Jack was expertly chopping parsley and Arthur was nosing around for the last morsels in his gleaming food bowl when she walked through the front door seven minutes later. ‘The terrible two’, she called them. They were inseparable: Arthur, an Irish terrier, slept soundly in the workshop as his master stuffed and wove and reupholstered rickety chairs on the point of collapse.
‘Hey, boys,’ she said, dropping her handbag and the new shoes on the pine bench in the tiny porch as Arthur bounded over to her, hair flying off him like dandelion puffs in the breeze. ‘You beat me to it, then.’
‘Well, I knew that if I wanted something more than beans on toast for supper . . .’ Jack teased, pausing in his chopping and reaching over the worktop with puckered lips.
‘Good day?’ she asked, kissing him and then watching him as he crushed a clove of garlic beneath the knife. He was so pretty – girlish almost, with his lanky frame, shaggy light brown hair and fine nose; only his bright blue eyes with their distinctive dropped irises that fell into slits like cat’s eyes gave him any kind of edge. Fee was always saying he looked like a boy-band singer, although at thirty-four he was probably more like their manager – but she took the point.
‘Well, I finished that chesterfield finally. Wept my way through it, of course. I mean – tartan? With all that buttoning? It gives me a headache just looking at it.’
‘Yes, but what the client wants . . .’
‘Mmm. Well, it’s done now; nothing a run home couldn’t shake off. Which Arthur loved, of course.’
‘Of course.’ Laura smiled, bending down to scratch the daft mutt lovingly around the neck.
‘The downside is, the car is still at the studio, so I’ll have to leave early to walk there in the morning.’
‘And yet again, Arthur’s a winner!’ Laura cheered, waving the dog’s forelegs in the air.
She stood up again, investigating the chopped ingredients, all placed in separate bowls, practically colour-coded along the worktop. ‘I thought you said dinner was almost ready,’ she said.
‘Ah, busted!’ he grinned. ‘Well, I’m afraid Arthur and I were missing you. This is going to be another half-hour. Why don’t you take the paper – it’s on the table there. I’ve already run you a bath, and I’ll bring a glass of something cold up in a minute.’
‘Oooh.’ Laura smiled, nicking some red pepper. ‘Mr Ambassador, you are spoiling me.’
She meandered lazily upstairs and peered into the bathroom. Fresh, fat bubbles foamed at the rim tantalizingly, and the scented oil burner was already lit on the windowsill. Undressing quickly, she climbed in, listening to the clatter of Jack in the kitchen below as she opened the local paper.
It was Thursday, publication day, and she always liked to start with the classifieds at the back, her keen eyes eager for a bargain. Most of what they owned had been ‘pre-loved’, as she preferred to call it – the grey linen Habitat sofa adopted after a customer never returned for it, the iron bedstead in their room (which had been a mistake: it creaked like an arthritic knee every time they turned over), the French painted armoire with the mesh front where she kept the towels in the spare room.
Jack came in with a glass of wine a few minutes later, true to his word as ever. ‘Here you go,’ he said, planting a kiss on the top of her head. ‘Seen anything you like?’
‘No. Not really,’ she sighed. ‘Although I see you did.’ She indicated an ad at the bottom that had a faint pencil mark around it.
‘Oh, that,’ he said dismissively. ‘It’s nothing.’
‘It’s for a beach hut,’ Laura said, reading the ad more closely.
‘Yes. A private sale. That was why it caught my eye.’
‘I thought you could only get them through the council? Fee once told me there’s a crazy waiting list.’
‘Everything’s crazy in Fee’s world,’ he grinned. ‘But yes, she’s right on this occasion.’ He sat on the edge of the bath and began gently ladling the water over her shoulders. ‘You either have to get your name on the list and wait until you’re in your mid-eighties to get one, or you remortgage to get one that comes through a private seller like this.’
‘Remortgage? For a glorified shed?’
‘Mmm-hmm.’
‘I bet that’s just hype. It says POA here. Why don’t you ring them and ask how much they want? It can’t be much. I mean, those things don’t even have running water, do they?’
‘No power,’ he corrected. ‘I rang when I got in. They’re asking fifteen for it.’
‘Hundred?’
‘Thousand.’
‘Fifteen thousand? No! No one would spend that kind of money on a glorified shed.’
Jack smiled at her outrage. ‘And that’s a bargain, trust me. It must be fairly shabby. The really smart ones go for well over double that. They’re investments as well as heirlooms.’
‘How do you know that?’
He sighed. ‘I’ve wanted one for years. When I was a kid, my grandma had one in Sandwich. We used to spend all summer messing around in it.’
‘I never knew that. What happened to it?’ she murmured as he soaped her shoulders.
He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It got sold, I suppose. Such a shame, though. I really loved it.’
Laura looked up at him. She could tell by his tone that he really had.
‘Well, do you want to go and look at it, maybe?’ she asked after a minute. ‘I mean, if you really want one that badly, we’ve got some “rainy day” savings we could dip into. And with my business taking off, it’s providing us with a nice little extra income too.’
Jack shook his head. ‘I’m sure, but it’s not coming in quickly enough for this, sadly. That baby will be gone by dinnertime tomorrow. And we won’t see another one for ten years.’
‘No!’
‘Rarer than hen’s teeth.’ He reached a hand down and gently squeezed a soapy breast. ‘Anyway, I only came up to do that.’ He grinned, kissing her on the lips. ‘I’d better go back down and check Arthur’s not sitting in the wok.’
Laura sighed as he shut the door gently behind him. Her earlier victory was growing evermore hollow by the moment: the biggest opportunity of her career, Fee’s Visa bill and now Jack’s boyhood dream – all dashed with one tantrum. She’d messed up properly this time. She’d blown it for them all.
Hadn’t she?