The Wife Before Me(43)
They talked about starting a family but they had careers to build before committing themselves to nappies and feeding on demand. Amelia’s public profile had grown after she successfully completed the interior design of a US multinational tech company with a base in Cork. The project attracted the attention of the editor of an architectural magazine, who was interested in doing an interview with her. Other media features followed. So, also, did commissions. Exciting opportunities that reflected her growing reputation. Nicholas’s star was also rising and he appeared regularly on television to discuss investments and the stock market. His down-to-earth approach to the intricacies of choosing the right investment portfolio made him a popular business pundit and he, like Amelia, had acquired a public persona. They were admired for their style and elegance at business functions. Gloss, glitz and colour – they made it look as though it was easy to maintain an idyllic marriage and two demanding careers.
The only problem was Nicholas’s insecurity, living as he was on Amelia’s charity. He had tied up his capital when he sold his apartment to buy into the junior partnership with KHM and it would take another two years before he would see a return on his investment; only then could they move to a new house that was not steeped in another man’s history.
But selling Woodbine was unthinkable to Amelia. Her desire to leave the old house after the death of her father had passed and her love for her childhood home had grown stronger. She wanted their children to play in its spacious rooms and leafy garden, climb the old trees, explore the surrounding fields. After long discussions with Nicholas, who admitted that, despite his reservations, he had also grown fond of Woodbine, they made an appointment to see David Smithson, her father’s solicitor, to have Nicholas’s name added to the house deed.
‘I’m afraid it’s not possible to do that, Amelia.’ David tapped his index nail against his office desk, then, noticing, relaxed his finger. ‘Your father added a codicil to his will. The ownership of Woodbine must remain in your name only.’
‘But that can’t apply to Nicholas.’ She was more surprised than shocked. ‘Why would my father add such a stipulation? I can’t understand his decision.’ But she knew the reason, as did Nicholas, who sat stiffly beside her.
‘He didn’t confide his reasons to me,’ David replied. ‘It wasn’t my business to ask why. The codicil was only to be revealed to you if you made the request you’ve just outlined to me.’
‘Can it be challenged?’ Nicholas asked.
‘Anything can be challenged,’ David replied. ‘But, as the law stands, it was John’s property and he was within his rights to make that decision.’
‘The ownership of our home doesn’t matter,’ she assured Nicholas when they left David’s office. ‘A piece of paper, that’s all it is. Woodbine is our home. It’s as much yours as it is mine.’
‘They’re just words, Amelia.’ Nicholas’s hurt was palpable. ‘They mean nothing. I’d be afraid to put a nail into a wall for fear you’d object.’
‘That’s silly,’ she protested. ‘Maintaining Woodbine is a full-time job. Your input will be just as important whenever we decorate it together.’
Unknown to him, she contacted David to check the date on the codicil. Her father’s signature had been added shortly after that awful night when she had sullied his love for her. How bitter he must have been, how shattered. This guilt, her caul, was she to be bound for ever by its constraints?
She returned from an overnight business trip a month later and discovered that in her absence Nicholas had organised the refurbishment of the old-fashioned bathroom. The antique slipper bathtub with its claw legs had been removed and replaced by a whirlpool bath that bulged outwards from the corner where the spindle-legged cupboard for storing towels used to stand. State of the art, Nicolas said as he bent to demonstrate its swirling effects. The familiar linoleum had been torn up and replaced by shiny marble tiles. A new power shower unit had been installed, along with wall tiles and a panel of blue lights that shone directly on the bath and added a chilling effect to this now unrecognisable bathroom.
Her shock quickly turned to outrage at the decision he had made without consulting her. She would never have agreed to any of this. She shouted him down when he tried to reason with her. Never once losing his patience, he explained how he had hoped to surprise her on her return home. The slipper bath was chipped and fit for nothing but the scrapyard. This new bath with its jacuzzi effects was exactly what they both needed after a stressful day at work. Room for two, he added. If they could bathe together, Amelia would soon overcome her fear of water.
She had climbed mountains, zip lined and bungee jumped, parachuted for charity, hot-air-ballooned for pleasure, but, since her mother’s drowning, she had never gone near the sea. When she was younger, hanging out with Leanne and their wider circle of friends, she would accompany them to the beach on condition that they sunbathed on the sand dunes where the long marram grass hid her view of the waves. Standing under a shower, even all these years after the tragedy, she averted her face from the water; and she kept her hair short so that she could shampoo it as quickly as possible. The idea of sitting in a bath with water gushing from whirlpool jets appalled her. How could Nicholas be so insensitive to her feelings?
He was hurt by her reaction, and bewildered, also. Why was she so annoyed? She had told him to make whatever changes he believed were necessary to Woodbine, and he had believed that the bathroom with its cracked tiles and woodwormed furniture was the best place to begin the renovations.