The Forever House: A feel-good summer page-turner

by Veronica Henry

  ‘Belinda?’ Richard Mortlake looked at her in consternation in the middle of their weekly target meeting.

  ‘Sorry.’ She snapped out of her reverie and shuffled through her paperwork. ‘We’ve put on seven houses this week – we’ve definitely got the market share . . .’

  He called her that evening. They went out for dinner, even though it was only a Tuesday. They went back to his flat.

  And this time she stayed over.

  Her friends crowed with delight when she admitted she was head over heels and she and Charlie were a proper item.

  She supposed it had just been a question of finding the right person. The one who allowed her to be her, and didn’t push for attention, but was interested. Charlie loved talking houses with her. He loved all the gossip about the owners, and the wrangling that went on. He introduced her to lots of people – having a wine shop made you very popular, it turned out, and even though he’d only been in Peasebrook just over a year, he seemed to know everyone that was everyone.

  Suddenly life had a different dimension. It felt fuller and richer and more fun to be sharing it with someone. Her social life went up a gear, and her sex life went into overdrive. Luckily it didn’t affect Belinda’s work. On the contrary, it made her even more determined to succeed and do well. She and the boss’s son, Giles, were constantly pitted against each other, and she was determined to outdo him.

  The only thing she found disconcerting was Charlie’s spending.

  ‘There’s no pockets in shrouds,’ he would say in a cod Yorkshire accent, egging her out for yet another evening where he would think nothing of spending over a hundred quid on cocktails, dinner and wine. She tried to rein him in but he wouldn’t have it. He was generous to a fault, and always picked up the bill.

  Maybe that’s what normal people did? Maybe she was the weird one? It wasn’t that she was stingy. She was just tactical about what she did with her money. How else were you supposed to get on?

  ‘I don’t know – everything just seems to fall into place,’ Charlie said when she asked him how he managed financially. ‘I’ve never made a plan in my life and I’ve done all right.’

  He did seem to be doing all right. The wine shop was always busy and he was working hard picking up contracts with restaurants and hotels. She tried not to worry and told herself it was good to have opposites in a relationship. It would be awful if they were both spendthrifts. And she supposed it would be boring if they were both like her.

  Besides, she was happy. They were happy. They were a good match, she thought.

  Charlie had been worth the wait.

  One day, he told her he had a surprise.

  ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ He held up a key.

  She went to grab it. ‘What? What’s that for?’

  He pulled it away, laughing. ‘You have to follow me.’

  He led her out of the wine shop and down the high street to the far end of Peasebrook. Belinda frowned when he stopped outside one of the old wool-merchants’ houses.

  ‘This belongs to one of my clients,’ he told her. ‘She’s had to go into sheltered accommodation and they’re putting it on the market. We’ve got a sneak preview. If we want it, it’s ours.’

  She fell in love at first sight.

  The High House was what she would euphemistically call ‘a project’ if she was listing it. She didn’t feel daunted, though. She would far rather have a wreck that needed to be done up from scratch than have to undo someone else’s hard work that wasn’t to her taste. Some of the eyewateringly expensive kitchens she saw on her viewings would be impossible for her to live with, but to rip them out would be a waste. The High House was a blank canvas. It was structurally perfect – well, obviously it would need a thorough survey, but Belinda couldn’t see any obvious horrors like subsidence – and therefore just waiting for her to put her stamp on it.

  Well, their stamp.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Charlie. ‘Can you see us here? Because I can.’

  She swallowed. This was a turning point. Buying The High House together would be a huge step. It was begging to be filled with footsteps and laughter. Already she could imagine it. When she looked in the bedroom, she imagined a giant sleigh bed and her and Charlie gently sleeping. When she looked in the kitchen, she saw them sharing tea and toast with the radio on in the background. She could picture them in the garden, Charlie bringing out a bottle of something new he’d discovered, sitting and sipping it in the early evening sun.

  She looked over at Charlie, his arm resting on the mantelpiece. The fireplace below had been bricked up and an ugly gas fire put in, surrounded by shiny beige tiles. She fast-tracked to a year or more later, the Artex paper on the walls stripped off, the floorboards exposed and sanded and polished, the woodwork, currently sticky with a brown gloss, picked out in a subtle, dead flat oil. Apple logs burning in the grate and the mantelpiece groaning with photographs and invitations.

  She could picture it so clearly. It felt so right.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So how do we do this?’

  Looking back, this was the moment she should have heard alarm bells. But her brain was fuzzy with the thrill of being in love for the first time, the prospect of a house to call her own, the thought of a bright future.

  And even perhaps a family. That was her ultimate dream. She could already picture her slightly unruly but enchanting offspring sliding down the bannisters. And she was so sidetracked by the second half of what Charlie said next that she ignored the warning signs.

  ‘There is only one snag. All my money is tied up in the wine business at the moment,’ he told her. ‘I can’t take any of it out. Of course I can contribute to the mortgage payments, but I can’t put anything down as a deposit.’ He put his arms around her neck. ‘But nothing would make me happier than being Mr and Mrs Fox of High House, Peasebrook.’

  A thrill ran through her. At the same time, she was doing the maths. This was why she had been saving all these years. This was her game plan, and it was time for the pay-off.

  All she wanted was her own four walls around her. A house she could call her own. Only then would she feel happy and settled and secure. Where she could drive a nail into her own freshly painted plaster and hang up a picture. A house that was hers, forever. A house that was an extension of her personality and reflected who she was. A house that looked after her. A cocoon. A haven.

  It took six weeks of wrangling with solicitors, banks, building societies and surveyors. More than once Belinda sank into despair, convinced the figures didn’t stack up. The mortgage would have to be in her name only, as it turned out Charlie had a raft of County Court Judgements thanks to the myriad parking tickets he had racked up while living in London.

  ‘I know I’m an idiot,’ he told her. ‘But I’ll be able to help pay the mortgage. I just can’t have my name on one. But because you’re sensible and a genius, it will be all right. And I can pay for the building work. Don’t forget this place is going to be worth a mint when it’s done up. Peasebrook is on the up.’ He grinned. ‘You always know when a decent wine merchant moves into town that the property prices are going to soar.’

  She juggled figures and had endless meetings and photocopied a million pieces of paper – payslips and bank statements – but eventually she got the mortgage offer and took out some money on her credit card to pay the stamp duty.

  And then suddenly, one Friday afternoon, the solicitor rang to say they had exchanged contracts and she and Charlie stood on the pavement outside The High House with the key in their hand, just as they had done the first time they had come to see it, only this time it was theirs.

  Every day, Belinda seemed to get further away from who she had been and turned into someone new. By the end of the year, they got married. They barely spent any money on the wedding, because it was all going to go towards the house, but they did a very relaxed and casual wine and cheese evening for all their friends in the shop, and Charlie promised her a pro
per reception when the house was done up.

  ‘I don’t care about that sort of thing. You know I don’t,’ said Belinda, surrounded by paint charts. ‘I am as happy as a pig in the proverbial.’

  ‘That’s why I love you. Because you are so undemanding.’

  ‘Just you wait,’ said Belinda. ‘I can do demanding, when there’s DIY to be done.’

  She couldn’t pretend that the first year of marriage wasn’t hard. The house was cold and dusty and noisy to live in. Somehow she managed to commute to Maybury, hold down her job, and supervise the renovation. Charlie was very tied up with the shop and was reluctant to take on more staff, and so much of his business was done at weekends that it was left to Belinda to manage.

  ‘I know I’m not much use, but hopefully it will pay off,’ he told her, when he’d come back from yet another delivery, yet another wedding, yet another tasting to find her up a ladder. Sometimes she wondered if perhaps he drank a little too much, but it was part of his job.

  ‘It actually is my job,’ he said, when she questioned it once. ‘I can’t be a teetotal wine merchant.’

  Of course he couldn’t, and actually it made the renovation easier, for she was able to get on and do it her way without asking for a second opinion.

  ‘I totally trust your taste,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s impeccable.’

  She was flattered, and it didn’t occur to her that he just wasn’t all that interested.

  She spent Saturday nights with a paintbrush in her hand, or pushing a sander over the wooden floorboards, while he was out at events. She would fall into bed at midnight; he would come in at two.

  ‘You reek of booze,’ she said, pushing at him, but in a fond way.

  ‘You stink of paint,’ would be his riposte, but they would curl up with each other, because they were still slightly in awe of how they could make each other feel between the sheets.

  Belinda started awake. She had fallen asleep and her bath had gone cold. She shook away the unwanted remnants of her reverie. Reliving those days always made her feel unsettled. She had worked so hard to put them behind her.

  She never thought about what had happened next if she could help it. Perhaps it was unhealthy to block it all out, but that was the only way she could manage.

  And she was doing fine, she told herself as she jumped out of the bath and wrapped herself in a towel. She was a success, against the odds.

  And now she only had fifteen minutes to get ready and get to the Hong Kong Garden. She grabbed a pair of jeans and a cardigan and rough-dried her hair. It was only Bruce. He wouldn’t mind if she didn’t look top dollar.

  20

  Peasebrook had a great selection of restaurants for a small town. Its jewels in the crown were A Deux, a tiny little pop-up restaurant for two, and the Cardamom Pod, a funky, upscale Indian. And then the Hong Kong Garden, a traditional Chinese that was always packed because the food was as fantastic as the décor was excruciating: shiny red and black plastic with lots of backlit photographs of the food they served.

  Bruce was waiting outside when she arrived. He gave her a hug, then looked at her appreciatively.

  ‘You look stunning, darling. You’ve increased your chances of getting laid a hundredfold. All those stiff jackets – they’re not doing you any good. Come here. You’ve done your cardi up wrong.’

  He buttoned it up properly for her. Belinda grinned, because she was used to Bruce and his un-PC banter, but she had to admit it was nice to be appreciated, even when you hadn’t done your hair properly.

  As they made their way to their table inside, she spotted someone she wanted to avoid. Giles Mortlake, sitting in front of a mound of egg fried rice and chicken in black bean sauce, his rabbity wife opposite him. Could she sneak past without him noticing?

  Not a chance.

  ‘Belinda!’ Giles heaved himself to his feet and stretched out a meaty paw. He must have put on three stone since she’d last crossed paths with him.

  ‘Giles. How lovely. We’re just about to sit down . . .’ She indicated her table where the waiter was hovering.

  Giles pointed at Bruce. ‘You’re the chappie who does the pictures. You did a nice job on Hunter’s Moon, I must say. Very House and Garden.’

  ‘How did you get a brochure?’ Belinda felt indignant.

  ‘Oh, Belinda, come on. Industrial espionage. You know you’re guilty of it too.’ Giles smirked. ‘Congratulations on getting it.’ He winked at Bruce. ‘I taught her everything she knows.’

  Belinda wasn’t going to dignify this claim with a protest. ‘Enjoy your meal,’ she said, and went to move on.

  ‘I see you got your old place as well. The High House.’

  Would this blithering idiot not shut up?

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Must have been a trip down Memory Lane. But good to make some money out of it after everything you lost.’

  ‘That wasn’t really my motive.’

  ‘Come, come – revenge is a dish best eaten cold, no?

  ‘It wasn’t revenge, Giles. It’s just business.’

  ‘Well, good to see you doing so well.’ Giles sat back down in his seat and picked up his chopsticks. ‘Enjoy!’

  Belinda was seething as they made their way to their table.

  ‘How did you not punch him?’ asked Bruce.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ she said tightly as they sat down.

  ‘There’s no love lost between you and Giles, is there?’

  ‘No, there bloody isn’t.’ Belinda picked up the menu.

  There was silence for a moment, then Bruce couldn’t bear it.

  ‘So The High House was yours?’

  ‘A long time ago. For a very short time.’

  ‘You didn’t tell me.’ Bruce looked hurt.

  ‘It’s not relevant.’

  ‘No, but it’s interesting.’ He leaned forward, eager for more information.

  She sighed. She knew Bruce. He would winkle it out of her eventually.

  ‘OK. The guy at Hunter’s Moon this afternoon? That’s Charlie Fox. My ex-husband. We were married for about five minutes. We had The High House for about five minutes. We got married far too quickly and we had nothing in common. That’s all there is to it and I don’t want to talk about it.’ She stared at Bruce, defying him to pry any further.

  ‘You were married?’

  ‘End of conversation.’

  ‘Right.’ He picked up the menu and looked down it. ‘I reckon we should go Set Dinner for Two, because it’s fricking awesome and if there’s anything left you can take it back home.’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Belinda, thanking God he’d got the message.

  ‘The duck in black bean sauce is amazing; the salt and pepper squid is amazing. It’s all amazing.’

  ‘Then bring it on. And could I please have a very large glass of white wine? In fact, make it a bottle.’

  The service at the Hong Kong Garden was unfailingly cheery, and with a towering bowl of warm prawn crackers and a goldfish bowl full of Pinot Grigio in front of her, Belinda started to feel as if the day had barely happened.

  By the time they had chomped their way through their banquet, Belinda realised she had polished off a whole bottle of white wine to herself as Bruce was drinking Chinese beer. Luckily she’d had plenty of food, so she didn’t feel as out of control as she might, given she rarely drank more than a glass these days, though once upon a time a bottle a night had been the norm.

  She wasn’t thinking about that, she reminded herself. She’d managed to dodge the bullet. As Memory Lanes went, that wasn’t one she wanted to go down.

  After pineapple fritters, the bill arrived with two fortune cookies. She crushed hers open and unravelled the tiny strip of paper.

  ‘What does it say?’ said Bruce.

  ‘A dark stranger is going to enter your life and bring you untold happiness,’ she read.

  ‘Why are they always dark strangers? Why are they never ginger?’

  ‘What about yours?’

&n
bsp; Bruce unravelled his. ‘A beautiful brunette will end up in your bed tonight.’

  Belinda laughed. He was incorrigible.

  ‘You better get out there and start looking for one then.’

  She held on to Bruce’s arm as they came out into the high street. She was a tiny bit unsteady on her feet, and he laughed at her.

  ‘Darling, you need a coffee. Come back to mine. And don’t worry, I’m not going to pounce. That would be very bad form,’ he chuckled.

  ‘You are Peter Pan,’ murmured Belinda. ‘That’s who you remind me of.’

  ‘Oh gawd, don’t. You make me sound like Cliff Richard.’

  Bruce had an apartment in the converted glove factory just off Peasebrook high street. Belinda had been the agent when they went on the market and had talked him into buying one of the first releases, but she hadn’t been to see it since he’d moved in.

  There was an open-plan main room with rough bare brick walls and large arched metal windows. A U-shaped white linen sofa sat in front of a wide screen TV, hundreds of vinyl LPs lined up against the back wall, and there were black-and-white photographs everywhere.

  ‘This is my diary,’ Bruce told her proudly. ‘The gallery of me and my life.’

  He went over to an art deco cocktail cabinet while Belinda scrutinised the photos. It was like looking at a gossip column mixed with a travel magazine. Bruce’s life had certainly never been dull: beautiful people in beautiful places, having the time of their lives; cowboys and flamenco dancers and graffiti artists.

  He came and stood by her, handing her a Cointreau on ice cloudy with promise.

  ‘That’s not coffee,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ he said. She took it and sipped, enjoying the fiery orange sweetness slipping down her throat and the glow it gave her. It was great, being out, letting her hair down. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d done it. She’d drunk more this evening than she’d drunk this year.

  She waved her glass at all the photographs.