‘You’re a cook,’ he said. ‘Or should we be calling you a chef now? So you must know aboutkitchens. Where they should be situated? What to put in them? Should they be all open plan? Or has that trend had its day?’
I laughed at that. ‘George, I do all my cooking in an area in which I honestly can’t swing a cat.’
‘But you must know what you’d like? If you had the choice? The chance to plan a kitchen from scratch?’
‘Well, yes, one can always dream.’
‘I want a house, Jessica. I’m fed up of living in apartments. I want a garden for my girls and my bees. I’ve encroached on Kamran long enough. And now your mum is there…’
‘I’m sure Mum won’t mind you in the garden. She’s already sorted a pen for Roger.’
‘Roger?’
‘The rabbit. Kamran has put his foot down about having him in the house. Even though he is ahouserabbit. Apparently, he’s now got his own heated little bijou residence as near to the main house as Mum could get him.’ I laughed, recalling Mum’s description of Roger’s new pad. ‘But Kamran’s garden is huge! It’s big enough, surely, for the pair of you to do your own thing without getting in each other’s way?’
‘Not the point. When someone is about to marry, about to share their life with another, the last thing they want is someone else always there, like a bloody gooseberry, popping up every two minutes to feed the hens. Anyway, I want more.’
‘More what?’
‘More of the good life, I suppose you’d call it.’ He smiled across at me.
‘And your girlfriend – Mina, is it? – wants the good life as well?’
‘We’re here.’ George broke off, not answering.
‘Oh, my goodness!’ I didn’t appear to be able to get any more words out. George had pulled up in the yard of what was some sort of farmhouse with a barn attached. ‘You’re not serious?’
‘Deadly serious.’ George grinned at me, leading the way up a path through an overgrown garden, under an archway of meandering honeysuckle to the farmhouse’s front door.
‘Mum would love to get her hands on this garden,’ I said, taking in what must have previously been a kitchen garden, beds of mint, oregano, chives, sage and thyme determinedly pushing through the choking weeds and grass. I bent, crushing a fresh growth of mint between my fingers.
‘D’you think she would?’ George looked hopeful.
‘I think she’s enough on at the moment what with The White House plot she’s determined to turn into a produce garden. She’ll end up doing too much and become ill again if she’s not careful.’
‘You’re very close, aren’t you? To Lisa, I mean?’
I nodded. ‘So, have you bought this place? Are you buying it? Is this the house your girlfriend was telling you about at the gym? She seemed really enthusiastic about it.’
‘She was.’ George turned back towards me as he struggled with the key in the lock of the huge ancient wooden door. ‘Unfortunately,notthis place. The house she’d seen, and is determined to have, is a brand new, six-bedroomed “all ensuite”’ – George air-mimed the words in a high-pitched overexcited voice – ‘monstrosity over in North Leeds. So, no, not this one. When I first brought her up here, six months ago, she wouldn’t even come inside to look round. She sat in the car on her phone, saying she couldn’t stand the smell.’
‘The smell?’
‘Countryside smell. They’d been muckspreading that day.’ George indicated the fields behind the house. ‘She already owns an apartment in Chelsea Harbour in London.’
‘But she wants to settle down here in a family home with you in Yorkshire? I get that…’
I broke off as the stiff obviously water-swollen door suddenly gave way and we sort of fell into the farmhouse together. ‘Oh, wow!’
Forgetting George, all I saw was a vision of the most beautiful kitchen that could, one day, be here, and I simply stood and stared, taking it all in, my mind already planning what would go where.
‘Huge bifocal doors here,’ I finally managed to get out, walking quickly over to the bank of windows overlooking the garden, the fields beyond, and further away to the distant hills.
‘Bifolddoors.’ George laughed. ‘And no, I could never rip out these traditional farmhouse windows. Come with me.’ He reversed back through the outside door we’d just entered. ‘Look, look, here.’ He led me through a patch of thistles to the adjoining barn. ‘It’s in really good nick, is the barn. Was apparently being used for keeping livestock until only recently. Come on.’
‘Is there a light?’ I looked round. The evening had suddenly descended without my fully realising it, and I couldn’t quite see where we were heading. George unlocked a tiny door camouflaged in the huge wooden barn door, flicking on a light as he did so.
‘This,’ he said, ‘thisis where I thought a kitchen could be. What d’you think?’
