The Ladies' Midnight Swimming Club(42)

‘But that’s the thing, dear – after all these years it’s just dawning on me, I’m not sure it’s ever really been my home.’





18


Lucy


‘What is it?’ Lucy’s antennae were already on high alert. It had been a busy morning in the surgery and she hadn’t slept properly any night since the visit to the oncologist with her mother. She was too drained not to pick up on even the slightest little cue.

‘Oh, nothing. Not a thing at all,’ Elizabeth said a little too brightly.

‘There is something and if you don’t tell me now, I’m going to assume the worst, so you might as well just say it.’ She smiled at Elizabeth. They had met each other when they were both, to say the least, at low ebbs of their contentment scales. It broke down some of the usual nuances around blunt honesty.

‘There’s absolutely nothing wrong.’ Elizabeth was smiling now, but there was still a trepidation playing around her eyes. She took a deep breath. ‘Really, it’s nothing, well, not on the scale of the worries you’ve been carrying about the place for Jo and Niall.’ She stopped for a moment, perhaps trying to fix the correct phrasing in her mind for what was coming next. ‘No, it’s just I got my first payment demand this morning from one of the banks.’ She passed the letter across the table to Lucy, topping up their coffees while she read.

‘Oh, dear, they’re not exactly subtle, are they?’ Lucy said.

‘I’m not worried about it– no more than I was a week ago, anyway.’ She sipped her coffee. ‘It’s addressed to Eric, so they’re not talking about drawing down on his estate, such as it is.’

‘No?’

‘Well, no, and you see, I’ve been looking about the village and there are plenty of small houses I could pick up for very little. They’re not exactly what I’ve set my heart on, but at least I’m fairly sure that I wouldn’t be without a roof over my head. For now, if we can just keep ahead of the banks, perhaps I can make some small dint on the repayments with the money from the surgery, just to keep the wolves from the door for long enough for a cottage that I’d like to come up and then…’

‘You’re thinking of moving?’ Lucy said and she clapped her hands. ‘But, that’s the best news ever.’ It was exactly what Elizabeth needed: a new start, a place to call her home. And it would be an actual home – as opposed to the mausoleum that the grand old Georgian had become around her.

‘Yes, but that leaves this place…’ Elizabeth said, meeting her eye levelly – they both knew the score. Her husband had left a thriving practice behind him and a huge house, but both were on the brink of ruin. He had also left gambling debts that would swallow any cash made on the sale of either and so Elizabeth was in many ways as trapped now as she’d been when he was alive. ‘That’s why I wasn’t sure if I should mention it, just yet. You have so much already on your plate,’ she said softly.

‘I suppose I have,’ Lucy said, ‘but all the same, that shouldn’t stop you from moving forward with your life. Remember, me being here, it was always only going to be temporary.’ That was the truth; it was what she’d signed up for. She had come here for at most two weeks to keep the surgery moving until a locum could be found to slip into the role in a more permanent capacity. Those two weeks had stretched, so soon she would be here almost three months – how on earth had that happened?

‘I suppose, with Jo and all…’ Elizabeth smiled a little sadly. ‘Well, all that you’ve done here… you’ve really done far more than I ever expected. You’ve transformed the whole practice.’ She shrugged. ‘I thought maybe you’d changed your mind.’

‘Oh dear,’ Lucy said. ‘Honestly, I can’t think about anything past Mum and Niall at the moment.’ They were everything to her. They far outweighed any desire to travel or even the notion of heading back to her old job in the real world. ‘Look, at least now you can go to an auctioneer, show them the house, take their advice, and see how it would stack up against what Eric owed.’

‘Yes, I’ll have to make an appointment,’ Elizabeth said faintly.

‘You know this place…’ Lucy said. ‘The surgery, you don’t have to sell it with the house. It’s a separate building entirely, if you block off that one connecting door.’

She looked at Lucy now. The idea of selling on the practice seemed a bit crazy to her. It was being here, meeting people, having some kind of purpose that had really brought Elizabeth out of herself. Why on earth would she want to turn her back on that?

‘I don’t really want to cut my ties with this place,’ Elizabeth said as if she’d been reading her thoughts, but then she lowered her voice. ‘You know, even if I sell the house, big and grand as it is, anyone buying it is going to have to put a new roof on it and do major work inside with replacing the electrics and looking at how the whole house is heated. It’s like an ice box in winter time… in some ways, all I’m selling is an address, a view and maybe, at most, original period details.’ She smiled sadly at that. ‘The thing is, we both know I have to clear off Eric’s debts first and I’ll be lucky to make enough from the sale of the house to do that. Prices down here aren’t what they are in Dublin. If this house was in the city, I could probably set myself up in Monte Carlo for the rest of my days with what it would make.’