The Mini Break Page 3
I’m about to move away when his hand is on the small of my back and, as the bedlam of the airport disappears to nothing, we kiss. A long, memorably sexy kiss – one that reminds me what was at the top of my big, unruly list of things I have missed.
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Chapter 1
Dan
When a man loves a woman, there are moments when she’ll nudge him out of his comfort zone. Most of the time, he can live with this. He’ll man up and remind himself what she is to him: his Ingrid Bergman in Casablanca. His Patricia Arquette in True Romance. His Princess Fiona in Shrek (though somehow she never appreciates that comparison).
However, there are times when even the most temperate of men, and I consider myself among them, approach their limit.
I am standing outside a row of small cottages, set high above the River Dee in Heswall in the Wirral Peninsula. I am clutching the estate agents’ blurb that was thrust at me this morning – and which I’d shoved into the ‘man bag’ my mother bought me in her enduring quest to turn me into a metrosexual – and my limit currently feels dangerously close.
When, four months ago, my girlfriend suggested that we buy a place together, I was nothing less than keen. Gemma is the sort of woman I never thought would come along: the girl of my most pleasant dreams, my All Time Great.
But who knew that house-hunting would turn out to be the hardest thing a man could do, outside training as a Royal Marine or venturing into Next on a Saturday?
We started our quest with the old houses we both liked in the Georgian Quarter in Liverpool. ‘We could buy somewhere cheap and do it up,’ I agreed. What a hopeless, naïve fool.
That was before our chips were thoroughly pissed on, along with all hopes of cracking open the Blossom Hill. The houses in that part of the city – the ones for sale anyway – were miles out of our price range.
So we widened our search to include anywhere within a forty-minute drive from Liverpool, making the rookie error of believing this would open up a cornucopia of choice. Since then, weekends have been dominated by viewings of places it was impossible to leave without wondering whether you’d contracted typhoid from the door handles.
Things came to a head last week when we were touring a semi with a pungent nursing home fragrance and a bathroom suite the colour of bile. I was invited to inspect a converted under-stairs toilet, only to come face-to-face with the owner’s teenage grandson, mid-way through evacuating the by-products of the previous night’s takeaway.
It wasn’t just the puking teenager that did it for me. It was that there was simply nothing left that we hadn’t seen. We’d already viewed a vast spectrum of houses, starting with The Dead Certs and ending with The Dregs, and one fact was now screaming at us: WHAT WE WANT DOESN’T EXIST.
Which I must admit, even I find hard to believe. I know we’re first-time buyers with a challenging budget, but our tick-list shouldn’t be insurmountable: nice area, two bedrooms, running water a bonus.
There is of course another issue, one I couldn’t say out loud: some houses were deemed unsuitable by Gemma for reasons that remain as mysterious and inexplicable as the construction of Stonehenge.
I’d complete the tour, optimistically anticipating her verdict about a place I couldn’t see anything wrong with, only to be told emphatically that she couldn’t see anything right about it.
It’s not often that I put my foot down. I’d flatter myself if I could list three occasions in the four years we’ve been together. But we needed a break from this, and I said so.
To my surprise, she agreed wholeheartedly. For a week and a half, life Before Rightmove resumed and the internet was free to exist without risk of Gemma melting it.
Then I got a phone call yesterday asking me to knock off work early to check out this place because it looks ‘completely perfect on paper’.
So here I am.
‘You’re early. Anyone would think you were starting to enjoy all this,’ she grins, clasping my hand as she stands on her tiptoes and sinks her lips into mine. She tastes of the same cherry lip balm she used to wear when we first got together. I feel a nostalgic pang of regret that this time, instead of heading back for some pleasures of the flesh, I’ve got to go and pretend I have an opinion on some bay windows.
She’s come straight from work and is in heels, a suit and is carrying her ‘statement bag’ (which I’ve now learned simply means psychotically expensive).
‘I can think of nothing more enjoyable, except perhaps plucking out my own armpit hair,’ I say.
‘It’ll be worth it if it’s The One. And I’ve got high hopes. I don’t know how I missed this place. It’s been on and off the market for a while, apparently. And look at the view, Dan.’
I can’t argue with the view, which stretches across rooftops, fields and trees, right down to the river and across to the Welsh hills.
We look up to see the estate agent marching towards the house, his phone at his ear. ‘There’s one and a half per cent at stake here. I don’t care if she’s a little old lady – so was the Witch of the West.’ He sees us and straightens up. ‘Gotta go.’ He slams shut the phone.
‘Hiyyy.’ He grabs me by the hand and pumps it up and down. Like Gemma, he’s wearing pinstripes, though his are crooked at the top as his trousers stretch violently over a pronounced belly. ‘Rich Cummins. FAB to meet you both. Day off, is it?’
‘No, I . . .’ I glance down at my jeans and long-sleeved T-shirt, which might breach the dress code in some workplaces, but not mine.
‘Pah. Five years ago you’d have been sacked for not wearing a tie, and now look. Standards, eh?’ Gemma stifles a smile. ‘KIDDING! Right. This . . . is Pebble Cottage.’ He presents the house to us with a flourish of his arm, like a magician’s assistant after sawing someone in half. Then he opens up.
The hall is small but bright and overwhelmed by the kind of junk only women buy: candle-holders, key hooks, picture frames that are battered (deliberately).
We enter a living room that’s been decorated by someone who knows what they’re doing. It has a cast-iron fireplace, lots of books, pale walls, a faintly ethnic rug. On the mantelpiece, there’s a single picture – of three women in their late twenties in front of the Sydney Opera House – and gaps where it looks as though others once were.
It’s a nice gaff. At least, I think so.
I glance at Gemma as she runs a finger along the window-frame with her Bad Cop face on. She’s worn this expression at every viewing since her friend Allie confided that she had paid more than necessary for her house because she failed to hide how keen she was.
The estate agent claps his hands together. ‘I should warn you that this property is blindingly popular.’
‘Um . . . why’s it still for sale then?’ Gemma asks. He responds with an odd little laugh, as if she’s told a joke he doesn’t quite get.
‘There’s no chain in this sale – the owners are moving out this weekend. The schools here are UH-MAZ-ING . . .’
‘We don’t have kids,’ Gemma tells him.
‘The bars and restaurants in Heswall are pumping.’
‘Potential for noise and drunks then?’
‘It’s fabulously convenient for the station . . . a commuter’s paradise.’
‘Thought I’d heard the clatter of trains.’
He does the laugh again and shows us into the kitchen. It’s another nice room. Very nice. As are the two bedrooms, with an old-fashioned radiator and antique rocking horse in the window bay, which I presume is some sort of ‘feature’ as there are no other signs of children living here.
By the time we reach the end, he’s still banging on about ‘original features’ as he points to a rusty door hinge, and effervescing about the ‘access arrangements’, while highlighting the single front step.
‘We’d like to have a look round by ourselves now, if that’s okay?’ Gemma asks.
‘Sure. I’ll step outside – take as long as you want. Well, not too long: Robocop’s on tonight.’ He winks at her and grins. I decide I don’t like him very much.
We head up the stairs as Gemma takes more photos on her phone, resisting discussion of whether she likes the place until after the viewing. When we reach the room with the rocking horse, she wanders over, runs her hand along its mane.
‘I had one of these when I was a little girl,’ she tells me wistfully. ‘Mum used to sit on it and hold me on her lap.’
‘Go on, no one’s looking. I dare you.’ I suggest this in the full knowledge that it’s never going to happen.
‘What – have a go? Don’t be ridiculous,’ she tuts. Then she bites her lip. ‘What if it breaks?’
‘You’ve just said yours used to take the weight of both you and your mum. Although . . .’ I register how old it looks . . . ‘maybe you’re right. It might not hold you.’
She produces a familiar look of indignation. ‘Are you saying I’ve put weight on?’
I love this kind of logic. ‘Of course not, there’s nothing of you.’ She looks the horse up and down and clearly decides that proving the weight issue – the one that never was an issue – is of vital importance. She defiantly hoists up her skirt and climbs on.
I wince as it creaks loudly in protest, but decide not to point this out to her.
‘I know what you’re thinking: I look like that Khaleesi in Game of Thrones,’ she grins, rocking backwards and forwards.
‘The resemblance is uncanny, particularly with your steed’s glass eye and wooden legs.’
‘Oh, Dan, this brings back memories,’ she sighs, gooey-eyed, as she increases in force and speed until the horse is virtually galloping through the window. ‘I have no idea what happened to mine.’
She appears entirely oblivious to the cracking sound vibrating through the floorboards, the sharp pops farting themselves from the arse end of the horse.
‘Erm, Gemma . . .’
‘I hope my mum didn’t throw it away – these things are worth a fortune.’
The horse now makes a sound I can only compare to a 300-foot redwood tree falling on a shed. Gemma’s eyes inflate.
‘Shit!’ she shrieks, but it’s too late to rein in and dismount. The horse sinks to one side, throwing her off as if she’s just insulted the braid in its mane.
I help her up as she scrambles to a standing position, hoists her skirt over her knickers and stands gaping at an angry break in one of the rocking horse’s legs. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the horse has a glittering career as firewood ahead of it.
‘Oh my GOD,’ she hisses, hysteria wobbling in her voice. ‘Don’t suppose you’ve got any Blu Tack on you?’
Ten minutes later, Rich drives off in his snot-green Seat Ibiza with a ‘Laters!’ hanging in the air.
Gemma turns to me. ‘I’m going to have to phone and offer to pay for the horse,’ she says, rubbing her brow. It is true that our restoration job, which involved precariously balancing the top half of the horse on the broken leg, then hurrying away – would not win either of us a job on The Antiques Roadshow.
‘Why didn’t you just confess to it there and then, like you said you were going to? I’d have said it was me if you were that worried.’
‘I know,’ she cringes. ‘Anyway, look: what did you think of the house?’
It took a few attempts before I worked out the right answer to this question. Small. No character. Not my cup of tea. But she doesn’t give me a chance to say anything.
‘Dan, it’s absolutely gorgeous. Did you see the cornices in the bedroom? And the distressed tiles in the kitchen? There’s even somewhere for my shoes – that little closet in the main bedroom. Oh my God, I love everything about it. This one’s not just perfect on paper, it’s perfect in every conceivable way.’
She throws her arms around me as one word springs to my lips. Hallebloodylujah.
Chapter 2
Gemma
I feel like shouting it from the hilltops: I AM IN LOVE!
I am completely and utterly smitten with a two-bedroom period home boasting Edwardian-style geometric tiled splashbacks, dogtooth oak flooring, restored cast-iron radiators and a fully-functioning feature fireplace.
‘Where do I sign?’ Dan asks, as he threads his fingers through mine and we walk towards the beach. ‘I want to get this done before you change your mind.’
‘I’m not changing my mind. I want that house. I’d sell a kidney for it.’
Although I’m a southerner – I grew up just outside Brighton – I’ve lived in Liverpool long enough to get to know Heswall. It’s small but bursting with character, and midway between my work in Cheshire, and Dan’s, a hop across the River Mersey in Liverpool.
As we stroll along Thurstaston beach, I mentally replay the tour of each room in the house, trying to stop myself from breaking into song like in the opening scene of The Sound of Music.
I picture my beautiful Turkish kilim in front of the fire, the contrasting throws we could drape over the sofa. I imagine the wall art we could hang, the roman blinds we’d install in the kitchen, the vintage wallpaper we could choose for the hall.
‘So shall we phone and make an offer?’ Dan suggests.
‘I thought you’d never ask!’ I say. ‘Right, what figure should we try? The asking price is over our budget, but in today’s market, you can knock £15k off of virtually anything. We could just about do that and still have a little left over to decorate.’
‘Would they accept that, when it’s so blindingly popular?’
‘We’ve got nowhere to sell ourselves, so there’s no chain,’ I remind him. ‘We’ve already got an in-principle mortgage offer and only have to give a month’s notice on our flat. Let’s start with £15k less. They’d be mad not to snap it up.’
I phone the number on Rich’s business card. It rings four times before someone answers.
‘MI5 Central Intelligence. What’s your ID code, please?’ I frown. ‘HA! Don’t worry, it’s only Rich! Ha, ha!’
When he finally composes himself, I take a deep breath, make our offer – and sit back and listen while he sucks his teeth. ‘Dunno if the sellers’ll go for that, to be honest.’
I straighten my back. ‘Okay, but I’d appreciate it if you could just put it to them.’
‘Will do. I don’t hold out much hope though.’
‘That’s up to them, surely.’
‘Yeah, but it is blindingly popular, with the schools and the bars and the—’
‘Would you just tell them that we’ve made an offer, please?’ I interrupt.
‘You wouldn’t want to increase it?’
‘That’s as far as our budget stretches,’ I say firmly.
‘Ok-ay-eee,’ he replies, as if we’d have more of a chance bartering in chocolate coins.
As I end the call, Dan puts his arm around me and I relax into him, breathing in the faint aroma of his aftershave (which I love) and the clean, salty scent of his skin (which I love even more).
When we first got together, I worried about Dan’s looks and the baggage I feared came with them. Without a hint of exaggeration, he is jaw-droppingly gorgeous. A big man, he’s physically commanding and athletic, with a tiny scar on his cheek that does nothing to detract from an incandescent smile that makes him appear younger than twenty-nine. His hair is thick, treacle brown, and short. Always short. Anything over three weeks’ growth irritates the hell out of him.
If the truth be told, I
worried a lot about Dan when we first got together. About what the catch could be. In my early twenties, I’d gravitated towards men you’d describe as ‘bad news’, having developed a perverse assumption that to be interesting, men had to be flawed, the loopier the better.
I’m about to steal a kiss when my phone rings again. I hold my breath.
‘Gem? It’s Rich. M’lady . . . I bring news!’
‘Okay.’ I can hear my heart over the seagulls. Dan raises his eyebrows expectantly.
‘And . . . it’s . . .’ there’s clearly a drum roll happening in Rich’s head ‘. . . not good.’
‘Oh. They said no?’
‘Like I said, it’s blindingly popular. And what with the schools and the—’
‘Did they say what they would accept?’
‘Doesn’t work like that, hon. If you want to make another offer, feel free. Though, between you and me, you’ll have to do a lot better. So. Go and have a chat with Hubbie . . .’
‘We’re not married.’
‘. . . and once you’ve crunched your numbers, reviewed your situation, re-evaluated and revised, come back to Rich and we’ll see what we can do.’
I end the call and Dan squeezes my hand for moral support as I fill him in despondently. ‘We could go another £2k higher, couldn’t we?’ he says. ‘At a push.’
‘That’d leave us with no money to spend on decorating it how we want.’
‘Yeah, but it’s already lovely as it is. Obviously, I’d be devastated not to dust off my Black and Decker, but I’d cope,’ he smiles.
A thought tugs at my brain. ‘Dan, I think we need to go higher. I’m going to add my savings. It’s not much but the more we can edge it up, the better.’
‘I’ve got a little too – and there’s some Premium Bonds I could sell that Grandma bought me years ago.’
Over the next hour, we perform such a thorough scrape-around for cash, I’ve virtually organised a car-boot sale to flog my knickers.
Rich is not exactly bowled over. ‘You can’t do any better? I’m saying this because I like you guys and I think this house is made for you. But that’s not going to cut the mustard. At best it’ll curdle the mustard. And this is blindingly popular mustard.’