Page 62 of Her Fixer Upper

Craig gave a heavy sigh. ‘Let me run you through some other security checks, and I’ll see if we can find you that way,’ he offered eventually.

After he’d extracted a huge amount of personal information from me, his voice changed.

‘O-kay.’ He paused and I could hear the sound of him tapping on his keyboard again. ‘Let me put you on hold while I check something. Two minutes,’ he said, not giving me a chance to respond before a tinny version of the James Bond theme tune started playing from the receiver. I drummed my fingers on the desk, wishing I’d brought my phone downstairs with me to charge. I still hadn’t managed to get in touch with Charlie to warn him about what had happened. And the fact that I hadn’t heard from him yet was making me worried for his safety too, although the obvious explanation, which caused me a different kind of angst, was that he’d stayed at Serena’s overnight. But if he returned this morning and saw the state of the house, he’d be in for a shock. I needed to let him know that I was okay, even if the house wasn’t.

‘Miss Hutchinson, are you still there?’ Craig’s voice had changed to one of sympathetic patience. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you, but you don’t have an insurance policy with us.’

The words made no sense.

‘I’m sorry, can you repeat that?’

He spoke the same phrase back at me, but I still couldn’t figure out what he meant.

‘But of course we have a policy. I have the details here. I’m really meticulous when it comes to paperwork, and there’s no way we would have moved in without getting the appropriate insurance. Could it be with a sister company instead, perhaps? I’m reading this piece of paper here, and it says ‘Quotation for building and contents insurance’.’

Speaking slowly and carefully, he explained exactly what had happened. ‘You approached us for a quotation, which we provided, then we sent you the paperwork to complete. But it was never returned to us. Cover is only in place once the forms have been filled out and the money has been paid.’

‘There must be some mistake, I’ll call you back.’

I hobbled upstairs as fast as I could manage and rescued my phone, ignoring the half a dozen messages and missed calls that had landed since it started charging, and scrolled through the neatly labelled folders in my email inbox to the one called ‘Insurance’. There were copies of the life insurance we’d had to take out as a condition of getting the mortgage, and the insurance for Charlie’s car after he’d insisted on adding me to his policy as a named driver, even though I was yet to take him up on his offer to lend the vehicle. Also in the folder was the paperwork for the house insurance, ready to be filled out. But when I searched my sent items for the completed forms, there was nothing there. Finally, with growing horror, I went into my drafts folder and scrolled through the dozen or so incomplete emails lurking there, forgotten about. And I found it. The paperwork, all filled out, but never actually sent off.

I felt physically sick. I stared at the draft email, willing it to be a figment of my imagination. And then I searched back through my emails again, in case I was mistaken. Finally, I checked my banking apps, hoping that I’d see regular payments to the insurers from either my personal account or the joint one that Charlie and I had set up to deal with house issues. But there was nothing in either. How had I been so stupid as to let this happen? Why hadn’t I noticed that the email hadn’t been sent, or that we were slightly better off at the end of each month than we should have been because the insurance direct debit wasn’t being taken out of the account? How had I let this nightmare happen?

There was a light tap on the door, and Sheila stuck her head around it. Before she could speak, Ted had scurried through the gap, his claws clicking as he ran downstairs.

‘Aw, your little dog knows Charlie’s in the kitchen, love,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind telling you that he was in a bit of a state when my husband found him. We were looking out for his car, you see. He thought you were trapped in the house because he couldn’t get through to you, and was about to call the fire brigade, only Frank told him you were here first. I can’t tell you how relieved he looked.’

His relief would be short-lived when he realised what I had done, or rather failed to do. I nodded numbly. ‘Thanks, Sheila. I’ll be down in a minute. I’ll just gather my stuff together.’

‘No rush. I suggest he takes you to the hospital to get that foot of yours looked at. It looks very painful. Do you want me to send him up to help you? I would offer myself but I’m not as strong as I look, I’m afraid.’

‘I’ll manage,’ I insisted. I wanted to postpone the inevitable horror of the reunion with Charlie for as long as I could. I was so ashamed of myself. I couldn’t bear the thought of how much pain I was about to inflict upon him. Because by failing to insure our cottage, I’d single-handedly destroyed both our futures. There would be no chance now of us selling up with a modest profit and moving on. And even being able to stay put seemed unlikely. We’d be lucky if the destruction from the storm hadn’t condemned the building, as well as wiping most of the value off the house. All the money, all the hard work, all the love we had poured into Oak Tree Cottage over the last few months, it was all meaningless. Because we were now back to where we started. No, we weren’t even at that place because the house had a dirty great big tree through half of it, destruction where the kitchen was meant to be, and devastation instead of the second bedroom. And we’d still have a mortgage to pay on it, regardless of its state.

I was fixating on the money side of things because it was a tangible concept. But there was so much more to it than that. Despite the current condition of our relationship, Charlie and I had had some very happy times in that house. We’d rekindled a friendship, and I’d found something so much more. In Charlie I had found the perfect foil. He was calm where I was stressed, he was brave where I sometimes would hold back. But during the months that we’d spent together, I liked to think I’d grown as a person. He helped to bring out the best in me, not by making me dependent on him, but by allowing me the space to see certain qualities in myself, and feel confident enough to bring them to the fore. We’d bought a house, but together we’d made it a home. Until I’d gone and messed it all up.

There was no point in dawdling and putting off the dreaded moment any longer. Steeling myself for what was about to happen, I slowly and steadily made my way down the stairs to where Charlie was waiting for me in the kitchen.

‘Freya, thank goodness you’re all right,’ he said, rushing towards me, then stopping halfway across the room when he saw the awkwardness of my movements.

‘What happened to your foot? Did you get trapped? Why didn’t you call me as soon as the storm hit?

‘Too many questions,’ I said, as he wrapped me in a big bear hug, holding me tight, as if wanting to reassure himself that I was really there.

I held myself tense, not daring to allow myself to relax into his arms. He wouldn’t be hugging me like this if he knew what had happened.

‘I think we should go back to the cottage now,’ I said eventually, knowing that I couldn’t put off the dreaded moment any longer.

After what felt like forever, but also didn’t feel long enough, he loosened his grip, although he then looped his arm through mine.

‘Let me help you, lovely,’ he said, the affectionate term feeling so undeserved.

‘You’re both welcome to stay here if it helps,’ offered Sheila. ‘It’s nice having some young people around the place. We’ve been saying how good it has been to have you in the village, neighbours who care so much about the place. We always thought it was such a shame that Oak Tree Cottage was allowed to get into the state it did. All it needed was a little love in the place.’

‘Thank you, but you’ve been more than kind already,’ I said, before Charlie could say any different. ‘We’ll be okay.’ I was fairly sure that was a lie.

We made our way slowly down the lane, Ted sticking closely to our heels, not wanting to be left behind. When we got back to Oak Tree Cottage, we both stood in stunned silence, surveying the damage. The front and right-hand side of the house looked pretty much as normal, but the back left-hand side of the building was a different story, the house’s innards exposed to full view thanks to the tree-shaped hole in its fabric. The curtains in Charlie’s room were gently flapping in the breeze, but the window they normally surrounded was smashed straight through. Vaguely I wondered if the fact that the tree had missed the corner of the house was a good thing, some distant memory from school physics classes about structural integrity striking a chord. That would be one of many things we’d have to investigate. If we could afford to.

‘You should have rung me,’ repeated Charlie. ‘I know we’d had words in the morning, but I hope you know that I’ll always be there for you in a crisis, Freya.’

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