Free Restoring Grace by Katie Fforde

legible.’
    *
    'Excuse me,'
Ellie asked the man in the junk shop, who had been a bit taken aback by Grace
and Ellie's appear ance just as he was about
to go home for the day. 'Is the paint in those tins likely to be
usable?'
    ‘Oh yes, and
at fifty pence a can, you can't go wrong.' Once
he had realised they were serious buyers, he viewed them much more
favourably.
    ‘ Not if you can't get
it out of the can,' said Ellie sharply, 'but we'll take it. If it's all
dried up, we'll demand our money back.'
    ‘Don't you want to see what colour it is?'
asked Grace.
    ‘ No. It's a
soft grey, you can see from where it's dripped over the edges of the tin. If it's nice we could do more than just my room with it. But we'd better get
some white emulsion as well. You don't happen to have . . . ?'
    ‘No,' said the man. 'Hardware, over the road.’
    Ellie turned to Grace.
'Can you go and get that? A nice big tin? I'll carry on here.’
    Grace wasn't long on her
errand but when she returned she was
impressed by the accumulation of furniture and bric-à-brac that Ellie had
assembled in her absence. 'Are you sure we can afford all that?'
    ‘ Oh yes.
He's doing us a deal. But there's just one more thing.' Ellie hunted out the proprietor who had retreated to his
cubby hole at the back of the shop. 'You don't happen to have a typewriter for
sale, do you? Anything would do.’
    He shook his head. 'I'm afraid I haven't.
There's really no call for typewriters these
days. Everyone's got computers.'
    ‘ Except me,' said Grace. 'Come on, let's go
home.’
    *
    'I'm sure you shouldn't be
painting when you're preg nant,' said Grace to Ellie the next
day. 'Especially not standing on a chair.'
    ‘ I'm having a baby. It's a perfectly normal
condition. If I didn't stand on the chair I wouldn't be able to reach.’
    ‘But that
paint may be toxic!'
    ‘Possibly,
but it was very cheap, and I quite like the colour, don't you?’
    The paint
wasn't quite the same as it had been on the side
of the tin, it was a little darker and not quite so soft. 'Sort of. It's
quite dark.'
    ‘It'll dry
lighter.'
    ‘I should be
doing it really.'
    ‘ I thought you and Edward always got people in to do
painting.'
    ‘ He did, but
I'd like to give it a try. I've missed out on a lot of perfectly normal
activities, getting married so young.'
    ‘ Like going clubbing?'
    ‘Definitely.'
    ‘We should
go. It would be fun.'
    ‘ I think on balance I'd prefer painting. Can I have a go
now?’
    When they had changed places, and Grace,
wearing a pair of Edward's old chinos belted in tightly, with one of his shirts
over the top, had got the hang of wiping the brush on the side of the tin,
Ellie said, 'It's like Changing
Rooms on telly, isn't it?'
    ‘ What?'
    ‘ You know, when two couples swap keys and do up a room in
each other's houses, helped by a designer and Handy Andy. Haven't you ever
watched it?'
    ‘ No. Edward didn't like television much.’
    Ellie opened her mouth to
say that she thought Edward sounded really boring, but managed
to shut it in time. 'Have you got any more
furniture hidden away anywhere we
could adapt? Or am I getting my programmes muddled up? As a student, you
get to watch a lot of daytime telly,' she explained.
    ‘I don't think there's anything anywhere. Not
in the house, anyway. But we got quite a good haul yesterday. That little
bookshelf, the nest of tables—'
    ‘ I'm going to
sand those down and varnish them, possibly paint one. I thought I might
nail some of those wine boxes together and make a little chest of drawers, with cardboard boxes for the drawers,' Ellie
added. 'I made a really
good occasional table out of a nappy box once. Where do you write your
articles, by the way?’
    Ellie had the look of a
woman prepared to make a desk with drop-down lid, drawers and secret
compartment out of Grace's tea chests,
and Grace put up her hands defen sively. 'Oh,
I've got a little table which works fine. Doesn't need anything doing to it! You don't need to