Now we stand in the front driveway and look up at the house, horror dawning. It’s going to need a lot more work than I remember. Not for the first time the weight of what we’ve undertaken threatens to crush me.
‘Are we really going to be living in that?’ Amelia asks, wrinkling her nose as she surveys the holes in the roof, the boarded-up windows, the ivy that spreads up the walls, like unruly facial hair. The builders have already begun on the roof and scaffolding has been erected, although there’s no sign of any workers.
‘Not yet,’ I assure her. ‘We’re going to be staying in the flat we’ve rented at the other end of the village. Remember?’
‘Great,’ she mutters, folding her arms across her skinny chest. ‘Cramped in some dumb flat for the summer.’
‘It’ll be fun,’ pipes up Evie. ‘We get to share a room.’
‘And the thrills keep coming,’ Amelia deadpans.
I ignore her cheek, deciding to cut her some slack today of all days. Instead I enthuse about the huge garden, reminding Amelia that I’d agreed to buy them a trampoline – they’ve been pestering me about one for the last year but there wasn’t the space at our old house. ‘And we can get those rabbits you’ve always wanted, Evie,’ I promise. She jumps up and down with glee.
Adrian throws an arm around me. Although it’s August, there’s a chill in the air and I move closer to him, glad of the embrace. Before it happened, Adrian was very affectionate. I secretly thought – somewhat guiltily – too much so. Always wanting to hold my hand, touch the back of my head, or my knee when I was driving. I used to feel embarrassed in front of the girls or our friends if he nuzzled the side of my neck when I was cooking. I’d come from an undemonstrative family – the most I ever got from my mother was a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. And then the touching had stopped and I missed it. Now I reach around his waist and pull him closer to me, resting my head on his shoulder.
‘I’m never going to get used to the pronunciation of this place.’ Adrian laughs.
‘What – “the Old Rectory”?’ scoffs Amelia.
‘Don’t be facetious. You know what your dad means,’ I say.
‘Stupid Welsh words,’ mumbles Amelia, prodding the ground with the toe of her lilac Supagas.
‘It’s easy – Hywelphilly. PronouncedHowell Filly,’ I say, rolling the Ls, liking the way the language feels in my mouth. When we first met, Adrian delighted in my accent. He’d make me pronounce long Welsh words over and over again, and stared at me in awe as I said them with ease. He’d try to copy but they sounded like bizarre tongue-twisters coming from his lips.
‘Can you speak Welsh, Mummy?’ asks Evie, looking at me with her wide blue eyes.
‘Of course.’
‘Will we learn to speak Welsh?’ Evie asks. ‘I want to talk like you.’
Amelia looks as though she can’t think of anything worse.
I move away from Adrian and cuddle Evie, kissing her soft blonde hair. She looks kooky in her clashing colours: a red-and-yellow-spotted tunic with pink leggings and green frog wellies. Over her head I notice that Amelia moves away before I can coax her into a group hug.
‘Come on, then,’ says Adrian, heading back to the car. ‘We’d better get the keys for the flat.’
We troop behind him, my gaze following Amelia. Her head is bent and her arms are folded around herself. She’s shivering slightly in her thin hoody. I want to grab her and hold her close, reassure her that everything will be okay, that I love her. But she gets into the car before I can catch up with her. She’ll cheer up once she gets used to living here.
We drive through the village in silence, each of us taking in the ornate arched bridge, the hills and mountains of the Brecons in the distance, the green parks and fields of sheep, the cobbled high street with its shops, and the only pub, the Seven Stars, which overlooks the River Usk.
Although I’ve never lived here before, I feel as if I’ve come home.
2
A month before
My mother turns up on a Saturday at the end of September, less than four weeks before we’re due to open. I spot her from the living-room window climbing out of a taxi, smart in black trousers and heeled boots. She always dresses as if she’s about to go into an office, even though she retired eight years ago. She still has a good figure, trim and tidy, as my dad would have said, with auburn hair and bright blue eyes that are occasionally twinkly, regularly disapproving and often judgemental. I glance down at my own baggy cardigan and shapeless T-shirt, and brush the dust from my faded jeans. It fogs the air in front of me, causing me to cough. Mum once observed, disparagingly, that I like to ‘dress for comfort’.
I reach for my inhaler and take a few puffs, then return it to my pocket. I always have one on me. Without it I panic: as a teenager, a severe asthma attack had kept me in hospital for days. I’m relieved that, so far, I haven’t spotted any symptoms in my daughters.
I can feel Adrian’s disapproving gaze on me even though I can’t see him. He’s behind me, painting the living-room door satin white. He’s said before that I’m too reliant on the inhaler, that overuse isn’t good for me because it contains steroids.
‘Mum’s arrived,’ I announce, mainly to distract him. I move away from the window, resisting the urge to flick a duster around the room.
I want to laugh at the alarm on Adrian’s face. I know he’s also worrying that she’ll be disappointed with our progress. We’ve been in Hywelphilly for more than a month but only moved into the Old Rectory yesterday. We’ve done so much, though – knocking some rooms into others to make them bigger, incorporating en-suites, fixing the roof, restoring the geometric black-and-white Victorian tiles in the hallway, and we’ve divided the attic space into three bedrooms and a bathroom for us to live in so that we’re separate from the guests. But there’s still so much to do before we open to the public: painting, sanding, waxing and sourcing furniture. At the thought, my stress levels rise.
The doorbell rings and I realize that Adrian and I have been staring at each other in mild panic. He has paint on his clothes, in his beard and on his cheek. I laugh nervously. ‘Brace yourself.’
