Page 11 of The Reno
“Mum,” I warned, “let’s not get into it.”
I’d had this argument with her a million times and I was so tired. Tired of justifying my diagnosis.
“Katherine,” she continued, ignoring my pleas, “you were a bright child. Sure, you had some… organisational challenges. But you were bright, clever. You just didn’t apply yourself.”
Anxiety rose like bile in my throat. My eyes and nose stung with tears.
“Mum, can we please change the subject?” I asked as calmly as I could.
She relented, and we walked in silence for a few moments. We passed a couple hiking back down the hill. Mum and I gave them a courteous nod. I looked up at the clear blue sky, trying to calm my nervous system, which had gone into overdrive.
“Have you called the estate agent?” Mum asked. She probably thought it was a less controversial topic, which made me want to laugh. Or cry. “We can do it remotely, I checked. We can send them some keys. Then, they can value it. I can’t imagine it would get more than what your father bought it for before—” Mum gave a constipated look. “You know.”
Before he diedwas what she meant, but she couldn’t say it. “You know” was the extent of the conversation we’d had about Dad’s death since the funeral. While I empathised that some people felt icky about death, it wasn’t enough for me. I wanted to talk about him. I needed to. I craved to say how I was feeling. I wanted to claw at my skin and scream into the sky. But Mum shut down every attempt I’d made to talk about him, and she was one of the few people who knew Dad. Graham rarely met him. My friends had never met him.
Mum was the only person who could relate to how I felt, but she was content to shove it all under the carpet.
“I haven’t yet, no—”
“Oh, come on, Katherine. You need to move quicker than this. It could take forever to sell that house. Not all housing markets are like the one in London. I imagine it’s a lot slower in the Northwest.”
“Actually, from my research, they are having a bit of a boom at the moment.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You have time to research the housing market in Manchester but no time to call an estate agent?”
“Well—” I took a breath, wondering if she’d interrupt me again. But she didn’t. “The reason I did some research wasbecause I did call the estate agent.”
My mum’s eyes lit up. “Oh, fabulous. Why didn’t you say that?”
“Well, I had an interesting conversation with a chap called John. And he said that because of the market right now, that I could get a lot more for it, if I did it up a bit. You know, a lick of paint. A new bathroom and kitchen, perhaps.” I added the last sentence with such airy grace that I was worried I would fly away.
Mum’s face contorted into confusion. Then repulsion.
“How would you renovate a house two hundred miles away? It would be hell. It’s the kind of thing you need to be there for, making sure everything runs smoothly.”
“Yes. Exactly. I was thinking that perhaps, maybe, I could move up temporarily to oversee the renovation.” I winced, waiting for the onslaught.
Mum gave a peel of laughter, like it was the most ridiculous thing she’d ever heard. She glanced over at me, and her face dropped.
“You can’t be serious.” She sighed like she was tired, and not because of the gradual incline of the slope we were walking up. “Katherine, don’t be ridiculous. Renovate the house, for what? A few more thousand pounds? I can’t imagine you’d get much more back—”
“Well, John said it could be up to seventy thousand pounds more.” My words came fast now, desperate to escape. “And that would get me a flat in a more central location. A bit more central. Not somewhere on the outskirts of Reading—”
“And what is wrong with Reading? There are plentyof houses you could buy here, I’m sure.”
My mum was oblivious. She seemed to think that houses were growing on trees. We were living through a very real housing crisis. And I’d looked at houses in Reading; they were as expensive and competitive to buy as in London. Regardless of whether I picked a small flat in London or a little house in Reading, I needed as much cash as possible to buy.
“It would take me two months—”
“Two months?” she squeaked. “And leave yourjob?” She said it like my job was the be-all and end-all of my life. Like it was my reason for living. And it really wasn’t. I was grateful to have a job that allowed me to hang out with Willa every day and rent a room in London, but I’d always felt I was missing something.
Some greater calling.
“Ah, I see,” Mum said knowingly. “This is another one of your schemes. What was the last one? Calligraphy for weddings, wasn’t it?”
A lump in my throat formed. A shroud of shame hovered over me.
“And the one before that—scented candle making. I think you sold a few of those.”
