‘Pip,’ she said, remembering why she’d bothered to get out of bed and come out here in the first place, ‘who do you rent your house from?’
‘A company called MA Holdings in Bristol,’ he said, sitting up and stretching.
‘Could you give me their number?’
‘Sure. Well, actually we don’t have a phone number. We do everything by email or post.’
‘Where are their offices?’
‘Bristol,’ he repeated. ‘But we’ve only got a P.O. number.’
Evie considered this. ‘So you’ve never been into their office?’ This was annoying – she had been thinking she might go into town this afternoon and visit the landlord herself. It had been five days since she’d phoned Harry and he hadn’t got back to her yet. Doing nothing was driving her crazy.
Pip shook his head. ‘We met a woman at the house here when we came to view. She was called Valerie, I think. Cissy will remember. Our money goes out of the bank every month, and if we have any problems we just email them. We’ve never actually had any problems, though.’
Lucky you, thought Evie. She said, ‘Okay. The email address would be great, thanks.’
‘You’re not after renting the house yourself, are you?’ Pip’s face had taken on a panicked expression. ‘I mean, I know your folks live across the way but we’re really happy here.’
‘I’m not trying to get you out of your house, Pip. Far from it. I’m trying to make sure none of the houses in Cupid’s Way get sold to Dynamite Construction. Ever.’
‘Phew. Well, if there’s anything I can do, you just ask. We might not be proper residents, like we don’t own our house and that, but Cissy and I are just as devoted to living here as anyone.’
‘I can see that,’ Evie told him. ‘And you are proper residents. You mustn’t think any different.’
But she knew as she walked away that everyone else in the street would still be calling them “the renters” for at least another five years.
*
On her way back to number eleven her mobile phone rang and buzzed in her pocket. Evie swore and pulled it out, annoyed that her hands were still disgustingly dirty. She looked at the screen, willing it to be Harry.
It wasn’t Harry. It was Michael.
‘Evie,’ he said. His voice was deep and authoritative. Evie closed her eyes briefly, then did an about-turn and headed towards the south end of the row. She couldn’t go back inside the house with the enemy on the other end of the phone.
‘Evie, I miss you. Meet up with me this morning.’
She moved from deliciously happy – he misses me! He wants to meet up with me! – to furious within the space of a few seconds.
‘Do you have amnesia? Don’t you remember what I said to you?’
‘I remember that you’ve got the most beautiful eyes and that they are very green when you’re angry. Green eyes, green suit, green issues. That’s what I thought the first time I met you. My green goddess.’
Oh, for goodness sake. Evie segued from annoyed to nauseated without a backwards glance.
‘Give me a break. Your silver tongue won’t work with me, remember? I know what you’re really like.’
‘Let me guess – a cut-throat developer, right?’
‘If the cap fits.’
‘Except I’m not. Am I? I told you stuff I shouldn’t have told you – I could get the sack, in fact.’
‘I hope you do,’ she countered.
‘No, you don’t. If the board got rid of me, my replacement would be even worse, believe me. Properly cut-throat. Not a sentimental bone in his body.’
‘Do you have a sentimental bone in your body, Michael?’ Evie loved saying his name. Even now, leaning against the frost-blown wall, looking back along the row of houses this man was trying to buy so he could do nothing better than knock them all down, she loved saying his name. It did not bode well.
‘Not really,’ he admitted. She could hear the laughter in his voice. ‘But I do have a very strong attraction to a woman I feel is going to be causing me a lot of trouble in the coming months.’
‘You’re right about that,’ she told him.
‘Evie, can’t we just put it aside? You have your agenda, I have mine, but we’re good together. Aren’t we? We could have so much fun.’
‘Michael. How much fun do you honestly think I could have with you? I’d be thinking about my grandparents and how I was betraying them every minute.’
He started to answer but she cut across him. ‘And I don’t have an agenda. I just want to stop this travesty taking place. And I won’t rest until I do.’
‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said. He sounded tired now. For just a moment she wanted to wind back to the moment when he’d told her he missed her, when his voice was silky like chocolate.
‘Evie, I’ve got to fly back to Edinburgh tomorrow and I don’t know when I’ll be home again. Please come into town and meet me. Or I could come there.’
‘Are you crazy? You’d be beaten with sticks.’ She turned around and faced out towards the playground. The McAllister building cast its shadow over the playing field to her left. A thought struck her. ‘Michael, Cupid’s Way isn’t that big really, is it? Why is the land worth so much to you?’
‘I can’t tell you that, Evie. You know I can’t.’
‘Will you be building on the playing field as well?’
He was quiet for a moment. ‘I think it might be included with the plot of land, yes.’
‘And the playground?’
‘Evie, I don’t really–’
‘I used to play there as a child. I used to fall over and scrape my knee there, and then I’d come over to my gran’s for a plaster and a biscuit.’
If there was impatience in his voice it was only the slightest trace. ‘Evie, the playground I used to go to is a Tesco now. It’s just the way things are.’
‘I have to go,’ Evie said. She could see her granddad coming down the path towards her. He would wonder why she was out here in the cold shivering when there was a perfectly good telephone in the house. She scooted off to her right and began to circumvent the row of terraces, keeping her head low. It wasn’t hard – she barely reached the top of the back yard walls anyway.
‘I wanted to take you to Horizon House,’ Michael was saying. She realised suddenly that this was the first time she’d spoken to him on the phone and that it felt as natural as walking.
‘I don’t know what that is but I’m not coming.’ She passed the empty house, the one that Dynamite owned – that Michael owned – and glared at it. The house stared back with blank windows for eyes. The guttering curved alarmingly in the middle, like a single frowning eyebrow.
‘It’s the headquarters of the Environment Agency. I’m on my way there now. You’d love it, Evie. The architecture is brilliant. It’s one of the UK’s greenest buildings.’
This time he left off with the green goddess nonsense, but Evie knew he was thinking it.
‘It sounds great, Michael, and I’m touched you want to take me there. But I’m not coming. And now I really have to go.’ She reached her grandparents’ back yard and lowered her voice. ‘Well,’ she said. She dug at the gravel with the toe of her wellington.
‘Evie, I don’t want to leave things badly between us. If only you could–’
‘And if only you could,’ she interrupted. ‘If only you could find somewhere else to build your medical centre and leave my family alone.’
He rang off then, with the briefest of goodbyes. Apparently she did know how to end the call after all.
She slipped through the back gate and crossed the tiny yard that usually contained the cobwebby table that now sat in Mavis and Frank’s living room. She reached for the door handle and tried the back door, hoping it was unlocked. When she was a child it had always been open, even when they were out. The handle turned and she smiled.
Her gran was in the kitchen, but she didn’t notice Evie at the door. She was talking to someone, animated, waving her hand
s in the air. Evie stopped, unsure whether she was interrupting an argument or a private discussion. But hadn’t she just seen her granddad leaving Cupid’s Way via the south gate? Maybe he’d doubled back and beat her to it, but he’d have had to be quick to get in the front door and start a row already.
She listened for an answering voice but heard nothing. Mavis was talking again, holding out her arms as if in supplication. She said, ‘I will never leave you. You know that. You’re safe here, and I’ll always be here for you. There is nowhere else in the world for me. You are my home, Tommy. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.’
Evie stepped backwards and closed the door softly. She looked through the window and watched her grandma. There was no one else there, of that she was certain. Mavis was talking to herself. Correction: she was talking to someone called Tommy. But there was no one called Tommy in the house.
She slipped out of the yard and leaned against the wall, pressing her fingers against the rough brick and looking up at the McAllister monstrosity. She could smell the earth on her clothes still and she really needed to get inside and have a shower. It would probably be best if she went around to the front and came in calling a noisy hello. It was probably crazy, but Evie didn’t want her gran to know what she’d overheard.
She also didn’t want to think about who Tommy might be. There was a pressing feeling on her chest, as though some invisible person was pushing her with both palms. She thought about her mother in Canada and imagined her sitting by a lake drinking out of a metal flask, smiling. Would her mother know who this Tommy was?
Evie turned right and came back into Cupid’s Way by the allotments. Pip and Cissy waved to her. They didn’t seem to have made much progress.
‘I gave that email address to your granddad,’ Pip called out. Evie waved back, then reached into her pocket. Her phone was ringing. She hoped it wasn’t Michael again.
‘Harry,’ she said, feeling both relieved and a little disappointed. ‘What have you got for me?’
‘That’s our Evie,’ he said. ‘Get straight to the point, no messing around.’
‘Sorry. I’m just a bit tense. How are you? How are things in the mad house?’
He laughed. ‘It’s just as you say – a mad house. Actually, I’d better not stay on too long. Julia’s on the warpath.’
‘Oh, lord. Am I glad I’m on holiday.’
‘I’m afraid I might be about to turn your holiday into a bit of a nightmare.’
She turned away from Pip and Cissy and hunkered down on a wooden bench that someone had painted bright purple. ‘What do you mean?’
‘It’s worse than we thought, Evie. Or should I say, it’s exactly as bad as we thought. The medical centre? That’s just the half of it. Wait till you hear what else they’re building.’
Chapter 12
Evie watched the screen of her phone until it went black. Harry had rung off at least three minutes ago but still she hadn’t moved. She pocketed the phone and looked up. Frank was walking back along the cobbled path, a pint of milk from the Happy Shopper in his hand. He’d have had to walk right past the new supermarket to reach the Happy Shopper, and she knew he didn’t do that because he needed the exercise. She noted the spring in his step, the calmness of his face. She was about to change all that.
Galvanised into action, she jumped up and called over to Pip and Cissy. ‘I’ve got news,’ she said. ‘Can you get everyone together?’ They might as well all hear it at once.
Frank reached her side and said, ‘What’s up?’
‘I’ve got some news,’ she told him. ‘From my colleague at work. It’s not good, Gramps.’
‘Should I get your gran?’
She shook her head. ‘Leave her for now.’ Did Frank know his wife talked to an invisible man when he popped out for milk? Evie couldn’t think about that right now.
Zac arrived looking artfully dishevelled. His jeans were covered in orange dust but his T-shirt was pristine white. ‘What’s going on?’ he said. Evie didn’t answer. She waited for Sarah, who said she was texting Tim, and for the Peacocks to pile out of their triple-fronted house. Freda had her hair in curlers and Bob was wearing his pyjamas. Even Rolo Peacock came outside, grey and grubby in an ancient suit jacket that looked like he lived and slept in it. Evie realised it was still early. She felt like she’d been up for an entire day.
Frank cleared his throat and tapped a stick on the metal gate post. ‘Evie’s got something to tell us. She’s got some news …’ He looked at her with raised eyebrows and she nodded. ‘About Cupid’s Way. Over to you, Evie.’
She stood up, aware that her legs felt shaky but aware too that she didn’t care. This wasn’t like speaking to a bunch of delegates at a conference – this was about people’s lives. This mattered. Her nerves were irrelevant.
‘I just had a call from Manchester,’ she told them. Sarah nodded encouragingly; Zac hadn’t taken his eyes off her. ‘I asked a colleague of mine to look into the plans for Cupid’s Way. He’s a real veteran, knows everyone. He spoke to someone who works for Bristol council, and this source of his asked around the people she knows in the planning department.’ She was trying to establish Harry’s integrity, hoping they wouldn’t want to shoot the messenger, but then she realised they didn’t care about him. Or her. They just wanted to hear her news.
‘It’s not good, I’m afraid. The long and short of it is, Dynamite Construction have already struck a deal with the council. They’re building two hundred new homes on a site outside the city, but this medical centre is their sweetener. Their loss-leader, if you like.’
Confused faces stared back at her. Someone coughed. Evie sighed and racked her brain for the best way to explain it. A few words from Harry and she got the picture – but she was familiar with the industry terms. She clenched her teeth as another wave of anger swelled inside her. She was familiar with the back-handed, devious, under-the-table deals as well. But she’d thought better of Michael. She really had.
‘It’s like this,’ she said, sitting down on the bench again. As one, they all moved a step closer. ‘Say a big company wanted to build some new houses. Lots of houses. The council needs the houses – whatever you feel about the rights and wrongs of it, councils do need new housing to be built, and they want developers to build it. But – and here’s where it gets complicated – the council don’t want to just say “Go ahead and build” because there’s nothing in it for them. The builders know the council want the houses, and the council knows the builders know it, but they have the power to say yes or no. So they pretend they’ll say no unless the builders – in this case, Dynamite Construction – do something for them. Are you following me?’
Zac, Sarah and Tim nodded, but the others continued to stare at her blankly. Evie carried on.
‘Suppose the council have been under pressure to build essential resources to keep up with the growing population? They could build them themselves, but this costs money. Money they probably don’t have, to be fair.’
‘Essential resources like a medical centre?’
Evie looked up at Tim and nodded. ‘Exactly. I think you know where this is going? The council say to the builder – Dynamite, for example – you can build your houses but you also have to build this new medical centre for us. And the builder says yes because they know they won’t get through planning otherwise. Whatever it’s going to cost to build the medical centre is offset against the millions they are going to make on the new housing. It’s simple, and it’s very common.’ She sat back and clasped her hands together to stop them shaking. ‘It’s also completely disgusting.’
She allowed the silence to settle, knowing they needed time to take it in. Bob Peacock was scratching his belly, which pushed against the fabric of his stripy pyjamas in a way Evie would have found comical at any other time. Frank had turned white. Zac’s expression had turned thunderous. Evie figured he would have a clearer grasp of the ramifications than any of the other residents.
Sure enough, he w
as the first to explode into action.
‘The underhanded bastards,’ he said, clenching his fists and looking around as though Michael Andrews might be near enough to punch.
If he had been, Evie would have been cheering Zac on. She felt sucker-punched herself, and the knowledge that Michael had intimated that something like this might be going on, and had admitted he couldn’t talk about it to her, didn’t help one bit.
‘They can’t do this,’ Zac said. He looked as though he was going to cry. Evie remembered how she’d questioned his attachment to Cupid’s Way. It seemed he was just as attached as anyone.
‘Evie?’ Frank moved closer, and Evie reached out and took his arm. ‘What does this mean?’
‘Do you understand what’s happening?’ she asked. He looked so shell-shocked she wasn’t sure he’d taken any of it in.
He nodded. ‘I think so. But what does it mean for us? We can still fight it, can’t we?’
‘I don’t know, Gramps. Nothing’s certain until planning approval has been officially granted, but Harry said this deal has been thrashed out over the past six months, and that it’s unlikely it will fall through now.’ She rubbed her eyes, but only succeeded in making them sting even more. ‘The council knew this would be a controversial site, which is why they had the surveyor’s report done. Their line, according to Harry, is that Cupid’s Way is bordering on derelict and would need to be demolished in a few years anyway. The fact that there’s a developer willing to buy the residents out is a bonus for everyone, they say.’
This was, of course, Michael’s line too. Evie thought back to his phone call – if only she had agreed to meet him, to go along to Horizon House with him. Then when Harry’s call came through she could have done something satisfying like throw a drink over him.
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