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When she reached the house, Sara found several vehicles parked in the gravel driveway, end to end like a metallic snake or a police road block. There was a small red Toyota, a white sedan with the city council logo on the door, and a ute with what looked like a large engine on the back of it. A group of people were arguing on the over grown lawn. They fell silent when she came towards them.
There were two men she didn’t recognise, one in a pair of overalls and the other a suit, both wearing hardhats as though they were on a construction site. Next to them, her expression smugly righteous, was Moana, her back stiff and arms folded. Nate Adams stood a few paces from the other three. He spread his hands as though unconcerned, but Sara could see the tension in his strong jawline.
“I wasn’t expecting visitors,” she said, suddenly very conscious of her bare feet and dressing gown.
Moana’s arms tightened across her chest. “Building inspection.”
Sara frowned at her. “You told me that was next month.”
“Miss O’Neill, is it? I’m Garrett, and this is Jason. We’ll be conducting the inspection.” One of the men stepped forward and extended his hand. Sara ignored it and after a moment he dropped it again, wiping the palm on his pants leg. “Yes, well, I can understand this is a difficult time but let me assure you, we’re here for your safety.”
“Felt safe until you arrived,” Sara said.
Garrett shrugged. “Well, given recent events, it was thought best that we move the inspection forward.”
Sara scowled. “How does someone else’s incompetence...?” she began, then trailed off when she caught Nate give a little shake of his head. “Fine. Whatever.”
“I was just telling these gentlemen about the generator I’m installing for you today,” Nate said. His eyes kept hers as he spoke. “So you can really get started on the renovations.”
“Oh.” Her mouth moved like one of the dumb goldfish staring out of the tank at the play centre where she’d worked. He was giving her a safety line, she realised. A way to make it look as though she’d done more than she had. “Yes, of course. You’re...earlier than I was expecting. Thanks.”
He smiled that adorable asymmetrical smile she remembered from the other day. “No problem. I’ll get set up while you let the inspectors know your plans for the place.”
Sara swallowed. Plans? “Right. Thank you.”
Garrett seemed interested. “You have plans?”
Sara led the way to the house. “Well, nothing drawn up as yet, but I’ve only been here a few days. I’d like to do a full restoration on the place and get it back to its original glory. They built them solid back in the day, right?”
Garrett grunted. “Not always.”
Sara gritted her teeth. Diplomacy, she reminded herself. Try diplomacy. “Well, the cladding and some of the floor boards could do with replacing but the structure itself is pretty sound.”
Moana gripped the porch railing and pulled hard. A chunk of wood came off in her hands.
“If you’re going to deliberately damage my home, I’d rather you wait in the car,” Sara snapped. “Actually, what are you even doing here?”
“I thought I should come and point out the issues,” Moana said. She dropped the chunk of railing on the floor and nudged it against the wall with her foot. “This house hasn’t been safe for a long time.”
“Let’s leave that for the inspectors to decide, shall we?” Sara tugged her dressing gown tighter around herself.
“I see you’ve got a pet already.”
“What?” Sara looked where Moana pointed. A large ginger cat was sunning itself on the porch. She sneezed. “A stray. Gentlemen, if you’d like to start looking around, I’ll go and get dressed.”
She hurried down the hall to her room, kicking herself for not having spent more time cleaning up the place already. The worst of the dust and grime was gone from most of the main living areas but she was painfully aware of the parts of the house with rotted timber and moth-eaten fabrics. This was not how she would want her family’s ancestral home to be assessed.
She pushed the door to her bedroom most of the way closed and dropped the dressing gown in a pool of cloth on the floor. She grabbed her jeans from beside the bed and started tugging them on.
“Just...keep in mind that the house hasn’t been lived in for years and I’ve only just moved in, okay?” There was no response and Sara had no idea whether they’d even heard her. Probably Moana was already guiding them to the worst parts of the house. God knew how often that woman had been in here looking for the wayward offspring she’d claimed would be injured here or just sticking her nose where it didn’t belong.
She pulled a bra out from under her Kindle – another flat battery, like every other electronic item in the house – and slipped it on. Next, a green t-shirt that matched her eyes. She was pulling it over her head when a creaky floorboard in the hall sounded the alarm. She jerked it down quickly, but as the cloth cleared her eyes, she saw Nate Adams standing in the doorway.
His face flushed red. “Um, sorry. I was just wondering if you had anything you wanted me to plug in...you know, to the generator once I get it started.”
Sara straightened the t-shirt over her stomach. She lifted her chin, determined not to show she was embarrassed. Her insides felt hot. “Sure. My phone and charger are on the hall table.”
He nodded and turned to leave.
“Nate?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks. For bringing the generator and...” She gestured in the general direction of the rest of the house where the inspectors were doing their work.
He shrugged. “No problem.”
She found the inspectors with Moana in the kitchen. Jason had an electronic stud finder pressed against the wall but seemed more interested in scratching beneath a loose flap of peeling wallpaper. Moana stood in the centre of the floor with her arms folded and a look of distaste on her face. She shivered as if someone had slipped ice down the back of her sleeveless blouse, despite the morning already being quite warm. Garrett poked behind the old wood burning stove. Sara didn’t like to think what he could be finding back there.
At last he stepped back, shaking his head. “So there’s no electrical wiring in the house at all?”
“Nope,” Sara said. “So it will all be done fresh and up to current standards. No worries there.”
The inspector frowned. “But I thought someone was electrocuted here.”
“Outside. And not because of my wiring. I don’t have any yet. He was supposed to be installing it. So you can’t blame the house for that one.” She looked pointedly at Moana.
“That doesn’t mean the house is safe,” Moana said. “I mean look at the rot in this door frame.” She took a step forward and tripped, lurching forward like she’d been launched from a catapult. Her arms windmilled and for a moment Sara thought she would save herself, but then she stumbled further forward and her head cracked into the side of a cupboard with a loud, sickening bang. She clutched at her head and slid into a crouched position on the floor, her face a mask of pain.
“Oh God! Are you all right?”
Sara knelt beside the woman, checking her for injury.
Moana shook her off. A tiny trickle of blood ran from a cut just above her eyebrow. “I’m fine. It’s your stupid uneven floor you should be worried about.”
Sara bit her tongue. She stood up, wet a tea towel under the tap, and handed it to the woman to clean up the blood.
“The floor isn’t uneven,” Garrett said. “You tripped over this.” He held up a piece of wood with paint flaking off three sides. It was the chunk of broken porch railing.
“What?” Sara stared at it. “Why did you bring that inside?”
“I didn’t,” Moana snapped. She pressed the wet cloth to her head and stood up slowly. “I’m not staying here. I’ll wait outside.”
Sara watched her leave, concerned, but satisfied that there didn’t seem to be any serious damage. What she couldn’t figure out was how the broken railing had ended up on the kitchen floor. It made no sense. Surely Moana wouldn’t have placed it there herself and then deliberately tripped on it to make a point? She shook her head. She had bigger concerns.
“So what do you think so far?”
It was Jason who answered. “There’s a lot to be done, but so far most of it is cosmetic. I don’t like the look of this mould behind the wallpaper and there’s a fair amount of rot. The question is whether it’s gotten into any of the supporting beams. If so, that’s where the problems will be. We’ll let you know when we’re finished.”
Sara knew a dismissal when she heard one.
The low hum of the generator outside reached her as she left the building inspectors to their job. It seemed Nate had it set up and running already. That made one thing that had gone well out of this entire day. Between bad dreams, injuries, and inspections, she felt ready to go back to bed, pull the covers over her head, and hope for a better start tomorrow – and the day had barely begun!
Her shoulders slumped and she walked into the lounge and looked around, hardly daring to see the disrepair. At least the furniture here wasn’t too bad. She’d folded up the sheets that had been draped over everything when she arrived and piled them up on one armchair. She sat on top of that pile, raising herself about two feet above the cushion of the actual chair, with a rueful chuckle at her need to be higher up than usual.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She knew this feeling. This painful sense of being overwhelmed. It happened on every house renovation. There was always a point at which the task ahead seemed too big, too insurmountable. And there was always a point at which some part of the building code or council regulation tripped her up and meant something had to be tweaked in her plans. “That’s okay,” she reminded herself. “We always get through it in the end.” This time she didn’t have Greg’s temper to deal with when things went wrong. This time, she would have to do it all on her own.
Another deep breath as she tried to centre herself the way the counsellor at the hospital had taught her. Let go of the worry. Trust in her instincts. No matter what Garrett and Jason found wrong with the house, she knew she could handle it. She would be fine.
Slowly she let her awareness focus on the sounds of the world around her. The movements of the building inspectors down the hall, the birds singing outside, the hum of the generator...the tune of a cell-phone ringing.
Her eyes popped open. She recognised that ringtone.
“Crap!”
She jumped down off the pile of linen, almost twisting her ankle as she did so. She swore again and ran for the door.
Too late.
As she stepped into the hall she saw Nate with her phone to his hear. “Sara’s phone. One moment please.” He held it out to her. “It started ringing almost as soon as it got any charge. I didn’t want you to miss your call.”
She forced a smile. “Thanks.” She licked her lips and lifted the phone to her ear.
“Who the fuck was that?” Greg’s voice reverberated through her like the vibration of a passing train. “Where are you?”
Sara swallowed. Her chest felt as though a thousand volts were running through her body. Her lips felt numb. “You...you’re not supposed to phone me.”
“Oh yeah?” The sneer was audible in his voice. “Why’s that?”
“The protection order.” They’d served it on him just a few hours after she’d left. That had been the plan.
“You think that shitty piece of paper is gonna stop me finding you? You took my money, bitch. I’m coming to get it back.”
Sara felt panic fluttering in her lungs like a trapped bird. “I...no...I only took my share...the lawyer said...”
“Fuck you and fuck the lawyer! Who do you think you are? You really think you can just run off in the middle of the night and I’m gonna be fine with that? You better tell me where you are right now or so help me, I’ll...”
The phone pulled away from her ear and Sara let it go. She heard the soft beep as Nate hung up on the call and switched off the phone. A moment later he pulled her into a warm hug.
She stiffened against the comfort, but his strong arms around her seemed to shut away the rest of the world. Her jaw was trembling against his chest and she didn’t dare look up and let him see her face, or say a word for fear of what he would see released in her – the weakness, the terror, the foolishness. What would he think of her for staying so long with a man who hit her? How could anyone respect her again?
“I’m sorry,” he murmured into her hair. “I shouldn’t have answered it. I didn’t know.”
She started to shake her head, then stopped, worried she’d smear tears onto his shirt. “It’s okay. I’m okay.”
“It’s not okay,” he said. “What he’s done will never be okay. But you are. You were amazing.”
The praise sent a flush of heat through her face. She didn’t feel amazing. She felt like shit. And she needed to pull herself together and stop making a fool of herself in front of this man. Only a few days as his neighbour and she was already crying on his shoulder. It was ridiculous.
She pulled away and he let her go without resistance. “Thanks,” she said, awkwardly. “Sorry about that.”
He looked like he was going to say something in reply and she hoped it wasn’t too kind because she didn’t think she could take it - but then his gaze shifted and Sara heard footsteps behind her. She turned to see Garrett and Jason step into the hall. Garrett had a clipboard with several sheets of paper attached. .
“How did it go, gentlemen?” Sara asked.
Garrett unclipped the papers and held them out to her. “Unfortunately there’s quite a lot of work that needs to be done to save the house, Miss O’Neill.”
“Oh,” she said, and took the report.
“Some of the rooms in the back of the house are currently unliveable. I’ve red stickered them to stay clear of because there are support beams that are too corroded in the roof.”
Sara looked at the papers, then back at the building inspector. “But you’re not condemning the house?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. I’d rather you stayed somewhere else, but if you stay clear of the unsafe areas, you’ll be okay. You have 90 days to comply with some of the urgent issues. We will be back to check on your progress in a few weeks. I expect to see some significant changes in that time or we will have to consider alternative options.”
She nodded, wondering which of them would give Moana the good news. “No problem.”
“I assume you have engaged a contractor?”
“Um...” Shit. She’d intended on doing most of the work herself, but there would definitely be things she needed professionals for.
“I’ll be helping out,” said Nate. I’m a registered builder as well as a sparky.”
Sara blinked and stayed silent.
Garrett nodded. “Okay then. We’ll be on our way and let you get to it. If you have any questions, give me a call.”
He and his colleague left then, and Sara was alone with Nate once more.
“You didn’t have to do that,” she told him.
He shrugged. “I know. How about we make a trade? It’s school holidays and I could use a babysitter for my daughter. You look after her and I’ll do the wiring and heavy duty stuff around here?”
Sara blinked. She’d made a fool of herself over and over in front of this man and he still wanted to help her. She didn’t know quite what to make of it. “Um.”
Nate grinned. “Okay then. Come and I’ll show you how to work the generator. You’ll definitely want a way to charge an iPad when Abi arrives!”