Georgia Hill - While I Was Waiting

She was like a long, cool glass of water, he decided, or more like an icy one, for she hadn’t been that friendly. Far too self-contained. Shame. Still, he could work on that. Kevin had been right about the Llewellyn charm. Girls liked something about him and, although he’d never fathomed out quite what, it had never failed him yet. He gave Kevin a quick glance. ‘Oh she was alright. Bit toffee-nosed, like.’

‘Bet she fancied you.’

‘Oh, shut up, Kev.’

The following Monday morning, Rachel rang Mr Foster, who explained that Mrs Trenchard-Lewis had died several years ago in a local nursing home and that Rachel would need to contact the solicitors about her find. He also said that the house had been cleared and, as it was unlikely the tin contained anything valuable, she could probably keep it.

‘The house was sold complete with chattels, wasn’t it?’ He didn’t sound as interested as she thought he might be, but she could hear voices in the background and several phones ringing, so maybe he was having a busy day. She thought back to the worm-infested kitchen table and the two bookshelves that constituted ‘the chattels’. ‘Erm, yes.’

‘Well, especially as there seem to be no descendants to make a claim, I would have thought the box is rightfully yours. Do let me know if there’s anything of interest in there, I’m quite keen on local history. I do apologise, Miss Makepeace, but I must go, the office is getting rather hectic.’

Rachel thanked him and a further call to the solicitors confirmed that the tin was, indeed, her legal possession.

Over the next few days it lay on the kitchen table, hidden by the mess that had accompanied the house move. Stuff that, try hard as she might, she couldn’t find a home for. The tin and its intriguing contents remained undisturbed; she had other things to do. Rachel was desperate to get organised. She liked order and she liked everything in its place. No, she admitted to herself with a smile, she craved order and until she had everything sorted there was no hope of doing any work. And if she didn’t work, she may as well give up on the idea of living in the cottage completely; she’d never make the mortgage.

So for the next three days she toiled long hours into the night to replace the chaos and unpacked boxes with calm and organisation. On the third attempt to scrub the sitting-room floor, the first two efforts being not to her satisfaction, she sat back and grinned. She remembered, long ago, Tim claiming she was getting far too much like her mother. That her perfectionism would risk her ending up alone, with only cats for company. She didn’t need a psychoanalyst to tell her it was an attempt to live up to her mother’s intolerance to mess or dirt of any kind. Paula Makepeace was fanatical. She’d gone through dozens of cleaners, as none of them did the job to her exacting standards. No one came up to Paula’s standards – in any way – and that included Rachel. She didn’t know how her father coped.

She gave a shrug, pausing only long enough to turn up the radio, and scrubbed even harder.

Thanks to Gabe, the boiler continued to produce copious amounts of scalding hot water and, after a day’s cleaning and sorting, Rachel was only too glad of a long soak in the bath. As she lay there, listening to Radio Three and the sounds of the cottage settling quietly for the night, she mulled over what she was going to do with her new home.

The kitchen she was going to leave more or less as it was, once she’d brightened it with paint. She liked its old-fashioned, unfitted quality and the quarry tiles and wooden plate rack, which she suspected were original. She would get the old table mended; she guessed it was oak and too good to simply throw out. Her own electric cooker looked out of place, but the long-desired Aga would have to wait.

She looked around the bathroom as she idly blew soap bubbles. The tiles were pale green – not very exciting, but liveable with. The suite was old-fashioned but thankfully white and the bath was deep, with enormous taps. She lacked the power shower that had got her through so many sticky days in the city but, again, that would have to wait.

The rest of the house was, thanks to her hard work, becoming grime-free and small though the rooms might be, some good-looking floorboards had been revealed. A sander would do the trick, she thought dreamily, and then it would be the home of her dreams.

Eventually.

She put Gabe Llewellyn and his long list of expensive repairs firmly to the back of her mind and blew another bubble.

Below her, the old house shifted in agreement.

In the end, it was almost two weeks later when the Toyota came revving up the track. It was another yellow spring day full of the unadulterated light that Rachel was slowly getting used to. She’d been working in the sitting room, which had a commanding view from the front of the cottage. It received good, useful light for most of the day.

She watched as Gabe and another man got out of the truck and held an animated conversation. There was much pointing at the roof, which Rachel felt was ominous. With a frown, she left her drawing board and went to greet her visitors. She opened the front door just as Gabe went to lift the rusty old knocker.

For a second his hand hung comically in mid air, then he grinned. ‘Hi. Erm, this is my dad. Dad, this is Rachel.’

The older man nodded his head in a quick greeting. ‘Mike Llewellyn. Pleased to meet you.’ They shook hands briefly. He looked from Rachel to his son and then back again. He smiled, making his eyes crinkle like his son’s. ‘Gabe said there was quite a lot of work to be done on the old place, so I’ve come to have a look myself.’

He was a shorter, wirier version of Gabe, but lacked his son’s laid-back charm.

‘Sorry we couldn’t get to you earlier,’ with this he gave Gabe a meaningful look. ‘Another job went on a bit, like.’

Ever since moving in, Rachel had done little else but clean, scrub, unpack and sort her belongings, not to mention wait around for the phone to be connected, the oil delivery to be made and for the sander she’d hired to be delivered. This was the very first morning she had felt able to sit down and do some work, real paying work, not the sketching and watercolours she found herself lured into doing by the seductive view. The last thing she wanted to do today was play host to builders. The roof would probably be fine. It hadn’t leaked once since she’d moved in, conveniently forgetting it hadn’t rained either. Rachel looked at their expectant faces, so alike in expression, and sighed inwardly. They were here now and her concentration was already interrupted. If they were quick, she could get back to her work by lunchtime. ‘You’d better come in, then, I suppose,’ she said and led them into the cottage’s sitting room.

‘This has changed a bit!’ Gabe looked around, admiringly. ‘You’ve been busy.’

Rachel followed his gaze around the room. She had worked her hardest in here, keen to get her working area organised. A rug lay over the newly scrubbed and sanded floorboards. She’d even got around to painting them – a pale yellowy cream. She’d set up her bookshelves in the alcoves on either side of the fireplace and they were overflowing with her beloved art books. She’d even had time to hang her favourite prints. A Georgia O’ Keeffe still life looked down from over the mantelpiece – the best sort of company. The room was restful, colourful – just how she liked it.

Gabe walked to her drawing board, positioned neatly in front of the uncurtained sash window and fingered her pencils. ‘What do you do?’

Rachel hurried over and nudged him out of the way. She shut her sketchbook and flipped the cloth over her drawing board. She hated people seeing her work until she felt it was finished, perfect. Or as perfect as she could make it.