first one’s at four o’clock. I should be able to get away early.’
‘Will I meet you there? I have the address so I know exactly where the house is.’
‘OK. I’ll ring you if there’s any change.’
Maybe it was because I didn’t usually have conversations with Keith at this hour of the morning but he definitely sounded different. ‘Keith?’
‘Mmm…’
‘Are you OK?’
‘What?’
‘Are you OK? You seem very distant.’
‘No, I’m fine. I’m just tired. I’m seeing a bit too much of work, these days. That’s all.’
‘We could do with getting away,’ I said, the idea suddenly popping into my head. ‘What about next weekend? There’s nothing else on, is there?’
‘No, but don’t make any plans yet. I’ll know better at the end of the week how work is fixed.’
‘OK.’
‘It’s just a busy time, Kate. It’ll be over soon.’
He kissed me moderately warmly on the lips and then he was out of the door before I even had a chance to put the kettle on.
Since I was up I used the time to ring Mum and ask her if we could call over that evening. I wanted to pick a date for the wedding and there was no point in getting the calendar out without her approval. She said she’d love to see us as long as we didn’t mind having salad for dinner – they were on a health regime. Once that was sorted I made coffee for Jean, who was in need of something to kick-start her day, but she was out the door before I had a chance to tell her about the previous evening. As I left the flat in my neat little pinstripe, having breakfasted on bran flakes, I determined to be sensible and efficient. I needed to be. I had a wedding to plan, after all.
Our house viewing didn’t go as well as I’d hoped. I thought one house was great but Keith preferred the other. The one I liked was a real fixer-upper. An old couple had been living there for nearly fifty years and nothing much had changed in that time. The potential was obvious, though. Structurally, the house seemed sound but it would benefit by breaking a few walls here and there. Of course, absolutely everything would have to be stripped out – wallpaper, carpets, shelving, kitchen and bathroom units – but given the house’s great location and perfect situation at the end of a row of similar red-brick Victorian villas with a fabulous walled-in garden at the back, it seemed perfect to me. Keith couldn’t see the point of bringing all that work on ourselves when we could buy a house that was ready to move into.
‘But we want to put our mark on the house, don’t we?’ I implored. ‘Otherwise we might as well stick with what we have. I thought that was what you wanted.’
‘It is, but that doesn’t mean we have to go into the demolition business to do it.’
I hate it when he’s sarcastic.
The house he preferred had been built in the last twenty years and while it was perfectly nice I didn’t get any feel from it. He said we could make a ‘feel’ in the way we painted it and filled it with our things, but I wasn’t as excited by a little painting job as by the prospect of totally overhauling the other house.
‘But, Kate, neither of us knows anything about that kind of thing.’
‘We could learn.’
‘It’s very time-consuming and it can work out expensive.’
‘We’re not in a major hurry and the asking price is much lower than the other one.’
‘It would want to be.’
We agreed to think about it and maybe come back and see them again later in the week. The locations, on the South Circular Road, were ideal, and even though they were expensive we knew we could probably manage it. I asked Keith if he was worried about meeting the mortgage if I wasn’t bringing in that much money and he said, no, absolutely not, he wasn’t worried about that at all. I had to take him at his word.
Next stop Sycamore Lodge.
Mum and Dad were out in the garden: she was reading and he was tidying some flowerbeds. They looked very companionable, the two of them, the perfect picture of old married contentment. In truth, they’d just had a row and had come into the garden to cool off. Mum hates reading out of doors: the glare strains her eyes and she won’t wear sunglasses because she thinks they’re common.
‘Hello, there,’ we