Page 2 of The Second Chance Supper Club
A few minutes later, with a mug of strong builder’s tea to hand, she took in her new kitchen.
The cupboards were a light-oak shade, the work surfaces a mottled-grey marble effect; she could live with that, but the walls had faded to an aged off-white.
The sash window overlooked a back garden with slightly wilding grass and borders.
The sun was trying to streak in through dusty panes – one more job for the list. Hmm, it could do with a lift in here really.
Perhaps she might change the wall colour to a cheery shade of yellow?
She looked outside to the garden for inspiration.
Oh, yes, perhaps somewhere between a primrose and a daffodil colour.
Let a little light into her life. Why not?
After all, the kitchen had always been one of the most important rooms for her: the heart of the home. She resolved to find a hardware store and buy some paint and brushes, adding this to her ever-growing to-do list.
Gazing out of the window above the sink, with her mug in hand, she then found herself staring at a garden shed.
Her garden shed. It nestled beside a leafy beech hedge where the grass levelled at the top of the rise.
The shed was medium-sized, wooden, and had been painted a pale moss green, quite some time ago by the looks of the cracked and peeling colour.
Hmm, now that might work for storage. Hopefully, it wasn’t too damp in there.
The packing boxes and crate might come in handy at some point in the future, yet they would be out of sight and out of mind there.
With her head still humming with memories, she pictured the shed at No 3 Limestone Lane, Roundhay, Leeds: Trevor’s domain.
Tidy rows of tools, neat stacks of seedling trays on the potting bench, the tomato plants by the glass windows trained on wires in their compost grow-bags.
She had in fact enjoyed the fruits of that particular labour, as a keen cook, and used them to experiment with various Mediterranean flavours and recipes.
With no time like the present, she grabbed the boxes and headed out of the back door, onto a small paved patio area and then up the stone garden steps.
Dishearteningly, the grass was rather unkempt on each side of her, looking more like a dandelion-and-daisy weed meadow.
Up close, the shed’s green paint was peeling heavily, and the middle pane of glass in one of the two front-opening doors had a zig-zag crack in it.
There was a rusty padlock securing the doors together, which on closer inspection was no longer functional, though, luckily for Cath, had seized up in the open position.
Placing the boxes down, Cath removed the padlock, and with a tug, the doors opened outwards with a slight creak.
A musty smell hit her, as she took a small step forward, straight into a dangling cobweb, which startled her, tickling then, eek , sticking to her face.
Oof , oh shit . Her fingers floundered as she hurriedly swiped it aside, hoping there were no straggly legged spiders about to land on her.
She hated spiders … and now there was no Trevor or Adam to catch the hairy little blighters for her.
She pushed on; she’d started this outhouse expedition, so she’d darn well finish it.
On first inspection, the floor space at least looked relatively dry, though up above, several tendrils of ivy had found their way into the shed, pushing through a tiny gap between the slanting roof and the wooden walls.
A few terracotta pots had been left behind on a shelf, along with an old set of hand tools poking out of one of them.
Some bamboo canes were leaning dejectedly in a corner.
She’d learned from the estate agent that an elderly gentleman had lived in the cottage before her, having had to give it up just a few months before, after a bad fall and being too frail to stay on his own.
He had moved into a residential home in the neighbouring town of Kirkton.
It must have been hard for him to leave, she thought, imagining his weathered hands using those tools and tending this garden over the years, nurturing this space.
Oh, he’d surely be cross about the state of the wilding grass – note to self , lawn mower to buy asap .
She’d never really been much of a gardener, except for growing a few potted herbs to cook with – the grass and the shrub borders, well, they had always been Trevor’s domain.
Now she was inside, the shed looked as though it was about to fall apart at its rickety wooden seams. Blimey, there was an awful lot to take on here by herself.
It wasn’t just the old stone cottage to keep up with.
She was the owner of a garden, and a shed, too.
What the hell was she thinking? Doubts didn’t just creep in, they exploded in her mind like popping candy.
Was she up to the task? Would she be able to keep up with it all?
Crikey, she was going to have to up her game, for sure.
Stepping back out into the gentle glow of the April morning sun, she spotted an orange-breasted robin cocking his head at her as he bobbed about the border.
She looked around at the unruly shrubs in need of a prune, wishing her old dad was still about to give advice on the overgrown plants.
Then, she looked down upon her honey-stoned, two-hundred-year-old abode, and thought of this other elderly man, no doubt most reluctant to leave this place, and she made a vow, there and then, that she’d look after this house, his old home, as best she could.
In fact, she’d give it a brand-new chapter – much like herself.