Tilly's End-of-Terrace

From across the street, it was easy to spot that the end-of-terrace house on the north side of the street was empty. And it probably had been so for some time. There were several roof slates cracked or missing, and the guttering at the rather unusual hipped end was hanging precariously. Even without looking inside, I knew that there would be damp. Well ... more than just damp. Water damage. Possibly quite serious water damage.

'What's the story with the end-of-terrace?' I asked the chap who was painting the front door of the house next door.

'You an estate agent?' he asked, looking at me suspiciously.

'A builder,' I said. 'My boys are working on the place across the street. We're putting on an extension out the back. And then we're going to be doing a loft conversion.'

He nodded. 'The woman who lived next door died. Hetty Holborn. A pity. I really liked Hetty. She was a good neighbour, a good sort. But now I gather that her kids are now fighting over the spoils.'

'Well, they should get something done about that roof,' I said. 'Otherwise there'll be no spoils left to fight over.' I was exaggerating, but still ...

The door painter frowned and peered up at the roof.

'You probably can't see from here,' I said. 'But from the roof across the street you can clearly see a number of cracked slates. And a couple missing altogether. And the guttering on the end is only just hanging on. A decent downpour and it could all come crashing down.'

The door painter nodded.

'Is this your place?' I asked.

He nodded again.

'Might pay to have a word with the council,' I said. 'If the water starts getting in next door, it could start coming into your place too.'

'Really?' he said.

'It would depend on the wind. A good nor' easterly ...? But, if it was me, I wouldn't want to take the risk.'

It was about three weeks later; we had the rear extension at the weather-tight stage, and we were working on the loft conversion. 'There's a lady wants to talk to you, boss,' Mo said.

'I'm Tilly,' she said. 'Tilly Green. The chap across the road - Barry - suggested that I should talk to you.'

'Oh?'

'The house on the end belonged to my mother. She left it to me. But my siblings weren't ... umm ... well, you know how it sometimes is. We've never really got on very well - my brother and sister and me. Anyway, we've sorted it out now. I think. But it's taken a while. Barry - next door - tells me that you know what's wrong with the place.'

'Wrong?'

'He said that you know what needs fixing.'

I explained to Tilly that I was only talking about what I could see from across the street.

'Well then, you had better come and have look inside,' she said. 'See what you think.'

As I suspected, there was quite a lot of water damage. 'What are you going to do with this place?' I asked. 'Sell it? Let it? '

'I'm not sure,' Tilly said. 'I probably need to get an estate agent's opinion, I suppose. You know ... market value ... possible rental ... that sort of thing.'

'Well, the roof obviously needs some work. There are a couple of windows that are probably not worth trying to save. And there are three, possibly four, walls that are going to need re-plastering. After that, it really depends on what you want to do with it.

'You'd probably need to redecorate throughout. A fresh coat of paint. Sort out the flooring. As for the kitchen and bathroom ... As I say, it probably depends on what you want to do with the place. It's a good house. It's a very good house. It's just a bit tired.'

'Do you have any idea what it might cost?' Tilly asked. 'To sort it out.'

'I would have thought four or five thousand - obviously a bit more if you were going to change out the kitchen and bathroom.'

'Thank you. I'll talk to a couple of estate agents,' she said.

I wasn't at the Oak Street job for the next couple of days. But when I called in to see how things were going on Friday morning, Mo said that 'that lady' had been looking for me.

'Which lady is that, Mo?'

'The pretty one. End of terrace. She said that she'd come back later. I gave her your phone number anyway,' Mo said. 'Just in case, eh? She seemed quite keen.' And he grinned.

Tilly called about two minutes later. It was as though she had been listening. 'I gather that you were looking for me,' I said.

'I was. Can we get together?'

'I'm across the road from your place now,' I said.

'Excellent. I'll be there in ten minutes.'

When Tilly arrived, I could see why Mo had referred to her as 'the pretty one'. She was looking particularly scrumptious. She certainly knew how to dress.

'I've spoken to a couple of estate agents,' she said. 'Selling or letting would both be quite attractive based on their numbers. But I'm thinking that I might like to live here myself. I think that's what Mum was thinking - the more I think about it. My siblings already own their own homes - well, with a little help from a mortgage or two. I, for a number of reasons, don't. I think that Mum wanted to help me to go on doing what I do and still have a roof over my head.'

'OK,' I said. 'I guess that means a new kitchen and bathroom. And perhaps upgrade the heating system?'

Tilly nodded.

'I suggest we start with the roof,' I said. 'And then we can sort out the damp while you are thinking about the decorating and the kitchen, et cetera.' And then it suddenly dawned on me that we hadn't actually agreed that we would be the ones doing the work. 'Of course, you may have another contractor in mind,' I said. 'I may be getting ahead of myself here.'

'No, no. I've asked around. You and your team have a very good reputation. One of the estate agents thinks that you walk on water.'

'Thank you,' I said. And we shook hands. Although, to be honest, I had been on the verge of giving her a hug. There was just something very huggable about Tilly.

We got the roof sorted out, replaced the guttering on the hipped end and repaired the guttering in a couple of other places. And then Tilly and I had an on-site meeting to discuss 'the owner's wish list'.

'Your mother was well-liked, wasn't she?' I said.

'Yes. I

think

so,' Tilly said cautiously.

'Well, judging from the comments of the people who have stopped by while we've been working here, I think that you can

know

so.'

'That's nice,' she said.

'Now, what are the must-haves and what are the nice-to-haves?'

'Well, if I'm going to live here, I must have somewhere to work,' Tilly said.

'Oh? You work from home. I didn't realise. So, what do we need? A boat-building workshop? A full commercial kitchen? A science lab?'

Tilly laughed. 'Just a room with a desk and space for a printer-cum-copier. Oh, and lots of cupboard space. With shelves. I'm afraid I've never managed to master the paperless office.'

'And what will you do in this, umm, well-papered office?'

'I will write. Mainly books. On the covers of which will be printed the names of other people.'

I must have looked a bit confused.

'I'm a ghost writer,' Tilly said. 'Well ... mainly. I'm trying to do my own stuff, but ghost writing is what pays the bills.'

'And do you have a favourite desk? Or could we build you something to make the most of the space.'

Tilly nodded. 'I like that idea,' she said.

'In that case, we could turn the small bedroom into your workroom. You'd have plenty of space in there.'

The workroom was Tilly's only must-have. And the nice-to-haves were all pretty easy to accommodate.

'If this was my house,' I said as we looked at the kitchen, 'I would be inclined to take out this wall and make a spacious kitchen-diner. It will require a steel, a supporting beam, but you have plenty of ceiling height.'

Tilly stood in the doorway and looked first at the kitchen and then at the dining room, and then at the kitchen again. 'Yes, that would work,' she said. 'Good idea.' And then she said: 'This has the makings of a great team. You suggest things; and I agree.'

'Why don't we just get married?' I said.

'Good idea. What are you doing on Saturday?' And she laughed.

Over the next week I saw Tilly several times as she popped in and out to sort through her late mother's furniture and other possessions. On Wednesday afternoon, I looked in to see how she was getting on.

'I was thinking about you last night,' I said. 'Well ... I was thinking about your house anyway.'

'Oh dear. So near and yet so far away,' Tilly said. 'It's the story of my life.'

We both laughed, and then I explained what I had been thinking about. There was a corridor leading from the landing and running between the bathroom and the main bedroom. On one side there was the door to the bathroom. The other side was just a blank wall, and at the end of the corridor there was an external window.

'At least half of that corridor is wasted space,' I said. 'If we stopped it just past the bathroom door that would leave enough space for an en suite shower room off the main bedroom. And the shower room would have its own window for ventilation.'

'That's an excellent idea,' Tilly said. 'Yes. Let's do it.'

'I told you that we should get married,' I said. And we both laughed again.

We were still standing on the landing, chatting and laughing, when

he

arrived.

'I thought that you said that you were coming to clear out the kitchen cupboards,' he said.

'Oh. Murray. I didn't hear you come in,' Tilly said. 'Jack has just come up with a brilliant idea. We're going to chop off most of this corridor and use the space to create an en suite shower room off the bedroom.'

'Won't that be expensive? Plumbing. All that sort of thing. You don't want to over-capitalise the place. It's just an end-of-terrace. It's not a detached house in the country.'

'It shouldn't cost very much. All the pipework is just through the wall in the family bathroom,' I said.

'Huh.' Murray didn't seem convinced.

'I'll leave you two,' I said. 'I need to go and see what progress the decorators have made across the road.'

I noticed that Tilly was at the house again on Friday, and I popped across the road to let her know that we would be ready to start work on Monday morning.

'Excellent,' she said. 'I think I've pretty much got rid of everything that isn't staying. The skip out the back is overflowing with stuff that probably should have been thrown out years ago. I'm afraid that Mum was a bit of a hoarder. I used to try to encourage her to have a throw-out at least once a year. But I think we often ended up keeping more than we had when we started. I'm still not quite sure how that happened.'

'That chap,' I said. 'Murray.'

'What about him?'

'Is he your accountant?'

Tilly laughed. 'He looks a bit like one, doesn't he?' she said. 'But, no. He's just a bloke I know.' And then she said: 'Although, if you asked him, he'd probably tell you that he's my boyfriend.'

Talk about a bolt from the blue. It hadn't occurred to me that Tilly would be 'spoken for'. I thought that she was footloose and fancy free. 'But he's not?' I said, trying to sound casual and unconcerned.

Tilly hesitated. But then she laughed again. 'No,' she said. 'As I say ... just a bloke I know.'

On Monday, Mo and Dave stripped out the kitchen and the bathroom, and removed the damaged plaster from the walls that were going to need to be re-done. Since we had repaired the roof, the walls seemed to have dried out nicely. Nevertheless, we left a couple of big fan heaters running overnight.

On Tuesday, the steel arrived, and we got to work opening up the kitchen space, before Mo and Dave moved upstairs and set about making space for the en suite shower room.

Murray arrived just as we were cleaning up. 'Did Matilda know that you were taking this wall out?' he asked, standing in the newly-formed gap between what had been the kitchen and the dining room.

'Oh, yes,' I said.

'Isn't this just going to fill the house with cooking smells?'

'Modern extractors are very efficient,' I said. 'And I'm not too sure that many people boil cabbage for three days anymore.'

But Murray didn't seem convinced. 'Huh.'

The following morning, Tilly herself paid a visit. 'This is excellent,' she said. 'Excellent.'

'Yes,' I think it works,' I told her. 'Mind you, that ... umm ... bloke that you know ...,' I said. 'He came by last night, and he wasn't quite so enthusiastic.'

'So I gather,' Tilly said. 'He came to see me too. He said that I should get you to fill it in again. But don't worry. I told him to go and play with his toy soldiers and leave all of this to you and me.'

'Toy soldiers?'

'He belongs to one of those clubs that re-fights old battles with toy soldiers. Or do they re-enact them? I'm not sure. I'd have to look it up.'

'We've also made some progress upstairs,' I said. And then I remembered about the tin box. 'We found it in that little cupboard in the corner of the bedroom. The cupboard was partly built into the wall - which I why it was deeper on the inside than it appeared to be from the outside. I'm afraid that we had to demolish it.'

Tilly looked at the dark green metal box with its flaking gold painted handle and trim. 'Another of Mum's treasures. Probably just throw it in the skip. I don't think it's worth anything, is it?'

'Not sure. I think it has something in it,' I said, giving it a shake. 'And it's locked. I'm wondering if there's a key.'

'There was a small bunch of keys that didn't seem to belong to anything,' Tilly said. 'But I can't remember what I did with them. They may be in the skip already.'

'Well, a good strong screwdriver would probably open it,' I said. 'But it might make a bit of a mess of the box.'

'Nothing ventured. I think the box is well past its best-by date.'

I went and got the biggest screwdriver from the tool bag. 'And you're sure?' I said.

'Yes. Give it a go.'

I thought that the hinges were probably the weakest points, so that's where I started. It took quite a bit of effort but, eventually, the hinges pinged and the contents of the box were revealed: several wads of banknotes bound in rubber bands. There was also a folded sheet of notepaper on which was written a short series of numbers, and then £23,510 and a smiley face.

'Bloody hell. That's Mum's handwriting,' Tilly said.

'Her own private bank?'

Tilly took out one of the wads of notes and removed the restraining rubber bands. 'Well, they look real enough,' she said, frowning.

I picked up the piece of notepaper and looked at it again. 'Did your mother play the lottery by any chance?'

'Oh, yes. Mum liked a flutter. Nothing serious. I think that she won ten quid from time to time. Nothing earth-shattering.'

I nodded. 'Well, I could be wrong, but I think she might have won twenty-three thousand on at least one occasion. I think these are winning lottery numbers.'

'Gosh.'

'I'm not sure if this lot adds up to twenty-three grand. But I suppose it could do.'

And then suddenly a black cloud descended over Tilly. 'Oh, god. I suppose I'll need to tell Simon and Anita. And then we can start fighting all over again.'

'Simon and Anita?'

'My brother and sister.'

'Perhaps you should talk to a solicitor first,' I suggested.

Tilly continued to frown. But then she said: 'Yes. I suppose you're right.'

'And, in the meantime, you might want to put that somewhere safe.'

'In my knickers drawer?'

I laughed. 'Up to you,' I said. 'But I was thinking of something a little more heavy duty. Perhaps take it to the bank and see if they'll put it in their safe for you. Or your solicitor, for that matter. I'm that he or she will have a safe.'

We had another productive day, and it was about a quarter to five, we were just tidying up and getting ready to call time, when Tilly phoned.

'Well, Gillian - that's my solicitor - says that it's up to me,' Tilly said. 'Mum's will clearly states that I am to receive the house

and its contents

. Gillian's opinion is that Mum's handwriting establishes that the box and its contents were hers, and she is of the opinion that they form part of the contents of the house. But, as you know, my siblings challenged the will on the basis that my share was greater than theirs - and that was before they knew about this little pile of cash.'

'But you sorted that,' I said.

'Yes. I paid each of them nine thousand pounds.'

'Oh. I didn't realise. Nine grand. That sounds pretty generous.'

'If I hadn't, I think we would still have been arguing about it in five years' time. What do you think I should do?'

I was a bit surprised that Tilly was asking my opinion. We were getting on very well as far as the house was concerned, but still ... family matters?

'I guess what I'm asking is: what would

you

do?' Tilly said. 'You seem pretty sensible about things like this.'

What would I do? It was a good question. 'Was your mother of sound mind when she died?'

'Oh, yes. She still had all her marbles. It was her lungs that gave out, not her brain.'

'Well, in that case, I see no reason not to think that she knew that the money was there, and that she intended you to have it. And if mentioning it to your brother and sister is likely to cause further unpleasantness, I would be tempted to just stay schtum. But that's just me.'

'Thank you,' Tilly said. 'Thank you. Yes.'

The following morning, Tilly and I were scheduled to go and visit a couple of trade wholesalers from where we could select some kitchen and bathroom units. But just after seven, Tilly called to say that she had an urgent editing job that she needed to do. 'Could we postpone until late morning?' she said. 'Say half past ten? Eleven? Something like that.'

I told her that would not be a problem, and I would pick her up from her flat at eleven.

In my experience, taking a client to visit a wholesaler usually goes one of two ways: either we find what we want in a relatively short time, or we (that is to say 'the client') spends hours looking and still has trouble making a decision. With Tilly, the whole process was remarkably painless: I made a few suggestions; and Tilly agreed with them.

'I thought that making these sort of decisions was supposed to take weeks,' Tilly said, as we drove away.

'Believe me, with some people it does,' I said. 'Perhaps we can use up some of the time that we have saved by having a quick bite of lunch. Have you tried The Black Cat Café?'

'I have,' she said. 'It was one of Mum's favourites.'

'Black Cat it is then.'

I got to know Louise, one of the café's owners, when we had been giving the place a major makeover. 'Hello,' she said. 'I didn't think that you ever had time for lunch.'

'Special occasion,' I said. 'I finally have a client who doesn't keep changing her mind.'

'Hey, it wasn't me,' Louise said. 'You can blame Andre for all the changes. He's the one who can never make up his mind.'

I introduced Louise and Tilly to each other, and Louise found us a table by the window.

'I've seen you in here before, haven't I?' Louise said.

Tilly nodded. 'I used to come in with my mother. Unfortunately, she's died.'

'Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. I liked your mother. She was very nice.'

'Yes. I thought so too,' Tilly said.

Tilly and I both ordered the Devilled Chicken Sandwich: thin slices of chicken breast, lightly marinated in lemon juice and lots of freshly-ground black pepper, grilled, and then served on lightly toasted Panini with a sauce of mustard, chilli, and thyme. Delicious.

'I suppose that I had better start packing up my flat,' Tilly said.

'Well, all going well, we are going to be finished even sooner than we thought.'

Tilly smiled. 'It'll be nice to have my own place. The flat I'm in at the moment is quite nice. But it's not mine.'

'I know what you mean. The thing about doing a ground-up renovation is that you can have what you want the way you want it. Well ... within reason.'