do that. Ask the Garths as well, number’s in the book. Get back to us when you can.’
‘By the end of next week would be better,’ Mike interjected. ‘Otherwise we might not be able to fit her in along with the Halliday job.’
Rachel had had enough. She rose decisively. ‘I’ll ring you on Friday, then. And now I think we’ve all got things to do?’
She saw them out and, before the Toyota could be heard grinding down the track, was hunting through Yellow Pages.
Later that week Rachel took a pot of mint tea into the sitting room and collapsed on the sofa in front of the fireplace. The weather had turned cloudy and it was a clammy but chilly sort of an evening. If she could trust the chimney, she’d risk lighting a fire, but remembered Mike Llewellyn’s words that it would need sweeping first. She made do with her little electric radiator and wrinkled her nose against the dusty smell as it heated up.
The cottage had a strange atmosphere this evening and she needed comfort. Last night, her heart thumping, she’d woken up to sounds outside – some kind of screeching. Common sense told her it was probably an owl or something, but it had sounded disconcertingly like a person in pain. It had taken hours to get back to sleep and she’d become very aware of being alone in a remote place. Today she had wanted to continually look over her shoulder, certain someone was there. She wasn’t entirely sure she believed in ghosts, but there was definitely a weird atmosphere in the cottage sometimes. Putting it down to tiredness, she tried to shrug off her mood and took a sip of tea. She shivered. Perhaps it would be nice to have central heating after all.
After thinking through what Mike and Gabe had said, she was resigned to the inevitable; that the house needed work. A lot of work. So she had applied herself in her usual methodical and thorough way and had tried to get some comparable quotations for the job. But her search for other builders had proved fruitless. Two firms were unable to visit for another month; another local one had managed to come and had then quoted a price far higher than the Llewellyns’; one said they were fully booked for the next three months and yet another hadn’t even bothered to reply to the messages she’d left on their answering service.‘Looks like it’ll be the Llewellyn boys, then,’ she said to no one in particular and tried to warm her hands around her mug. ‘It shouldn’t be too bad,’ she went on, forcing herself to be optimistic, ‘as long as I can find a way of working around them.’
She already had some work overdue, inevitably delayed by moving house. She was also getting far too distracted by the sumptuous countryside around the cottage. ‘I wonder if I could combine the two,’ she murmured. ‘Who would like some stunning landscapes?’
Rachel shook her head and laughed. It felt like madness talking to an empty room but, in some peculiar way, it really felt as though there was someone listening. Someone not completely unfriendly, more curious.
Her mother had always poured scorn on the thought of ghostly presences. ‘I leave the arty-farty nonsense to you, darling,’ she’d giggled, already on her second gin and tonic. ‘After all, you’re the one who claims to be artistic. That’s just the sort of rubbish you lot believe in, isn’t it?’
Rachel knew it had been the gin talking. When sober, her mother excelled in the odd, sly, caustic comment. She declared wide-eyed innocence if anyone took offence. She only really loosened up with alcohol. Rachel hated seeing her mother so out of control. She almost preferred the closed-up, sarcastic version.
She shook herself, trying to instil some sense into her head. It helped make up her mind; she’d ring Mike first thing in the morning. She lay back on the cushions, more relaxed now that she’d come to a decision, albeit an expensive one, and her eye was caught by the Huntley and Palmer biscuit tin. She’d shoved it out of the way when clearing the kitchen to paint and it was wedged between Sister Wendy Beckett and a book on Kandinsky. She’d forgotten all about it. Putting her mug down carefully, not wanting to stain the floor, she took the tin down and settled back on the sofa.
‘So, little tin, what secrets are you hiding?’ Part of her was aware of the air shifting around her as she unwrapped the book. There were the eclectic mixture of papers again, a few neatly stuck in. Some looked as if they had been cut from a diary and were covered in densely written handwriting. The photographs caught her eye. One, a wedding photograph, featured a tall man in uniform with a vibrant-looking woman at his side. They were both holding themselves very erect, looking tense. Another was of a very dashing dark-haired man on horseback, a whip in his hand and a grin splitting his face. Both photographs looked old; they were sepia-tinted and spotted with age.
As she sifted through the loose pages, Rachel noticed that each was neatly numbered at the top right-hand side.
‘Someone after my own heart,’ she said with a smile.
She flipped back to the very beginning until she found the frontispiece again. ‘Henrietta Trenchard-Lewis,’ it proclaimed in an elegant and imperious hand. ‘Her Life.’
Henrietta? Lewis? Rachel found the postcard from Brighton and again looked at the address. Mrs H. Lewis. There was no doubt about it; it must be the same Mrs Lewis who had lived in the cottage.
At the bottom of the tin lay the letters, tenderly tied with their faded-pink velvet ribbon. Rachel laid them to one side; it felt far too much of an intrusion to read them now. She checked the tin for any more loose pages and, satisfied that there were none, pulled the throw around her, snuggled into the sofa and started to read.
June 1963, Clematis Cottage
I began to be who I am when I went to the big house for the very first time. This is my story.
Hetty readied herself. She re-filled her pen with indigo ink, took a sip of tea and grimaced. It had cooled since she’d sat down at the little table in the window and had become distracted by the view, as always. She gave herself a mental shake and began. If she didn’t start this now, in her seventieth year, it would be too late. She forced herself back into the past, the distant past, and began to write.
I was a young girl when I went to Delamere House. Now, I am an old lady seeing in a year I may not see out and surrounded by the detritus of a long life lived in many parts. I live in this cottage, with a blue clematis growing around the front door and am bothered by few. It is how I like it. For too long I have been at the mercy of others. I now intend to see out my days in a pure and blissful selfishness. The big house has long since been sold. The family has not, after all, managed to keep it. Perhaps if I’d had children? But I digress. I jump forward when really I should start at the beginning. The beginning of my life. I began to be who I am when I went to the big house for the first time.
It’s been over sixty years. Hard to believe that all those years have passed, but I can remember it better than yesterday. It was a fine spring day in 1903.
Papa delivered me, thrust a package at me and then, almost immediately, went away again. As a small child I never did hold the same fascination as his spiders and insects.
I was to stay with my very distant relatives Aunts Hester and Leonora whilst he travelled on an expedition with the then Royal National Geographic and Scientific Institute. I loved Aunt Hester from the very beginning. She was all lavender scent and soft skirts. I detested Aunt Leonora almost as quickly. And I believe the feeling was entirely mutual. She never failed to point out my lack of manners and decorum. I asked for cake before sandwiches once and it was never forgotten
