Thea stared out of the attic bedroom’s small sash window, struggling to calm the apprehension which was making her stomach act as if it was a washing machine stuck on the spin cycle. Spotting a flash of blue among the tangle of overgrown hedges and leftover autumn leaves, she picked up her binoculars and focused on five azure petalled flowers, complete with hairy stems and oval leaves. A clutch of woodland forget-me-nots was winning the fight against the mass of undergrowth that connected the garden and the woods. It was the glimmer of hope Thea badly needed.
Scanning the full sweep of the manor’s terrain, she hunted for more signs of life. Buds on assorted tree branches and rain-drooped Campanula soon filled the lenses and made her smile away some of her apprehension.
The over-loud tick of the carriage clock, perched on the room’s unusable fireplace, broke into Thea’s moment of escapism. Turning to the rickety single bed, under which she’d stuffed the few belongings that had accompanied her from Bath, Thea wiped her perspiring palms down her jeans.
What was wrong with her?
She was used to having constant battles with her inner shyness and lack of confidence at work, but usually she won the fight. Since she’d taken the job at Mill Grange, however, her ability to hide her insecurities and self-doubt had deserted her in the face of the project’s established volunteers. Tonight, Thea was determined to change that. She had to, or there’d be no hope of finishing renovating the manor in the timeframe the Trust had given her.
Jogging down the two sets of narrow Victorian backstairs to the kitchen, Thea resolved to pull herself together. ‘You’re a professional woman. You know what you’re talking about. You can do this.’
Pushing open the narrow double doors towards the kitchen’s Aga hugging warmth, Thea sank into an oversized wingback armchair. Cocooning herself beneath a pile of throws, she critically examined the site of that day’s restorative activity.
Two nearby seats, companions to the chair upon which she sat, gave off a satisfying aroma of buffed leather. Three kitchen shelves, which had been in danger of collapsing under the twin strains of damp and wear, had been replaced, and every cupboard was empty, ready to be washed out the following day. For now, Thea allowed her mind to skirt over the mountain of cupboard contents and ornaments which sat in random heaps on the dining room table.
Every one of the kitchen’s vast external surfaces had been scrubbed to within an inch of its life with the aid of willpower, elbow grease and Radio Two. Mabel had made it clear she’d rather have listened to Radio Four. They’d always listened to Radio Four before.
Before, meant before Thea. Before her.
Thea winced. Something had to be done about the steely-haired seventy-five-year-old, with permanently rolled up sleeves, a different apron for everyday of the week and coordinating rubber gloves. But what should that something be? Mabel Hastings had been at the tiller of the restoration of Mill Grange for so long that, even though Thea had been employed by the house’s trustees as overseer of the project, she couldn’t, or wouldn’t, let go.
Mabel was a dynamo of activity. Set her in the direction of a task and she was off; unstoppable until every cobweb had been vanquished and every spider had packed its suitcase ready to emigrate to the safety of one of Mill Grange’s many outbuildings. And goodness knows there wasn’t a grease stain or blocked toilet that could go the distance with her. The problem was that in Mabel’s eyes, there were two ways of doing things: her way, or the wrong way. Thea’s way definitely fell into the latter category.
There was no doubting Mabel’s methods were effective, even if they generally involved some magical cleaning compound that had vinegar at its heart and left the lingering aroma of acetic acid hanging around for hours afterwards. But although Mabel was thorough, she was not fast. Nor was she an easy woman to talk to, or persuade into doing something she didn’t wish to do.
Taking comfort in the bouquet of polished leather and fresh cut wood (minus vinegar for once) infusing the air, Thea closed her eyes. At least John would never find her here. There was no chance of tracking her on social media (which she’d stopped using after his unwanted arrival in Bath). She’d changed her mobile number and email address anyway though. Just in case.
Taking a deep breath, Thea levered herself from the cushioned safety of the armchair. Dwelling on the past wouldn’t help. Not if she wanted the immediate future to be the success it deserved to be. She owed it to Mill Grange itself, if nothing else.
Heading to the huge oak table that dominated in the centre of the oblong room, Thea stroked its smooth sides. Local legend claimed that Mill Grange had only been built because Lady Upwich had fallen in love with that very table, but couldn’t get it into her current home. So, in 1856, Mill Grange mark two had been constructed, extending the original house to surround the table.
Thea wasn’t sure how much of that was true.
Mabel was convinced of every word.
Thea would have liked to check for historical proof, but the trip she’d promised herself to the archivist’s office in either Taunton or Exeter hadn’t yet happened. There was just so much else to do if the house and mill were going to be ready to open in August.
As she pushed her shoulders back, Thea’s private determination to make the manor perfect urged her on. She’d wanted a fresh challenge as well as a fresh start away from her past, so when Tina, who worked for the Exmoor Heritage Trust, had mentioned that they were advertising for a project manager and eventual curator for Mill Grange, the timing had felt like a gift from the Goddess of Wisdom – Minerva herself. Thea had applied straight away.
An involuntary shudder tripped down Thea’s spine as the memory of the last time she’d seen John nudged itself, uninvited, to the forefront of her mind.
It had been four days before she’d started her new job. Once he’d finally accepted that she didn’t want to go out to dinner with him after his unexpected arrival at the Abbey Café, and following a dozen subsequent failed attempts to engage her interest, John had turned up in her local pub in Bath. Looming over her seat and blocking Thea’s view of the scattering of early evening locals, John had spoken quietly. There had been a smile on his face, but she’d noted the strain in his eyes, and she’d had to battle with her conscience not to invite him to join her for a drink just to be kind.
His tone had been serene, but she’d had a horrible feeling he was close to bursting into tears, when, as if caught in some eighteenth-century time warp, John had spelt out why it was unacceptable for Thea to be in a pub on her own. It sounded laughable; it was laughable. But it wasn’t funny.
Feeling hemmed in and increasingly responsible for John’s desperate behaviour, Thea had tried one last time.
‘I’m asking you to leave here for your own good. Sort yourself out, John. You deserve better than this. I’ve told you I don’t love you. I’m sorry – I wish I did, for your sake – but I just don’t.’
Doing her best to shake off the spectre of her ex, who, thankfully, she hadn’t seen since, Thea addressed the empty kitchen. ‘If I can cope with John and his warped approach to romance, then I can cope with Mabel’s overzealous good intentions.’ She danced a finger along the grain of the polished oak table. Time I stuck to the reliable things in life, like coffee, cake and history.
*
April 4th Evening
The kitchen clock struck a quarter to seven. The meeting wasn’t due to start for another half an hour. At least four of them would be early. Not one of them would be late.
None of the seven volunteers working to restore Mill Grange would want to miss what had been building up as a ‘Thea versus us’ showdown for the past fortnight.
She wasn’t sure how it had happened. In her naïvety, Thea had assumed the volunteers would be glad to have someone take the worry of time and expenses from their shoulders. Surely the job was easier for them, unpaid as they were, if they could get on with the tasks she saw as the most urgent. The main thing was to have the house ready to open in time for the approaching summer holiday period.
In reality, every suggestion or instruction she’d made had been listened to politely, before the volunteer in question reported to Mabel, as they’d always done. Sometimes the tasks Mabel had in mind coincided with Thea’s. Often they didn’t, and the allotted job would be substituted for another.
Thea had been polite and considerate, constantly making allowances for the fact that she was the newcomer. But no amount of explaining and cajoling made any difference. After fourteen exhausting days of making a concerted attempt to be accepted as manager, she had become tired of fighting against the way things had been done prior to her arrival.
Annoyed at her failure to manage the group, and resisting the urge to grab the emergency bottle of wine she’d hidden in the fridge, Thea put on the kettle. If she was going to get through this with her soul intact, it was going to take more than the heavily sugared lemon cake Tina had made her. It was going to take coffee. Strong coffee.
Heaping rather too many beans into the grinder, Thea wondered how her workforce would react if they discovered she’d been living in the attic since her arrival.
It hadn’t been her intention to use what had once been a maid’s bedroom as anything other than a temporary holding point for the few belongings she hadn’t put into storage and a place to sleep for two or three nights. Her new working routine however, had become so busy so fast, that Thea hadn’t got round to searching for anywhere to live. She needed to be on site during every hour of daylight if there was any hope of opening on the day the trustees had demanded. Anyway, all the available, affordable rental accommodation was over twenty miles away, along remote moorland roads. Finding a home simply hadn’t happened. The guilt of living in secret, rent-free, was offset by the knowledge that the only time Thea stopped working was when she slept.
The sound of boots crossing the stone chipped courtyard outside the kitchen door tied her stomach into a dozen knots.
‘Get a grip, woman. You co-ran an entire museum in Bath, for goodness’ sake. You managed a team so big that you never did find the time to meet them all. Surely you can sort out eight people and get them all to play nicely!’
As a voice at the back of her head unhelpfully pointed out that it was much easier to tell people what to do if you’d never set eyes on them, the back door opened and Tina bounced in.
Thea smiled. The word ‘bounced’ summed Tina up perfectly. Ever since they’d met as archaeology students at Durham University fourteen years ago, Tina had faced life with an endless ability to shrug off a crisis. Thea had learnt early on that much of this was an act. Tina’s way of coping with the ups and downs of existence was to grab everything with both hands and tackle the consequences later – whether good or bad. It was a technique Thea admired and envied, but could not replicate however much she wished otherwise.
‘Am I the first?’ Tina wiped her walking boots on the mat, flicking a blonde pigtail over her shoulder as she waved a bottle of prosecco in her friend’s direction.
‘You are.’ Thea nodded towards the alcohol. ‘You’re not optimistic then?’
Laughing, Tina tucked the bottle into the fridge next to the Pinot Thea had already put there. ‘And neither are you by the looks of things.’
‘That’s either to help smooth over the widening cracks between me and the volunteers or to drink in a pathetic bout of self-pity afterwards.’
Tina headed to the nearest cupboard. ‘I’ll get out some glasses.’
Wishing she could borrow some of Tina’s confidence, even if only for half an hour, Thea sighed. ‘All I want is for them to see I haven’t come here to overrule or undermine them. I’m just an extra pair of hands and an onsite pair of eyes to make sure we stay to schedule. I didn’t expect my employment at Mill Grange to be considered as a hostile coup.’
‘I know, but they’ve been here for five years. Until now, there hasn’t been a schedule. The only person they’ve had keeping an occasional eye on things is me, and I only come in once a week for a progress report. Otherwise, it’s been…’
‘Mabel.’
Tina pulled a face. ‘Ever since Mabel was entrusted with a set of manor house keys, she took on the unofficial role of group leader with all the solemnity of someone receiving an OBE from the Queen, which she’ll probably get one day because she is a community whizz and deserves one. But she’s such a dominant person and so good at organising things, that no one’s stopped her.’
‘Or has been brave enough to try?’
‘Quite.’ Tina wrinkled her nose. ‘Right now, she feels her territory has been stamped on.’
‘By me.’ Thea ruffled a hand through her straggly hair. ‘How on earth can I convince Mabel I’m not anti what she’s done or what she’s doing? Honestly, every time I walk into a room with volunteers in, the conversation stops. I feel like I’m trespassing in my own workplace. It’s like one of those Westerns where a cowboy comes into a new town and the whole bar freezes.’
‘It has gone a bit them and us.’ Tina grabbed some paper plates from her bag ready to dish out the cake. ‘It’s because they’ve gone their own way for so long. And, to be fair, done a brilliant job.’
‘More than brilliant. What they’ve achieved is incredible. I keep trying to tell them that, but all I get is polite but sceptical “you are just saying that” smiles.’ Thea shook her head as she considered her pensioner crew of unstoppable scrubbing brushes and beeswax polish. ‘In five years of popping in and out for the odd hour here and there, they’ve cleared the overgrowth from a quarter of the garden, uncovered the dried leat course down to the river, cleaned the original wallpaper and got every bathroom and kitchen fixture working. I think they’re amazing. And I’ve told them so.’
‘But?’
‘But it is going to take a lot more to have the place open to the public on time. I’m hoping that when I tell them the trustees have settled on 4th August as launch day, then they’ll finally understand that we still have a mountain left to climb.’
‘I’m glad the trustees have confirmed a date at last. I was beginning to think my persuasive skills were failing me.’ Tina checked her phone. ‘It’s 4th April today, so that’s four months exactly.’
‘There’s a danger Mabel will think that’s ages away. But it isn’t.’
Tina hugged her friend. ‘Together we’ll convince them, and by the time it’s nine o’clock everyone will understand exactly why you’re here.’
‘Hopefully.’ Thea was less convinced. ‘Or they could walk away. They are volunteers after all.’
‘Tell them the truth. Lay everything the trustees want out in the open. I think you’ve been too nice. Too polite and keen to be friends with them. You’re their boss. It’s time to kick butt and demand respect!’
‘Hence the alcohol and the cake?’
‘Well, it can’t make it any worse, can it?’