Abi’s House

Jenny Kane

Newly widowed at barely thirty, Abi Carter is desperate to escape the Stepford Wives lifestyle that Luke, her late husband, had been so keen for her to live.

Abi decides to fulfil a lifelong dream. As a child on holiday in a Cornwall she fell in love with a cottage – the prophetically named Abbey’s House. Now she is going to see if she can find the place again, relive the happy memories … maybe even buy a place of her own nearby?

On impulse Abi sets off to Cornwall, where a chance meeting in a village pub brings new friends Beth and Max into her life. Beth, like Abi, has a life-changing decision to make. Max, Beth’s best mate, soon helps Abi track down the house of her dreams … but things aren’t quite that simple. There’s the complicated life Abi left behind, including her late husband’s brother, Simon – a man with more than friendship on his mind …

Will Abi’s house remain a dream, or will the bricks and mortar become a reality?

For my beloved and much-missed grandparents x

Dedication

A special dedication and thank you must go to the Dennyside Bowling Association. This UK-wide bowling club-based charity was founded by Leonard Denny in 1935. In 2014 they raised over £40,000 for various good causes. Recently they bid in the CLIC Sargent Get in Character Auction. Dennyside’s winning bid entitled them to choose a name for one of the characters in Abi’s House. So, please let me introduce you to Jacob Denny – a perfect name for a Cornish potter, and a generous tribute to Dennyside’s founder.

Jenny x

Chapter One

It was the muffins that had been the last straw. As Abi sat nursing a glass of wine, she thought back to the events of an hour earlier with an exasperated sigh.

Hurrying towards the church hall, Abi parked Luke’s unnecessarily large and ostentatious Porsche 4x4 as nearby as possible, and carried a stack of large square Tupperware tubs in her arms. With her handbag slung over her shoulder and key fob hanging from her teeth, Abi precariously balanced her load as she elbowed the hall door open.

Although she was twenty minutes early, Abi had still managed to be the last to arrive, earning her a silent ‘tut’ from some of the executive wives who were adding the finishing touches to the tables that surrounded three sides of the hall, and sympathetic grimaces from everyone else.

Acting as though she hadn’t noticed the air of disapproval, Abi made a beeline for the cake stall and plastered her best ‘this is for charity so be happy’ expression on her face. Polly Chester-Davies, an exquisitely dressed woman whom Abi always thought of as ‘Perfect Polly’, was adding doilies to plates, making the stall look as though it was stuck in a timewarp.

‘Ah, there you are, Mrs Carter, I’d given you up.’

Biting back the desire to tell Polly she’d been working, and was in fact early anyway, Abi began to unpack her wares, ‘Here you go, two dozen chocolate muffins without frosting, and two dozen with frosting, as requested.’

Polly said nothing, but her imperious stare moved rather pointedly from Abi’s face to the chocolate muffins already in position on plates on the table, and back again.

Her disdainful expression made Abi mumble, ‘Are you expecting to sell lots of chocolate muffins today then?’

‘No, Mrs Carter, I am not. Which is precisely why you were instructed to make chococcino muffins.’

It had been that ‘instructed’ which did it. In that moment Abi felt an overwhelming hit of resentment for every one of the orders she had gracefully accepted from this Stepford harridan of the community.

For almost three years Abi had been doing what this woman asked of her, and never once had she said thank you, or commented on how nice Abi’s cooking was. Probably, Abi thought as she compared her own muffins with those provided by Perfect Polly herself, because mine don’t look like they could pull your fillings out. Nor had any reference ever been made to the fact that she would have to catch up on her own work in the evenings, after helping out with whichever good cause she’d been emotionally blackmailed into supporting this time. Not that Abi was against supporting a good cause, but this was different. These women didn’t raise funds for whichever charity was flavour of the month out of the goodness of their hearts. They did it because it was what they should be seen to be doing. It went hand in bespoke glove with being the wife of a successful man in the city, living in faux-village suburbia, and having a suitably fashionable nanny for the children.

Abi spoke slowly through gritted teeth. ‘The message on my answerphone sounded scrambled. I heard it as far as “choc”, so I did what I always do. I dropped everything I was supposed to be doing and made you these.’ Abi nodded towards the muffins but, rather than putting them onto plates, she snapped the lids back on the tubs. ‘Some of us do work for a living, you know!’

Speechless for a fraction of a second, Polly closed her ruby lips, and put her best ‘so sorry for you’ face on. ‘Yes, well, of course, things are very different for you now you don’t have darling Luke to support you.’

‘Luke didn’t support me! I supported me. Unlike some, Mrs Chester-Davies, I did not marry for money!’ Then, collecting up forty-eight muffins she’d never get round to eating in a million years, Abi strode from the hall with her shoulders back and her head held high, trying not to meet a single one of the astonished stares that followed her exit.

As she threw the tubs of cakes onto the passenger seat of the car, Abi’s hands began to shake. It had been a long time since she’d stood up for herself. She could just imagine what was being said about her in the hall as she drove away at an unadvisable speed for the narrow road towards her home.

‘Well, I say, how ungrateful; and after we took her under our wing for Luke’s sake!’

‘We should make allowances, she’s grieving after all.’

‘I would have thought she’d like being kept as busy as possible.’

‘I don’t see why she works anyway. Luke was loaded!’

The various conversations Abi’s mind conjured swirled around in her brain, causing her to park Luke’s car with a carelessness he’d have hated, and head towards the kitchen and a bottle of wine at high speed.

She left the Tupperware tubs neglected on the passenger seat.

Now, sipping a rare glass of wine before seven o’clock at night, Abi had a sudden desire to drink the whole bottle. She was also dying to tell someone about what had happened. She was sure if she had a friend to share the ridiculousness of her exchange with Perfect Polly with, it would all fall into perspective, become funny even. But Abi didn’t have friends anymore. Luke had seen to that. She just had people that she knew, and that was not the same thing at all.

Her eyes surveyed her kitchen. Abi couldn’t remember the last time she’d actually studied it properly. There was no doubt it was beautiful. It had everything a connoisseur of cookery could wish for, and with its scrubbed oak units, shuttered windows, state-of-the-art Aga, and antique double sink, it was an interior designer’s dream.

Abi looked down at the sofa upon which she sat. It was in total contrast to the rest of her home. Tatty, and in some places the pale blue fabric was so worn that it was virtually threadbare. This was where Abi had spent most of her time since Luke had died, either reading or sketching out new picture ideas for the children’s books that awaited her attention.

Luke had hated it, but the sofa was her one rebellion. Its continued presence in their lives, and its journey from her flat, to his flat, to the corner of their kitchen, was the only thing she’d ever successfully managed to insist upon.

Abi used to think Luke tolerated it because it held happy memories of their time snuggled up on it together when they’d first begun dating. In recent years she’d come to see it was Luke’s idea of indulging her. Letting his wife have one tiny piece of her own identity to hold onto in compensation for taking over the rest of her body and soul. A fact that had been hammered home to her a few months before his unexpected heart attack, when Luke had told her to buy some throws to hide her sofa from view, as it was an unnecessary embarrassment that lowered the tone of the house.

The reason Abi was living in this Surrey village, which was really a small commuter town with ideas above its station, was Luke. Well, now Luke was gone, along with his constant need to be seen to have the best of everything, and his inability to understand that the best and the most expensive weren’t always the same thing.

Taking another draught of Pinot, Abi sighed. She had done her best to be the wife Luke desired, to match his required lifestyle. She’d spoken to the right people, worn the right clothes, driven the right car, and said the right things. At first it had pleased her to please Luke; but soon it had become just a role she played. Now that it was all over, Abi realised just how long she’d been acting the flawless wife, rather than genuinely being the flawless wife.

The quiet one from the office, Abi had been flattered by Luke’s attentions, and bowled over by his good looks. Twelve years her senior, he’d been kind and courteous; not pressing the pace of their relationship, nor teasing about her lack of confidence like his fellows had. It hadn’t bothered Luke, or at least she hadn’t thought it had, that she was just a temp, a part-time assistant PA to help subsidise her earnings as an artist. She had been his one rebellion against the conventions of his life.

Squeezing her eyes closed, Abi pictured Luke as he’d been in the beginning. Just over six feet tall, with sandy-coloured, well-cut hair, his broad shoulders and muscles were honed by an hour at the gym each morning before work. He’d had a lopsided grin which she’d found endearing, and an easy-going nature that none of his City colleagues had shared.

Luke had swept her off her feet – and she’d been happy to let him. More than happy. Abi hadn’t been able to believe her luck. It had felt too good to be true. Which of course, hindsight now smirked at her, it had been.

Two months after they’d been married in a lavish ceremony in the Bahamas, Luke had been promoted, and in that instant the increased responsibility, combined with a salary increase that no one could truly justify, the Luke Abi had fallen in love with began to disappear.

First he had insisted they move out of his London flat, and into Luke’s idea of where successful couples lived: a huge detached home in a row of identical detached homes in executiveville. Six months later, when Luke calmly informed her that it was time she stopped mixing with her arty friends because they weren’t in keeping with her new lifestyle, Abi began to suspect he’d married her because she fitted the mould of what an executive’s wife was meant to look like. And she did – she was a petite, fit brunette with a high IQ and excellent cooking skills, and although she didn’t care about clothes, there was no doubt she had a good eye for what suited her, and always looked far less unruffled than she felt.

It worried Abi that Luke had only been dead for six months and she didn’t really miss him at all. No. That wasn’t true. She did miss the Luke that used to live with her when the front door was closed on the rest of the world. Only then did she get to see the occasional glimpse of the kind, funny man she had fallen in love with.

She did not miss the Luke who appeared in public. It hadn’t been enough for him to have the best of everything; he had to be seen to have the best. He had become a walking statement of his success, and always had to show the world his latest cars, gadgets, and designer suits. For reasons Abi couldn’t fathom, clever though Luke had been, he’d never worked out that this would turn more people away than it attracted; he was constantly trying just that little bit too hard to be liked. The result was that he was seen as rather overbearing. His public standards Abi found impossible to live up to.

Well, now she didn’t have to.

It had been Luke’s idea, a few months after their marriage, that Abi give up going into the office and work from home. She had been delighted, keen to return to her art, but after two weeks, when the search for work hadn’t been the immediate success Luke had assumed it would be, Abi had discovered he’d asked the village ladies to enrol her in all their events, and take her under their wing. In other words, Luke wanted to turn her into a lady of the village.

These twinset and pearls-wearing women were all older than Abi, and most of them had reached the stage of executive wifeness where they could cook a five-course meal for six unexpected visiting reps at the drop of a hat (or at least employ someone to do this for them), while simultaneously running the WI, and chatting to the mayor on the telephone about why purple and silver Christmas decorations would be so wrong in the village square this year.

When Abi had seen an advertisement for a children’s illustrator she had applied straight away, and had been thrilled when she’d got the job. It had taken all the stubbornness she had to ignore Luke’s protests that she didn’t have to work, and should just look after him and their home.

Glugging back her wine, Abi put her glass down, and with a desperate need to escape rising fast in her chest, she walked around her home from room to room. Each one was exactly as it should be. Tidy, clean, and basically soulless.

Pulling her mobile phone from her pocket, Abi leaned against her huge wardrobe doors and opened up her contacts page. There were only five. Her brother Oliver, her brother-in-law Simon, Luke’s mother, Perfect Polly, and her employers, Genie Press. Abi’s old phone had had her friends listed on it. But that, along with her friends, was long gone.

Angry at how easily Luke had manoeuvred her into cutting ties with her past, and even more disgusted with herself for letting him, Abi threw the phone on to the double bed, her heart pounding with fearful exhilaration as she realised that, at long last, she was ready to retake charge of her life.

Chapter Two

Fighting down the habitual rush of guilt that hit her whenever she thought about how much easier life was without Luke, Abi checked her watch. Thanks to walking out of the charity fundraiser three hours earlier than she’d expected to, she had time to get back to work … or she could plan her escape …

Now the idea had entered her mind, it seemed so blindingly obvious that another wave of anger at her own feebleness threatened to wash over her. It wasn’t as if she could blame grief, although she could probably blame guilt over her lack of grief for her recent going-through-the-motions behaviour. Certainly shock must have had a role to play. One minute Luke was there, calling over his shoulder as he left for the gym at 6 a.m. on that Friday morning six months ago. Then, two hours later, she’d taken a call from a suitably sober-sounding nurse from the Royal Surrey County Hospital.

Luke had got caught in heavy traffic on the way to the gym and, determined to complete his morning exercise session, he’d rushed through his fitness routine. Unbeknown to Abi, he’d signed himself up for intense training sessions with view to doing an Iron Man challenge. It was a dangerously foolish thing to do at the age of forty-four, even if you were fit and in good health.

That morning, fresh from doing an extreme workout in less time than he should have allowed for it, Luke had dashed to his car so he wouldn’t be late for work.

It had been a sprint too far.

No one had had any idea that Luke had arrhythmia. He’d had what the consultant explained was a ventricular fibrillation, rapid, erratic electrical impulses causing the heart’s ventricles to quiver uselessly instead of pumping blood. It was likely to have happened sometime during Luke’s life, he said, but had probably been triggered that day by the morning’s exercise routine combined with the additional stress of rushing to his car. A car Luke had never got into again.

The consultant had gone on to say that the condition was distressingly common. In her numb state, Abi’s overwhelming thought at the time had been that Luke would not have liked dying of anything common.

The depth of the sigh that escaped from Abi’s lips caught her by surprise, and physically and mentally she knew it was high time that she pulled herself together.

It was time to leave. Time go somewhere new, where she could embrace her inner muddle. Fighting back the good little persona that she’d unwittingly developed over the course of her marriage, she yanked her shoulders back and did her best to haul the Abi who used to efficiently temp her way around some of the most competitive companies in London back to the fore.

‘I’ll sell the house.’ The determined stare Abi gave her reflection in the bedroom mirror was reassuringly bracing. ‘I can be an illustrator anywhere as long as there’s internet access. But where to go? Somewhere far, far away from here.’

Abi’s head immediately filled with an image of a small slate-roofed end-of-terrace in a short row of houses in Cornwall, one that she’d fallen in love with as an eight-year-old. It had been a tiny house that her late parents had always joked should be hers, simply because it was called ‘Abbey’s House’ …

‘That’s as good a place to start as any!’ Emboldened by her snap decision to hunt down the village she, her brother, and their parents had regularly visited on holiday, Abi closed her eyes.

Where exactly in Cornwall had it been? Near Land’s End, but where? She could almost feel the sea breeze playing on her skin as her memory nudged her. Abi was almost sure her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her, and that the cottage had been within viewing, if not walking, distance of the sea. She could virtually hear the cry of the seagulls. Not like the gulls that made a nuisance of themselves in the parks of Surrey, continuously squawking as if blaming all around them for the fact they’d somehow found themselves so far inland, but the proper call of a seagull, living where a seagull should live.

Scooping her phone back off the bed, Abi rang Oliver’s number, and headed toward the study, flicking on her laptop with a feeling of purpose she hadn’t experienced for years. The call was picked up as she was halfway through typing ‘slate roof cottages Cornwall’ into Google.

‘Hi, Ollie, you OK up there?’

Ollie laughed, ‘Afternoon, sis. Why do you always make Yorkshire sound as if it’s Outer Mongolia or something?’

Cursing herself, as she always did, for not phoning her brother more often, for Ollie always had the ability to make her smile, Abi laughed. ‘I only do it because it annoys you. Look, Ollie, I know it’s a long shot, but do you remember the Cornish holidays we used to have when we were little?’

‘Blimey, Abi, they were twenty-odd years ago.’

‘I know, but I sort of need to know exactly where we stayed.’

‘Sort of need to know?’

Picking up on the query in her brother’s voice, Abi explained her sudden desire to escape. ‘I mean, the happy memories I can take with me, and the rest – well, the rest I want to leave behind.’

‘I don’t blame you! I’ve been telling you for ages to come north. You’d be very welcome here, you know.’

Abi smiled down the line, ‘Thanks, Ollie, but you have your hands full with Tina and the kids anyway. The last thing you need is a confused widow cluttering up the place, giving out a “not sure where to settle” vibe.’

‘You’re not that bad, are you? I got the impression you were coping brilliantly. Or have you been conning your old brother?’

Flicking her gaze down the line of Cornish houses on her computer screen, Abi groaned she answered, ‘Well, that’s the thing. I am coping. I do miss Luke being around, and the private Luke was a hell of a lot nicer than the public one but … it’s like I was tired all the time trying to keep up with him. I was always trying to justify him to people I liked, or was hidden in his shadow when we were with the people he liked.

‘Which was most of the time?’

‘Well, yes.’ Abi hovered her cursor over an image of some slate-roofed houses that had a familiar feel about them. ‘It was the muffins that were the last straw really.’

‘The muffins? That one you’ll have to explain.’

Abi relayed the entire chocolate-versus-chococcino debacle before adding, ‘So, can you remember where we went? Right at the bottom of the county, near Penzance and Land’s End, wasn’t it?’

She could hear Ollie moving around whichever room he was in, ‘Hang on a minute, Abi, I’m in the junk room; the photo albums are here somewhere.’ There was the sound of books falling, before he said, ‘Yes, here we go. They were behind the ones of my lot.’ There was a noise of the plastic pages of a photo album being flicked before Ollie said, ‘I was about ten, wasn’t I, which means you were eight-ish. Sound right?’

‘Yes. The last one was when I was eight, but we went for at least five years on the trot before that. Have you found something?’

‘Think so. Tina has stuck dates on the front of all the albums.’

‘Seriously? Boy, that’s organised.’

‘Well, you know Tina.’

An image of her sister-in-law came into Abi’s head. Tina, with her no-nonsense haircut and sensibly blunt outlook on life: always mega-organised, always just a little bit frightening. One thing was for certain, Tina would be able to cope with Perfect Polly and her cohorts no problem at all.

‘Here, I think I’ve found them. Yes!’ Ollie chuckled, ‘I’d forgotten you had pigtails. How cute you were. Not unlike my Kitty.’

‘So I did.’

Abi felt a shot of sadness at the memory of her carefree self, so much like her youngest niece, before quickly gathering herself up with an even stronger determination to get that carefree feeling back. ‘So, where were we?’

‘You were right, we were right down the bottom. Here’s one of us in the botanical garden in Penzance, and another by St Michael’s Mount. Oh, and here we are in an empty field.’

‘An empty field?’

‘Yeah. Don’t you remember, back in the old days there was nothing at Land’s End except, well, land?’

‘Of course! Any shots of the houses?’

‘A few. Shall I post some of them down?’

‘Would you? That would be wonderful. Thanks, Ollie.’

‘It’s very good of you to see me so near to closing time.’

‘Not at all, Mrs Carter.’ The estate agent, whose name badge declared he was Nigel Davison, settled into his chair with the gleam in his eye that all agents get when faced with the prospect of selling a particularly valuable property. ‘As you will appreciate we will have to make a valuation, and if you are keen on speed, a survey might be a good idea.’ He opened his diary, ‘When would be good for you?’

‘Tomorrow?’

Mr Davison looked flustered, ‘As fast as that? I’m not sure we have anyone free tomorrow as we don’t survey at weekends, but I could sort something for Monday.’

Taking a leaf out of Luke’s book, and modelling her haughty response on Perfect Polly, Abi rose from her chair. ‘Thank you, Mr Davison, but as this is a matter of some urgency I think I’d better try someone else.’

The panic only lingered on Nigel’s face for a split second before he gestured benevolently to the recently vacated chair, ‘In that case, if speed really is of the essence, then I’m sure we can accommodate you. Perhaps …’ He glanced at his watch, ‘I could view the property this evening, so that I can give the surveyor the information he needs, and we can start putting some particulars together for the sale?’

‘And the surveyor will arrive …’

‘The best I can do is nine o’clock on Monday morning.’

‘Thank you, Mr Davison. I shall go and prepare for your arrival.’

‘About seven? And please, call me Nigel.’

Abi was aware that her pulse had been racing with an overdose of adrenalin ever since she’d stalked out of the church hall, and eventually it was going to run out. Before that happened she needed to make one more call.

‘Good evening, Simon, I hope I haven’t called at a bad time.’

Her brother-in-law answered with his usual suave confidence, ‘Abigail, how nice to hear from you. All well I trust?’

Not wasting her breath reminding Simon that her name was not and never had been Abigail, but simply Abi, she prepared herself for the landslide of disapproval that she was sure was about to come her way. ‘I’ve decided to sell the house, Simon. I can’t live here anymore. It is just so big, and now I’m on my own…’

Deciding not to tell him that she was planning on fleeing the area completely, Abi left a tiny pause before adding, ‘I know it is terribly short notice, but I wondered if you’d come over in an hour. The estate agent is on his way, and I’m rather out of touch with what sort of price he should offer me.’ Adding a little flattery to her request, she added, ‘I know how well you keep up with these things.’

‘But, Abigail! That’s your home. Luke’s home. You can’t just …’

‘Simon, it isn’t exactly a home anymore, is it. I’m lonely here and …’

The moment the word ‘lonely’ had come out of her mouth Abi regretted it. She’d always known that her brother-in-law had a crush on her, but she’d politely ignored it. Since Luke’s death he had been a little more forward each time they met.

‘You never have to be lonely, you know you only have to say and I’d be there.’

‘I know. Thank you. Luke would be very grateful to you for looking after me.’

There was a pause, and Simon said. ‘I’ll be there in half an hour. If the agent turns up first, show him the garden until I get there.’

Still bristling from Simon’s high-handed manner, and the fact that she’d brought it upon herself by asking him to help her in the first place, Abi cursed the lingering feelings of loyalty she had towards Luke’s family.

Simon had arrived at the same time as Nigel, their BMWs parked twin-like on the wide gravel drive. As the suited men had got out of their cars and shaken hands, Abi had been reminded of two stags at bay rather than two professional men about to negotiate the value of her home.

Habit had seen Abi letting Simon simply take over. He’d been the one who’d led Nigel from room to room, and he’d been the one who’d laughed at the first valuation, and agreed upon a much higher rate of sale. It was only when the men had returned to the garden, where Abi had been sat at the patio table, feeling oddly detached from what was going on, that she became involved.

‘Are you still available on Monday morning for the surveyor, Mrs Carter?’

‘I am. Nine as agreed?’

The estate agent opened his leather-bound diary and pencilled down some numbers. ‘I have taken Mr Carter’s number; can I have your mobile number please to pass on to the surveyor so he can call if there is a delay?’

‘Of course.’ Abi dictated her number. ‘In fact, it should be my number you call rather than Simon’s. This is my house, after all.’

Simon’s eyes narrowed slightly, and Nigel looked confused, but good manners prevented him from saying anything. ‘I am sure you’ll find our quotes acceptable. I will get them processed and emailed to you on Monday as well.’

As Nigel stood to leave, Abi shook his hand, before Simon escorted him back to his car.

Swallowing her annoyance, which was more at her own behaviour for not having the confidence to deal with the agent’s valuation on her own, than at Simon, who was just being, well, Simon, Abi was about to politely thank him when a suspicion crossed her mind. ‘Mr Davison didn’t think we were married, did he, Simon?’

‘He did, actually, but don’t worry, I put him right.’

Her natural inclination to be polite, rather than doing what she really wanted, made Abi offer Simon a cup of tea instead of asking him to leave.

‘I’d rather have something stronger.’

‘But, Simon, you’re driving.’

‘Not for ages yet. I’ve decided to take you for dinner. We need to talk.’