‘Thanks for that,’ said Lauren.
‘No worries,’ said Troy, giving her a wink. ‘I won’t have you being bullied like that.’
Lauren forced down the little thrill that shot through her as he said that. Troy was being Troy. He was trying to get her back, and would use any means at his disposal to do so, she had to remember that.
As it happened, he didn’t try anything at all for the rest of the evening. It was a fairly slow night and only three or four of the regulars were in, so Lauren and he chatted amicably behind the bar for most of the night. To her surprise, Lauren found they had a lot to talk about. They argued about the football, Lauren supported the local third division club, while Troy (naturally) supported Man U, and couldn’t work out why Lauren would be interested in a bunch of losers. They read the headlines in the tabloids left at the bar, and laughed at the shenanigans that low grade celebs were getting up to if the redtops were to be believed. And in between, Troy talked about the girls.
‘I just can’t get over how great they are,’ he said. ‘You’ve done a good job with them, Loz.’
Lauren felt a little glow of pride. It wasn’t as if being a mum came with a yearly appraisal. It felt nice to get some recognition that she was getting it right.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Most of the time I feel like I’m just about coping.’
‘I think you do more than cope,’ said Troy. ‘In fact I think you’re rather magnificent.’
Lauren blushed, and turned away. Why did he have to be so nice now? If only he could have felt like this four years ago.
‘Well, that’s easy for you to say,’ she said. ‘You come in after all the hard work’s done and think by complimenting me that makes it all right.’
Troy had the grace to look embarrassed.
‘Sorry, that came out wrong,’ he said. ‘You’re absolutely right. It is easy for me to say, but I know now what a tosser I’ve been. I should never have left you in the lurch like that, and I wish I hadn’t.’
‘Too right you shouldn’t,’ said Lauren.
‘I do want to make it up to you,’ he said, ‘more than anything.’
Lauren sighed, ‘It’s not that easy to wipe out four years of hurt, Troy. Let’s just leave it that we get to know each other again as friends, and you concentrate on being the girls’ dad. Take one step at a time, eh?’
She touched his arm lightly, then went to clear up the empties and wipe down tables. When she looked up, she caught Troy looking at her when he thought she wasn’t watching. He looked rather sad and thoughtful. She wondered, for the first time since he was back, if he really meant everything he said. Perhaps this time, he had changed, and for the better.
Joel was at home lovingly working on Edward’s desk. He’d decided that if he was going to open the house for the Edward Handford exhibition, he needed to get on and renovate. Thanks to Kezzie having wangled some grant money for the garden from a small gardening charity, he’d had to spend less on the restoration than he’d budgeted for. Which meant he felt able to splash out on a decorator, and had managed to get the dining room and lounge finished. The hallway was next on the list, and in the meantime Joel had resumed work on the desk. As the only bit of furniture still surviving from Edward’s day, Joel wanted it to form pride of place in the exhibition.
He finally finished stripping off the old layers of polish and lacquer, layers and layers of it, which he’d spent weeks doing when Sam was small, before Claire had died. But now he had attacked it with renewed vigour, and he was rewarded for his efforts by being able to see the original walnut in all its beauty. He took a piece of sandpaper to it, and started to sand it down gently. This was such a beautiful piece of furniture. It gave him a thrill to think of Edward sitting here, writing at it, looking out of the front of the house, just as he did. The more he read Edward’s diaries, and looked through the other material he and Kezzie had found, the greater his affinity with his great great grandfather, who had moved into the house in the first throes of love, and created a garden in memory of that love.
For Joel too, it was love that had brought him here, though to begin with it was the garden that had attracted him – he clearly remembered as a child the excitement of coming to visit Uncle Jack, and finding it locked, sneaking into it in much the same way as Kezzie had. He could still remember the thrill, as he swung himself over the wall, and dropped down into the garden.
Back then it had been half tended – Uncle Jack had employed a curmudgeonly old handyman, whom Joel had instinctively avoided – but rarely visited, so the borders had been a jumble of weeds and plants. He particularly remembered there was a lot of heartsease, but then you found a lot of that growing round here. But he could also make out the patterns of the knot garden, just about being kept in shape, although he hadn’t really appreciated what he was looking at. The bushes round the side of the garden had been very overgrown and Joel had spent a lovely half hour having adventures in them before he’d been called indoors. Forever after, the secret garden had held a magical place in his heart. When his mum told him about Uncle Jack’s will it had been a no brainer to come here.
Realistically, though, when he saw the house he should have known it wouldn’t be to Claire’s taste. It hadn’t, if he were honest, been altogether to his. He had taken her to Lovelace Cottage as a surprise, but their first view of the place had been hardly propitious. Uncle Jack had been a bachelor, with no children, and precious little money. So the house had fallen into a state of disrepair, and was in desperate need of modernization. What Joel remembered as romantic and exotic from his childhood had turned into a decaying lost paradise, and even he had balked a little as he opened the creaking iron gate, and led Claire by the hand up the path.
The crazy paving was broken and cracked, leaving the surface uneven. The grass was growing long and wild, and the flowerbeds were a riot of weeds, with the odd snapdragon and forget me not poking out. The scent of the wisteria over the front door was strong, but the plant itself had, triffid-like, taken over the whole of the front of the house and needed cutting back. Claire had blinked in the May sunlight. The sun played upon her face, and she raised her hand to shield herself from its glare. Her fair hair was tied in a high ponytail, and her face was alive and laughing.
‘Um, it’s a bit overgrown,’ she said. ‘And who in their right mind would plant a privet hedge so close to the house? It must be hideously dark inside.’
‘I don’t suppose it was like that originally,’ he said. ‘Nobody’s done anything here forever. I’m sure we can trim that back so it’s not so overgrown. Come on, let’s go in.’
He opened the front door with some trepidation. Uncle Jack was a cantankerous old soul, and from his childhood memories the place had never been clean. Claire was used to the spick and span modernity of their flat in town; would she be able to cope with the amount of work needed here? Even Joel, who loved the idea of restoring an old house like this, felt a little daunted.
They had walked into a house trapped in time. There was dust everywhere, mote beams danced in the green, red and blue shadows cast by sunlight pouring through the stained-glass window of the front door, but the overall impression was of gloomy darkness. The stairway in the hall, though impressive, was made of dark mahogany, and matched the wood panelling up the walls. The parquet floor was partially covered in a faded red and white rug, which had seen better days, and pictures of various aged relatives stared vacantly out of ancient photographs.
‘Who’s
