Fern Britton - Coming Home

It was at least a hundred and fifty years old. Dressed in clapboard, its white paint peeling, it carried two floors above the front door. The estate agent greeted them.

‘Mr and Mrs Tallon, I presume? Tim Baynon.’

They all shook hands.

‘Welcome to the Old Chandlery …’ Mr Baynon began his spiel. ‘There’s been a lot of interest in the property, I can tell you.’

‘Really?’ asked Bill incredulous.

Adela glared at him and addressed the agent: ‘I’m sure. It’s absolutely gorgeous.’

Bill shot her a murderous look. And as Mr Baynon took a set of keys from his pocket and put them in the rusted lock of the warped front door, Bill pulled his wife aside and whispered, ‘Don’t act too keen. He’ll bump the price up.’

Adela tutted, and whispered back, ‘I want him to know we are serious buyers.’

She pushed past him and followed the agent, who had given the door a couple of kicks to open it, leaving a lump of damp and rotting wood on the mat, into what had been the shop.

‘As you see,’ Mr Baynon was all pomposity, ‘all the original fixtures and fittings are still intact.’

Bill looked at the empty shelves lining the walls and the shop counter covered in dust. ‘Seen better days,’ he said.

‘So much character,’ countered Adela.

Mr Baynon continued his tour into the room behind the shop which housed an old Raeburn range and a large butler’s sink. ‘And beyond is the garden.’ Grandly he lifted the latch of the old back door and showed them a patch of wasteland no bigger than a couple of wheelbarrows. ‘Sun all day.’

Adela could see that Bill was losing interest. ‘Can we see upstairs?’

A steep and narrow staircase took them up to the first floor which housed two small rooms back and front. The second floor was the same.

Adela felt certain that Bill would never agree to live here. As he and Mr Baynon chatted on the tiny landing, she walked towards the window of the uppermost front room, her heels knocking on the bare floorboards. She rubbed the dust and grime from one of the small square panes and looked out. Trevay and its harbour were laid out before her like a drawing from a child’s picture book. She tried the rusty latch and after a couple of thumps with the heel of her hand it opened. Sunlight, sea air and the call of gulls flooded the room. She almost laughed at the simple joyousness of it all.

She heard footsteps behind her, followed by Bill’s hand on her waist as he stood next to her.

She laid her head against his shoulder. ‘Someone will make this into a lovely home,’ she sighed.

‘Yes, we will,’ he answered.

She looked up at him, all alert. ‘What?’

‘I’ve put an offer in. My Baynon is going to let us know in a couple of days.’

She hugged him, then pulled away and pummelled him. ‘You bugger! I thought you hated it.’

‘Just my poker face.’

‘Oh, darling.’ She kissed him, then a horrible thought crossed her mind. ‘You didn’t offer him a stupidly low price, did you? We’ll definitely lose it if you have.’

‘I’ve offered what it’s worth to us. Which is more than it’s worth to anyone else.’

‘I love it.’ She hopped from one foot to another.

‘I love it too. It’s mad. It’s too much work. It’s totally impractical. Who buys a building that’s as tall and thin as a pencil?’

Adela laughed and leant on the filthy window sill to look out at the amazing view.

‘That’s what we’ll call it. Pencil House.’

They got the keys and moved in within three weeks. The Raeburn only needed a good service and soon warmed the house through. Bill, always good with his hands, made the old shop counter into a kitchen unit, and built a sturdy kitchen table top out of the shop’s shelves. Adela started upstairs. She swept, she washed and she painted everywhere and everything. Slowly, Pencil House was becoming a home.

At weekends they would take themselves off on bus rides, discovering seaside towns and hidden coves and simply immersing themselves in each other and life they were building.

It was about four months into their arrival that Adela began to feel sick in the mornings. The doctor confirmed her pregnancy and the following spring their daughter arrived.

Bill and Adela were as besotted with her as they were with themselves.

‘What shall we call her?’ asked Bill holding her for the first time by Adela’s hospital bed.

Adela smiled. ‘I would like to call her Sennen,’ she said.

‘Sennen?’ asked Bill, puzzled. ‘Why?’

She grinned. ‘Remember that evening on Sennen Cove last summer?’

‘Oh.’ Bill remembered. ‘When I … when we …’

She nodded. ‘Yes, darling. Your daughter was conceived on Sennen Cove.’

A few days later Bill went to collect Adela and Sennen from the hospital. He’d bought himself an ancient red Ford Anglia for the occasion. ‘Oh, Bill, it’s wonderful,’ exclaimed Adela when she saw it. ‘Can we afford it?’

‘For my wife and daughter, nothing is too much.’ He opened the door for her and got her settled with Adela wrapped in her arms.’

When they got to Pencil House he told her to stay in the car while he opened up and took the bags in, then, when he was ready, he scooped Adela, who was still cradling Sennen, into his arms and carried them both over the threshold with Adela laughing and protesting until he placed her on the sofa.

‘Welcome home.’ He bent and kissed her. ‘I am so proud of you.’

‘What on earth for?’

‘For making Sennen for us.’

‘Well, it took both of us.’

‘But you did the hard work.’ He knelt by Adela’s knee and lifted the shawl his mother had knitted from Sennen’s face. ‘Hello, my darling. We are three – and nothing and nobody will ever tear us apart.’

At Marguerite Cottage, the day that Henry had left Pendruggan, making Ella promise not to meet their mother when or if she came back, Adam and Kit were cooking supper. Although they were cousins they were more like brothers. Adam, the elder, making suggestions as to how to dice an onion correctly and Kit arguing that the kitchen was a shared domain and if he was cooking, he’d do it his way.

Adam shrugged and started to lay the table. ‘More wine, Ella? Supper will be a while.’

He poured a good slug of rosé into her glass and she excused herself. ‘I’ll take this into the lounge, if you don’t mind?’

The boys barely looked up as they had started a ridiculous debate about whether to put chives on the new potatoes or mint.

Ella sat on the rug next to Celia and Terry and rubbed their ears. ‘Don’t tell Henry,’ she whispered, ‘but I would really like to meet my mum. I wonder what she’s like? Do you think she’d like me?’ Terry rolled over so that she could tickle his tummy. ‘You don’t have a care in the world, do you, Terry.’ She turned to Celia who was in ear-tickle ecstasy, her eyes half-shut in bliss. ‘Celia, you’re a girl. What do you think my mum is like? Is she all bad? Selfish? Feeling guilty at what she did? Or is she funny and beautiful and clever and desperate for us to forgive her? Hmm? Do you think we could be friends? I’d like that. I really, really want to know. I want to see her. Is that too bad of me?’