A Perfect Home (5 page)

‘The photographer liked the house.'

‘What photographer?' he asked, still searching in the fridge. ‘There's something slimy on the bottom shelf in here.'

‘The photographer who's photographing the house tomorrow,' she replied. ‘You haven't forgotten the photo shoot, have you? You did say yesterday that you'd arranged time off to be there.'

William stood up holding a dripping pot of Petit Filous and sniffed it. ‘Ugh! It smells ancient. How long has it been in there?'

‘I don't know, can't you just wipe it up?' Claire gave the end of the cucumber one final loud chop.

William backed towards the dustbin. ‘No need to attack the cucumber, Claire. I was just about to clear it up anyway.'

They were silent while he found a cloth and a bottle of kitchen cleaner. Claire got on with preparing the salad for their supper. Looking up she found William taking everything out of the fridge and putting half of it into a plastic bag.

‘What are you doing?' she asked.

‘Checking sell-by dates,' he replied. ‘Did you realise how much of this stuff is out of date?'

‘William!' she said in exasperation. ‘There is so much to do. If you really want to help couldn't you go and put a new plug on the Hoover like I asked you to last night?'

‘This needs defrosting too,' said William, poking at a thick layer of ice descending from the roof of the freezer. ‘If you move all this stuff into the freezer in the garage I'll do it now.'

Claire thought of Sally, who would be trying to get her hyperactive boys into bed while Gareth lay on the sofa watching football on the enormous television he'd bought for Sally's Christmas present last year. Claire knew she was lucky to have William, she really did. But sometimes …

‘I'll sort out the fridge
and
the freezer over the weekend,' she said, with strained patience. ‘After the magazine people have gone. It's just that it would be so helpful if you could do something that really needs doing right now.'

‘I had thought I might mow the grass after I've eaten. Before the light goes.'

‘William!' Claire tried not to raise her voice.

‘What?'

‘I've told you, it's supposed to be Christmas here. They're not going to photograph the garden, mowing the grass is not a …'

‘Don't shout, Claire,' his interruption made her jump. ‘I've had one hell of a day at work to get things sorted so that I can be here tomorrow. I only want things to look smart when they come. It's just the same as you wanting your cushions and stuff to look nice in the pictures, I want the grass to look tidy for the pictures.'

‘The grass won't be in the pictures.'

‘It will show through the windows.'

He took a bottle of beer from the fridge and took a long swig before pouring the rest into a glass. Claire watched him for a few seconds, trying to decide whether it was worth continuing the argument. She decided she didn't have the time.

‘He was nice,' she said after a little while.

‘Who?'

‘The photographer. He was lovely with Ben.'

William muttered inaudibly and started opening the post.

‘This is the one,' he exclaimed, suddenly enthusiastic. He thrust his latest copy of
Home Build
magazine in between Claire and the chopping board. ‘This is what I'm going to make for us.' He pointed at a picture of a wooden building, made up of tongue and groove, painted moss green, with a long veranda and a shingled roof. ‘What do you think?'

‘A shed?' asked Claire. ‘Do we need another shed?'

‘It's not a shed. It's a summer house.'

‘Do we need a summer house?'

‘Every English garden needs a summer house, Claire. Imagine – we could sit in it and drink wine in the evenings, read books, listen to music. We could have visitors to stay in it if we put in electricity, a little log burner in the corner. You and Sally could sit and drink coffee all day, or whatever it is you do together. Mix up witches' brew in a cauldron.' He laughed.

Claire ignored his remark. She took the magazine from him and looked at the picture again. It was charming. It looked like something from the Scandinavian woods. An idea sprang into her mind. It certainly looked spacious enough.

‘I could use it as a studio and then I wouldn't need to use the spare room any more,' Claire said, feeling a charge of excitement at the thought. A studio in the garden would be lovely. A space of her own for sewing and designing; perhaps a little showroom area to display her latest designs for customers to come and visit. A shop; she'd always wanted to have a shop. If they built it at the side of the drive people could easily come and go. In her mind she already saw the Emily Love sign across the doorway, inside a sofa scattered with her cushions, bunting strewn across the ceiling, aprons hanging from hooks on the wall, a dresser piled high with stock. The other half could be her work area – a large table for cutting out patterns, glass bottles full of buttons and beads and rolls of multi-coloured ribbon on long shelves around the walls, cupboards full of fabrics. She smiled at William. ‘I'd love that – my own studio in the garden and a little shop. It would be wonderful.'

He took the magazine out of her hands. ‘I'm not sure it would be suitable for that. Perhaps if your business gets off the ground we could think about converting the old woodshed for you.'

Claire turned back to the chopping board and sliced a yellow pepper very thinly and then chopped it up fast, into little tiny pieces.

‘I thought I'd build it at the bottom of the garden, cut down some of those old yew trees,' William went on. ‘At the back it will look out over the hills to the sea.'

‘Can we afford it? Won't it take ages to build?' She didn't like the idea of cutting down the yew trees either. Wasn't that meant to be unlucky?

‘No, it won't take long at all. A few months of weekends and evenings. I'll put a patio area in front, looking out over the valley. Use up those extra flag stones we found in the corner of the orchard. Maybe you could make a couple of little flowerbeds beside it? Some lavender, a few hollyhocks – what do you think, darling?' He walked over to Claire and gave her a hug. Claire leant into him and felt her anger seeping away.

He looked down into her face; his blue eyes sparkling, a familiar flush of DIY fervour colouring his cheeks.

‘You'll love it, Claire. Wonder how we ever lived without it.'

‘It could be nice, I suppose,' she said.

‘That's my girl.' He squeezed her just a little bit too tightly before untangling himself from her arms and picking up the magazine again to look at the picture of the summer house.

‘Maybe your parents could stay in it when they come to visit?' said Claire.

‘Oh no,' he said dismissively. ‘I wasn't thinking about it for my parents. They like to be on hand to help you with the children. I was thinking of our friends from London.'

‘We don't have many weekend guests these days – apart from your parents,' she sighed, as she laid thickly sliced, home-cured ham on two plates. ‘You're always too busy when people ask if they can come.'

‘Don't get grumpy, Claire.' William started sorting through the rest of the post, ripping open the envelopes with a small, sharp knife. ‘And if you're trying to have a go at my parents, just remember how good they've been to us. We wouldn't have this house at all if it hadn't been for them.'

Claire took a deep breath and counted to three in her head.

‘I'm not having a go at your parents,' she said, trying to keep her voice calm. ‘I know how grateful we are to them. They have been very kind.' She forced a smile and he seemed to relax a little.

Claire could never forget how grateful she had to be to William's parents; she was never allowed to forget. It had been William's mother who found the advertisement for the semi-derelict Somerset farmhouse in the
Telegraph
's property pages, William's parents who had given them a large financial gift for the deposit.

‘I'll make it beautiful for you,' William had said as they stood for the first time, on the overgrown driveway while his mother rushed ahead enthusing about potential and rustic charm. William had taken Claire's face between his hands and looked into her eyes, ‘It will be the house of our dreams. The house of your dreams. I promise.'

Claire had sighed. She didn't have a house she dreamt about. William was her dream. He was all she needed to be happy.

She had stared at the cracked grey rendering, the sagging thatch, and tried very hard to imagine how it could be. If it was painted, if the garden was cleared, maybe it could be tolerable. Maybe it could even be nice. A garden would be a novelty – she could plant vegetables, grow strawberries, have chickens, dogs, cats, even a goat or pigs. She could make jam for village fêtes, wear an apron, make bread. She suddenly had a picture in her head of lots of children running amongst wild flowers in the sun, golden-limbed with blond curls, like William's. Their children. The thought had felt nice.

‘If this is what you really want,' Claire had said to William, ‘Maybe I'll get used to living in the country.'

Claire poured the thick yellow dressing onto the salad. ‘I suppose we could think about building a summer house next year.'

‘No, not next year, darling,' said William. ‘I want to do it this year. This summer. In fact, I'll go and phone that tree surgeon in the village now. As soon as he's cut down the yews I can start to level the site and lay a concrete base.' He started to walk out of the kitchen.

‘I thought you said you'd be busy with other jobs on the house this summer?' Claire called after him. ‘And the supper is ready now.'

There was no answer; only the sound of the latch on the study door clicking closed. Claire stood in the middle of the kitchen and resisted the urge to throw the ham and salad all over the room. She had to keep it clean for the morning.

Sitting down at the table she ate three of the mince pies that she had made earlier on. She remembered Stefan joking about squashed ants in the mincemeat and smiled to herself.

The cat jumped onto the table with a soft thud and began to lick the ham on William's plate. She reached across and stroked the thick ginger fur. He arched his back and purred, dribbling onto the salad. Claire stroked him some more.

‘Did you say dinner was ready?' asked William, coming back into the room.

Chapter Five

‘In her blissful attic bathroom, Claire can relax in her reclaimed Victorian style roll-top bath and enjoy an uninterrupted view of the sea.'

Claire woke up at dawn. It was already humid; no breeze blew through the wooden shutters of the bedroom window. There was no sound of birdsong; it seemed that even the birds were too hot to sing. The house was still and silent. Her cotton nightdress clung to her uncomfortably as she got out of bed and walked towards the shower.

As she let the cool water wash away the stickiness of the night, she thought about all the things she had to do before Stefan and the stylist arrived at nine. She felt nervous but strangely excited about the photo shoot; she was looking forward to it now. Stepping out of the shower cubicle she reached for the large towelling dressing gown she usually put on as quickly as possible to hide the little rolls of fat and stretch marks she didn't want to be reminded of. Suddenly she let the dressing gown fall to the floor, she had an urge to be naked in the warm air.

Standing at the window she wound her long, dark, dripping hair into a towel. From up here she could see the woods at the bottom of the valley and fields and, far away in the distance, the sea. No need for frosted glass or curtains; there were no roads or houses, no one to see you for miles.

The sun was already flooding the room with soft yellow light. She could remember when this room was cold and dark, the walls tiled in mouldy cork and the floor covered in rotting carpet tiles. A chocolate-coloured plastic bath had been squeezed into one corner, a thick white ring of scale permanently encrusted around it. Claire had hated that bath, she had dipped in and out of it as quickly as possible when they finally had hot water. She still remembered her happiness at seeing it disappear down the lane on the top of a skip.

The bathroom was lovely now with its cast-iron bath standing, claw-footed, on the black and white chequered tiles. The white walls were half-panelled in Nile green tongue and groove; soft towels were piled high on a small pine table beside a ceramic bowl of smooth pink shells.

The shells reminded Claire of the holiday on a little Greek island the summer before they were married. She had collected them on the beach below their pretty villa on the edge of a fishing village. She and William had spent long lazy mornings in bed and afternoons swimming in the sea, exploring the hidden coves along the coast. Often they were the only people on the isolated beaches and more than once they had made love on the soft, white sand with the hot Mediterranean sun shining down on their entangled limbs.

That seemed like another life to Claire. It seemed like another man.

Claire and William had first met at a Christmas party hosted by the City accountancy firm he had worked for. It had been held in a fairy-lit, glass-fronted restaurant overlooking the Thames. A jazz band had played as the guests enjoyed the easy flowing champagne and a five-course dinner.

The week before, Claire had signed up as a waitress for a catering agency. In her final year of art college, she was trying to make some sort of dent in her overdraft. She already worked weekends in a shoe shop on Kensington High Street, but had found herself with more shoes than actual cash.

Her first job as a waitress had been for a television production company's launch party, serving canapés while dressed as a Tyrolean mountain girl with tiny lederhosen and a low-cut frilly blouse – on roller skates.
Nothing could be harder or more humiliating than that
, she had told herself, as she queued up to put the cheque into her bank.