Varcoe is a soldier’s daughter and grew up travelling. “All I ever wanted was to live by the sea, with an Aga, a big pine table and children,” she says. Eight years ago, her prayers appeared to be answered when she met her husband-to-be at a party. Within a year the 35-year-old London recruitment consultant had sold her flat, moved to Cornwall, and married. All was bliss.
“My mother-in-law had a lovely place near the Eden Project,” Varcoe says. “There were three cottages and she lived in one, we lived in one and the third was rented out. It was great because she was the most beautiful woman and I just loved her. She introduced me to art for the first time and I discovered a complete passion for it. I met old Newlyn School painters and I was over the moon. People say dreams can come true — and mine did.”
Then her mother-in-law died. “Our world fell apart and it took two years to sell the cottages,” she says. Finally, the couple bought an old farmhouse near Lostwithiel. “People couldn’t believe we took it on. And with hindsight, maybe we shouldn’t have.”
They turned a six-bed house into one with four bedrooms and four bathrooms, all en-suite, but it took two years and three sets of builders. “It was a terrible time,” she says. “I was working part-time in an art gallery in Truro, but the idea was for me to do B&B while my husband started a company importing Indian tents to be used as marquees.”
Both businesses were a success. “And that’s when the chaos started,” she says. “I was trying to be a secretary for the tents as well as doing the B&B, and there were too many people in the house. I started letting out our own bedroom, and the kitchen was always full of people.
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“I started to nag and I let myself go, I don’t mind admitting it. I dressed like a builder and I put on weight, got depressed, had no confidence. And I stopped listening to him (my husband). He’d come into the kitchen wanting a cup of coffee, and it would be full of people. Then I’d have to tell him we were sleeping in the barn that night.”
Eventually, in August 2004, it all came to a head. “He left. I stayed for a year on my own and went absolutely barmy. I was grieving for the marriage and felt like a failure: I had failed to have children, failed to keep the marriage going. It was just tragic.”
The Varcoes had bought the farmhouse in 2002 for £235,000 and sold it in 2004 for £700,000, after spending about £200,000 doing it up. Varcoe moved in with her parents, who had followed her to Cornwall.
It was a bleak time, but just as she was becoming quite desperate, an acquaintance came to her with a business proposal. He had seen what she had done to the farmhouse and was impressed. “He told me to find a run-down cottage, do it up, and we’d become commercial partners,” she says. “It isn’t about being greedy. He’s a frustrated architect, and we both love seeing old cottages come back to life.”
She found somewhere a week later, Trebant, an old, neglected three-bed cottage for £310,000 in the hamlet of Penpol, near Lerryn. It was dark and gloomy and the garden was overgrown, but Varcoe knew that by knocking down walls and adding windows, she could fill the house with light. Cutting back the undergrowth would reveal lovely views of Penpol Creek.
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This time, everything went right. The builders were a joy and she wasn’t trying to run another business at the same time. It was lonely but peaceful. On long summer evenings, she would row on the river, have a glass of wine and a meal at the village pub, and be tucked up in bed by 9.30pm. “Bringing this house back to life was a phenomenal, lucky experience, and I was absolutely blessed,” she says. She even found old tables, chairs and a chest in the shed.
“I thought if other people can Farrow & Ball their bits of furniture and stick them in Country Life, then so can I, even though I’d never picked up a paintbrush in my life.”
The cottage is already on the market, priced at £439,950. She has been surprised at how expensive the project has been. “There are so many hidden costs,” she says. “There’s stamp duty, insurance, council tax, putting in the phone line, even just moving the furniture in and out and storage — it all adds up.”
And Varcoe, who lives with her two lurchers, has already lined up the next, more ambitious job. Renovation, once her downfall, has become her saviour.
“I would turn the clock back tomorrow to have a happy marriage and family,” she says, “but I’m on my own now. To have got into the property business has enabled me to find somewhere to live temporarily. It hasn’t taken away the grief and loneliness, but it has kept me busy and got rid of the chaos. I feel in control again. I have been given an opportunity, and I’m jolly well going to make the most of it.”
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Trebant is for sale through Fowey River, 01726 833 000, www.foweyriver.ndirect.co.uk