Page 16 of Bargaining

“It will get easier. Just take one day at a time.” Platitudes, but she wasn’t interested in anything else I could offer. “Call me if you want. Any time.”

“Call you?” She eyed me with a mix of confusion and despair, as though waking from a bad dream to something worse. “You think you can ghost me for twelve years and then turn up here like nothing happened?”

No. I’m under no illusions about that.“I’m here now. I can be here if you want to talk or if you need anything. Anything at all. I want to help you, Charlotte.”

She chuffed out a faint humorless laugh. “You can help me by leaving me alone. Goodbye, Cole. Have a pleasant life.”

Chapter 7

Charlotte

Six months later

“Tall ceilings,” the woman remarked.

She hadn’t taken her shoes off. Nor had her husband. It made my teeth itch. Dad had hated shoes in the living room.

“Yes. Tall,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say, and I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to be giving a sales pitch. Tiff had coached me on some choice lines, but considering I wanted these people out of my house as quickly as possible, it was probably better to keep my mouth shut.

The man wandered to the French doors and peered through the smudges in the glass at the back garden. Once upon a time, Dad had sat out there on sunny days with the radio on and his book of crossword puzzles. The man’s bored eyes glided over Dad’s antique roses, the bird table, and the shed. He appeared to be counting the cracks in the paving flags.

The pond had been home to Dad’s koi carp, sparkling with flashes of gold as one swam near the surface. Now, algae and leaf debris floated on the dirt. It was another job for my list.

“We’ll have to dredge that pond.” The woman wrinkled her nose as though this small body of water had personally offended her.

I hadn’t asked their names, and I didn’t care enough to ask now.

“And get it paved out front to fit both cars on the drive,” the man said.

My stomach dropped. Dad had worked so hard on his beautiful hydrangeas. I’d done my best to keep them going. I made to protest, but they disappeared into the kitchen as though they already owned the place.

The woman’s eyes roamed over the breakfast bar with disinterest. She hammered a fist on the wall that partitioned the kitchen from the dining room. “We can knock through and make it open plan. It will be a great space for entertaining.”

Ridiculous idea.That was a structural wall. They’d knock it through and the entire house would fall down. With any luck, they’d still be inside at the time of collapse.

The man sighed and glanced at the battered kitchen island. “I still think we’d be better with a newbuild.”

The woman shook her head. “I want character. This place actually feels like a home.”

Because it is a home. My family’s home.Every scratch and dent in this place told a story. These strangers wouldn’t appreciate that. Who did they think they were? Walking in here with their dirty shoes, rubbing their greedy hands together, thinking about lowballing us on an offer. I wouldn’t be accepting a pound below the asking price, that was for sure. Tiff had definitely let the estate agent underprice us.

I turned my face to the kitchen window so the intruders in Dad’s house wouldn’t catch my irritation. There was no reason to dislike these people so intensely, other than that they didn’t deserve this house. The sooner we got this over with, the better.

Squeezing around the kitchen island past them, I ushered them back through the hallway. “You probably want to see the bedrooms.”

They ambled up the stairs. The woman glanced at Dad’s stair lift. “Will you be getting rid of that or is that our responsibility to remove it?”

It was on my list of the million jobs I had to do to get the house ready. “The company will come and collect it.”

“Will you leave any of the furniture?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.” I’d have to, otherwise I’d be trying to ram it all into the one-bedroom flat I’d found to rent. But it was hard to even know where to start. Most of it was so old-fashioned, it wouldn’t get a good price second-hand, but I couldn’t bear to throw it away.

I hung back on the landing while the couple surveyed the bedrooms and the bathroom. The woman nodded enthusiastically when she saw the maroon bathroom units.

“I saw something like this on Instagram the other day. The retro aesthetic is a vibe.”

They probably thought I was out of earshot, but I caught the man’s sarcastic reply. “Sure. I wouldn’t change a thing.”