My ankle was still in a cast for another two weeks and it could not come quick enough. I was managing to use the gym to do just weight work, most of it upper body focused. In fact, the weight of the cast was giving me something extra to contend with when I did pull ups, but that didn’t mean I wanted it as a permanent accessory.
“You want to visit one house on Halloween? Why don’t we go back and get the twins? At least we look like we’re trick or treating then and not just two weirdos who are too old for this stuff,” Ava said through bright red lips.
“Trust me,” I said, taking as sudden a right turn as I could using the crutches.
I heard her mutter about where trusting me had got her in the past and left her to it, letting her enjoy her moan and whinge, because in a minute I knew she wouldn’t be complaining.
After the conversation at her parents we’d started to look for houses, scouring the internet, making lists (Ava did) of what we wanted and didn’t want and where and then dismissing everything that had come available, was sold subject to contract or had been on the market for months because it was dilapidated and no one in their right mind would touch it. We’d viewed three houses and each of them had something catastrophically wrong with it, or so one of us thought.
However, there was a solution. Or so I hoped.
Ena Arkwright.
Ms Ena Arkwright had been the first mistress of a young ladies’ finishing school in Chelsea. She’d never married and her family had passed away or moved away, leaving the only beneficiary of her will as the school library. She had a small sum of money and a house in Southwark about four streets away from Killian and Claire’s.
It wasn’t my case: I didn’t do probate. I was firmly companies suing other companies and that was it. However, I’d heard one of the secretaries talking to one of the people on reception about the property and how old fashioned the interior had been and who would take on a place like that, because Ena had stipulated two things: the house couldn’t be sold to someone who was going to convert it into flats and the new owners would have to look after her cat. The cat was negotiable as there was nothing in law that said the cat had to stay, but the school wanted to try to do right by Ena.
Fortunately the collie I’d adopted, along with its owner, liked cats. Queenie liked everything. She was even more enthusiastic than Seph on a Friday night in a bar if there was the possibility of even putting her head on somebody’s knee.
“Where are you taking me?”
I paused on the pavement about three doors down from where we were going.
“There’s one house I wanted to knock at.”
“Elijah, we’re adults. It’s eight pm on Halloween. You’ve dragged me out of Claire and Killian’s lovely warm house with really nice food and wine to visit a street that looks like it’s in Grimsville on St Grimsville Day.”
My excuse to get her out was poor at the least. And viewing a house at this time on a dark night was probably not the best idea, but this was Ava and a house was a project and a potential home no matter what time of day or night.
“Just a bit further. And those houses have got decorations up. And pumpkins.” I pointed at them with one of my crutches.
“So it’s not that grim.” She looked about her. “In fact it’s a pretty nice street. Driveways and road parking. Shame there’s nothing up for sale.”
I grinned, hoping she would see and carried on shuffling down the road.
The next time I stopped we were at the bottom of the narrow drive, the shrubbery still tidy and the bins put back neatly. I started to head up towards the front door, my back to Ava, which was unfortunate as I wanted to see her face.
“Elijah?” she said. “There’s no one in.”
I went up the two steps to the door and turned around, resting a crutch against the door so I could dangle a key.
“Eli?” Ava said when she was close enough to see the key with just the streetlight. “What have you done?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Yet. But why don’t you come in and look around?”
“Why? It isn’t for sale.”
“It is. I’ve got first refusal.”
Ava froze, the light casting crazy shadows over my skeletonised girlfriend.
“Eli, it’s a semi-detached eighteenth century house, with I’m guessing six beds including the attic rooms, cellars that could be converted and a garden and drive. While we’re hardly paupers and it clearly needs some renovation, this is beyond our budget.
She would’ve had a point.
I gave her the story of Ena Arkwright and her finishing school. The cat informed her of the rest. And I told her the price, which had been capped due to the requirements and the covenant with regard to it staying as one property.
“There was lots in her will: she wanted the house to be bought by a family or a couple. She wanted the cat to stay. There’s things to do with the furniture too, that’s why it hasn’t been moved yet,” I told her, giving her more details about the woman who had lived here all of her life.
