A Perfect Home (40 page)

Long, lazy days merged into one another. Her mother and Brian fussed around their visitors, cooking lingering al fresco meals which they ate in the dappled shade of a vine-covered trellis. Friendly neighbours came and went, joining meals, bringing produce from their garden. Claire marvelled at her mother's rapid French. She seemed to become more gregarious as she spoke the language that Claire could only partly understand, her eyes twinkling, her laughter easy. Like the French themselves, she used her hands as she spoke, gesticulating to get her point across. Claire felt sad that her mother had spent so many years only having bored adolescents to share her love of France with.

Buster was a constant presence, his coat as golden as the farmhouse. He followed the children in their games around the garden before collapsing with them, hot and panting, for afternoon naps in the shade. Dog and children tangled together in contented sleep.

Before lunch Claire liked to sketch or read on the patio while Brian taught the children how to fish in the stream that ran through the garden or look for fossils in the small quarry at the bottom of his land. In the late afternoon they walked to a nearby lake where they would swim from a little wooden jetty or drift around in Brian's dingy – Buster at the helm – Claire and her mother reclined on cushions while the children trailed their hands in the water and took it in turns to try to row the boat with Brian.

They visited a Sunday morning bric-a-brac market and Claire bought a bale of 1960s floral fabric, a green enamel jug, an art deco mirror, and a set of pre-war kitchen jars with Sucre, Café, Thé, and Epices written on them.

Sometimes her mother and Brian's easy companionship and obvious adoration of each other gave Claire a pang of envy.

Her mother seemed radiant. She was a different person to the bitter woman Claire had shared her teenage years with in the dark, cramped flat. She told Claire she'd started writing a novel at last and she obviously had developed a passion for gardening. Tall yellow sunflowers swayed above jewel-coloured geraniums and salvias.

‘Brian laughs at me for planting sunflowers,' she said as she straightened a bamboo support. Claire noticed how brown her mother's arms had become. ‘The fields round here are full of them – they're crops like corn or barley – but I love them. They make me cheerful.'

‘I don't think you need sunflowers to make you cheerful,' Claire said gently. ‘Brian seems to do that very well himself.'

Her mother smiled. ‘He's started asking me to marry him again. He'd stopped for a while after Christmas but now the silly man has stared with it all over again.'

‘Well, why not?'

‘I don't want to go there again. I've been married and it was a disaster. All that pain for so many years. I just want to stay as we are. Why spoil it?'

‘Oh, Mum,' Claire took her hand. ‘It wasn't being married that spoilt it the last time, it was the man. Brian's so different from Dad. I'm sure he'd never hurt you. He loves you. For him marriage is a way of showing you how much.'

Her mother shrugged and bent down to pluck a weed from the hot, dry soil. When she didn't get up Claire crouched down beside her and saw that her mother was crying.

‘Mum, what's wrong?' Claire put her arms around her.

‘I'm sorry, darling,' her mother spoke through muffled sobs. ‘I just get overwhelmed by it all. I can't believe that this has happened to me: that I met Brian, that I've moved here to this beautiful house and that I can share it with you and the children.'

‘But why are you crying?'

The older woman wiped her eyes and looked at her daughter with a smile.

‘I'm crying because I'm just so happy.'

All too soon the week had gone; it was time to go home. Claire felt a sense of trepidation as she thought of William and the house which, no doubt, would be ever nearer to completion. As Elizabeth and Brian stood at the top of the drive and waved goodbye she wondered if she would ever be as happy as her mother seemed now; could she ever be that happy with William? Maybe moving back after this enforced break would bring them closer together again – closer than before the fire, maybe as close as they had once been long ago. As close as they had been before the house had come into their lives?

Chapter Thirty-five

‘Claire has let the structural materials assert themselves beautifully against the pure white walls.'

‘Do you mind if we don't have this on?'

‘OK.'

Claire turned the radio off. William had turned the volume up but with Radio 4 presenters blaring at her, Claire couldn't think properly to drive. She felt hot. She lowered the window a little; outside a fresh breeze kept the temperature cool despite the bright sun shining down from the blue July sky.

The children were with Sally, she'd thought it best that they weren't there the first time that William saw the house again.

Claire had spent weeks scouring shops and catalogues for the right furniture and rugs and lamps and cutlery and children's toys and everything exactly as they'd had before.

As Claire had walked through the rooms that morning, she'd felt as though she was walking around a show home. Everything was immaculate, no finger prints, no sticky patches, no dust balls nesting in the corners. It looked very similar to the way it had been before the fire but it felt sterile; lifeless, as though it were a soulless reflection of the family home it once had been.

Claire placed a vase of lilies on the console table in the hall. Remembering William, she fetched a cork table mat and put it under the patterned vase. The vase was almost identical to the Moorcroft vase they'd had before; though the pattern was of harebells not of snowdrops and the glaze was slightly duller, a little less intense. Claire shivered and went to turn the heating on despite the time of year. The house just needed people living in it to bring it properly back to life.

Claire stopped the car in the drive and walked round to help William out of the car. He still walked with a stick and the long journey had obviously left his back stiff and painful. He slowly pulled himself into a standing position. Claire fetched his bag from the boot and followed him to the front door. The roses were in the second flush of bloom and the newly planted lavender sent a heady sent into the air around them. Claire took a deep breath and prayed that William would like what he saw.

Walking into the hall, William was silent and remained silent as together they went from room to room. Claire kept glancing at his face for a reaction but she found she couldn't read his thoughts at all.

Finally they stood in the spotless kitchen. The dresser shelves were still empty. Claire hadn't managed to replace the Cornishware she had loved so much and the kitchen walls were free from the jumble of children's drawings that had filled them before. The new Aga gleamed, the wooden work surfaces were yet to be scratched and stained by knives and spills, and the paintwork on the units was fresh and clean. Claire could hardly recognise it as the room she'd once loved so much.

William leant his stick against a chair and ran his fingers over the shiny new fridge-freezer and touched the smooth unblemished pine table. He looked at Claire and smiled. ‘It's perfect,' he said. ‘It's all so perfect!' He took her in his arms. ‘It's just as I imagined it would be when we first moved here, just as I always wanted it to be. I can't wait to show it to my mother. Did I tell you that my parents are coming this afternoon to look round? I know my mother will be so pleased.'

He leant down and kissed her lips and then taking her face between his hands he looked into her eyes.

‘You'll try and keep it just like this, won't you? You will look after it, don't let the children spoil it, will you, Claire?'

Claire felt as though cold water were running through her veins.

‘We have to live in it, William. It's not going to stay quite this clean and immaculate for long.'

‘But we can try to keep it like this, can't we?'

‘William, we have three children; there'll be five of us living here. I don't think it's going to be possible to keep it like this all the time, that's not realistic.'

‘You haven't changed,' he said to her, letting his hands drop to his sides.

‘I haven't changed? I thought you were going to change?'

‘All I'm asking is that you respect our home.' Claire could hear anger in his voice and she looked behind her as though checking for a clear exit. He took hold of her arm and though his grip seemed gentle she could feel each finger tip exert a subtle pressure. Her heart began to beat faster. The walls of the flawless kitchen seemed to be closing in on her. ‘Is that too much to ask?' William continued.

Suddenly she felt that everything was clear. She knew where she wanted her home to be and it wasn't here, it wasn't with William.

‘I can't do this,' she said.

‘What?'

‘Live here with you.'

He looked as though she'd hit him, incredulity spreading over his face. ‘But it's all so lovely now. You and the children can just move back in with me and we'll go on like before, won't we? You told me that's how it would be.'

The children. Claire thought of them and faltered. Then she thought of how happy they had seemed in the past few months, relaxed and full of life in the clutter of the higgledy flat. They never talked about coming home.

Claire picked up her keys from the work surface and detached the front door key from her car keys and handed it to William.

‘It's all yours now,' she said. ‘I don't want this house any more. I've made a new home, somewhere that is really mine, somewhere that really feels like home.' She turned to leave and, though she thought he would, William didn't try to stop her.

Outside Claire could hear a blackbird; it seemed to be pouring out its heart in euphoric song. As she got into her car Claire felt as though she'd been released and as she drove down the hill she wanted to sing with all her heart as loudly as the bird.

Chapter Thirty-six

‘Exquisite taste and an eye for old-world charm.'

Just after her second Christmas in the shop, Claire and Sally sat at the counter, sketching out plans for a New Year window display.

Claire had been delighted as she and Sally had unpacked the boxes from the pottery in Stoke on Trent, she had been developing designs with them for months and finally the first batch of Emily Love tableware had arrived. It was glazed in softest duck egg blue with small white hearts and flowers and birds that ran around the rims and edges of the mugs and bowls and jugs, while teapots and plates were decorated in a delicate pattern of spots and stripes and wiggly lines.

‘I thought cut-out silhouettes of cupcakes suspended above the display?' said Sally. ‘It would be like a nod to good old Patisserie Tremond as well as in keeping with the simple designs on the pottery.'

‘Great idea,' said Claire giving a little grey whippet, with velvet fur and chocolate eyes, a stroke on his long nose. She had found Napoleon wandering along a poplar-lined French road, skeletally thin and bearing the scars of having been repeatedly beaten. Claire had fallen in love immediately and, after a short quarantine period, had brought him back to England to nurse him back to health. Now Napoleon was happy to sit with Claire in the shop all day and run like a mad thing along the riverbank with the children, when they came home from school.

Every few months Claire, the children, and Napoleon piled into her new blue Emily Love-emblazoned van and went to see her mother and Brian in France. The children and Napoleon spent happy days in their old farmhouse romping around with Buster, while Claire went on tours of junk shops and old house sales, collecting pretty wrought-iron furniture, vintage floral quilts, scarves, and lace. She started buying enamel kitchen utensils and old tin storage jars which sold very well in the shop and complemented her own work.

‘Can I tempt you to a tiny triangle?' Claire took a large bar of duty-free Toblerone from her stash under the counter and waved it enticingly at Sally. Sally shook her head and virtuously produced an apple to accompany her tea.

‘Girls?' Claire called behind her into the workshop. ‘Chocolate?'

The hum of sewing machines stopped and Claire could hear a murmur going round the room. After a few seconds a shuffling noise heralded Doris, who, with a ‘don't mind if we do,' snatched up the whole bar from Claire's hand and disappeared back into the room and closed the door.

‘Is it my overly active imagination, or does Doris remind you of some sort of naughty goblin who every now and then emerges from the Middle Earth that is the workshop to scavenge for anything that might be on offer?'

‘She has to keep her strength up for Young Colin,' replied Claire with a laugh. ‘Especially now they're engaged.'

‘Doesn't that give you hope, Claire? Maybe you could find a nice toy boy of your own?'

‘Your cupcake idea for the window reminds me of something else I need to tell you.' Claire wanted to change the subject.

‘Go on,' encouraged Sally through a mouthful of apple. ‘Is it that you've got a date with a baker?'

‘No!' with a huff Claire continued. ‘You know the café next door is closing soon?'

‘Yes, it's such a shame,' said Sally, taking a sip from a new Emily Love mug. ‘This town needs a good café. It will probably end up as another empty shop. It won't look good next to us, and where will I get my lunchtime salad now?'

‘I've been thinking,' Claire said. ‘I might take on the lease myself.'

Sally nodded slowly as she munched on a mouthful of apple. ‘It is a bit bigger than this shop. More floor space for us. We could certainly do with it, but it seems a shame to have to move when we've got it looking so nice in here.'

‘I don't mean we'd leave here,' said Claire. ‘We'd keep this as the shop and keep next door as a café. We could have the café as part of the shop.'