The House on Cold Hill

23

By midday, it seemed almost every room in the house had workmen in it, plumbers, builders and electricians. The water had seeped through their bedroom floor, which was directly above the kitchen, and shorted out the lights there and in the atrium. Caro had had to go into work for a meeting she couldn’t cancel, but said she would try to come home as soon as she could, to help out.

Meanwhile Ollie had done his best in the bedroom, with a mop and bucket, then helped the workmen cover everything there with dust sheets. Bryan Barker explained it would be difficult to repair one individual section of the very old ceiling, which was lath and plaster — a lime mortar mixed with horsehair — without risking more damage. It would be better and faster to take the lot down and then plasterboard it. Ollie made the decision and told him to go ahead. With luck the work could be completed by the end of the week, but until then the bedroom would not be habitable.

The only spare room that was in a fit state to sleep in was the tiny room up in the attic, with the wrought-iron bedstead; he and Caro could camp there, he decided. His tiredness was starting to make him feel irritable. The house was a cacophony of radios blaring out pop music, hammering, the whine of power tools and the rasp of sawing. He needed, badly, to lock himself away in his office and focus on work for a few hours. Cholmondley had already left two messages for him this morning, sounding increasingly impatient, wanting to know when the latest amendment he had texted him about yesterday would be up on the website, and Anup Bhattacharya of The Chattri House had sent him an idea for his website that he wanted, urgently, to discuss today.

Bleary-eyed from lack of sleep, he was desperate for more coffee, but the two strong ones he’d made himself earlier this morning had drained the small water reservoir of the Nespresso machine, and at present the water supply to the house had been isolated and capped off by the plumber. There was some mineral water in the fridge, he remembered, going downstairs and entering the kitchen. An extravagance, he thought wryly, removing the bottle of Evian and filling enough for a large espresso. As he did so a shadow fell across him.

He spun round.

‘Sorry, didn’t mean to startle you, squire!’ It was Michael Maguire, in his boiler suit, looking grimy and exhausted. He’d been here since 4 a.m.

Ollie smiled at him, a quotation he’d come across suddenly echoing in his mind. To the man who is afraid, everything rustles. That was how he was feeling right now. ‘Want a coffee? I can make it from this,’ he said, holding up the bottle.

‘We’re just rigging up a standpipe now — we’ll have your mains water back on by late afternoon. Thanks, I’d appreciate one. So, do you want the good news or the bad news first?’

‘I think coffee first,’ Ollie said.

A few minutes later they sat down at the kitchen table, and while Maguire was finishing a phone call to a supplier, ordering materials, Ollie took the opportunity to quickly check his emails on his own phone. When the plumber finished his call, he looked back at Ollie.

‘There is good news?’ Ollie quizzed. ‘In all of this? Want to tell me?’

Maguire sat hunched over the table and eyed Ollie warily for a moment. ‘Well, the good news is I can get hold of all the materials I’m going to need right away. I’ll have some here this afternoon and the rest tomorrow morning.’ Then he stared gloomily down at his coffee.

‘And the bad?’

‘I’ll try and work out the cost, but it’s going to be expensive. You might be able to get some of it back on insurance, but I don’t know how much.’

‘The bedroom ceiling, with luck,’ Ollie said. ‘And the wiring damage in here.’ He shrugged. ‘So tell me your findings — what caused all the taps to start running?’

‘Well, I haven’t got to the bottom of it yet, but you know from the survey what a poor condition the plumbing is in. Every single washer in every tap is ancient rubber and has perished. From all the droppings I can see in the loft spaces and wall cavities, you’ve an infestation of vermin — particularly mice. Those little buggers have eaten through the only modern pipework you have — the plastic ones put in by the developers before they went under. There are air-locks all over the system, causing a lot of hammering and juddering of pipes — and that leads to the degradation of washers, too, causing them to fail.’

Maguire paused to sip his coffee then went on. ‘Your plumbing here is a complete mishmash of mainly lead, with some copper and really ancient barrel pipe. Copper piping can, when it gets too old, just pop apart; lead starts to get fine, pinhole perforations, and begins spraying water as if it’s sweating. Barrel pipe’s made from low carbon steel and the oxygen in the water makes it rust from the inside. The pipe corrodes to a point where water won’t move through it any more, like a clogged artery. Then, of course, you get a build-up of pressure from the backed-up water in the system. Something starts making the pipes vibrate, you get the effect of expansion and contraction from the pipes not having seen any hot water through them in years. All that blocked water, with pressure building up, is going to have to go somewhere.’

He looked balefully at Ollie and shrugged. ‘The action of the expansion and contraction tends to have one of two effects — either it causes a catastrophic failure of piping joints, or it loosens the blockages in the pipes and you get a surge of water. Get that surge and the taps, with their disintegrated washers, can’t hold it back. The problem is compounded by the whole antiquated water system in this house being interlinked. You’ve got a galvanized service tank in the loft space between the attics, directly above your bedroom. When tanks like that age, they start getting blisters, and there’s a danger if pressure builds up too much that the sides can just blow — collapse.’

‘That’s what happened, you think, Mike?’ Ollie sipped his coffee; it tasted good. The aroma gave a momentary respite from the smell of damp that had been pervading the house during the past few hours.

‘I can’t tell you for certain, Ollie.’ The plumber pursed his lips and shook his head from side to side. ‘But if you add everything up — the ancient pipework, no lagging anywhere against the ravages of past winters, the vermin infestation, the complete absence of any plumbing maintenance, a service tank fifty years past its sell-by date — you’ve got all the ingredients for a perfect storm.’ He shook his head. ‘I think it’s criminal anyone allowed such a beautiful house to get into this condition. I’ll tell you one thing, you’re lucky all the washers are corroded — if the taps had held, then several of the piping joints might have failed and you’d have had flooding in rooms all over the house.’

Ollie listened carefully, drank some more coffee, then thought for some moments. ‘OK, what you’re saying does make sense, but if all the tap washers were useless, how come I was able to turn the taps off and stop the water? The taps were all opened — surely they couldn’t have opened by themselves?’

‘Well, they could, Ollie, if there was enough vibration in the pipes. Like the nuts on the wheel of a car can work loose if there’s enough vibration for long enough.’

Ollie’s phone pinged with an incoming text. He saw it was from Cholmondley but didn’t read it. He looked back at the plumber. ‘Nearly every tap in the house — and the outside one as well?’

‘As I said, Ollie, I can’t tell you categorically that this is what happened. There is, of course, another possibility.’

‘Which is?’

‘Someone causing mischief. Some intruder, vandal?’

‘Mike, I can’t see anyone breaking into a house at three in the morning and then running around turning all the taps on. That doesn’t make any sense.’

‘I’m just speculating — couldn’t have been your daughter and some of her friends having a bit of a laugh?’

‘A bit of a laugh?’

He raised his hands. ‘Kids today. Mine are constant mischief.’

‘We’re lucky with Jade, she’s pretty sensible — she—’ He stopped and frowned, as a thought occurred to him.

When Jade was younger she had sleepwalked regularly. Could it have been her who had done this? Could she have gone around the entire house, in her sleep, turning on taps? Why? And yet, he did remember one incident, some years back when she was about seven, when she’d gone out into the garden shed, lifted several items out and put them on the lawn. In the morning she’d had absolutely no recollection of doing it. And another occasion, around that same time, when she had gone into the kitchen and emptied everything out of the fridge and freezer and stacked it all neatly on the floor, again with no recollection in the morning.

‘My daughter had a sleepwalking problem when she was younger. I wonder — I–I’m just — could she have done this?’ Ollie said. ‘Just—’ He fell silent for some moments, then turned his palms upwards in despair. ‘I’m just speculating.’

‘That’s all I’m doing, too,’ Michael Maguire said. ‘I’m just speculating.’