Read Chapter 26: The Carpenter's Apprentice

The noise started before Imogen had finished her first coffee of the morning. A knock at the front door, then another, then the unmistakable sound of boots on the flagstone floor of the hallway, multiple sets, moving with the easy confidence of people who had been in this building before.

She found Joe Trelawney in the kitchen doorway, a toolbox at his feet and a roll of plans tucked under one arm that looked older than she was. Behind him stood a stooped man with white hair and a face like a well-creased map, and behind him, a round woman in a floral apron who was already peering at the cracked larder door with professional interest.

“Morning,” Joe said, as if arriving at a stranger's house before nine with a small army was the most natural thing in the world. “Elias left the surveyor’s report up at the pub. Bad news travels fast, and so does good help.”

“I’m sorry,” Imogen said, her voice still grainy with sleep. “I don’t—who are you?”

The old man stepped forward and offered a hand that swallowed hers. “Billy Pascoe. Retired electrician, forty-two years. Brought my kit. You’ve got a junction box in the east wall that looks like it was wired by a blind ferret.”

“And I’m Gwen,” said the woman in the apron, already moving past Imogen toward the stairs. “I did the books for the inn when your gran was alive. I brought scones. You’ll need them.”

Imogen stood in the hallway, coffee growing cold in her hand, as the three of them fanned out through the building with the unhurried competence of people who had known this house longer than she had. Joe dropped to one knee beside the exposed beam where the inspector had left the red notice taped to the plaster. He ran a hand along the grain, clicked his tongue.

“You got the timber yet?”

“I don’t have— I was going to call someone this week about a quote,” Imogen said, the words thin and pathetic in her own ears. “I haven’t actually been able to afford one yet.”

Joe stood up, dusting off his knees. “We know. Elias told us you tore up a banker’s cheque. Word gets around.” He cracked a smile, weathered and genuine. “Took some nerve, that. Gwen had to sit down when she heard.”

“There’s salvage wood down at the co-op,” Billy said, appearing at the top of the stairs. “Good oak, reclaimed from the old pilchard warehouse they tore down in Newlyn. Keep it in the dry loft. Fifty pence a foot if you ask for Len and don’t let him talk you up.”

Imogen stared at them. “I don’t understand. Why are you—you don’t even know me.”

Gwen came back down the stairs, wiping flour from her hands onto her apron. “We know the inn. We know Dorothea.” She stopped in front of Imogen, studying her face with a frankness that was almost uncomfortable. “And we know a Renfrew girl when we see one, even if she’s been living up country long enough to lose the accent.”

The front door opened again before Imogen could respond. Toby came in carrying a canvas bag over his shoulder, wearing an old flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His eyes found hers immediately, and something in his face—tender, careful, hopeful—made her chest tighten.

“Joe called,” he said simply. “Told Frank I wasn’t coming in today.”

“Toby, you’ve got the lunch service. You can’t just—”

“The lunch service will survive without me.” He set the bag down. “This beam won’t. And neither will your summer if you don’t fix it.” He paused, and his voice softened. “I’ve got my own history with this house. I’d like to help it too.”

Imogen opened her mouth to argue, but Gwen cut her off with a sharp −stic as she pushed a warm scone wrapped in a tea towel into Imogen's hands. "Eat. You'll need your strength. Joe's going to walk you through what needs to happen, and then we're going to do it."

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By noon, the ground floor of the Saltwater Inn looked like a construction site with a bakery attached. Gwen had commandeered the kitchen and was producing an endless stream of tea and sandwiches for the steady trickle of villagers who appeared with tools and offers of help. Billy had rewired the faulty junction box by mid-morning, muttering about Victorian standards while he worked. A man Imogen had never met arrived with a truck full of reclaimed oak and refused payment, saying only that Dorothea had taught his mother to read. Another, younger, came with a plasterer’s float and started patching the ceiling cracks in the parlour.

Imogen stood against the wall of the dining room, surveyor’s report in her hand, watching Joe and Toby work side by side on the condemned beam. They had set up a makeshift support system, a temporary jack that took the weight off the load-bearing point while they cut the damaged section out. Sawdust hung in the air, catching the light from the window that looked out over the harbour.

“You’re going to want to sister it,” Joe said, gesturing at the new timber they’d cut. “Slide the new piece alongside the old, bolt them together. Gives you double the strength without having to replace the whole span.”

Toby nodded, already reaching for the clamps. “This end’s got rot traveling further than the inspector noted. We’ll need to cut back another foot, maybe two.”

“Then we cut back two feet.” Joe looked over at Imogen. “You’re the architect. What do you say?”

Imogen blinked, pulled from her daze. “I’m sorry?”

“You’re the expert,” Joe said. “I’ve done plenty of beam work, but you’ve got the drawings. What’s your call on the line?”

She stepped forward, the architect in her waking up for the first time in weeks. She looked at the junction, at the new timber, at the way the old beam tied into the wall framing. She walked around it, running her hand along the grain, feeling the house respond through her fingertips like a pulse.

“Cut back the full two feet,” she said. “And sister it on both sides, not just the one. The exterior wall’s been damp-seeping for decades. The structure needs support on the load path, not just the visible surface.” She pointed at a spot near the corner. “You should check the joist hangers while you’ve got the floor up. If they’ve rusted through, you’ll want to address that now while everything’s open.”

Joe’s eyebrows raised. “Both sides, then.” He looked at Toby and grinned. “She’s got Dorothea’s eye. That old woman could read a building like a confession.”

Toby’s gaze met hers, and he smiled—slow, private, meant only for her. “She’s got more than that,” he said.

Imogen felt heat rise to her cheeks and turned away, pretending to study the surveyor’s report. But she couldn’t hide the way her heart was beating a little faster, the way the house felt less like a burden and more like—she didn’t know what. Something alive. Something that held her, instead of the other way around.

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The afternoon dissolved into sawdust and laughter. A woman from the bakery two doors down appeared with a tray of pasties, and Billy Pascoe took a break to tell a story about Dorothea chimneying down a neighbour's roof in 1979 to rescue a wedged badger, a tale that grew more elaborate with every telling. Joe and Toby worked in easy rhythm, trading tools without words, the language of craftsmen who respected each other’s hands.

Imogen found herself doing what she had trained to do—measuring, planning, directing—but with a warmth she had never felt in any London office. These people didn’t need her credentials. They needed her present, her engaged, her willing to get her hands dirty alongside them.

At four o'clock, the beam was repaired. Joe stepped back and wiped his forehead with the back of his arm, surveying the work with a critical eye that slowly softened into a nod. “She’ll hold,” he said. “Better than she did before, probably. That old thing was due for a replacement twenty years ago.”

Billy had already returned, wiring a new junction box with the neat precision of a man who had done this exact task a thousand times. “All tested,” he reported. “You’re up to modern code on that circuit now. Won’t burn the place down this week.”

Gwen emerged from the kitchen with a final tray of tea, and the assembled group gravitated toward the dining room, settling into chairs and benches with the ease of people who had done this many times before. Imogen stood by the fireplace, looking at the repaired beam, the fresh plaster, the clean wiring. The room was no longer condemned. It was, for the first time since she’d arrived, a functioning inn.

“You should call the inspector tomorrow,” Joe said, setting down his cup. “He’ll want to see the work, but I’m confident he’ll pass it. I’ve known him since school. He’s fair, if grumpy.”

“I don’t know how to thank you,” Imogen said, and was surprised to find her voice unsteady. “All of you. You didn’t have to do any of this. I’m not even—I wasn’t even sure I was staying.”

“Ah,” Gwen said, waving a dismissive hand. “You’re staying. Anyone who tears up a cheque like that is staying. That’s the first test, and you passed.” She picked up her apron. “The second test is the summer season. We’ll see if you’ve got the stomach after that.”

The others laughed, and Imogen found herself laughing too, a sound that felt strange and good in her throat. She looked around the room at these people—strangers who had become something else in the course of a single day. Not friends, exactly. Not yet. But something older. Something like community.

Toby caught her eye from across the room. He was leaning against the window frame, cup in hand, sawdust still in his hair. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to.

Imogen looked at the beam, at the grains of new oak, at the evidence of what a group of people had done for a house they had no stake in. Except they did have a stake. This was their village, their history, their anchor in the world. And the inn was the heart of it.

She had spent ten years running from the sea, from this town, from the girl she had been. She had built walls in London, bricks and mortar, a life carefully designed to keep the tide out.

But the tide had found her anyway.

She looked at the repaired beam and felt something settle in her chest—a decision she hadn’t known she was making, taking root. She didn’t know what the autumn held. She didn’t know if the inn could survive, if she could survive it, if the secrets Dorothea had buried would surface and drown her.

But she knew, with a certainty that surprised her, that she wasn’t running toward the end of the summer anymore.

She was running toward it—and she wanted to be here when the sea gave up what it had been keeping.