He stood back, letting his heart rate slow, scanning the building itself. Was it possible that Seaspray had once been two properties, not the large pile it was now?
He made his way along the wall to an area of ivy he hadn’t cleared yet. There was no sign of another door and the stone he could see seemed consistent all the way along. That still didn’t mean it couldn’t once have been one property divided into two.
He picked his way carefully around the side of the house, ducking under gunnera leaves and through the wreckage ofthe sunroom. He didn’t quite know what he was looking for. There was a rear door that led into the kitchen. Theonlykitchen, as far as he knew.
He skirted the building, noting it had three chimney stacks – also not unusual for a property of its size and age. Finally, he turned along the far end of the house where the hedges touched the outer wall and he had to stoop beneath their foliage to squeeze along the other side of the building.
There was an oil storage tank at the side which he fought his way past and finally reached the front garden again after his tour.
Seaspray seemed to be one big house from the outside, so why did it have ‘Rosewarne’ written by the door?
He hadn’t been inside the property since the builders’ visits, so he fetched a hard hat from the caravan and unlocked the front door. The place smelled musty, but it wasn’t as gloomy as it had once been now that some of the windows were free of foliage.
His clearance work enabled him to see the interior far more clearly than when he’d first arrived. There was only one staircase going up to the first floor, but it was offset a little to the left, dividing the house into two halves – nothing unusual for a double-fronted house.
To the left of the hall, the largest of two reception rooms had an original granite fireplace from the early nineteenth century and a slate floor. Using his torch, he illuminated cornices around the ceilings and a moulded plaster centrepiece still held a dangling naked light bulb. The floor was still in good shape too – he could save all those features – then hisbrief moment of satisfaction sagged again as he reminded himself of the reason behind his search.
On the right side of the hall, the main feature of the smaller sitting room, a 1950s fireplace, was a total eyesore. It was blackened from use, and judging by the few sticks of furniture still remaining, this had been Walter’s sole living space until he’d had to move into a nursing home over a decade before. Prior to that, the solicitor executors had surmised that the property had been subject to many years of neglect, which was how it had come to be in this sorry state.
Ruan shone his torch into a darker corner of the room, spotted what looked like a rectangular panel in the wall and swore loudly.
A pigeon flew out of the hearth, its wings almost brushing Ruan’s head. The shock made him stumble over a piece of rotting lino. He shone his torch along the floor, noticing that the lino was raised in a strip.
He scuffed it with his toe and it disintegrated. He looked upwards at the ceiling and through a hole in the plaster, glimpsed a joist running along it that must have been used to hold the ceiling up after a supporting wall had been removed.
It looked like the room had been altered at one time – that the layout might have been changed. But the house must be getting on for two hundred years old; it was bound to have had some modifications, but could one half once have been Tammy’s cottage, while the other belonged to someone else?
Ruan shone his torch at the rectangular panel in the wall. The wallpaper was peeling off and he pulled another stripaway to reveal a bricked-up doorway that might once have led up to a staircase. He lowered his torch, the beam pointing downwards as his shoulders slumped.
Pieces of the puzzle dropped into place, each one crushing his hopes and adding to his sense of dismay.
Seaspraycouldhave been two houses.
Tammy had told him that she’d hated living somewhere without a view of the sea. That was common enough for anyone living in Cornwall, apart from the fact that she’d said she’d gone to the local primary school near Seaspray. How had he never connected that with his house?
Immediately he answered his own question: because she’d explicitly said she’d lived in a two-bedroom cottage called Rosewarne and never mentioned a five-bedroom house called Seaspray.
He himself had actively avoided telling her anything about the house and been deliberately vague about his location because he was too embarrassed to reveal his good fortune and risk alienating her.
‘Argh.’ He groaned out loud but took a breath. This wasn’t the time for panic. He had to deal with the situation logically.
His spirits lifted slightly. There was still the slim possibility he was mistaken but he had to find out. On Monday he would phone the solicitors who’d acted as executors for Walter’s estate. When they’d contacted him with the initial news, they’d only informed him that he’d inherited the property and where it was.
It wasn’t like a normal conveyancing case where hehimself would have looked into the past history of the house if he were acting on behalf of the purchasers. He also hadn’t got round to contacting the Land Registry and transferring ownership of the place to his name or he’d probably have found out more about the history. He’d been too busy changing his job, selling his own flat, and shipping his life to Cornwall while being dazzled by his good fortune. Once he’d arrived, he’d been finding his feet at work, coping with the change, and then he’d met Tammy …
If hehadinherited Rosewarne, he had to do something about it. This was the place that had ruined Tammy’s father, and even though Ruan wasn’t directly responsible for stealing her inheritance, he’d profited from her loss. He’d taken possession of the beloved childhood home that had meant so much to her and her father and encapsulated so many memories of her childhood, both bitter and sweet.
He should have told her exactly where he was living from the moment they met, even if he hadn’t known it was her house. He should have taken her there the first chance he got because now she would never believe he hadn’t known all along.
CHAPTER THIRTY
This was the one. The final installation and the one closest to her heart.
Tammy centred herself, focusing on the natural environment before she started her dad’s sunrise tribute.
With her van in for repair until Tuesday, Davey and Breda had given her a lift and were somewhere up above, knowing she’d rather be alone for this one. She guessed Ruan must be up there too, having arranged to meet her after the installation was done. Although she loved being with him, she was glad that he wasn’t there as a distraction.
Even though it was late afternoon, it was still very warm and she was in shorts and a vest top, glad of the damp sand and shallow pools to cool her feet. A small group had gathered on the beach, kept at a safe distance by the rope cordon and steward, his orange hi-vis at odds with the landscape.
