Cash would not be late home that night.
Chapter Six
Mrs. Truman
Abby sat at the big battered farm table in her grandmother’s huge kitchen. The Aga stove, aided by a merry fire burning in the stone hearth of the fireplace, warmed the space so thoroughly, even the huge chunks of slate that formed the floor felt heated.
She was drinking coffee with Pete and listening to him tell her about plumbing, electricity, new boilers, chimney pots and so on down to re-plastering and paint, all of which her house needed to be put back to rights.
“That’s just what I see, love, but I’d get someone in to do a survey,” Pete advised, before draining his mug. His eyes came back to her as he put down his cup. “I know someone if you want me to set it up.”
Abby nodded. “I can’t do this anymore Pete. Every week it’s something new. I need to know what I’m up against.”
He grinned at her with approval. “Smart girl.”
She smiled back and grabbed his mug. “Another cuppa?”
“Supposed to be bringin’ the boys up in your bathroom one, so make it three,” Pete answered.
Abby stood and went to the kettle.
She’d decided on the way home from Cash’s that now the deed was irrevocably done, she was setting the plans in motion to get her life back in order.
She was not going to delay.
When her arrangement with Cash was over, she was going to begin anew and she was going to hit the ground running.
Over a year ago, Jenny had negotiated a good deal on the sale of Abby and Ben’s home. Selling her furniture, her car and their other belongings allowed Abby to pay off her mountain of debt and left her with enough to rest comfortably as she started her new life in England (or so she thought).
Abby had decided to take a month or two off before starting work. In hindsight, of course, this was not the most sterling idea. She already knew her grandmother’s home needed attention. Gram was a packrat, she kept everything. Abby had visions of spending her days sorting and tidying, maybe slapping some new coats of paint here and there, making Gram’s home her own.
However, a week after she’d moved in it had rained, as it had a way of doing in England, rather heavily outside.
Unfortunately, it had rained rather heavily inside too.
Abby had spent the night rushing around with pots, pans and bowls to place under the drips.
She’d spent the next day listening to Pete tell her she needed a new roof and that the leaks had been around awhile, there was water damage. Gram, who’d spend most of her time on the first floor, probably didn’t know it (or didn’t want to).
After paying the taxes, Gram’s inheritance didn’t come with a boatload of money. The roof and repair of the water damage dug deep into Abby’s reserves but she had no choice and even if it was expensive, it certainly didn’t bankrupt her.
She had time to make it up and get her life rolling.
At least that was what she thought.
Deep into December, about a month after she’d moved in, England was gripped by an arctic cold snap. Gram’s home was also gripped by it. The house was huge, big rooms, tall ceilings, wide stairways and lots of open space in the halls. The boilers were in overdrive and older than Mrs. Truman. Abby kept the fires in the rooms blazing with wood and coal and still could barely keep out the chill.
Unfortunately, some of the rooms had chimneys that needed work and Abby learned the hard way she should have had them looked at before she built fires in their grates.
Pete came after the smoke cleared (literally), telling her not only did she need her chimneys serviced, she needed new windows and insulation for her insulation had been installed during the Boer War (this was not Pete’s estimate, it was Abby’s).
She lived in a conservation area so she couldn’t buy cheap but effective windows. She had to buy expensive timber framed ones.
At the time Abby had found a job. She was working. She liked her job and the people there but her pay was a fraction of what it used to be. Since she didn’t have a mortgage (although her gas and electric bills were staggering), she thought this would be okay and she could live the standard of life she was used to.
Also, considering she had a goodly amount of money in the bank and not knowing what would soon befall her, she’d sold her Gram’s old estate car and bought herself a brand new, sporty BMW 118, not going over the top (she thought) but it suited her and Ben would have loved it.
This had dwindled her reserves further.
To pay for the chimneys, insulation and windows, she’d taken out a loan.
Then in a shocking turn of events, she and four of her colleagues had been made redundant. To their credit, her employers were nearly (but not quite) as upset as Abby and promised if things improved they’d call her (so far, obviously, they hadn’t).
Out of work and nearly out of money, Abby soldiered on.
She spent her days alternately working at high-paid but short-lived contracts or clearing out her Grandmother’s piles of magazines and newspapers, the plethora of books and knick knacks and a kitchen full of equipment that was broken, rusty or hadn’t been needed since cavemen were starting fires by striking together flint rocks.
Then one bathroom groaned to a halt, which Abby ignored (and shouldn’t have), then another one did (ditto the ignoring bit).
Then the window men found the damp, the fixing of which led to her second loan. And the insulation men found the dry rot, the fixing of which led to Abby being broke.
Kieran and Jenny had offered help on numerous occasions but Abby refused.
They’d done enough.
There were no jobs in sight, contracts were growing thin on the ground and Abby’s desperation was increasing.
It was the evening after the day Abby sold one of her brooches, a gold and pearl antique one that belonged to her great-grandmother that Jenny went to the party.
Jenny knew about the brooch, knew that Abby hated selling it and then she overheard James and Cash talking. She heard James’s suggestion of a discreet escort to deflect attention off some business Cash was involved with regarding his uncle (business Jenny didn’t hear) and further protect him against his uncle’s increasingly frustrating efforts to throw Cash in front of one of his three stepdaughters.
And Jenny came up with her idea. Then she talked Abby into it. Then Kieran.
That morning, showering in Cash’s bathroom and attempting to ignore the fact that Cash’s na**d body had been in the same space but hours before (and also trying not to think about how much she liked his shower, it was lush), Abby thought instead about what her family would think of what she was doing.