Home for the Holidays

by Sue Moorcroft

  ‘Then I’ll burn Elton’s house down instead. Little prick.’ Gabe threw his arms around Alexia for a big hug, making her squeak and giggle in surprise.

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’ Ben raised his glass with mock solemnity and Alexia and Gabe joined the toast.

  The relieving of feelings seemed to cheer them all up and they were just deciding on whether to have a final round of drinks when Carola, who Ben remembered as the grumbler from the village meeting, approached.

  Alexia sighed audibly.

  Carola looked thin and white and pinched by the cold. ‘Is this a council of war? Or are you about to announce you’ve found the missing money?’

  For once, Gabe lost his customary cool. ‘As you didn’t put any in, it’s none of your damned business. Come back when you’ve got something to contribute other than salt for our wounds!’

  Carola’s mouth opened. And shut. Then her eyes filled with tears and she turned and hurried away, gaze fixed to the floor until she’d gained the door of the pub. In a moment it had swung closed behind her.

  Alexia and Gabe looked at each other. Gabe’s eyebrows almost disappeared into his hair. ‘Did I just make Carola cry?’

  Alexia’s eyes were very wide. ‘I think so,’ she agreed uncertainly. ‘Wow. I thought she was made of iron. But she’s been acting strangely since the village hall closed. She hasn’t got any fetes to organise or committee meetings to chair and I think that those things were all she did, aside from being a mum and wife.’

  Gabe’s look of horror was comical as he pulled on his old duffel coat. ‘I’ll have to apologise to her. Get me another drink, someone.’ And he hurried to follow Carola out through the door.

  It was Ben’s round and so he went to the bar for two more pints and another Pepsi. When he returned, it was to find Alexia’s ex-boyfriend, Sebastian, had arrived.

  ‘Why don’t we just try it?’ Sebastian was asking Alexia. He might be described as a bear of a man but a teddy bear rather than a grizzly.

  Ben resumed his seat. ‘Don’t mind me.’

  Sebastian evidently did mind as he gave Alexia a wistful smile and made for the bar.

  Alexia shook her head as she drank the foam off yet another pint. Where did she put them all within her half-pint frame? ‘He’s just tried the “let’s just go out together as friends until you leave” angle.’ She rolled her dark eyes. ‘I didn’t have the energy to tell him I’m not leaving and then have to fend off his attempts to make us a couple again.’

  Ben winked. ‘I could tell him about our night together if you think it would put him off.’

  ‘Don’t be an idiot!’ Alexia looked pained. The flush on her cheeks reminded Ben of when no frown had crinkled her brow or worry clouded her eyes and she’d worn only a smile as she’d shared her body with him in the dancing light of the fire. He knew he shouldn’t have reminded her of what had happened but when images of her naked breasts hung in his mind’s eye and the memory of the feel of her skin made his fingertips tingle …

  Gabe burst back into the pub, wiping rain from his face, hurrying to rejoin them. ‘Brr, I got soaked. It’s raining cats and dogs.’ Hanging his coat on the back of his chair, he edged it closer to the fire. ‘Damned woman wouldn’t let me apologise. Said I was right and I’d given her something to think about. Now I feel worse than ever.’

  Ben fell to sipping his drink and listening as Alexia and Gabe discussed the oddities in Carola’s behaviour, glad Gabe had bumbled back in to break the spell, and shaken to realise he’d quite like to put Seb off Alexia.

  And had been about to say so.

  Alexia returned home from the pub exhausted, but her mind was too busy to allow her to sleep.

  Both Sebastian and Carola had unsettled her. And Ben! When he’d told her what Imogen had done her heart had felt as if it were literally trying to reach out to him. Then he’d offered to tell Seb about their night together and she’d returned abruptly to the more familiar state of feeling twitchy irritation with him. To top it off, he’d then lapsed into a state of silence for most of the rest of the evening.

  Once in her favourite cosy pyjamas covered in little paw prints, Alexia climbed into bed and propped herself on her pillows. Setting up her laptop, she began firing off emails. First to Dion the roofer, giving him the go ahead to buy the reclaimed tiles and trying to woo him into starting her job the moment he had them in his possession. She moved on to plasterer Freddie, ground worker Hayden and electrician Phil, outlining the work for which she needed estimates and requesting site meetings.

  That done, she checked her inbox. The several work-related emails could wait until the morrow but her cursor hovered over one from Elton. She clicked and watched his email fill the screen.

  Alexia,

  Sorry our last conversation ended on a sour note. I might have something for you, if you’re interested?

  Elton

  She drummed her fingers. Resentment told her to click delete but common sense grabbed her clicking finger before she could do it. When she’d thought she was going to work with Elton she’d kept only enough work-related irons in the fire till Christmas to smooth her transition from one geographical area to another. Now Jodie was gone she had no rent coming in so she needed more irons and a much hotter fire. Whilst her mortgage wasn’t as overwhelming as some people’s it did need paying.

  The bleak fact was that she couldn’t afford to be choosy, even if it was Elton offering.

  What kind of ‘something’?

  A

  The clock read nearly midnight, but she still felt too keyed up to sleep. Probably working on emails tonight had been a bad idea because all the problems associated with The Angel and her pique at Elton were now buzzing like a swarm of insects with names such as doubt, fear, worry, anger and pressure. Unlike Pandora’s Box there seemed no corner reserved for hope.

  She decided to read for a while. She was halfway through a great romantic comedy that had been keeping her attention for the last few nights.

  Somehow, though, curiosity guiding her fingers, instead of picking up her paperback she typed into her search engine Lloyd Hardaker. The first item that came up was from the Reading Chronicle and was headlined: Woman Dies in Head-On Collision. Uncomfortable now at her own interest, she skimmed the account of Lloyd taking a corner on a country road half in the wrong lane and the collision with an oncoming vehicle, flipping Lloyd’s car on its side. Of the other car careering out of control into a tree and its driver not surviving the impact, and Mr Hardaker’s blood alcohol level being nearly three times the legal limit. Her heart ached with her knowledge of the pain that underlay the passing mention at the foot of the column. Mrs Imogen Hardaker, passenger in Lloyd Hardaker’s car and wife of the driver’s brother, Benedict Hardaker, received life-changing injuries.

  A later article covered Lloyd’s sentencing at crown court. Guilty! Lawyer in the Dock rehashed the previous article and contained a ‘no comment’ comment from Holloway Menton & Partners, solicitors and Lloyd’s erstwhile employers, and an emotional ‘I hope he rots in jail’ quote from the husband of the poor woman who’d died.

  The next searches simply listed links to Lloyd’s Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, all no doubt leading to page unavailable messages or out-of-date information.

  She was about to close down her computer when her curiosity got the better of her again and she typed Benedict Hardaker into the search engine.

  Top of the list was a website for the company Hardaker Tree Management. The company had changed ownership earlier in the year but it looked to be a thriving business full of smiling employees wearing hard hats with raised visors. Clicking on Blog and searching the archives from before the company had changed hands she found several entries about Ben very visibly heading up his own company. Ben at the tops of tall trees, Ben travelling to work at stately homes. Ben in a dark suit receiving an award for entrepreneurship from the local chamber of trade, a beautiful woman at his side in a blue-green shiny cocktail dress that looked
as if it should be made of mermaids’ tails.

  Feeling guilty at poking her nose into Ben’s past, she closed the machine.

  As she tried to sleep though, one thought kept spooling through her mind: Benedict Hardaker had once had a ready smile. The kind that actually made him look happy.

  Chapter Twelve

  The rest of Alexia’s week passed in a whirl of work. Issues arose on the basement conversion job and made it hard to keep it on track time-wise. Mood boards had to be prepared ahead of meetings with clients. Noting the thinness of her order book in November and December she emailed five people who’d previously sent enquiries to explain that she was not now relocating and would be happy to discuss their needs if they hadn’t yet found a decorator. These, and all the other tasks involved in running a business, particularly one that had hit a bump in the road, took care of the day job.

  The Angel took care of every other spare moment. On Tuesday the scaffolding had gone up so Dion could begin work on the roof early next week and Alexia had squeezed in site meetings with Hayden and Phil. Another was arranged with Freddie for Saturday morning.

  Roughly, the schedule said Hayden and his mate Toby would get the ground floor to screed level while Phil the electrician and Malc the plumber worked upstairs. In their wake, Freddie and Nick would plaster and Alexia would make decisions on joinery. There would be a lot of drying out time before tiles could be laid and walls painted. She was already combing Gumtree, eBay and Bettsbrough Freecycle for whatever she thought she could use. Good kitchen equipment bargains were particularly hard to come by but Gabe had blanched at the cost of a commercial espresso machine first time round, let alone now their budget was a shadow of its former self.

  By Friday she was shattered. Even spending the afternoon on a mood board based around lilac checks and apple green floral for a pitch to a small hotel on the edge of Bettsbrough wasn’t the joy it should have been. She spent the evening working on how much of the walls of The Angel’s cavernous kitchen should be tiled and estimated the square metreage needed over the entire ground floor, along with grout and adhesive. At least when she fell into bed, she slept.

  On Saturday morning, refreshed, she whizzed off to The Angel to wait for Freddie to turn up so they could decide on plastering needs. Ben arrived at just about the same time, which meant Freddie could tap walls and point out unsound plaster to Ben. All Alexia had to do was make notes and establish that Freddie would manage the areas of brickwork to block up what had been fireplaces.

  Freddie pulled a regretful face. ‘You’re not putting the fireplaces back, then?’

  Without looking up from her notes, she shook her head. ‘Not necessary. No money. No fireplaces.’

  ‘Shame.’ Freddie settled his hands in the bib of his dungarees. ‘I expect all the fire surrounds were original, were they?’

  ‘Yep. Cast iron and Victorian tile. Worth nicking.’

  Freddie tutted and went back to tapping walls and making sure Ben knew how to use a hammer and bolster to chop off unsound plaster. Alexia hid a smile that someone was questioning Ben for a change.

  Once Freddie had eased himself back into his van and trundled off Ben followed Alexia into the Bar Parlour. ‘So shall I begin on the unsound plaster?’

  Alexia scuffed the floor with the toe of her boot. ‘How do you feel about breaking up this old lime mortar instead? We need to get it up for the damp proof membrane to go down.’

  ‘OK. I don’t have a sledgehammer or pickaxe but I think Gabe has. Be right back.’

  With the sound of his departing truck in her ears, Alexia was free to pace around the ground floor with her pad and pencil, opening her mind to possibilities.

  The huge kitchen worried her. The floor was OK as at some time heavy-duty vinyl had been laid. Shane hadn’t deemed it worth the effort to rip it up and steal whatever lay beneath and if the loos and pantry were anything to go by he would have found only workaday quarry tiles anyway. There wasn’t much remedial work necessary in the kitchen but the amount of equipment they could afford would be lost in the huge room, and tiles for the work areas plus emulsion for walls and ceiling would cost.

  She wandered back to the Bar Parlour and studied the spot where the bar had been. If they simply sectioned off that area they could get everything in behind a counter: refrigeration, food preparation, storage and sinks. She made a series of rapid notes to discuss with Gabe, the environmental health officer, the electrician and the plumber, and made rough sketches.

  When Ben returned she asked him to begin on the floor of the Public so she could continue undisturbed. She immersed herself in her ideas to the rhythmic thump of the sledgehammer and scrape of the shovel in the next room. When she reached the stage of needing the software on her computer to produce a proper drawing, she poked her head into the Public to tell Ben she was leaving.

  He paused to remove his hat and safety visor, leaning on the sledgehammer and breathing heavily, dust on his clothes and lower part of his face. The mortar was broken up around his feet and more was piled up behind him. ‘Do you know if it’s safe to go up in the loft?’

  She stepped a little further into the room. ‘The timbers are sound according to the survey Gabe had done when he bought the place, but it depends what you’re planning. At the back there’s only the tarpaulin between you and a long drop.’

  ‘Understood.’ He wiped his face on his sleeve, balanced the sledgehammer on its head, reached for a bottle of water and took a couple of thirsty gulps. ‘I’m trying to think of ways to monetize this place. I wondered whether it was possible to rent out the upstairs and, if so, worth converting the loft to make additional living space.’

  ‘It would make an amazing two-floor apartment and we’re in such easy commuting distance of Peterborough, young professionals would love its history and dormers overlooking the village. And those fantastic wide floorboards and moulded plaster ceilings. Maybe a Juliet balcony.’ She laughed. ‘But there’s no money for a new kitchen and bathroom upstairs let alone a loft conversion. Maybe when the community café’s up and running … but it will take time to accrue capital.’

  He grimaced, swiping up his sledgehammer again and hefting it in both hands. ‘If he wasn’t such a stubborn old sod there would be money. I’d invest. Or lend, if he let me.’

  Alexia stretched and yawned. ‘I’ll leave you now to frown over that problem while I go home to frown over my computer. Then I think I’ll have earned a couple of glasses of wine this evening.’

  Ben pulled his hardhat back on, obviously ready to convert more of the mortar to rubble. ‘I was thinking along similar lines. Why not let me buy you a drink?’

  ‘I didn’t mean I’d earned wine from you!’ she protested, her face feeling warmer than the frigid air inside The Angel warranted.

  ‘And I didn’t take it as a heavy hint. I’m offering to buy you a drink in appreciation of you going above and beyond the call of duty in helping my uncle out of a tight spot.’ He flipped his visor down so it was harder for her to see his face. ‘Also my final divorce papers arrived this morning and I feel as if I should somehow mark the event. I only really know you and Gabe in the village. And Gabe’s had a rotten cold all week.’

  Alexia found herself laughing. ‘So I’m your last resort?’

  He grinned. ‘Or nearly my first choice, if you want a more positive spin. But don’t worry if it doesn’t appeal. I’m man enough to go for a pint on my own.’

  He turned back to his work but Alexia’s conscience twanged as she imagined him spending the evening alone when such a seismic shift had occurred in his life. To be married and then single. So, as she turned to leave, she tossed back casually, ‘It’s not good to drink alone. I’ll meet you in The Three Fishes about eight.’

  At home, once settled with a pot of tea – she must be catching teapots and loose-leaf tea from Gabe – and her computer, Alexia was soon absorbed in creating plans and digital rendered models until an email from Elton pinged into her inbox. Knowing she�
�d be unable to sink back into her work until she knew what he had to say, she clicked on it.

  Alexia,

  The ‘something’ would be doing job costings for me. I’d do all the design but it would be great if you could get the estimates in, make recommendations, collate etc. All done by email, obvs.

  He suggested fees that were pretty much the going rate.

  Alexia glared at the screen, longing to send back:

  Stick your rotten work where the sun don’t shine, you shitty little git. That’s the least enjoyable and rewarding part of the role you originally offered me. And ‘all done by email, obvs’ just emphasises that you don’t want me sullying your sites with my ‘done up like a kipper’ presence.

  But she didn’t have the luxury. None of the enquiries she’d followed up this week had elicited replies and the sad truth was that most people likely to use someone like her would already be fixed up for the short term. She’d set most of her regular team to work on The Angel anyway so anything she might pick up would probably have to be the kind she got her own hands dirty on. Such decorating-only jobs were generally short but sweet, which meant you needed a lot of them.

  She printed her drawings out for Gabe, knowing he preferred paper to a screen, then, chin propped despondently on fist, pecked out a reply to Elton.

  OK, send it over when ready.

  Though she knew her missive was brusque and ungracious she couldn’t bring herself to sound grateful. As soon as she could get her order book into its usual satisfactory state she’d tell Elton he’d have to do his own costings. Hopefully, she’d be able to choose her moment – the one that would cause maximum inconvenience to him and make him fully aware of what a diamond he’d let slip through his fingers.

  Down in the dumps, she snapped shut her computer and prepared comfort food of beans on toast smothered in cheese followed by digestive biscuits spread with Nutella and settled down to binge on property programmes on TV.