‘She’s probably right. It sounds like something you would just buy for vanity, like a fancy numberplate.’ I folded the top of the box down and taped it shut, then wrote ‘Angels – sitting room’ on top with a big, black marker pen. ‘Let’s have some coffee, and then you can tell me why you’re clutching a copy of The Times.’
‘I’ve marked some men in the lonely hearts column and after that last disaster I want to know what you think before I contact them. You might be able to tell better than me if they sound weird.’
They all sounded weird to me, or desperate. But then Poppy is also getting slightly desperate (though she is not at all weird), since she would love to marry and have children before it is too late.
I’d resigned myself to having neither, unless you counted mothering Jake, who hadn’t so much fulfilled my maternal yearnings as made them wither on the vine.
Eventually, just as even the heroic patience of Grumps’ buyers was wearing thin, the day of our removal to the Old Smithy dawned clear and bright.
The day before, Poppy had brought her big horsebox over, and we’d taken all my pots and tubs and the dismantled greenhouse across to the Old Smithy and put them in the walled courtyard. The pots of scented geraniums had to line all the windowsills, since it was too cold to put them outside yet.
When we’d done that, Poppy showed me the house-warming present she and Felix had bought me between them: fixed to the wall next to my new front door was a painted oval sign, decorated with red geranium flowers, which read, ‘Angel Cottage’.
‘Angel Cottage, 1 Angel Lane’ sounded wonderfully soft and downy and safe, a home I could nestle into, like a cygnet under its mother’s wing. But I wasn’t sure what Grumps would make of it – angels on one side, pagans on the other! Still, there was a good chance he would never even notice.
You know, Sticklepond was a very Angel sort of place, what with Angel Lane and the old church of All Angels, the graveyard of which seemed full of marble ones. Felix told me a nearby stonemason specialised in them, and I often admired them over the wall.
And now there was my Angel Cottage too. It had been immaculately cleaned by Dolly Mops and was now repainted a soft, warm cream throughout, with one deep, old-rose, purply-pink wall in the little living room, to match the old tiles around the hearth.
The only exception to the colour scheme was the dark purple wall in Jake’s room, of course, which actually didn’t look quite as bad as I’d thought it would, even after I had hung his retro red, black and purple curtains.
Poppy helped me to hang the rest of the curtains before she had to dash back to Stirrups. She’d spent so much time in the previous two weeks helping me to scour the local junk and charity shops for furniture and furnishings that Janey was starting to complain, even though she was quite capable of going off on a bender herself at a moment’s notice. (A bit like Mum, though at least Janey’s disappearances lasted only a few days and she always came back.)
But we had done as much as we could anyway and by the next day this would be my new home – and maybe a whole fresh new chapter in my life too, as a contentedly single and successful businesswoman.
The team of removal men swung into action at dawn next morning. They had already spent days packing up the house, with Zillah and Grumps increasingly marooned in the kitchen and study respectively, among the packing cases.
Jake and I were all ready to go, we just had to strip our beds and pack up the last few things, like the kettle and coffee mugs. Then the contents of our flat were loaded into a small van and whisked away to Sticklepond, while the rest of the men were only just starting to fill a huge pantechnicon with Grumps’ worldly goods (and otherworldly ones), as though they were doing some challenging kind of three-dimensional jigsaw puzzle.
Felix and Jake were to direct unloading operations at the cottage, so Jake drove Zillah over in my Fiat, with Tabitha complaining bitterly in a basket on the back seat.
When I rang his mobile later to see how they were getting on, he said he and Felix had just screwed our bed frames together (I made a note to check those out before sleeping on them) and put the mattresses back on, and Zillah had already got the Aga going in her new kitchen and was dispensing stewed tea and biscuits.
‘And she put butter on Tabitha’s feet before she let her out!’
‘I think that’s supposed to make cats come back to the new house, though goodness knows why,’ I said. ‘Tell me when the phone landline starts working, won’t you? And I hope we can get broadband quickly, because I don’t want to have to conduct my business from the library or an internet café.’
‘OK, though Felix has broadband and I’m sure he would let you use his computer…and here comes my stuff, so I’ll have to go,’ he said, then rang off. I expected he would spend hours rearranging his new bedroom, ignoring the rest of the cottage, but at least Felix was there to make sure all the boxes and furniture went into the rooms they were labelled for.
Back at the old house, Grumps had written solidly in his study while it was emptied around him, so that his tall, Gothic chair and matching desk were the last things to go into the van – and therefore would be the first items out at the other end, meaning there would be very little disruption to his work. Clearly, there was method in his madness.
Finally, I drove him to Sticklepond in the Saab, wrapped in a midnight-blue velvet cloak against the chill and with a sort of embroidered fez over his long, silver hair. I dropped him off at the door, then turned round and went right back to take a last look alone around the old house and say my goodbyes. It was just something I felt I needed to do, before I could move on.
All the rooms echoed hollowly under my feet and looked strangely forlorn, especially the kitchen without Zillah’s bright cushions, throws and curtains. I wandered through the house, remembering mainly the happy things, like Granny and the strangely pagan-crossed-with-Christian version of Christmas we celebrated every year, Jake’s face as a small child, unwrapping presents (the one from Mum I always bought for her, because she never had any idea what he really wanted) and the night Poppy and I saw the angel…
I tried not to let memories of the bad times seep in, the moments of heartbreak and despair, but it was still all a bit poignant. It was more than time to move on and, I wondered, maybe I could leave the past behind me, like an outgrown shell and slip into a more expansive future?
In fact, a fresh start in a new place was just what we all needed – the Angel cards this morning had more or less told me so. I was sure Zillah had got her last reading wrong and the only visitors from my past likely to bother me were the ghosts I had just laid to rest.
I placed a big glazed pot of tulips on the kitchen windowsill, with a note welcoming the new owners to their home. Then I left, dropping the keys off with Conrad on the way to Sticklepond.
In our cottage Jake was still upstairs, which was much as I had expected, but Felix had lit a fire in the sitting room and was unpacking kitchen stuff into the wrong drawers and cupboards, though it was a kind thought, as was his having plugged in the little freezer and fridge the moment they were brought in.
‘I thought I’d make a start,’ he explained, ‘but I’ll have to go in a minute. I’ve got someone coming for a complete set of leather-bound Dickens and I’m hoping to offload some Thackeray onto them too. Is there anything else you’d like me to help you with, first?’
‘No, you’ve done wonders, Felix, I’m really grateful. And I love the house sign that you and Poppy gave me!’ I said warmly, giving him a hug. ‘I’m going to make our beds up now and then everything else can wait until tomorrow.’
After he’d gone, I found