in the mail.
‘I might lose this place, Niamh,’ she said, facing facts as she cupped her hands around her mug for warmth against the March morning. ‘The bank letters are coming thick and fast, and Brad isn’t happy to keep paying the mortgage indefinitely. I can’t possibly pay it. I don’t even have a sodding job.’
‘So divorce him and use the settlement. Ask the bank to wait.’
‘You know that won’t happen soon enough. Even if I saw a solicitor today it’d drag on for months.’ She didn’t mention that she wasn’t ready to start divorce proceedings. Divorces needed strength, and she couldn’t see herself feeling very Fatima Whitbread for a while yet.
‘Is there any chance that Brad might try to take the house?’
‘Over my dead body,’ Alice shot back, even though she had no clue how she’d stop him if he actually tried. This was her house. It might have both their names on the deeds, but she knew every brick and slate, she loved every nook and cranny. She knew its history and its stories, because she loved the place enough to find out. From the moment she’d set eyes on Borne Manor, she’d wrapped her heart around its mellow stone walls and vowed to love it for ever. Much like her wedding vows, really. The difference was that Brad had let her down. Borne Manor hadn’t, and she wanted to repay it in kind.
Quite how she was going to do that though was anyone’s guess.
‘How long do you have?’
Alice shrugged unhappily. ‘Two months, maybe?’
Niamh sucked in a sharp breath of cold air. ‘We better think of something fast then.’
We. Not you, we. Not for the first time in the last few months, Alice found herself grateful for Niamh’s friendship. They’d been neighbours ever since Alice and Brad moved to Borne, but it was only since Brad’s departure that their friendship had blossomed beyond the occasional coffee in the village or chat at the gate. She’d knocked on the door of Borne Manor and asked if Pluto could possibly go for a run in the gardens as it was safer for him than being on the common, and she’d been around most mornings since at sun up for an early morning coffee on the back bench and an hour setting the world to rights. Alice suspected that word had reached Niamh’s ears of her troubles and she’d reached out to help; she was that special kind of person. In actual fact they weren’t neighbours, exactly; as owner of the row of four tied cottages next to the manor, Alice was officially Niamh’s landlady. Not that she went along the row and collected rent; specified arrangements with most of the cottage owners had been included as part of the sale particulars.
Number one housed Stewie Heaven, ex seventies porn star, a perma-tanned man who seemed to have a wig to suit every occasion. Alice had only seen him on hops and catches as he wintered in Benidorm, but from what Niamh said he’d arrived home a week or so ago and was as verbose as ever about his exploits. He paid rent to Borne Manor at the princely sum of one pound a month, a nefarious peppercorn arrangement with the previous owner for services rendered. No one knew the precise nature of the services, and no one had the stomach to ask.
Hazel lived at number two, a woman as round as she was tall and who told everyone who cared to listen that she was a practising witch. She lived with her sofa-surfing son Ewan, a perpetual student, and Rambo, her talking mynah bird, who could often be found perched on her open windowsill shouting obscenities at passersby. Hazel paid double Stewie’s rent at two pounds a month, secured on the basis that she’d cleared the manor of an unwanted poltergeist some twenty years previously.
Which left just Niamh, who’d returned to Borne to nurse her ailing mother after a stroke last summer and stayed on after she died a couple of months later. It was written into the sale of Borne Manor that Niamh’s mother and any of her surviving children should be allowed to live rent free in number three until such a time as they no longer wanted or needed to. There was no explanation offered, and Alice saw no reason to question it. Brad had wanted to when news reached him of Niamh’s mother’s death, but Alice had uncharacteristically put her foot down and refused to allow it. She was glad every day now that she’d made a stand; Niamh had turned out to be the perfect friend in her time of need.
The end cottage, number four, presently stood empty after the passing of Borne’s most senior resident, Albert Rollinson, who Hazel assured them now haunted the row of cottages in spirit form, stealing their morning papers to check the runners and riders at Aintree. Fond of a bet and a pint, if Albert was there at all he was the most benign of ghosts. He’d make Casper look angry. Freed of its peppercorn rent arrangement with the death of Albert, the estate agent had secured a buyer for the tiny two up two down and agreed a sale a couple of months back, but as of yet no one had moved in.
‘Pluto!’ Niamh called, putting her cup down on the cobbles and standing up. ‘Here, boy! I better shoot. I’ve got a sitting this morning, some farmer from three villages over who wants a painting of himself naked for his wife’s birthday. Where would a man get the idea that any woman wants that?’
Alice laughed despite her gloom. ‘Maybe you could offer him a strategic bunch of bananas or grapes to drape himself with. Tell him it’s arty.’
Niamh huffed as she leaned down to clip Pluto’s lead on. ‘I don’t have bananas. Or grapes. Do you think he’d be offended if I suggested an out-of-date fig?’
‘His wife probably wouldn’t notice the difference,’ Alice said, making them both laugh softly as she opened the side gate for Niamh. ‘Call me if he gets frisky. I’ll come over with the contents of my fruit bowl.’
‘No worries on that score. I’ve got my bodyguard to protect me.’ Niamh fussed Pluto’s wiry head and he rolled his good eye towards Alice in farewell.
‘See you tomorrow. Same time same place.’
‘It’s a date,’ Niamh called over her shoulder, raising her hand as she disappeared down the road towards the cottages. Alice closed the gate slowly and returned to the bench, sitting down to watch the rose pink and gold clouds that streaked the early morning sky. One of her favourite parts of the day was already behind her and it was barely breakfast time.
Would it always feel like this? Would every day always be a new mountain to climb? Mount KilamancalledBradforbreakingmyheart might not roll easily off the tongue, but it was there on the map of Alice’s life and its recent eruption threatened to leave her homeless.
Bending to pick up the empty mugs, Alice looked out over the rolling gardens towards the woods. Through the trees she could see silvery glints of the vintage Airstream caravan she’d impulse bought on eBay last autumn with the intention of giving it a kitsch make-over for weekends away with Brad. His celebrity life made it difficult to go to hotels and cities without him being noticed, so she’d harboured hazy images of them camping out in the Airstream, maybe even taking it over to France for long weekends of wine and cheese and sex. The sight of it made her heart heavy these days. Maybe she could live in it if the bank repossessed the house, claim squatters rights in her beloved garden. Sighing, she turned and headed back into the warmth of the kitchen.
Sliding ready-made lasagne for one onto the kitchen table, Alice placed the most alcoholic bottle of wine she could find and a glass beside it and sat down, the tick of the kitchen clock the only sound in the too quiet, too big kitchen. It hadn’t seemed that way when she lived here with Brad; the kitchen had been the central hub of their lives and one of the rooms she loved best of all.
But then it had also been the room where the ugly end scenes of her marriage had played out too; the traded insults, the wall that had needed repainting after Alice hurled a cup of coffee at Brad
