Restoring Grace (3 page)

‘So did he give you money when he left?'

‘Oh yes, he gave me a very generous settlement,
but although I've got enough left to keep me going for a few months, I spent
most of it.'

‘I can't exactly see what on, from here,' Ellie
smiled.

‘
Well, no,'
Grace laughed, 'but if you went into the attic you would see that every joist
and beam is new, and that
every dodgy tile has been replaced by a
reclaimed stone one. It cost a fortune. I bought a car with what was left after
the roof.'

‘That's awful. And he's left you with hardly
any furniture at all?'

‘Well, only what I inherited.’

Ellie was confused. 'But didn't your aunt have
any furniture, either? It seems weird!'

‘Oh yes, but it went to my older brother and
sister.
They got the furniture, I got the
house, because she was
my godmother as well as my aunt. They were
livid.'

‘Why?' Ellie was staggered.

‘They felt the house should have been sold and
the money divided between us. But it
just
so
happened that Edward and I were newly engaged when she died, so
living here made perfect sense. Besides, it's what
my
aunt wanted, obviously, or she'd have made her will differently.'

‘So from his - your ex-husband's - point of
view, marrying a woman who had a really great house was a
good idea, if he had lots of lovely antiques that
needed
a home.’

She shook her head. 'No. He didn't marry me for
my
house, I'm quite sure of it. He fell in
love with me in a
sort of obsessive way. When
the
obsession faded he
realised we didn't really have that much in common,
and
then
of course he fell in love with someone else.’

‘
So how long
were you together?'

‘
We married when I was only twenty-two, and had five very
happy - ecstatic really - years, one less happy, and
one downright unhappy. It's taken nearly two years to
get
divorced.'

‘He sounds a complete bastard.'

‘He wasn't, really he wasn't. He was a sort of
serial monogamist, and probably incapable of staying faithful to anyone for
more than a couple of years, but not a bastard. He was very fair to me.’

Ellie shrugged. 'I think
it's very grown up of you to
feel like that.'

‘I'm not saying he didn't make me suffer, but
he didn't do it on purpose. And the baby thing is understandable. After all, he
has got two perfectly good children already.
When
he realised how I felt, particularly as I'm fairly sure he had someone else in
mind, we decided to call it a day.'

‘
It is a bit ironic,' said Ellie, draining her mug. 'Here
are you,
wanting a baby, and here's me, pregnant, not wanting one.'

‘I thought you did want one? I thought you said
you couldn't - do anything about it.'

‘That's slightly different. I didn't want a
baby before I
got pregnant. But now I am
pregnant, I couldn't not have
i
t.'

‘And you don't think your parents will be
supportive?'

‘
Well, yes,
they will. But they'll tell me off terribly for
not being more careful.'
She gave a wry smile. 'I was on the pill, but I threw up. It must have been
just at the wrong moment.'

‘
Or the right moment. From the baby's point of
view.’

‘It's a pity
we're not the sort of people who could just swap lives. I could give you my
baby and carry on, and you could have my baby and not worry about having to
find
someone else to give you one. But we couldn't,
could
we.' This was a
statement, not a question.

‘Nothing's
ever that straightforward. Would you like another cup of tea?'

‘
No, thank you, but another trip to the loo would be
very
welcome.’

Grace stayed in the
kitchen while Ellie visited the cloak
room again, then went with her to her car and waved
until she was out of sight. Back in the house, it suddenly
felt larger, lonelier, and possibly even a bit colder, than it
had done
before.

‘I shall be looking forward to feeling lonely
when the house has been full of strangers for an evening,' she
murmured, and turned her mind to finding seats
for the
wine tasting, and to giving
her latest article a final polish
'I
must get a computer, or even a typewriter,' she went
on. 'I must get
back into the real world.’

Chapter
Two

 
As Ellie drove away from the house
beneath an evening
sun
colouring
the sky, she thought about Grace and her story. It was kind of bizarre, her
being alone in that big, freezing, empty house, her marriage over, preparing to
have strangers in to taste wine.

On the other hand, her own existence was far
from perfect: she and Rick, living together in a tiny cottage in Bath, less
happily day by day.

She bit her lip to ward off
the sadness she felt when
she remembered
how happy they had been when they
first moved in together. It had been
such fun finding the house to rent, waiting to hear if they'd got it, and then
making it a home.

Of course, it had been Ellie who'd done most of
it. Rick
was an installation artist. He
rented a corner of someone
else's studio and spent most of his waking
hours there. Not that there were so many of those, thought Ellie, irri
tated. Not getting up until midday was fine when
you
were a student, but when you were
a working person,
you had to put the hours in.

It was easier for Rick. He didn't have a day
job, he devoted all his time to his art, and, at first, Ellie had thought this
was perfectly right and proper. He'd been two years ahead of her at university,
doing Fine Art, and
had got a first. Of
course his art was more important
than hers.

Ellie, two years behind, had done Creative Art
and had got a perfectly respectable two-one, but although she
loved painting and drawing and had actually sold
several
paintings even before she finished the course, she knew she
wasn't an artist like Rick was.

And so she'd been happy to work in a café
during the day and a bar in the evenings, so he could concentrate
on developing what everyone acknowledged was a
special
talent.

But now, eighteen months after moving in
together, she'd started to resent his tunnel vision even before she got
pregnant and he threw such a tantrum.

‘Now breathe, Ellie,' she instructed herself as
she got into the town and began negotiating her little car down the narrow
lanes towards their cottage. 'Don't get in a state all over again. It was bad
enough at the time, it's
not good for the
baby, and you can't afford any new
plates.’

At the time she had wept
bitterly: at his attitude,
because she was so tired, because
she felt more pre
menstrual than she had
ever felt before she was pregnant,
but mostly because it was the plate
she had made at college that she had broken. She had loved that plate. It was
oval, yellow and had clay fishes and other sea crea
tures stuck to it. It had a mate, but this one had been her
^f
avourite,
the best one, and she had broken it.

‘
Be a
grown-up, Ellie,' she said aloud now, putting her
key into the lock, mentally preparing herself for
the mess
which would await her. 'Wash up or ship out!’

She paused to pick up the pile of letters on
the mat,
^re
flecting that in some ways she was in fact more
grown
up than Grace, in spite of her having been through a
^di
vorce.
That's what getting pregnant by a boy you no
^lo
nger love does for
you: gives you a crash course in maturity

‘
Hi, babes,'
she called up the stairs as she stepped into
the living room and put
down her bag.

‘
In the bath!' Rick called
back, and she went upstairs.

His long, elegant limbs could not be contained
in the narrowness of the tub and he had draped them over the edges. Water
threatened to spill every time he moved. A
large
sponge sat on his stomach, and patches of bubbles
still lingered in the
water. Part of Ellie thought how gorgeous he was, and remembered how passionate
and excited he was about everything when they'd first met.
The other part was aware that he would have used
every
drop of hot water but wouldn't have switched on the
immersion heater, so that if she wanted a bath,
she'd have
to wait at least an hour. And he'd used the last of her
lavender oil.

‘Good day?' she asked, noticing the towel she
had washed and dried only the day before lying on the floor, already in a
puddle.

‘
Crap day.
Why don't you get in with me? Make me
feel better?’

Ellie shook her head. She
didn't want water all over
the floor, she didn't want to have
sex when she had to work later, and she needed to pee again.

‘
Don't be too long, sweets. I need the loo.'

‘Don't mind
me,' said Rick.

Ellie shook her head.
'I'll hang on. Did you do anything
for tea?'

‘
No time.
When I finished at the studio I got straight
in the bath. Needed to sort
my head out.’

Ellie smiled, hoping he wouldn't spot that it
was false, picked up the towel and draped it over the washbasin,
and left the room. His fabulous body and
irresistible smile
had lost their charm somewhat these days.

Back in the kitchen, a
small, often mildewed extension
behind the living room, she filled
the kettle so she could deal with the dishes. Considering he spent most of his
time at the studio, and that he and his mate always
went
to the pub for lunch, it was amazing how much washing up he managed
to generate.

He'd obviously had a
fry-up, including fried bread and
baked beans, for breakfast, and
added a lot of tomato ketchup. In spite of presumably having his routine pie
and chips and several pints at lunchtime, he'd
had time and appetite to grab a handful of Bombay Mix and some
crisps. The Bombay Mix packet had fallen over and
tipped
half of its contents on to the
floor. Apart from the fact
that the smell of curry sickened Ellie, she
was annoyed.
There wasn't much money for
luxuries, so she didn't like
sweeping them up off the floor.

While she washed mugs and
scraped ketchup and egg
yolk off the plate with her nail,
and her boyfriend luxu
riated in hot water,
Ellie thought she could do with a little
of the latter herself. What
would it be like to be a
pampered mistress,
feted and adored, every whim
indulged? Even having a boyfriend she
didn't actually live with would be better than this: only herself to clean
up after; no disgusting socks and boxer shorts to
wash.

However, that would be slightly hard to arrange
now
that she was pregnant — soon she'd be
too fat to attract
anyone. She
stopped her scrubbing for a moment. If time
was limited, perhaps she
should just go for a fling, a quick, fabulous affaire, before her pregnancy
showed?
After all, it was often the
beginning of a relationship
that was
most fun. Why not just have the beginning, the
^w
onderful,
exhilarating passionate sex, and then call it quits?
The idea lifted her spirits quite a lot and she turned
her thoughts to Grace. How was she doing with her
wine
^t
asting? By the time
she'd finished the washing up, she'd
^d
ecided she would do the painting of her house anyway,
and give it to Grace as a present. She'd seemed
so forlorn
that Ellie wanted to do something to cheer her up.