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‘Sure it’s a wreck but, God, it could be so beautiful, in time,’ Ollie had enthused.
‘It might be haunted,’ she’d said.
‘I know your mother believes in ghosts, bless her, but I don’t. The dead don’t frighten me, it’s the living I’m scared of.’
Caro had learned, early on in their relationship, way before they were married, that once Ollie had his mind set on something there was no dissuading him. He wasn’t an idiot, he had a great commercial brain. And besides, she had secretly liked the whole idea of a grand country lifestyle. Lady of the Manor of Cold Hill House.
Ollie removed his arm and opened the rear door for Jade, but his daughter, engrossed in her iPhone, carried on Instagramming.
‘Out, sweetheart!’
‘Give me a minute, this is important!’
‘Out!’ he said, reaching in and unclipping her seat belt, then lifting out the cat carriers.
She scowled, and pulled her hood up over her head, jammed her phone into her hoodie pocket, jumped down, then made a dash for the porch. Ollie lugged the carriers over and set them down, then ran back to the car, opened the two halves of the tailgate, grabbed a suitcase and hauled it out, followed by another.
Caro tugged out two of her cases, then trailed him into the porch. He put the bags down and fumbled with the vast assortment of keys on the ring that the estate agent had given him, selected what he hoped was the right one, slotted it in the lock and turned it. Then he pushed the heavy front door open, into the long, dark hallway.
At the end of the hallway to the right was the staircase up to the first floor. Beyond that, the hall led into a small, oak-panelled anteroom with three doors, which the estate agent said was called the atrium. One door, to the left, went through into the dining room, one on the right was to the kitchen, and the third door opened directly on to the grounds at the back. The estate agent had told them it was rumoured that the oak for the panelling had come from one of Nelson’s ships, Agamemnon.
Ollie was greeted with a strong smell of floor polish, and a milder, zesty smell of cleaning fluid. A firm of professional house cleaners had spent two days in here, sprucing it up for them. And because of the poor condition of the house, the vendor’s solicitors had permitted them to do some essential decorating of their basic living areas before completion.
Jade followed him in, holding the cat carriers and looking around curiously, followed by her mother. Ollie dumped the two suitcases at the foot of the staircase, then hurried back outside to greet his in-laws and the removals men, the first of whom, a shaven-headed man-mountain in a Meatloaf T-shirt and ancient stone-washed jeans, had just jumped down from the cab and was looking up at the house admiringly. He’d admitted, proudly, to Ollie a couple of days ago, while boxing up their possessions in the old house, that he’d only recently come out of jail for an offence he hadn’t actually disclosed.
‘Bleedin’ gorgeous place you’ve got yourselves, guv!’ he conceded. ‘Love that tower.’ Then, cupping his hand over his roll-up, seemingly oblivious to the elements, he leaned forward conspiratorially and nodded up at the first floor of the tower. ‘Pla
Ollie gri
‘Good one!’
He saw Caro’s mother clambering out of the driving seat of the Volvo, or the Ovlov as he jokingly called it. A doughty lady, and a Brighton and Hove magistrate, Pamela Reilly, in a hooded anorak and baggy waterproof trousers, looked at this moment dressed for a polar expedition.
Her husband, De
Twenty minutes later, after the kettle had boiled on the Aga, and tea and coffee had been distributed in mismatched mugs – all they had been able to find so far – and a packet of digestive biscuits torn open, they had an organized team. Caro stood at the bottom of the stairs, just before the atrium, directing the items which the chain of removal men carried in. De
Ollie stood with Pamela in the porch, with a checklist of which of the carefully labelled boxes should go into the house, and which belonged in the outbuildings around the rear, for now, until work inside the house was completed.
The shaven-headed man-mountain lugged a massive box, labelled BEDROOM 1 (MASTER), past them, with a grin.
Ollie ticked it off the list. He watched Caro, inside, look at the label and direct the removals man up the stairs. Then, as the man disappeared from sight, Ollie glimpsed a shadow crossing the atrium, like the flit of a bird across a fanlight.
His mother-in-law turned to him with a smile, her eyes wide open, almost bulging in excitement. ‘Did you see that?’ she asked.
Pamela, despite being an extremely well-respected magistrate, had a fey side to her. Early on in his relationship with Caro, Pamela had confided in him that, although she wasn’t sure if she was actually psychic – whatever that really meant – she would always know when someone was going to die, because she would have a recurring dream. It involved a black raven, a lake and a tombstone with the person’s name engraved on it.
What had she seen?
Caro was already uneasy enough about moving here, to this isolated property, without her mother spooking her out. It was the last thing he needed on this first day here, the first day of their new, dream life.
‘Did you see it?’ she asked again.
Her smile suddenly irritated him. There was a smugness, a told-you-so something about it.
‘No,’ he said, emphatically. ‘No, I didn’t see anything.’
4
Sunday, 6 September
Jade, her long fair hair clipped back, dressed in jeans, socks and a crop top, with a note to herself written in blue ink on her left hand, was in her bedroom, which had wallpaper that she thought was a bit naff. She had spent much of this first weekend sorting her things out, with the occasional help of her mother. Her favourite song, ‘Uptown Funk’ by Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson, was blasting out from the Sonos speaker on top of a wooden chest of drawers.
It was Sunday evening and she was bored of unpacking now. Stuff lay ankle-deep on the floor, and Bombay was curled up on the patchwork quilt of her wrought-iron bed. The tortoiseshell moggie, which had adopted Jade within hours of being brought home from the rescue centre three years ago, lay contentedly amid a pile of cushions, her head resting on Blankie, the grey blanket Jade had had with her since she was an infant, and nuzzled up against Jade’s yellow, bug-eyed minion. Above the cat, Duckie, her gangly, mangy cream duck, with yellow feet and yellow bill, that she’d had almost as long as Blankie, its feet entwined in the metal latticework of the headboard, hung down gormlessly. Suspended from the other side of the headboard was her purple dream-catcher.