Ashes

By Philip Hemplow

Patricia’s life has fallen apart. Her son, Noah, is in a Russian prison, framed for a crime he didn’t commit. Her husband has abandoned her, and mounting legal costs have left her broke. In desperate need of funds to pursue Noah’s appeal, she takes a job supervising the renovation of Gaunt House, an Elizabethan ruin on the North York Moors. When a corpse and a diary are discovered in the rubble, she begins to investigate the house’s tragic history—and finds that the past, and the dead, are closer than they seem.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Hemplow
• Release date: Mar 21, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005504045

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Ashes

by Philip Hemplow

copyright 2014 by Philip Hemplow

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronical or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system without prior written permission of the author. Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.

All characters in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Cover art by Jordan Saia http://www.jordansaia.com

Ashes

by Philip Hemplow

They want to call it ‘Phoenix House’.

Of course they do.

You know, the whole ‘rising from the ashes’ thing.

Yes, I get the symbolism. It’s a little on-the-nose, don’t you think?

The lawyer shrugged. Americans, he sniffed, by way of explanation.

Patricia turned away from him and looked out across the acres of sandgrass and glowing, magenta heather lining the valley below. In the distance, scores of sheep shuffled about the lower reaches, mowing the slopes with quiet dedication. A hawk sailed overhead, turning lazy circles in the warm, rising air as it scanned fields of fluorescent oil seed rape for movement.

The valley floor was dotted with old, stone barns, every single one of them converted into a residence now, with expensive cars parked outside. It was a postcard picture, an advertiser’s view of Yorkshire, and Patricia resented the tranquillity. It didn’t match her mood.

Where she was standing, in the shadow of a broken wall, suited her better. Even in the brilliant spring sunshine, it seemed like a bleak and forsaken place. There were no other people, no chattering birds, not so much as a solitary insect to break the silence. Behind them, gorse and bracken stretched for miles, petering out a respectful distance from the plot. The ground beneath their feet just an acidic dough of stone and clay.

Why isn’t the site completely overgrown?

The lawyer shrugged again and pointed to the ruined wall behind them. "There’s some lichen on the stonework that’ll need cleaning off. I don’t know why there’s nothing else here. Something to do with the fire, I expect—probably ruined the soil. You’re lucky though: they don’t want a garden, just a gravel courtyard. Apparently you don’t need a garden, with a view like this. They, ah…they haven’t seen it in winter."

What about utilities?

The lawyer blew out his cheeks. The plans call for a cess pit and oil-fired heating. Telecoms can be run up from the road. They want a wind turbine for electricity, with a backup generator. His wife’s a bit ‘green’. She wanted to go with solar, until I pointed out that this is Yorkshire and she’d be lucky to pull down enough wattage to boil an egg. Wind we can do, though. Plenty of breeze coming in off the North Sea.

You got planning permission for a wind turbine, here? Patricia was surprised.

Oh, yes, confirmed the lawyer. The council were thrilled when they found out a celebrity was planning to move in. The locals could see the sense in it, too. The valley and the village are mainly full of second homes and stockbrokers these days, so I dare say our clients won’t be short of dinner invitations when they arrive.

Water?

There’s a well, somewhere—or the remains of one—but it’s dry. Irrigation down the valley, apparently: drains what little groundwater manages to penetrate all this clay. The surveyor says you need a new borehole to tap the aquifer.

How deep?

I think he said seventy-five metres.

They lapsed into silence once more. Patricia stepped away from the lawyer and moved closer to the ruins, keeping a careful eye on the ground in case that well was anywhere in front of her.

The surviving walls still looked solid, she mused, trailing her fingers across the weathered sandstone. Acid rain had done its insidious damage, leaving the brickwork as pockmarked and powdery as a Renaissance syphilitic, but they had been built to last.

The walls stay? she asked, trying to recall the architect’s plans.

Er, yes, confirmed the lawyer. Yes, the idea is to integrate them into the new building, all the bits that can be salvaged. The cellars, too. They collapsed in the fire. They’ll need re-excavating. Probably the first order of business, I would have thought.

Patricia nodded, picking at a patch of moss that clung stubbornly to the stonework.

So, said the lawyer, anxious to wrap things up, can I tell Mr Liversedge that you’ll take it? The job? It’s good money.

Patricia succeeded in prising the plug of moss out of its crevice, and flicked it into the mud. It was a decent opportunity and she needed something. Even so, she was reluctant, resentful of having to spend time and thought on something as trivial as a rich man’s house. She could feel something though, tugging at her will, undermining her as she stood there considering her options.

I suppose so, she said at last. Need me to sign anything?

The lawyer seemed relieved. Excellent. Fantastic news! Er, Mr Liversedge has all the paperwork back at the office. Brief, contracts, permissions, plans, insurance—I’ve got copies of everything for you. There’s a discretionary bonus if the place is finished in time for Christmas. The client is keen to be able to spend the holidays in their new house. Means a very tight schedule, of course. Just something to bear in mind. I know you’ll do your best.

He gave her an ugly, ingratiating smile. Patricia turned her back on him and started walking back to the cars.

I’ll follow you, she called back over her shoulder, without waiting for him to catch up. If there was one thing she’d had enough of, it was lawyers.

*

People are looking for more fuel economy these days.

Not people who buy cars like this! Patricia gave her anger full rein, glad of a reason to lose her temper. It’s not even done five thousand miles!

Well, the new model’s out in a few months. It’s driving second-hand prices down—and there’s the colour, of course.

What, white?

People don’t like white cars: too hard to keep clean.

Bollocks!

Twenty-four thousand is really the best I can offer you, with the economy the way it is.

Patricia was speechless. The Evora had cost her well more than twice that only a year before. The dealership would sell it on for, what, forty thousand plus? Every dealer she had spoken to so far had low-balled her, evidently sensing her desperation. She wondered if she would have been offered a better deal if she was a man, and suspected she would.

Twenty-four thousand would keep the lawyers going for a couple of months though, and she had no other assets to trade in. The Lotus had been her one extravagance, bought with the completion bonus on her last job, a present to herself after Noah left home. At the time, the purchase had felt somehow symbolic, but of what she hadn’t been sure. Letting it go felt symbolic too, but it had to be done.

On the other side of the forecourt was an ageing, pre-facelift SEAT Leon. Her very first car had been a Leon. It was even the same colour. She forced herself to swallow her indignation and glowered at the dealer.

Twenty-four thousand, plus that SEAT, she demanded.

*

She missed the Evora every mile of the drive home. The Leon felt heavy and bad-tempered. It responded to her steering adjustments with reluctance, and the way it gathered momentum when she put her foot down felt sluggish. She left it in the driveway. It didn’t deserve to sit in the garage.

Her maid had been, leaving the house smelling of furniture polish and detergent. Patricia headed straight for the kitchen and poured a glass of wine from the bottle in the fridge. She downed half of it in one gulp and topped it up again before putting the bottle back. It had been a trying day. They all were, these days. She was starting to doubt she had the strength to keep up the fight.

Taking a seat at the kitchen table, she booted up her laptop. She briefly considered taking it into the front room, where she could lie on the sofa and relax, but decided against it. She had hardly been in the front room since the day she kicked Henry out of the house. Sitting in there, seeing his empty chair, seeing the things they had bought together, was something she could do without. The kitchen was her territory. It always had been, and she preferred it.

Before opening her emails, she turned on Radio 4. There was nothing on she particularly wanted to hear; she just needed voices to break the damnable, expectant silence of the empty house. She probably needed food, as well, but she had no appetite for anything other than wine.

She had been copied on an e-mail exchange between her London and Moscow lawyers, which she read with growing frustration. Her phone began to buzz before she reached the end. It was her husband calling. She groaned with annoyance and almost rejected it—but knew he would only turn up on the doorstep if she did.

Hello, Henry.

Patricia? Hi. Are you all right?

Of course I’m all right, exaggerated Patricia. Why wouldn’t I be?

I saw the car parked outside—thought you must have visitors.

So what? Henry, when I threw you out, I really hoped you’d go further than the next street. Stop bloody spying on me!

Much to her irritation, her husband had found a flat above the nail salon around the corner. She had managed to evict him a total of about two hundred yards. He was still holding out hopes of reconciliation, and Patricia was running out of ways to tell him to go fuck himself.

It’s still my house, pointed out Henry. Who have you got there?

So that was it. He was worried she’d got another man in the house. It would serve him right if she did, thought Patricia.

There’s no one here, Henry, she replied, making no effort to keep the contempt out of her voice. It’s my car.

Yours? What happened to the Evora?

"I sold it, Henry, to pay your son’s legal bills! To pay bribes and commissions! To make sure that at least this month he’s in his own cell, and that the gangs are paid enough not to stab him! Seeing to it that his appeal is funded! What do you think, that money grows on fucking trees?"

You sold it? Ah, Patricia, come on. His tone was incredulous, but loaded with unwanted sympathy. An appeal isn’t going to make any difference. You’re just throwing good money after bad. These lawyers will take you to the cleaners.

How can you say that? The anger and frustration boiled over, strangling her. "How can you even say that? He’s your son! Your son, you stupid prick!"

If he had called the landline, she could have slammed down the receiver. As it was, stabbing the ‘disconnect’ button proved insufficiently therapeutic. She threw the handset across the room, where it landed in the kitchen sink and careened around the stainless-steel before coming to rest in the plughole.

After taking a moment to compose herself, she went to fish it out again. The screen was cracked, but it still lit up when she nudged the ‘On’ switch. Despite her anger, she was relieved. It wouldn’t do to miss any calls from the lawyers.

Not that the lawyers had good news, as she found when she returned to her emails. The date of Noah’s hearing had been pushed back six weeks, for no apparent reason, and the price had gone up again. The price was always going up, and she had no choice but to pay it. At least she was working again. The Yorkshire job was a lucky break for her. It had been an expensive year.

She took off her reading glasses, poured another glass of wine, and resisted the impulse to Google her son’s name. The last time she had done that, the things she’d read had left her crying in bed for two full days. Instead, she forced her attention toward the stack of paperwork she had brought back down South, and began leafing through it.

Contracts, briefs, survey results, drawings—the documents were in no meaningful order. She spread them out on the tabletop, rearranging them into discrete piles. There was a brochure for a model of wind turbine the architect had incorporated into the plans. Patricia flipped through it. It was not one of the familiar, white, three-bladed masts: an Italian design, it looked far more contemporary. A skeletal pylon of carbonised metal supported a nacelle tipped with angular scimitars, like a cross between a radio tower and a food processor. Patricia didn’t like it.

Still, she didn’t have to live in the damned house, she just had to make sure it got built. That, and decorate it. The client, some retired American pro-golfer Patricia had never heard of, wanted minimalist/European interior design. In other words, thought Patricia, he wanted it to look like an expensive Ikea showroom. She could do that: lots of shiny wood and Baltic colours, a bit of chrome—nothing too expressive, just a straightforward substitution for taste or stylistic choice.

She would have to relocate for the duration. A project that size, with deadlines that tight, couldn’t be managed from London. Still, it would be good to get away from her own silent, unfamiliar house for a while. Good, too, to put a few hundred miles between herself and her husband. It was the North York Moors; there was bound to be a small cottage somewhere local she could rent.

The maid had forgotten to rinse out the recycling box, noticed Patricia as she dropped the empty wine bottle into it. Oh, well. In the grand scheme of things, who really gave a shit?

*

The Kindle finally shut down, its battery exhausted. Not surprising: she hadn’t charged the thing in weeks, or remembered to bring the charger with her. It didn’t matter. She couldn’t concentrate on the words anyway.

The place was freezing. There was a coal stove in the cramped parlour, but Patricia was reluctant to try building a fire in it. Henry would have done that, were he there, and enjoyed every minute of it, flattering himself he was some kind of hunter-gatherer archetype. Patricia resorted to pulling on a second jumper instead.

The cottage was ancient and tiny, aiming for quaint but managing only shabby. It