Restoring Grace (26 page)

Ellie, glad of an excuse to retreat to the cosy
disorder
of the kitchen, got to her feet.
'Well, I must go and see to
my sauce and set the table.'

‘Don't go!' Grace pleaded. She knew Allegra had
bad
news for her and she didn't want to
hear it without moral
support.

‘
I have to.
I can't trust Demi not to let the broccoli turn
to mush.'

‘
I don't
understand why that child isn't living with one
of her parents,' said Allegra
before Ellie was out of the room. 'And isn't her name Demeter?’

Grace regarded her sister. 'Tell me about the
report, Allegra, please.' Allegra glanced at Flynn who immediately got to his
feet. 'You don't have to go, really,' said Grace, feeling more abandoned by the
moment.

‘
I do,'
said Flynn. 'I still haven't cleared up all my tools.
We don't want
Ellie tripping over them.'

‘
Alone at
last!' said Allegra. 'Honestly, Grace, where
did you find those people?
Don't you know any normal couples?'

‘
Seeing as
I'm no longer part of one myself, the normal
couples seem to have
slipped out of my acquaintance.'

‘And I don't know if you and Edward were ever
quite normal,' said Allegra slightly acidly. 'Now, about this
report. It's dry rot and it's very bad. It'll cost
at least thirty
grand to fix it. Tell
me, have you got that amount left
from your settlement?’

Grace shook her head slowly, silenced by the
huge amount.

‘Then you really have no choice. You'll have to
sell. I'll
lend you the money to fix the dry
rot and you can pay me back when you sell. As well as giving me and Nick
our
share, of course.'

‘
Are you
willing to
sue
me for what you
describe as
your share?' asked Grace softly.

Allegra nodded, but so
slightly that Grace wondered
if Nicholas
had put her up to saying this, and suspected
that
Allegra was less keen on the notion. 'Of course we would absolutely hate it to
come to that, but Nick and I
feel that it's
perfectly possible that the courts would agree
with us, that the aunt
was not in her sound mind when she made her will in such an unfair way.’

Grace sighed. 'Have some
more wine, Allegra,' she said.
She felt infinitely tired, and
infinitely depressed.

*

In the kitchen, Ellie felt
as if she were directing an opera.
Getting the table and floor clear of
Flynn's tools and
Demi's work and made to
look as if it was capable of
being
sat round as the setting for a dinner party took some
doing. The knife
and fork situation was dire, too. It was impossible to make Grace's collection
of old silver forks, bone-handled knives with loose handles and suspicious
holes in them and a selection of spoons with
peculiar stains
look co-ordinated.
They were probably what was left after
Grace's
brother and sister had done their trawl of posses
sions. Ellie wondered if there was a nice set of good quality
stainless steel in a smart box hidden in the
attic. Or, and
it seemed just as
likely, a beautiful set of knives, forks and
spoons wrapped in green
baize and residing somewhere in the Home Counties, which had once come from
here; That sister really was the limit, thought Ellie, stirring her sauce and
willing it to thicken. She was probably on a diet, too. With any luck it was
the Atkins diet, where cream was perfectly all right as long as there wasn't a
sniff of anything resembling a vegetable.

‘
I'm going
back in,' said Flynn when he'd packed up
the last of his tools and washed his hands in Ellie's clean
sink yet again. 'I don't like to leave Grace with
that
woman.’

Ellie sighed. Did Grace appreciate what a nice
man
Flynn was? she wondered. Probably not,
mostly because
he seemed to make her nervous, and partly because she was
clearly still in love with Edward. She wasn't normal in some ways. Any sensible
woman would hate her ex-husband; it was the healthy way to feel. But Grace
wouldn't hear a word against him, even taking in his
daughter to make his new marriage easier. Not that Demi
wasn't a lovely girl. Ellie glanced at her now,
writing furi
ously at the end of the
kitchen table Ellie had allowed
her to keep.

‘Nearly finished, Dem?'

‘
Yup. That
should do it. I'll read it over tomorrow on
the way to college.' Demi put her biro into her pink fluffy
pencil
case. 'It's odd, I've never thought about it before, but history really is
quite interesting.'

‘
Good! Could
you be a love and call them in to eat now? I'll just lay a place where your
stuff is. If you do your work
and
get good marks it will really make life easier for Grace.
If either of
your parents think she's being soft and not making you do your work, they won't
let you stay.'

‘I know!' she rolled her eyes. 'As if Grace
could make anyone do anything!’

In the few
moments it took Ellie to finish setting the
table
she fervently hoped Grace wasn't the pushover
Demi thought she was.

*

'Well, this is very nice,'
said Allegra, seated at the head
of the table
with Flynn on her right-hand side. 'Although
as you know I was hoping to get an opportunity to talk
to Grace
on her own.'

‘
There's nothing private about dry rot,' said
Grace. 'No,' agreed Ellie, suspecting that Grace, like her, was thinking about
what
was
private.

‘It is a
terrible nuisance,' said Flynn. 'It can get everywhere. Even into stone.'

‘Does the
report say whereabouts in the house it is?' asked Grace.

‘
Of course! It's mostly upstairs, on the west side.'

‘Oh,' said Grace after a moment and glanced at
Ellie,
confirming what Ellie had just worked
out: that the dining
room was on the west side.

‘
What would
happen if you didn't do anything about
it?' asked Ellie, knowing Grace
couldn't ask but might want to know.

‘
You couldn't
do that. It could spread everywhere,'
said Flynn, 'and in a house like
this, that would be a tragedy.’

Grace suddenly began to feel sick. It was one
thing Allegra banging on about dry rot, but to hear Flynn, a disinterested
party, say that was frightening.

‘Just what I was saying to Grace,' said Allegra
whose battle with
schadenfreude
was obviously not going well.

‘I expect there are grants and things you could
apply for,' said Ellie.

‘Unlikely, for a private house,' said Flynn.
'Unless it was open to the public or something like that.'

‘I have said I'll lend Grace the money,' said
Allegra,
swooping a piece of pork round her
plate to catch the last
of the creamy sauce.

‘
But under
rather stringent conditions. I would have to
sell the house,' said Grace, who at that moment felt that
selling
it would be like tearing out her heart. Childless and partnerless, it really
was the only thing in the world that was hers.

‘
Grace!
This is not something we should be discussing
in front of strangers!' Allegra was indignant, either
because she
really was concerned about confidentiality, or because she didn't want her
demands made public: it was difficult to tell.

‘You can't sell this house!' said Demi. 'It's
yours! You love it!'

‘I'm sure she does, dear,' said Allegra,
possibly forgetting how much young people disliked being patronised.
'But it is very expensive to keep up, and quite
imprac
tical for one person.'

‘
But we live
here, too!' said Demi, who had had her
glass topped up a couple of times
already by Flynn.

‘That is not the point!' said Allegra. 'Grace
inherited it from our aunt. She was aunt to me and my brother just as much as
she was to Grace.'

‘
She was also my godmother,' said Grace.

‘
That doesn't make any difference! She never paid you
any attention when she was alive; it makes no
sense that
she left you her house when she died!'

‘But she did! And you did get the furniture,
some of which was very valuable. And I'm sure it didn't have dry
rot!' Grace had had a fair bit to drink, too:
Dutch courage
in industrial quantities.

‘
There was
some nasty woodworm in that little
Davenport I had to have treated,'
insisted Allegra.

‘Would anyone like any more?' said Ellie, who
wanted
to go to bed more than anything else
in the whole world.
'Or shall we move on to apple crumble. And cream,' she
added.

‘
You cook awfully well for
an art student,' said Allegra.

‘
I've graduated, actually,' said Ellie. 'But I
learnt to cook
during my gap year, when I
had a job in France as an au pair. The madame thought it was her duty to teach
me to
cook, as I was English
and would never learn otherwise.'

‘
We tried
to encourage Grace to do a cookery course when she refused to do A levels, but
she would insist on
doing that wine thing.'
Allegra drained her glass and Ellie
resolved that, however drunk she
was, Allegra was not having her bed. 'If you hadn't done that, you wouldn't
have met Edward, which would have saved everyone a great deal of trouble.’

A whimper broke from Demi.
Grace scowled at her
sister. 'I wouldn't not have met
Edward for the world. I
loved him very much
and even though our marriage
didn't last – perhaps it couldn't have
lasted – I wouldn't have missed a minute of it!' She drew a deep breath. 'Apart
from anything else I wouldn't have met Demi.’

While Allegra and Grace faced each other across
the table, Ellie whispered to Demi, 'Just to prove that Grace is right about
you, would you like to gather the plates?'

‘Would anyone like some water, to clear the
palate?' asked Flynn, proving to Ellie that he could be tactful as well as
kind.

‘
Actually, I think that
would be a good idea,' said Allegra.

*

It turned out that Allegra
had booked herself into a hotel
in the town.
Flynn offered to take her home, and as Ellie
had been thinking that she should offer to do this herself,
she mentally hugged him. When Grace nodded her head
iii the
direction of the door, and Ellie took it that she'd
been sent to bed, she was so grateful she could have cried.
She had to get up and go to Bath in the morning;
she was
surprisingly nervous about
it, and she was so tired it was
all she could do to summon up the energy
to brush her teeth. And even that made her gag these days.

Grace
returned to the kitchen, determined that Ellie
wouldn't find a single dirty glass or plate when
she came
down in the morning. Grace knew that Ellie was still nervous
and trying very hard not to show it. She should be able to leave the house with
a clear mind and a clear kitchen.

She was waiting for the
kettle to boil for the third time,
thinking about Allegra's 'sell or
else' speech, when she heard the bell give a single jangle. It was one o'clock
in
the morning and she was cautious, but
not frightened to
open it. It was Flynn.

‘
You
haven't brought Allegra back?' she said anxiously
as she saw his figure
outlined by moonlight. 'Or did you forget something?' A second too late, she
smiled, remembering his many kindnesses.