Chapter Three
‘Can you please slow down?’ I ask the taxi driver again. He doesn’t seem to know where his brake pedal is and he keeps swerving over the centre line. But after thirty fraught minutes, we’re finally turning into a steep drive.
‘Are you sure this is the address?’ I ask. ‘It doesn’t look right.’
The winter-bare trees have dropped many of their branches, which the taxi’s wheels crunch over as we pull into the circular drive. And the house is, well…
He takes Aunt Kate’s letter from me again.
‘Yes, this is it. I’ll get your bags.’
I’d get out and help him, but I’m rooted to the back seat.
This house is completely derelict. The once-white stucco and mock-Tudor façade is streaked and stained with neglect. The elements have bowed and bloated the window sills.
One corner of the steeply gabled roof is tile-free. The wooden joists poke out like badly broken bones.
I just can’t reconcile what I’m seeing with Aunt Kate’s descriptions of her dreamy gingerbread house in the woods. This isn’t a dream house. It’s a nightmare.
The enormity of what I’ve promised Aunt Kate is starting to sink in. That reviewer and his whole family will arrive, to this, in less than seventy-two hours.
‘Mummy, is it haunted?’ She grabs my hand.
‘I’m sure it’s not haunted, sugarpea. After all, it’s Aunt Kate’s home.’
How could I have let my aunt live here for all these years? I should have come up long before this.
‘Then why are you crying?’
‘Oh, I’m being silly. It’s just that there’s a lot to do before Aunt Kate’s guests arrive.’
The driver opens my door. ‘Is everything all right?’
He has a kind face and his deep brown eyes are full of concern. Or maybe he’s just afraid I can’t pay his fare.
My legs are shaking as I stand up. ‘Not really, no. In fact, it’s about as far from all right as I can imagine. We’ve got guests coming for Christmas in three days and the cook and housekeeper are buggering off to Spain. I’m all alone here.’
‘Oh, well,’ he says, ‘Bronwyn has always wanted to go to the Costa del Sol.’
‘Well, I’m really glad she’ll finally get to work on her tan, but where does that leave me? I can’t run this whole place by myself. I have no idea what I’m doing. And look at it.’
Tears fill my eyes again. It’s hopeless. I can’t even cook, let alone rebuild a roof.
‘I wish I could help you.’
He actually looks like he means that. ‘Can you cook?’ I ask in sudden desperation.
His expression turns from pity to suspicion. ‘Why?’
‘Because if you can, I’ll pay you £1,000 cash to help me for the next few days. Until the 26th when the guests leave.’
‘Well I can’t really-’
‘Please! I don’t know what else to do. My aunt is in a coma. That’s why we were at the hospital. And it’s too late now to cancel the guests’ stay.’ It all tumbles out. ‘It’s a reviewer and his family. Aunt Kate scheduled them because she needs a star rating or the bank is going to make her sell the B&B. This is her whole life. Do you know my aunt?’
He shakes his head, rubbing the dark stubble that peppers his chin. ‘I only know Bronwyn because we were at school together. A thousand quid you said? Cash?’
That was meant to be for our week’s holiday in the spring. ‘Yes, and I’ll even give you half today and half on the 26th. I’d need you to cook and help me get the place fixed up before they come. Well, basically I’ll need you to do whatever you can to help. Is it a deal?’
I pray he’ll say yes. Otherwise Mabel is going to have to learn some carpentry skills pretty sharpish.
He puts his hand out and envelops mine in its warmth. ‘Deal. I’ll drive you to the cash machine back in Rhyl. I’m Danny. What’s your name?’
‘Lottie, and this is Mabel. Nice to meet you.’
I just hope he’s more domestic than I am.
Try not to judge me when I tell you this, but I’ve only lived away from my parents for a few years in my entire life. That was when I went to university. It makes me sound really sheltered, doesn’t it? But what happened was that I fell in love with Mabel’s father in my final year. And then I fell pregnant. And he got scared.
But as soon as I saw those two pink lines on the wee stick, I knew that I wanted the little person growing inside me, and that my parents would be supportive. I never imagined just how supportive they’d turn out to be.
I waddled through my classes, morning-, noon- and night-sick, but so excited to meet my child at the end of it all. She came into the world with a full head of hair and a strong set of lungs and we’ve been a family of two ever since.
I moved back to my parents’ Hampstead house where my old room was waiting for me. Mum painted the spare room lilac and stencilled fairies all over the walls for her granddaughter.
By then, Celine had been part of our family for nearly my whole life. We didn’t have that much extra money when I was growing up, but with both Mum and Dad working at the university, they needed someone to look after the house and, sometimes, me. Celine started as a one-day-a-week cleaner, but she always found time to cook delicious dinners on the days she came. Eventually the whole family was addicted to her Filipino dishes and she took on more days as the years went by.
Then, when I was around ten, Celine’s landlord turned nasty. He threatened to double her rent and report her to Immigration if she didn’t pay up. But Celine’s work status here was perfectly legal, so she told him to get stuffed. That was when Mum and Dad invited her to live with us so that she wouldn’t have to deal with any more dodgy landlords. As long as the house in Hampstead is in our family, Celine has a home.
With such a fantastic cook around, it’s no wonder that I never really learned my way around the kitchen. Things might have been different if I’d lived with Mabel’s father, but that was never going to happen.
Danny drives us back at the B&B, me with a lighter bank account and Danny with a grin on his face.
The B&B hasn’t improved while we were away. If anything, it looks even more dire.
‘Time to go inside,’ I say to Mabel, taking her hand. A tiny part of me hopes that we’ll be surprised. Maybe Aunt Kate kept up the inside where her guests spent the most time. Then who’d care if the outside was a bit shabby?
I can imagine her draping the rooms in sumptuous velvets and brocades. Once an opera singer, she’s always had an eye for the dramatic. She used to drag me along Notting Hill's Portobello Road and to Grays Antique Centre nearly every weekend that she visited. We searched for brocade footstools and gilded mirrors and chairs or tables with elegant legs (Aunt Kate has a thing for elegant legs). All those purchases over the years must have found their way into the B&B.
By the time I wriggle the key in the lock just the right way to open the large wooden front door, I’m nearly sure it’ll look like the prop room at the Royal Opera House.
I take about two steps inside the murky hall. ‘Oof. Bollocks!’
‘Mummy, are you okay?’
I don’t know which to rub first, my throbbing toe or my knees where they’ve hit the floor. ‘I’m fine, I just tripped.’
‘You said a swear word.’
‘Yes, that wasn’t very clever of me, was it?’
‘I guess your aunt planned some renovations,’ Danny says from behind us. When he sheds his giant coat, I can see that he’s a bit older than he first seemed. I’m guessing in his early thirties. ‘Look at all these tins of paint.’
As I look around, my hopeful bubble bursts. This is definitely no Royal Opera House.
Three tall windows run along one side of the wide entrance, and a staircase climbs up the other side. But the grimy windowpanes let in only weak winter light.
‘I guess we may as well try to see what we’re dealing with.’
I hoist up the sash panes on every window so the daylight can reach the darkened corners.
‘It’s yucky,’ Mabel says.
It’s worse than yucky. The walls are pockmarked with holes and painted a dreary yellowish brown.
‘Who’d use that colour in a house?’ I ask.
‘I think it was probably a different colour to start with,’ Danny says. ‘It’s yellowed over the years.’
It’s got the patina of nicotine-stained fingers and the far corner is streaked with water damage. The varnish is worn off the floorboards where feet have trod over the decades, and everything needs a good wash. Whatever Bronwyn does with her time here, clearly it doesn’t involve much soap and water.
Slowly we walk through the rest of the house, like timid tomb raiders. Every gasp from Danny or Mabel makes me jump, expecting the worst. It’s obvious that the house was grand once upon a time. The parlour is large and overcrowded with Aunt Kate’s elegant-legged tables. I run my hand over a little mahogany side table with an unusual marquetry top.
‘Mabel, do you remember when we found this, in that skip in Highgate?’
She smiles. ‘You climbed in with the rubbish.’
The things I do for my aunt. ‘And we brought it home and Grandad fixed the legs?’
Mabel’s smile fades. ‘Mummy? Will Aunt Kate die like Granny and Grandad did?’
‘Ahem, I’ll have a look upstairs,’ Danny says, considerately making himself scarce.
I lead Mabel to one of the silver and red Chinese silk sofas. At least they’re in good shape.
‘Honey, the doctor said that Aunt Kate should be okay when she wakes up. She’s only sleeping now so that her body gets the chance to heal itself.’
‘So, she definitely won’t die?’ Mabel’s eyes search my face.
I’d love to give her that kind of absolute certainty. Children should have that. But I can’t lie to her. ‘I don’t think she will. I’m not planning on it, that’s for sure. Do you still worry about something happening to me?’
When she nods, my heart breaks a little. How am I supposed to make her feel secure? I haven’t got the authority to tell the Grim Reaper to bugger off and bother someone else.
I hug her little body to mine. ‘Well, I’m not going anywhere, and neither are you. We’ve got too much living to do!’
She returns my smile.
‘Let’s go see what the rest of the house looks like, okay?’
‘Yes, that’s quite enough of this morbid talk for one day,’ says my world-weary seven-year-old.
Danny bounds down the stairs just as we’re coming out of the dining room. ‘How’s it looking down here?’ he asks.
‘I think the ceiling may be coming down in the dining room, and there are mouse droppings in the kitchen sink. I’m afraid to ask what you’ve found upstairs.’
He shakes his head. ‘Mushrooms are literally growing on the floorboards in the bedrooms, and mould up the walls.’
‘Mushrooms? I guess that makes them local produce. Maybe we can cook them for the fry-ups.’ When DIY gods give you mushrooms, make omelettes.
As he pretends to think about it, I notice that he’s got lovely big hooded eyes. They remind me of those 1930s film stars photos of Marlene Dietrich.
Though nobody would mistake Danny for a woman.
‘Hmm, home-grown mushroom poisoning,’ he says. ‘Maybe not. I think your Aunt was optimistic when she got all that paint. This place needs a lot more than a coat on the walls. It needs a structural engineer. And a roofer.’
‘Well, we’ve only got three days to do what we can and hope the place doesn’t fall down before the guests leave. At least the furniture is all right. There’s just too much of it. But yes, Aunt Kate is definitely a person who looks on the bright side.’
She and Dad were opposites in a lot of ways. While he did the sensible thing – going to university, studying hard and gaining respectability in professorial circles, his little sister was travelling by campervan across Europe, trying to make a go of her operatic career. Whenever their parents told her she was nuts, she just laughed and hugged them. There wasn’t much that Aunt Kate couldn’t overcome with a giggle, a hug, a wing and a prayer.
She did gain a bit of success as an opera singer, and got small parts performing around Europe.
She was dreadful with money though. She didn’t mind being paid for her roles in clothes instead of cash so, Dad liked to say, her closets filled up instead of her bank account. But that was okay with her. ‘My life is rich and full,’ she said. ‘My purse doesn’t need to be.’