11 The Teashop on the Corner (12 page)

‘I thought he wanted a quick sale?’

‘He does,’ Jonty sighed. ‘He also wants to have his cake and eat it. I’m forbidden from letting Russians view it and anyone from the police or armed forces.’

Carla’s eyebrows rose. ‘Is that legal?’

‘Mine is not to reason why,’ replied Jonty, throwing his arms wide. ‘But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that it does make my job easier if I secure him a sale with a
thirtysomething female from the town in return for a stress-free cash sale for his asking price. I can arrange for a rental agreement to be drawn up for your tenant when you find one. I
wouldn’t charge you, of course.’

‘You’re too kind, Jonty,’ said Carla. ‘I’m going to miss you when you emigrate. I want to get settled in a new place as quickly as possible, then Theresa can stop
worrying about me. I don’t want to spoil your excitement.’

‘We’re both worrying about you,’ said Jonty, bumping his head on one of the beams in the sitting room. This house with its low ceilings wouldn’t have suited someone of
his six-foot-seven height. ‘You could always come with us to New Zealand, Carla.’

Carla gave her dear friend a fond smile.

‘I like the UK, Jonty. I like the history and shopping in Leeds and going down to London and seeing the Queen. I like the seasons. I like battening down the hatches in the winter and
watching the snow through the window and moaning about the rubbish summers. New Zealand is your dream – not mine. And I know it’ll be fabulous and I’m very probably mad, but I
like living in Yorkshire. I’ll be okay. I’m a big girl.’

Jonty nodded slowly. ‘Well, the offer remains there. You’ll have to come out for a holiday. Anyway, let’s get back to business.’

The house was beyond weird. It was a double-fronted build that had been split into two. The bigger half had a downstairs loo and a small cellar below the kitchen/diner which was a generously
sized square room. There was a built-in oven, a fridge freezer and a washing machine. Jonty said that the owner was leaving them in. They had all seen better days, but they’d do for a while.
In between the kitchen and lounge was a handsome swirl of staircase with a solid mahogany balustrade. The carpet on it was rather worn and a revolting shade of brown, but that was cosmetic and
could be changed. Upstairs was a bedroom with a cheap white built-in wardrobe and a bathroom with a burgundy suite like something out of a 1970s MFI catalogue. Next door was a small box-room under
the eaves which would be okay for storage but nigh on impossible to use as a spare bedroom. There was a long length of landing and a door at the end which led to the mini flat. This consisted of a
bedroom with a small en-suite shower room complete with an avocado toilet and sink. A spiral staircase twirled down to a small sitting room with floor-to-ceiling French doors leading to a small
square of private paved garden. There was no separate kitchen: the renter would need to share those facilities with Carla. Dundealin was detached, surrounded by a garden that was in serious need of
some TLC. There was an old shabby shed at the bottom of it and two posts with a sagging washing line strung between them. High walls on each side separated it from its neighbours. It seemed the
owner –
Mr Pink –
valued his privacy.

‘I think I can get him to stump up half the stamp duty an’ all if you move fast,’ said Jonty. ‘He wants to release his capital as quickly as possible. And then
disappear.’

Carla blew two large cheekfuls of air out. ‘I’ve never owned a house in my life. I can’t imagine even having the amount of money to do it, never mind handing it over to buy
one.’

‘Personally, Carla, and you know me well enough to know that this isn’t bullshit, I think you’d be mad to turn it down. You can afford the house. My advice would be to buy it.
It’s the best investment you’ll make in a lifetime, unless you count over-insuring a feckless husband.’

‘I’d own the house outright?’

‘Yup.’

Carla thought about having a lot of money in the bank and all the things she could buy with it. She could go on holiday to the Maldives, buy a whole wardrobe of clothes from Vivien Westwood. A
brand new Mercedes. Then Sensible Carla gave her a sharp rap on the side of her head and reminded her that she needed a home.

Let’s call him Mr Pink.

‘Shall I tell him you’re interested?’ asked Jonty, taking out his mobile phone.

Trust in pink.

The words bubbled out of Carla. ‘Yes, Jonty. Please.’

‘Excellent.’ Jonty began to scroll through his contact page.

Carla tried to imagine herself living there but couldn’t. She’d thought she and Martin would grow old and grey in his bungalow. She had been happy there, happy as Mrs Pride. At least
she had thought she was. She got back into Jonty’s car and prepared herself mentally to start the final separation from that married life that never was.

There was no time like the present. Carla was back home by nine a.m. and, after a fortifying cup of strong coffee, she changed into some tracksuit bottoms and an old T-shirt
and said to herself,
Let’s get cracking.

Except she didn’t know where to start. The task in front of her took daunting to another level. She gave herself the hard word.
Look, Carla, it’s simple. Divide everything into
the stuff you are taking, the stuff you intend to sell on and then you leave the rest for Julie. Okay?
Then she clapped her hands and got stuck in.

She pushed all the furniture in the sitting room to one end, designating an area for things she was going to claim. There were some nice pieces of pottery and ornaments in the cabinet which had
belonged to Martin’s parents. She didn’t want them but they might fetch a decent price on eBay and she was going to need all the money she could get. She felt down the sides of her
grotty sofa to see if there were any treasures. She found Martin’s old Zippo lighter and 20p amongst a lot of fluff. She turned the metal lighter around in her hand and thought of him puffing
the life into a cigarette, sitting in the chair tapping ash into a saucer whilst she scurried around getting his tea on a tray, ready to pamper him after a hard week working away from home. She
didn’t know whether to cry or spit and decided she might want to do a mixture of both. What would Julie think of the furniture she was going to leave for her, she wondered? It wasn’t
even good enough for a skip. Julie and Martin probably had one of those curving leather suites that seated eight. She pictured him sitting on it, watching a sixty-inch 3D LED TV and drinking a
glass of champagne, and a pain cut through her as if Martin had stubbed out one of his cigarettes on her heart.

Sod what Julie thinks. You can either cry or get on with it, so which is it to be, girl?
That voice again.

Carla used her anger to fuel her strength and pushed the sofa to the end of the room designated for the rubbish. Martin’s tatty reclining chair joined it. So did the chipped and scratched
coffee table and all Martin’s videos and DVDs and their cronky old TV set which was two foot deep and all the ancient media equipment and his stack of
Which
magazines. Then she went
into the kitchen to start there.

Dundealin had an oven, which was good, because Carla didn’t want to take Martin’s ancient one with her, the oven in which she had cooked his meals. She packed a few plates and pans
and utensils to see her on for a bit until she could afford new, because eventually she was going to rid herself of everything Martin had ever touched. She made a note on her hand to ring the scrap
man whose number she had torn out of the
Chronicle
. He would give her peanuts for the metal appliances and the bed frame, she knew, but it was better in her purse than in
Julie’s.

Carla checked every pocket of every garment in Martin’s wardrobe before putting them in bin liners. She found he had the latest iPhone, battery totally flattened, in a pair of trousers.
Presumably that was the one on which he used to contact Julie. For a moment she considered charging it up and reading the messages, then countered that by slamming it down hard on the windowsill
until it shattered. Then she immediately regretted doing that because maybe it held answers to some of the thousands of questions floating around her head. Still, it was done now and maybe she was
better off not knowing.

She found a roll of twenty-pound notes in the inside pocket of a jacket – over a thousand pounds. Other pockets yielded another two hundred. She’d cried to him the week before he
died because she couldn’t get a job and he’d put his arm around her and told her not to worry, that they’d manage. He’d given her a tenner and told her to go and buy them a
bottle of wine to have with their dinner. And she’d bought as cheap a one as she could find to give him back some change. Carla wanted to scream. She wished she had checked his pockets when
he was alive. But they didn’t have that sort of relationship – she trusted him. She hadn’t seen the slightest sign that he was about to leave her for another woman, especially one
that he had impregnated. How stupid she was.

She emptied his drawers and there, in a sock, she found a long case with the word ‘Cartier’ in sloping letters emblazoned on the lid. She clicked it open to find a gold ladies’
watch, the face ringed with diamonds. Carla’s fingers were trembling as she lifted it out and turned it over to see if it had been engraved: it had. ‘To J with all my love M.’

Carla remembered the box of Thornton’s chocolates and the cookery book he’d bought for her birthday in February, still with the half-price label stuck on the front. The receipt in
the sock said that Martin had paid four thousand two hundred pounds for that watch. Carla had to stop herself from launching it at the wall and smashing its smug little glittery face. She’d
take it to a dealer and sell it.

‘You . . . you . . . bastard,’ Carla growled upwards, but the word wasn’t enough to carry all the hurt and anger she wanted to direct towards him. There wasn’t a word in
existence to describe what Martin Pride was. She huffed. That was another thing she’d have to do – change her bank book and passport and Visa and so much other stuff back into her
maiden name –
her real name –
Carla Martelli. She had never minded being a Martelli, but she had enjoyed being a Mrs, a Mrs Pride. And now she was a Miss Martelli again –
well, she always had been really. And she had been washing Mr Pride’s grotty pants and cooking Mr Pride’s meals for ten years under the illusion that she had been doing wifely
duties.

She put Martin’s underwear in a separate bin bag. The charity shop might have been able to make use of his suits but no one would want to wear his old XXL Y-fronts or his socks. His
bedside cabinet contained nothing of interest: spare pair of glasses, driving licence, passport, a packet of condoms, an ancient wrap of Beecham’s Powders and a toenail clipper. In his best
shoe, Carla found another roll of money which she shoved in her pocket. That would buy her some new bedding because she wasn’t going to take her old duvet and pillows and sheets with her. And
she couldn’t take the dressing table which she had so lovingly restored because it was too wrapped up with memories of causing his death. Then again, maybe that was a reason to take it. She
was so angry. In the cold light of day, she could see so clearly how worn out this house was – not dirty, because Carla couldn’t abide dust or mess – but tired, everything in it
in dire need of being replaced. She hadn’t noticed it before, living in such close proximity to it all, but then a huge beam of torchlight, in the form of Martin’s deception, had been
shone on her life and she would never see anything the same way again.

Carla opened up another bin bag. She still had a long way to go. And who knew how many other rolls of money she would find. She would make sure she bought the biggest bottle of bloody champagne
out of it to christen her new life.

On the following Tuesday, Carla attended her dentist in Maltstone for her sixth-monthly check-up. She had meant to cancel it but they didn’t have another appointment for
six weeks and so she felt that she should go. Luckily she needed no treatment, which was some good news. She’d half expected to be told she needed root canal surgery, five crowns, twelve
fillings and some new gums; that seemed to be the way her luck was running.

The receptionist gave her a funny look when she asked for her record to be changed back to her maiden name when she informed them of Martin’s death. Carla wanted to shout at her,
‘I’m not rejecting his memory, he was married to another bloody woman.’ But she didn’t want to wash her dirty linen in public.

Carla didn’t want to go home yet and sit in a house which she had already mentally left. This was to be her last full day there. The scrap metal man had been, the charity wagon had picked
up Martin’s suits and the house clearance people were coming that afternoon. She had picked up Martin’s ashes at the weekend and resisted the urge to kick the urn around the garden. She
would be glad to leave the bungalow, she didn’t want to live in it any more, but if she was totally honest, she didn’t particularly want to live in Dundealin either. She could break out
in a cold sweat if she thought about spending all that money on the odd-looking house with the worst internal decor she had ever seen. She took a detour to Little Kipping and sat in the car for a
few minutes gazing at her new home. It looked grim and unfamiliar and her heart sank.
What the hell have I done?
she asked herself. At that moment, staying in her old home and battling it
out with Julie for a share of Martin’s estate seemed like the slightly better option, but she rejected it almost at once. She could imagine Julie’s side of the story appearing on the
front page of the
Daily Trumpet
, Carla’s worst nightmare. Nope, her only option was to move into Dundealin, a place that meant nothing to her. Carla felt suddenly adrift; she
belonged nowhere, she had nothing, no one. Panic gave all her organs a squeeze simultaneously with its long bony claws.

Spring Hill was nearby and a cup of coffee in the lovely tearoom was a welcoming thought. She turned into the car park, waiting patiently for a digger to make a three-point turn. To the right,
men were working on the unfinished units of the quadrangle. The teashop in the corner looked sweet and inviting with its brightly coloured pots of flowers outside it and hanging baskets. Carla
loved to read. Most of the boxes she was taking from the bungalow were full of her books. They had entertained her for many an empty hour but, alas, not this week. She had tried but failed to lose
herself in a good story.