Page 69 of The Art of Loving You

‘We don’t have to do this today, if you’re not ready,’ he said gently.

No time like the present,Jack would have said.

‘It’s okay. I’m being—’

‘Never apologise for your feelings, Libby,’ Noah said. ‘Christ, I don’t know how you’ve coped. Jack going out for a Lemsip and then… it’s a lot.’

‘I’m not always sure if I am coping.’

‘You’re going to have highs and lows. Grief is a very personal experience. We don’t have to tear everything down to start building it back up.’

I wasn’t sure whether he was talking about the house, or about me. Either way it was reassuring.

We’d take it slowly.

Square by square.

‘Socks?’ I called as I clattered my keys into the china bowl. ‘My cat,’ I explained to Noah.

‘Thank goodness for that. If you’d started talking to inanimate objects I’d be worried.’

‘Are you hungry? Shall we eat first?’

‘Let’s pop the salads in the fridge. I can’t wait to have a look around, this place is fabulous.’

‘Why have you got an old skittle on your windowsill?’ The question drew me away from my bleak thoughts.

‘That was a housewarming gift from Sid. This was his house once.’ I told Noah how we’d met Sid and the story of the beer bottle and skittle.

‘He sounds a real character.’

‘He is, if a tad too optimistic. He said this place just need a bit of tarting up.’

‘Let’s see what we can do, shall we?’

‘I don’t know where to begin.’

‘Why don’t you fetch a pen and pad and we can make a list.’

‘I love a list.’ It was familiar, cheering.

Armed with a notebook I led Noah upstairs and into what had once been Norma’s hobby room. Sid had said that she’d sit on her rocking chair, unfinished quilt draped across her lap, gazing out across the fields as she stitched together her memories.

‘If we do this room first there’ll be somewhere for Alice, my sister, and the baby to come and stay. She’s pregnant.’

‘That’s something to look forward to,’ Noah said. ‘I always wanted to be an uncle.’ I knew he was thinking of Bethany.

He paced over to the window. ‘This is a lovely big space. Nice and light. That looks like an original ceiling rose.’ He crouched down. ‘Do you mind if I peel off a bit of wallpaper?’

‘No.’

The strip he tugged at came away easily in his hand, plaster crumbling to the floor.

‘Thought so, it’ll need plastering. Can I have a wander round upstairs?’

‘Go ahead.’ While he was gone I sat on the window seat, the lemon-checked cushion faded and flattened with age, and I wondered if Norma had made that too. I gazed down at the tangled garden below and while I waited for Noah to clatter back down the stairs I turned to a fresh page in the notebook and began to sketch some plans for the outside.

‘It’s a bit of a mess up there,’ Noah said when he returned. ‘You’ve got a leak, I’m sorry. So the first thing to do is to get someone to look at the roof before it causes irreparable damage. There’s some mould too which we can try to treat; it might only be a recent thing because of the rain coming in, but we should get a professional to take a look. Structurally, otherwise it seems sound. You said you had a full survey so there shouldn’t be anything too frightening to tackle. There’s a lot of scope upstairs if you wanted to open the centre. Some of the rooms are big enough to add an en-suite or you could knock down some internal walls and—’

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