Unspoken: A story of secrets, love and revenge T. Belshaw (good books to read for beginners txt) 📖

calling for no other reason than to hear my posh telephone voice. She used to get me to use it in her bedroom when we were having a catch up. She would be Lady Agatha of Christie, calling to speak to her literary agent about her latest novel. I would pretend to be the agent Blossom Flowers, and we’d spend hours laughing as we invented characters and absolutely horrendous ways to kill them off. My favourite being arsenic used as an enema.

I picked out a local building firm called M. Hart and sons, firstly because they were local, and secondly because of a recommendation from Frank who had done some labouring for them in the past. Mr Hart was a difficult man to catch up with and I finally got in touch by ringing in the evening. He sounded a nice man, who told me he always prioritised local customers and after hearing my heartfelt plea about the reason I needed the work doing as quickly as possible, promised to visit on Saturday morning to assess the situation, and price up the job.

I can honestly say I had never been so excited about anything in my life, even the telephone installation paled into insignificance. I could see an end to sitting in a draughty kitchen during a freezing cold winter, or taking a bath in summer when the lads worked late and my father, along with Barney or one of the other workmen, could just walk in while I was stark naked. I took to locking the back door before I got in the bath but they would just look through the window and tap on it asking to be let in. It was amazing how many important discussions had to be made on a Friday evening before the lads went home for the night. I couldn’t bathe any later than nine, because it took an age to get my curls dry and I had to be up again at five the next morning. In the end I used to place four kitchen chairs around the bath in a square, and hang towels over them so that it was harder to see into the bath tub.

Mr Hart was a short, white-haired sixty-year-old with a broad chest, wide shoulders and a weather-beaten face. His jacket was daubed with old plaster and paint, he wore a similarly decorated pair of brown corduroy trousers. In contrast, his black boots looked relatively new and had been recently polished.

I had already hosed down the yard as I waited expectantly for him to arrive but he still picked his way carefully across the cobbles until he came to a halt next to the outside toilet. The building had been bolted onto the farmhouse back at the turn of the century, but the actual lavatory had been replaced in the twenties. The toilet had originally been part of a larger store house and my grandfather had divided it in two so as not to lose all of the storage capacity. We kept lengths of metal pole and fence posts in there along with rolled up, wire mesh fencing and barbed wire. Mr Hart, or Michael, as I was asked to call him, opened up the doors to both sides of the extension, then asked to see the parlour. He took off his coat and hung it on the gate post of the new piggery, and rolled up his sleeves, revealing thick forearms and standout veins.

Miriam, who was in the kitchen, whispered that he looked so fit and strong, he must even have muscles in his hair.

I pointed at him as he opened the door to the parlour and winked at Miriam. She blushed and rushed through to the front room to see to my father although she had only finished changing him half an hour before. We had now resorted to using terry towelling baby nappies on him instead of underpants.

Michael wasn’t in the parlour long. He pulled out his measuring tape and asked me to hold one end as he took measurements and jotted the results down in a thick, well-thumbed notepad with the stump of a pencil he kept behind his ear.

He went back outside again and we did similar measurements on the old lavvy and wire-store. He carried a wooden ladder from the barn and examined the slate roof before removing his hat, scratching his head, and pronouncing on his thinking.

‘We can do this job, one of two ways, Mrs Mollison,’ he said.

I almost corrected the name but bit my tongue in time.

‘We can revert this block back to its original size by knocking out the dividing wall, and build the bathroom out here, the drains and water supply are already in place, so that would save a big job trying to install them in the parlour.’

‘But it’s so cold in the lavatory, the pipes freeze up and the drains get blocked from time to time.’

‘All drains do,’ he said. ‘It’s what they do best.’ He scratched his head again, then went back and looked into the parlour from the kitchen window. Miriam, who had just returned to the kitchen, suddenly found the need to be elsewhere.

He seemed to be having a mental debate with himself as he looked back and forth between the parlour and outbuilding. ‘This way would definitely be easier, cheaper and a lot less disruptive, Mrs Mollison.’

‘Call me Alice,’ I said.

Michael gave me the thumbs up.

‘Well, Alice, as I see it. Out here, we have good, strong, double brick walls, the dividing wall will only be single brick, so we can knock it down in no time. We can insulate the inside and plaster it up. We can even build in a window to help ventilate the place. The parlour would take a lot more sorting out. We’d need to fit drains, water pipes, and get ventilation through the wall to the outside, but we can’t, because this (he pointed to the outbuilding) is in the way.’

‘I understand, and I’m