after his second viewing, guessing that there’d be a few of those little unforeseen jobs that older properties had a habit of hiding from prospective buyers even after a full structural survey. Now, he shook his head at his optimism. There were no little jobs at Winfield Hall; they were all massive jobs.
A whole city of scaffolding had been set up and Edward had lost count of the number of workers who were now coming and going. He was heartily glad that he’d hired a project manager to take care of it all, and he was kind of glad of his commitment in London because he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to cope with the stress of all the noise and seeing whole ceilings and walls being pulled down.
It was the end of January when they hit another problem. Max, the project manager, called Edward to give him the news.
‘Do you need me on site?’ Edward had asked from his office in London.
‘Trust me – you’re going to want to see this,’ Max had told him.
So Edward drove down.
Max was outside, pacing up and down.
‘What is it?’ Edward asked, almost dreading the answer but needing to hear it quickly.
‘Subsidence,’ Max said. The word to strike terror in any new property owner.
Edward sighed and Max proceeded to show him the damage. It had come up in a survey as a possibility but Edward had somehow managed to put that to the back of his mind. The whole of the east wing was affected. It could be fixed, Max assured him, but it would delay all the other work on that part of the house and, of course, would mean an extra bill. A very sizeable bill.
‘Do what’s needed,’ Edward told him.
Max nodded. ‘Sure thing.’
It was the only option, Edward told himself. You couldn’t do half a job on a place like Winfield or start gilding on rotten foundations especially if he wanted to rent apartments to other people. He couldn’t let out rooms in a house that was slowly sinking, could he?
He went for a walk after that to try and clear his head. He took the route through the village, passing the huddle of cottages hunkering close together under their thatched roofs as if in an attempt to keep warm. Looking at them now, Edward almost envied their simplicity and smallness. Just think how easy it would be to live in a cottage. How practical it would be to heat and maintain it. You could virtually see the whole property at once, he thought with a grin. There would be very little to surprise you with a cottage, he believed. Or, if there were any issues, they would be relatively easy and cheap to deal with.
But Edward hadn’t chosen to live in a cottage. He’d chosen a sprawling Georgian mansion. And he had the bills to prove it. He shook his head. It was only money after all, he told himself, and what was money for if not to spend? He’d just have to make some more. Besides, things were bound to get better soon. It would be spring before he knew it and his energy would pick up then as it usually did, with the promise of warmer weather when he could start to enjoy wild swimming again. And then winter and all the work and the money spent on renovations would be behind him and he’d have the summer to look forward to. He could spend more time outdoors then, enjoying the garden and the countryside. Now, that, Edward thought, was something to look forward to.
But little did he know the news that February would bring.
Chapter Four
There had been no warning signs. Nobody had suspected what was about to happen and it was the very last thing Edward had thought would happen to him.
He was made redundant.
It was nothing personal, his boss had said. Your work is good. Second to none. Only it seemed he was second to somebody at the company his was merging with. A number of his colleagues had suffered the same fate too. Within a week, he’d gone from having his own office to being forced to clear his desk. There was a redundancy package, of course, but that would only go so far. Edward was pretty sure some of his clients would come with him in time, but most, he feared, would stay loyal to his firm. A firm that hadn’t stayed loyal to him, he couldn’t help thinking bitterly.
And what about