Fandango in the Apse! (15 page)

Twelve-year-old Luke was sitting at the far end of the table, helping
Josh, two years his junior, with homework, and George was where he always
appeared to be – in the garden.  The six year old, had an affinity with animals
and had managed to acquire quite a menagerie.  He spent his afternoons feeding
his two rabbits, six ferrets and an unspecified amount of their offspring.

It was fantastic, but it also made me aware of the lack of soul in my own
home.  Whether it was shades of my mother, or Eddie’s orderly ways that had
rubbed off on me, I couldn’t be sure, but I knew there was no way I could stand
the clutter and chaos, yet I wanted to be able to: I found myself longing for
Alison’s way of life.

            Don’t you think that’s the root cause of so many problems? 
We always want what we don’t have and then if we manage to get it, we’re not
sure we want it after all. There was as much chance of me kissing the Pope’s
arse, as there was of being happy with so many kids and the mess they accumulated,
or with big, burly, constantly jovial, Mark, for that matter.  Don’t get me
wrong: he’s lovely, but just too damned happy all the time.  But, I’m a
contrary cow, and knowing the facts didn’t stop me wanting to change them.

            It wasn’t until the day before I left that Alison broached
the subject of my ridiculously fucked-up life.  We were in John Lewis having a
late lunch, having just dropped Missy at nursery, about which, the
four-year-old wasn’t best pleased.  Used to the constant attention of three,
over-protective brothers and doting parents, she didn’t like being one of
many.  Apparently, the tantrum I’d witnessed was par for the course. 

            ‘Mmm…’ Alison’s eyes rolled with pleasure as she took a bite
from her, oozing with cream, chocolate pie. ‘You should have some, Katie, it’s
heavenly!’

            ‘With my hips, are you mad?’  I laughed.

            ‘There’s nothing wrong with your hips, and…’ she quipped,  ‘a
little of what you fancy, does you good!’

            ‘Ha! So say you without an ounce of surplus fat in sight.’

            ‘What?  You’re joking, you should see the cellulite, but to
be honest, I couldn’t care less.’

            ‘No?  Well I wouldn’t either, Ali, if I had your life.’ It
was the wrong comment to make and it sobered Alison immediately.

            ‘Oh Katie, was it a bad idea for you to come?  I never
thought,’ she said with a worried expression.

            ‘No!  God no, it’s been great, just what I needed.’

            ‘Are you sure?’ 

            ‘Of course.’ I smiled. 

            ‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do?  It’s
completely over, right?’

            ‘Completely.’

            ‘It must have been a huge shock.  Jesus!  If I found out that
about Mark, I don’t know what I’d do.’

            ‘I don’t think there’s any danger there, Ali.  I’d forgotten
what a great guy he is,’ I remarked.  ‘You’re so lucky, the pair of you.’

            ‘Listen, Katie, I’ve had an idea. Mark told me to butt out,
let you make your own decisions… blah, blah, blah!  But you know what a control
freak I am.’ She laughed.

            ‘So what is it… your idea?’

            ‘Why don’t you move up here?’ She leaned forward and rested
her chin on her hand while batting her eyelids.  Her grin almost split her face
in two. ‘Whaddia fink?’ she said comically.

            ‘Crikey, Ali, that’s some idea.’

            ‘But a great one.  Think about it, what is there to keep you
in Exeter?’

            It all seemed perfectly simple when she put it like that, but
my God, it was a huge undertaking.

            ‘I don’t know, Ali, there’s the boys school to think about,
is it fair to move them, given what else they have to go through?’

            ‘Mark said that too, but I’ll tell you what I told him. It
couldn’t
be
a better time.  It’ll be a fresh start for them.  If you
move near me, they can go to the boys’ school.  I know they haven’t seen each
other for ages, but you know what kids are like, they’ll pick up where they
left off… come on, what do you say?’

            Listening to Alison, it sounded like a good idea, but it was
way too early to make a firm decision. 

            ‘I tell you what,’ I conceded, ‘you have a look in the estate
agents and see what’s about and I’ll have a serious think about it.’

Alison clapped her hands with glee. ‘I knew you’d go for it.’

‘Hey, calm down, I haven’t gone for it yet.’

‘Ah! But you will…’

Six weeks
later, the house was on the market, I’d had two viewings and an offer, which
Eddie refused – he was holding out for full price.  The boys had rebounded
surprisingly well from the news of our split-up.  I was conscious that it was
probably the gifts their father had showered on them that made the whole thing
more palatable.  Children can be so fickle; a new bike and oodles of toys sort
out so many problems.  Mind you, it was all still relatively simple for them. 
Eddie hadn’t yet moved to London and he’d introduced Ethan to them as “Dad’s
friend”, nothing more.  They spent every Sunday with their father and if they
thought it strange that he was sharing a flat with Ethan, they never mentioned
it. 

The only fly in the ointment as far as Eddie was concerned was his
parents.  Jean and Arthur were mortified.  As their only child, Eddie could do
no wrong – until then.  Arthur adamantly refused to speak to him and Jean was a
tearful wreck.  I almost felt sorry for her, but not quite; too many years of
her frosty disapproval had driven an insurmountable wedge between us.  However,
I did detect a thaw in her pitying looks and therefore, refrained from telling
her exactly what I thought of her over-indulged son.

As you can see I was holding my own quite well under the circumstances,
in fact, I was surprising myself.  I was busy making plans, which helped. 
After consulting the boys, we made the decision to move to Nottinghamshire.  I
was working on the premise that a fresh start was the best way forward.  I’d
spent the weeks before poring over house brochures with them and we had now
narrowed it down to three possibilities.  As Eddie had accepted a revised offer
on the house, we were off up to Alison’s the following week to view them. 

Stacey, who I rarely saw these days – she had proved very much a
fair-weather friend the previous year – called in for a coffee.  To be fair, it
must have cost her not to say, “I told you so” as she flicked through the
pictures of three-bedroom semi-detached houses, situated in less salubrious
surrounding than we were presently in.  To be honest, I couldn’t have cared
less.  The houses were all new builds on nice estates, and I felt I could be
happy living in any of them. 

I couldn’t blame karmic forces for what happened next, there was only one
damned culprit.  Eddie, the bastard, had double-crossed me.  Can you believe
it?  I’d received a letter from the solicitor giving details of the sale of the
house and to my horror, I would only be receiving half of what I had been
expecting. 

By the looks of it, Eddie had re-mortgaged the previous year.  I couldn’t
understand it; the house was in joint names, how could he have done it without
me knowing?  A phone call to the despicable rat told me all I needed to know. 

‘But you did sign the mortgage papers, don’t you remember?’ he said
silkily.

‘No, I fucking don’t, if you think – ’

‘Think back to just after your mother died. I gave you some papers to
sign, remember?’

A vague picture of Eddie coming into the bedroom with papers, filtered
through.  Oh. My. God, I did sign them.

‘You bastard!  You knew I wasn’t in a fit state to know what I was
signing, why did you do it?  What happened to the money?’

‘The money’s been spent.’  His tone was flat, unemotional.

‘On what?  What on earth could you spend that amount of money on?’

‘Katie, property in London is expensive.’

‘London?  But this was a year ago, you…’  Then the truth dawned.  ‘Oh, I
see now, you planned this, didn’t you?  You knew you were going to leave, so
you thought you’d squirrel away as much money as you could.  Well, you won’t
get away with it, I’ll fight you every step of the way.’

‘I’ve worked hard for what I’ve got Katie; I don’t see why you should
benefit from half of it.’ 

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing; this wasn’t the Eddie I knew.

‘I see… so will we get anything Eddie, the boys and me?’ I asked, although
was scared of the answer.

‘You’ve still got enough to buy a house, it might have to be a small one,
but you should be fine.  You won’t get much cash, I’m afraid, maybe a few
thousand, and your car, but other than that, I’ve protected myself, Katie.  You
can do what you like, but remember: money is my business. Obviously, I’ll still
keep up the maintenance.’

‘You are a low-life shit, Eddie!’ I yelled.

I heard “Fuck you” before he cut the line.  Isn’t it amazing how quickly
everything turns nasty when money is involved?

My emotions were in turmoil after the call.  I ranged between disbelief,
fear and deep-rooted anger.  Half an hour later anger had supremacy.  I
couldn’t sit still; I wandered the house venting my emotions.  How could I have
been such an idiot to trust him?  He was a financial wizard; I should have
known he’d pull a stroke like this.  He was a fucking, two-faced, lying, poof,
a shirt-lifter a…a...  I couldn’t think of enough expletives to describe what I
thought of him, well actually that’s not true, I could think of them, but
writing them down would be a bit embarrassing.  You’ll have to use your
imagination – think how you’d feel if you were me.  He wasn’t worth spit; he
didn’t care about his boys.  Ha! And I thought he was a good father?  That just
showed what a fuckwit I was.

When I could think rationally, I made an appointment with a solicitor. 
My anger turned to despair when I left her office a couple of days later.  She
didn’t hold out much hope of being able to find the money Eddie had expertly
manoeuvred out of my reach.  She was willing to give it a go, but she had an
idea he may have filtered it into an offshore account.  Basically, he had
pulled a blinder and I was screwed.  

Of course, I had to cancel the viewings and ring Alison to let her know
why.  She was horrified once I’d filled her in.

‘Come anyway,’ she said, with eternal hope. ‘We’ll just have to set our
sights lower. There’ll be something… you’ll see.’

I had to commend her for her optimism, I was of the opinion I’d be lucky
to find a tin shack in my price range, and then maybe that was expecting too
much.

Five days after our arrival, I stood with Alison, Toby, and Sam in the
wilderness that was the front garden of what looked like being our new home. 

‘It’s not too bad,’ Alison chirped brightly.

Three pairs of eyes turned to her in disbelief.

‘Well, you know… if you imagine how it would look done up,’ she tried
hopefully.

In my opinion, the only word to describe the place was horrendous.  It
was a typical cottage with a door to the left and a small downstairs window
almost completely obscured by cobwebs and an array of overgrown weeds skirting
the front of the building.  Protruding eaves overshadowed two upstairs windows
below a roof warped by age.  The whole place had a weathered look, not helped
by grey, peeling whitewash.  Darren, the young estate agent, was fighting to
get the door open and I wanted to tell him not to bother, but I couldn’t.  This
place was the only habitable building we had found in my price range, in
twenty-two properties and four days of looking.  I had to buy something for
cash because I didn’t have a job and therefore couldn’t get a mortgage.  Mark
had advised against renting and I agreed with his theory that renting was dead
money.

‘If you can, it would be far better to keep your foot on the property
ladder, there’s always money in bricks and mortar,’ he advised.

That was the reason I was considering a dilapidated shack that had been
empty for three years.  It was sitting half way down a farm track in the
village of Gringley-on-the-Hill, having once been a tithe cottage to a local
estate.  The previous owner had lived in it for over sixty years, according to
Darren.

‘He didn’t do much to it then,’ I couldn’t resist saying.

He did his best to secure the deal, despite my sarcasm.

‘It was rewired in the seventies and a bathroom put in in the eighties by
the owner’s son, when his father got too old to use the outside toilet,’ he
said, as if that made all the difference.

It didn’t make any difference to me; it could have had half a dozen
bathrooms and still been the shambles it was.

‘Shall we go inside?’ he ventured hopefully.

Gawd!  It seemed impossible, but if anything, the inside was worse.  We
walked straight into the living room whose only redeeming feature as far as I
could see, was the original fireplace.  The rest was a mixture of
“improvements” made in what looked like every decade of the previous owner’s
residence.  With low ceilings and small windows, it looked dark and miserable. 
It also had the stairs hidden behind a door in the corner of the room.

‘Well, you can’t say it hasn’t got character!’ Alison remarked once she
had time to wipe the look of dismay off her face.

Darren, hoping we hadn’t notice the loose plaster and rotting windows,
hurried us into what passed for the kitchen.  It was miniscule, housing a
disgusting-looking cooker, two cupboards and the original clay sink.  The
access for the “new” bathroom was through a lean-to that looked as if it had
been a coal shed originally. I wasn’t sure I could face upstairs.

‘Come on, Mum, there might be ghosts!’  Toby said, looking extremely
happy at the prospect.