? Told me where you were?’
‘Probably not.’
‘No, I didn’t think so. And I could never have guessed, could I?’ She shivered, looked around. ‘What is all this machinery? What does it do?’
‘Cut, plane, turn.’ He took her through the workshop, explaining each process, answering her questions as if she was visiting royalty.
‘And your designs?’ she asked. ‘If I wanted to commission you to make a piece of furniture for me?’
‘Willow—’
‘Please. I want to know everything.’
‘I’m trying to tell you. It’s difficult.’
‘I know, but I’m listening. Just follow my lead. Tell me about your designs.’
He opened up a plan chest, took out a folio of designs, photographs of finished pieces. She flipped through them. ‘You really made all these?’
‘Yes.’
‘This?’ she asked, staring at a picture of a small desk.
‘It was commissioned by Fergus Kavanagh. The man who gave the Trust the cottages. For his wife.’
She glanced up at him. He said it as if it was nothing. ‘How much would it cost to buy a desk like this from you?’ He mentioned a figure and she drew in a sharp breath. ‘That’s a lot of money.’
‘It took a long time. And I can only make one at time.’
‘You work on your own? No assistants? No apprentices?’
‘I didn’t want the responsibility.’ He shook his head. ‘Maybe I knew, one day, I’d have to give this up, go back.’
‘You’d be wrong to. The Chronicle could never compete with this.’ The Chronicle couldn’t compete, but it had a better claim on his loyalty than some selfish girl who put her own needs first, she realised. ‘When did you know?’
‘That I couldn’t give it up?’
‘No, when did you know that this was what you wanted to do?’
‘Oh, I see. At school. I was supposed to be doing Latin, but I just couldn’t stay out of the workshop. The scent of wood pulled me in like hot cakes fresh out of the oven. I typed out a letter on my father’s notepaper giving permission for me to swop. I don’t think my tutor was fooled, but since I wasn’t ever going to an intellectual asset to the classical languages department he took the pragmatic view that learning some basic workshop skills would be of more use to me than Latin verbs. Once I’d made my first project, I was hooked.’
‘And then you went to university and took business and accountancy? Why?’
‘Because my father asked me to. I wanted to take a hands-on course in furniture design. He thought I was mad, that it was something I’d grow out of, or that I could take up as a hobby if I was really keen, but he was far too clever to say so. He suggested that business management and accountancy would be useful.’ He shrugged. ‘It seemed to make sense—’
‘And if you still wanted to study furniture design?’
‘He promised he’d support me.’ Mike shrugged. ‘And meanwhile I was visiting museums, galleries, working with craftsmen when I could get them to take me seriously. Learning all the time. When I graduated he asked me to do a year at the Chronicle. It was the family business; I had a duty to the people who worked for him. I should know how it was run.’ He looked down. ‘When I realised that every capitulation simply fed his conviction that sooner or later he would win, I walked away.’
‘You came here?’
He looked around. ‘There was a preservation order on this place, but it was a wreck. No one wanted it. I took it on, raised some money, traded help with restoration in return for long-term cheap rents for shops, offices. I learned one hell of a lot about solid, basic carpentry and, what do you know? My father was right, the business and accountancy degree was a real help.
‘You own this place? All of it?’
‘The bank and I have an agreement. So long as I keep paying them money each month, they allow me to believe I do.’ He stood back, held open the door to the upper floor. ‘Do you want to see where I lived before I met you?’
‘Not lived. Live. You’re coming back, aren’t you? You’re never going back to the newspaper?’
‘Never’s a long time. I said that once before, but I went back when my father needed me.’ He thought about it for a moment. ‘I’d do it again, but only while I looked for a buyer for the paper.’ He saw her expression. ‘You think I’m wrong?’
‘There’s been an Armstrong Publications in Melchester since the days of moveable type.’
‘Yes, I know and I wish things were different. I wish I could be the son he needs. The husband you had a right to expect me to be. I tried, I really tried, but my heart wasn’t in it.’
‘Then you’re right to walk away. A newspaper, a newspaper like the Chronicle, must have heart.’
‘I’m just beginning to realise that.’ He
