Chapter Nine
Romy had arranged to drive down to Wicklow with Kit to look at his house the following day. It was a cold, wet day, rain coming down in slanting sheets. She had already been out and left Luke with her mother when Kit called at ten o’clock.
‘Do you want a cup of coffee before we go?’ she asked as he shook himself in the hallway like a wet dog. ‘I just have something I want to finish first.’
‘Yes, please. That’d be good.’ He took off his coat and hung it on the coat-stand in the hallway, and followed her into the kitchen. Romy already had a mug of coffee sitting on the little table alongside her laptop. She poured Kit a mug from the coffee pot and he sat down opposite her.
‘Sorry, I just want to get this done,’ she said, clicking the mouse. ‘It’ll only take a few minutes.’
‘What is it?’ Kit peered at the laptop.
‘I’m trying to word an ad for the flat downstairs. I want to get it up on Daft this morning.’
‘You have a flat to let?’
‘Yes,’ she said absently, as she started to type. ‘One of the basements.’
‘Um, Romy …’
‘Yes?’ she said, without looking up.
‘Well … I’m sort of looking for somewhere …’
‘Oh.’ Romy raised her head, catching the hopeful tone in his voice. He was looking at her expectantly and her heart sank. ‘The thing is, the rent on that flat is really cheap—’
‘That wouldn’t be a problem,’ he said, smiling.
‘Well, yes, but the reason it’s cheap—’
‘Is it a bit of a dump?’ he interrupted eagerly. ‘I don’t mind. It’d be better than living at home in my bedroom like a bloody teenager.’
‘No, it’s not a dump. It’s very nice. But the reason the rent’s so cheap is because I want to let it to a handyman – someone who can do maintenance work around the place. I’m offering the flat in lieu of part of the rent – most of it, in fact.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘It’s a really good deal. So if you know anyone who can do odd jobs …’
‘I can do odd jobs.’
‘You?’ She looked at him sceptically.
‘I’m not as useless as I look, you know.’
‘I’m not saying you’re useless. There are plenty of very clever, talented people who can’t do any DIY.’
‘Well, I’m not one of them,’ he said.
‘I’m sure you’re brilliant at what you do, but—’
‘I didn’t start out in a dealing room on Wall Street, you know. I had a few other jobs when I first moved to New York.
You’d be surprised, some of the skills I’ve acquired.’ He raised an eyebrow at her.
‘Really? What other jobs did you have?’
‘Oh, let’s see. I worked construction—’
Romy raised her eyebrows in surprise. She really couldn’t see Kit on a building site – though he did have very good muscles. She’d seen him with his shirt off. Maybe they hadn’t all been acquired in an expensive gym.
‘I was a short order cook for a while. I did a stint in a juice bar, I delivered flowers, waited tables, I worked behind a perfume counter in Saks – you name it. And I lived in shitty apartments for about the first five years. I can fix things.’
‘Well …’
‘Please, Romy. Living with my folks is impossible, and anywhere I can afford is too grotty for words. This would be perfect. Plus it’d be handy for us to be living close if we’re going to be doing this project together.’
‘You can put up shelves? Do basic plumbing?’
‘Yes, absolutely. I have my own tools and everything.’
Romy really couldn’t see Kit in handyman mode, but she didn’t have the heart to say no to him when he was so down on his luck. So she decided to give him the benefit of the doubt. She didn’t want to think about how much she was motivated by the idea of having him living in her house. Anyway, even if that was part of the reason, so what? She was opening herself up to possibility, as her mother had said she should – she was letting life in, giving things a chance to happen.
‘I should show you the apartment,’ she said. ‘It’s a basement, but I’ve maximised on the light and it’s not gloomy at all.’
‘Are you saying …’
‘It’s yours, if you want it.’ She clicked out of the screen, then turned off the laptop and closed the lid.
Kit grinned. ‘I want it. I don’t need to see it – I trust you. Thanks, Romy. You won’t regret it. I’ll be a model tenant. I’ll even throw in some babysitting, if you like.’
‘I’m not so sure about that. You don’t know how babies work, remember?’
‘Well, I can learn. If I’m going to be his dad—’
‘Oh, you’re not. Sorry, I should have said. I told Mum it’s not you, so you’re off the hook. You can consider your brief stint of fatherhood over.’
‘Oh.’ His face fell. ‘Probably just as well,’ he said, but he didn’t sound convinced.
‘But I’ll still be your date for Hannah’s wedding, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
‘You’ll come as my girlfriend?’ he asked, brightening. ‘Sure, if you want me to.’
‘I do. You know what people get like at weddings. All my relations will be trying to fix me up with someone if they think I’m not partnered up.’
‘So you want me to be a sort of smokescreen? Is that what your girlfriend in New York was?’
Kit shifted, looking at her warily. ‘How much did I say about that the other night?’
‘Oh, don’t you remember? You told me all your deepest, darkest secrets,’ Romy smirked.
‘Really?’ Kit’s eyes widened.
‘Yep. You’re quite the dark horse, aren’t you?’
‘Look, Romy, I was a bit drunk, and I may have said some things—’
‘Calm down,’ she said, relenting. ‘I’m just winding you up. You didn’t tell me all that much – just that you had this show-pony girlfriend who you weren’t in love with.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Pretty much. I don’t get why you’d basically pay someone to be your arm candy—’
‘It just made life easier,’ Kit said, shrugging. ‘I like to keep my private life private, and it stopped people prying.’
Romy still felt she was missing something, but she decided to drop it. ‘So, when do you want to move in?’
‘The sooner, the better.’
‘Okay, well, it’s ready whenever you like.’
‘Um, Romy … you know the way you have a van?’
She smiled resignedly. ‘Okay, I’ll help you move. I can’t do it tomorrow, but how about Wednesday? I’ll ask Danny to mind Luke.’ Danny had told her he didn’t have much work this week, and he would probably be glad of the distraction. He was still feeling a bit lost after the break-up with Paul and she knew that he needed to keep busy so he didn’t have time to brood.
When they had finished their coffee, Romy changed into Wellingtons and pulled on her big parka jacket.
‘You’re coat’s still soaking,’ she said, pulling it off the hook and handing it to him. It was thick wool and very expensive-looking, but completely inappropriate for the weather. It was sopping wet and weighed a ton.
Kit just shrugged and put it on. Romy pulled up her hood and they made a dash for it. They still got soaked in the short hop from the door to the van.
‘Okay, show me the address again,’ Romy said as she put on her seat belt, shaking dripping tendrils of hair from her face.
Kit passed her the paper with the estate agent details and she punched the address into her GPS. ‘Right, let’s go.’
Rain pelted the windows the whole way, the windshield wipers sloshing it away as fast as they could, but not able to keep up with the onslaught. They left behind open carriageways and wide fields, and drove through narrow twisting roads where the trees formed dark, verdant tunnels. Fat water-bombs dropped from the leafy branches that canopied the road and burst on the van roof.<
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‘We could have picked a better day,’ she said to Kit, who smiled at her resignedly. But despite the weather, she was enjoying the drive. It was nice to get out of Dublin, and the countryside was at its most lush and green. Besides, she was excited to be going to look at a prospective new project, and she felt mounting anticipation as they neared their destination.
Finally, the disembodied robotic voice of the GPS directed her to turn left and they passed through a set of gates into a narrow laneway. A small, stone cottage nestled just inside the entrance. Romy manoeuvred the van carefully along the muddy track, shrubbery brushing the sides as they passed, like a natural carwash. At the end of the bumpy, twisty lane, they emerged onto an unkempt gravel patch, and there was the house in all its … well, former glory. An imposing double-fronted building with stone steps leading up to the front door, it faced onto sweeping grounds, surrounded by a dilapidated fence that was broken in places. She bent down and peered up at the house through the windscreen, then checked the estate agent’s details again.
‘Yep, this is it,’ she said, trying to sound cheerful as she cut the engine, though the house was in even worse repair than it had been when the photograph was taken. ‘Let’s go take a look,’ she said to Kit, who already appeared despondent. ‘Here, take this.’ She grabbed a large umbrella from the back seat and handed it to him. She pulled up her hood, got out of the car and stood surveying the house and the surrounding land. When she looked back at Kit and found him watching her intently, she tried to perk her expression up a bit.
‘I guess it’s not looking its best today,’ he said. ‘The rain and everything …’
‘Right.’ Yeah, the rain – that was the problem. Kit stood, looking forlornly up at the house, his thick wool coat soaking up water like a sponge, his expensive-looking brogues already caked in mud. ‘Your shoes will get ruined,’ she said, pointing at his feet.
Kit just shrugged wearily.
‘Come on, let’s look around.’ She led the way around the back of the house, examining pipes and gutters as she went. Kit hopped after her, trying to pick his way over puddles, but his feet inevitably sank into the mud, making a great sucking sound as he pulled them out again. At the back of the house, they stood ankle-deep in muck and Romy surveyed the roof. From what she could see, its condition suggested that it wouldn’t be much drier inside the house than it was out.
‘God, it’s a shithole, isn’t it?’ Kit said beside her. ‘I’m sorry I’ve wasted your time.’
‘Well, it doesn’t look great, I admit. But if it’s structurally sound … Have you got the keys?’
Kit pulled a set of keys from his pocket and jangled them.
‘Right, let’s go and look inside.’
They walked up the wide granite steps that led to the front door, which Kit managed to open after a lot of fiddling. As they stepped inside, the smell of damp and decay was overwhelming.
‘Jesus!’ Kit swore, looking around in disgust.
Romy flicked a light switch, more in hope than expectation, but there was no electricity. It was only mid-morning, but it was such a grey, overcast day that it was still frustratingly dim inside. ‘Wow,’ she said as she looked around the vast entrance hall.
‘I know, what a dump!’ Kit said. ‘Why don’t we cut our losses, go down the local pub and get wrecked instead?’
Romy turned and smiled at him. ‘I’m driving, remember? Anyway, I meant that “wow” in a good way.’
‘Seriously?’ Kit looked at her disbelievingly.
‘Yes, totally,’ she said distractedly as she took her torch from her pocket and turned it on, shining it on the ceiling and lighting up the ornate plasterwork and ceiling roses. ‘This is an amazing house!’ she breathed. ‘Well, it was once …’
She looked at Kit’s sceptical expression and realised that of course he couldn’t see it as she did. He only saw how it was now – the crumbling floorboards, the damp dripping down the walls, the broken plasterwork and peeling paint. But she saw its potential. She saw how beautiful it had been once and could be again. Already her imagination was running riot with ideas and plans, and they were only in the hall. Okay, rein it in, she told herself. Don’t get carried away by the excitement of it all. She knew the thrill and satisfaction she would get from turning this crumbling scrapheap into something truly amazing. But it probably wasn’t viable, and she had to be sensible about it for Kit’s sake.
She wandered from room to room downstairs, shining her torch on walls to examine wires, pipes, cracks in the walls and rotting woodwork, while Kit trailed behind her. Back in the hall, she placed a foot gingerly on the bottom step of the stairs, holding on firmly to the banisters.
‘Are you sure you want to chance that?’ Kit asked. ‘They might collapse.’
Treading lightly, she made it to the first landing. ‘Come on,’ she said, turning and smiling down at him. ‘They’re perfectly safe.’
Kit followed her, and for the next hour they explored the house, the huge, high-ceilinged rooms echoing with emptiness. There were still some odd pieces of old furniture around the place, chairs and sofas covered in threadbare brocade, a gigantic monster of a four-poster bed in one room, heavy velvet curtains tied back by thick twisted rope in another. Romy made notes as she went.
‘This must have been an amazing house,’ she said, sitting down on a window seat in an upstairs bedroom. ‘Do you remember coming here when your aunt was alive?’
‘Barely,’ he said. He picked up an old birdcage from where it lay on the floor, examined it and tossed it onto the couch. ‘Even then it was a dump. For as long as I can remember, she just lived in the basement. The rest of the house was derelict. Ethan, Hannah and I used to play up here.’
‘What about the gate lodge?’
‘I think a caretaker bloke used to live there back in the day, but he was long gone when we were kids. My aunt used to rent it out a bit.’
‘Really? It doesn’t strike me as a great holiday spot.’
‘She knew a bunch of writers and artists – they used it when they wanted to get away from it all.’
‘It’s such a shame,’ Romy said wistfully, looking out to the garden below. The glass in the large sash window was cracked and grubby. ‘I don’t know why people let houses fall into such disrepair.’
‘So,’ Kit said, sitting down beside her. ‘Do you think there’s any hope for it?’
Romy sighed. ‘Well, normally I’d say your best bet would be to tear it down and start again – build something new from scratch. But it’s such a beautiful house …’
‘If you say so,’ Kit smiled.
‘It does need an awful lot of work – maybe more than you can afford. It will need a new roof for starters,’ she said, consulting her notebook, ‘new plumbing, rewiring, replastering, there’s dry rot that will have to be dealt with …’ She trailed off. ‘Look, leave it with me. I’ll work up some figures when I get home and give you an estimate.’
‘Can you give me an estimate for building from scratch too?’
‘Yes, I can. The only problem with that is, I’m not sure you’d be able to build something special enough to get the price you’d need – not with the market the way it is at the moment.’
‘But you think I could maybe make the money back if we did up this house?’
‘Possibly. I’ll have to go into the figures, but if we did the right thing with it … It would make a fantastic country house hotel.’
‘Oh, I never thought of that.’
‘It could be great. I can put out some feelers, see if anyone’s looking for a property like this.’
‘Thanks, Romy,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’
‘Don’t thank me yet,’ she grinned. ‘You might run screaming when you see the figures.’
The rain eased up on the drive back to Dublin. Romy drove Kit back to his house first. Kit’s parents still lived on the road where she and Kit had grown up, and she was overcome with nostalgia as she turned
into the tree-lined cul de sac. She had lived just four doors down on the opposite side from Kit. As she backed into the driveway, she glanced towards her childhood home. There were two children, a boy and a girl, playing ball in the front garden. It felt weird to think of someone else sleeping in her bedroom. Cutting the engine,
she looked at Kit’s house in her rear-view mirror. It harboured almost as many memories as her own. She had spent so much time here when she was with Kit, it had been like a second home to her. It was strange to be back. Everything looked the same, yet different.
‘You okay?’ Kit asked her.
‘Yeah. I just haven’t been around here in so long. It’s kind of weird. It all looks so much smaller.’
‘I know, doesn’t it? I’m glad you said that. If I say it, I get accused of being all up myself and Americanised.’
‘Well, your mum can hardly hold that against you.’
‘Don’t be so sure.’ Kit removed his seat belt and made to open his door. ‘Are you going to come in? Mom would love to see you.’
Romy glanced at her watch. ‘I’d better not. I need to pick Luke up from my mum’s. But I’ll see her when I come to help you move. Do you think you’ll be able to get your stuff packed up by Wednesday?’
‘Um … yeah,’ Kit said with a little smile. ‘That’s not a problem.’
‘Don’t tell me – you haven’t unpacked yet, have you?’
‘Er … no, not really,’ he mumbled guiltily.
Romy laughed. ‘Okay, well, I’ll see if I can get Danny to babysit and I’ll give you a ring later to sort it out.’
Kit found his mother in the kitchen, standing over what appeared to be a large chocolate puddle that was oozing and spreading across the table before his eyes.
‘Kit, thank goodness!’ Laura said, looking up at him. She appeared to be using a palette knife as a dam to contain the tide of chocolate before it reached the edge of the table.
Kit was about to ask what it was when his father came in from the garden.
‘Colm, great! I need you two to give me a hand with this.’
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