An Unsuitable Match by Joanna Trollope

Author:Joanna Trollope
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Wood Cottage had a lovely garden. Rose could see that, could see how lovely it was and, more importantly, how it could be made lovelier. It faced south, it had enough trees, and there was a terrace outside the conservatory kitchen that was both wide and deep, and segued gracefully into the lawn without the need for steps. Tyler watched her going round the garden, noticing the planting, working out the amount of upkeep needed, squinting up at the angle of the sun. He imagined himself on a ride-on mower, making immaculate stripes on the tidy parts and cutting curving paths through the more casual ones, among the apple trees. Their apple trees. The thought of owning apple trees and a ride-on mower induced in him something close, he thought, to ecstasy. He wondered in amazement, thinking back, at how he had spent all those years of his marriage to Cindy living in houses of her father’s choosing, stepping out into gardens – yards – rigorously controlled by Moses. Looking back, he thought he must have been sleepwalking. If the existence of Seth and Mallory hadn’t been there to contradict him, he might have believed that he had spent thirty years simply dreaming. But he wasn’t dreaming now. He was looking at a house and a garden that might very well be his. A place he could put up shelves and clear guttering and cut the grass. He knelt down and brushed his hand reverently over the grass. The possibilities of ownership broke over him in a sudden flood of joy.

But the house. It was plain, from the moment she entered the house and saw the copper jugs shining in the over-restored brick fireplace, and the too-bright rugs on the improbably glossy floor, that Rose wasn’t going to like the house. The owners had replaced the original windows with diamond-paned double glazing in sturdy plastic frames. The conservatory kitchen was kitted out in stridently varnished wooden units, with fancy handles in antiqued metal, and fretwork cornices. There were jokey notices on the toilet walls and herds of whimsical china animals on the windowsills. Rose grew very quiet.

‘It’s just décor,’ Tyler said gently. ‘Surface stuff.’

‘The windows aren’t.’

‘The windows are a pity,’ Tyler said. ‘I’ll give you that. But this room’ – he gestured round the master bedroom, which he was trying manfully not to furnish in his mind’s eye – ‘is great. Big enough, double aspect, bathroom off it—’

‘A pink bathroom,’ Rose said.

‘Which could easily become a white bathroom, sweetheart. Quite a big bathroom, actually. With a window.’

Rose said, in a whisper, as if she didn’t want to hurt the room’s feelings, ‘I don’t like it.’

‘But you liked the garden.’

Rose looked about her.

‘I like most gardens. I like the fact of gardens. On principle.’

He came closer. ‘We can change the décor, you know, completely. We can change everything. Even the windows.’

She looked at him directly.

‘I don’t like it, Tyler.’

‘Could I ask . . .’ he said, and stopped.

‘What?’

‘Could I ask

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