“Down there.” I jabbed my finger at the windshield. “Turn left!”

Obediently, Robbie yanked the wheel hard around, and we managed to swing into the drive without hitting the ornate iron gate. Robbie groaned as the Lada’s wing mirror clipped the stone gate post, and clattered to the ground.

“Flippin’ wonderful,” he moaned as the back wheel crunched over the mirror.

“Hey, I think it’s an improvement. Gives you more manoeuvring room without that ugly thing sticking at the side of the car.”

“All the people in this car who dinnae drive can shut up now.”

Grinning, I slapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll buy you a new one, husband. It’s the least I can do.”

“Aye, damn right.”

I stared out the window, in awe of this beautiful property that would soon be mine. A wrought-iron arch over the gate depicted the house’s name: PRIMROSE HOUSE. Silver birch branches scraped along the roof of the car. The trees tangled together over our heads, creating a tunnel of foliage so dense and knotted, I couldn’t see anything beyond the bend in the drive ahead. A few hazels mixed in with the birch, their nuts littering the ditch on either side of the drive. I imagined sculptures hidden in the trees, Chinese lanterns strung from the branches, leading the way to an artistic sanctuary. We turned the corner, and I gasped.

Primrose House rose up in front of us; a grand old lady, bedecked in the lace of early Victorian grandeur. A wide porch circled half the house, white lattice details framing the house like a delicate lace petticoat. The roof jutted out at stark angles, punctuated by grand dormer windows. The turret dominated the front facade, leading my eye up to that gorgeous hidden balcony. Immaculate boxed gardens lined a pebble path leading up to the sweeping steps.

“Wow,” Robbie said, his gaze leaping across the house before focusing on the turret.

“Yeah.” I grinned, leaping out of the car before it came to a complete stop.

Last time I’d been inside this house, I was fifteen. My mother and I weren’t speaking (which wasn’t unusual), but she forced me into the car for our monthly visit with Grandmother June. June started the evening by telling me I was to take my nose ring off at the table, then refusing to allow me to eat after I removed the stud but replaced it with an enormous spike. I stormed out of the gate, called my then-girlfriend Sally-Sandy-Sarah-something to come pick me up, and spent the rest of the night smoking weed and snogging up at the Witches Cemetery. Mother kicked me out a few weeks later and I hadn’t spoken to my grandmother since.

To think that now I was about to step inside Primrose House again, to remove from it the stain of her oppressive tyranny, and give it the life it really deserved.

I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this place, strip off all the stuffy English details, and fill it with art and eccentric people. The first thing to go will be that hideous gazebo, my mind whirled, as I stood on the steps and gazed out across the garden at the flimsy wooden construction where the garden met the edge of Crookshollow Forest. In its place, we’ll put in a fire pit, and maybe an outdoor natural spa pool…

June’s lawyer was already waiting for us on the porch, her thin mouth frowning at her watch as I jogged over to her. “You were supposed to be here thirteen minutes ago,” she snapped. “I’ll be billing you for this extra time.”

I rolled my eyes. Elinor was exactly the same, always ridiculously punctual and chastising anyone for being late. I guess it came from having to bill time in three-minute increments.

Not even the threat of additional legal fees could destroy my mood today. I beamed as the lawyer tossed the keys into my hand. My stomach fluttering with excitement, I bounded up to the door and shoved the key into the lock.

The key turned. I pushed the heavy mahogany door open, revealing the familiar front hall. Drab floral wallpaper covered every wall, hidden in places by neat rows of dreary paintings of the English countryside. My Docs sank into a deep Persian rug. At the end of the hall, beside the door leading to the rest of the house, a grandfather clock clacked, the only noise in that silent home.

The clack clack clack of the clock took me back. Suddenly, I wasn’t 23-year-old Bianca anymore, I was six years old, tugging desperately on my mother’s skirt, trying to get her to go back to the car so we could go home.

“No, Bianca.” Mother prised my fingers off the hem of her skirt, dusting down my itchy frock and using the corner of her handkerchief to wipe dirt off my face. “You’re going to sit in that house and behave yourself.”

“But I don’ wanna!” I plonked myself down on the porch steps, staring into that dark hallway like it was the mouth of hell. “I don wanna see mean lady.”

Six-year-old me wasn’t exaggerating. Grandmother June was one mean octogenarian – a fairy-tale wicked witch in the flesh, who made my mother look like a saint of the first order. June believed children should be seen and not heard.

Ideally, if she couldn’t see us either, I think she’d have been happier. She would make my brother and I sit straight-backed on the uncomfortable sofa, not fiddle, not say anything for hours. She had no toys in the house, unless you counted her collection of porcelain dolls in one of the bedrooms upstairs that we weren’t allowed to touch. For hours we’d sit there, dying of boredom, while she lectured our mother on manners, our schooling, my marriage prospects, the family holdings, and all manner of dull dull dull topics until my head felt like it was going to explode.

Sometimes, she babysat us while Mother and Father went to functions down in London. I dreaded those weekends. June would lecture us for hours on Bible stories and force us to memorise Psalms, rapping our knuckles with her walking stick when we messed up. She’d send us to bed with empty stomachs and stories about the fires of hell, then get us up at six in the morning for church service, and force us to eat spoonfuls of cod liver oil before every meal. And the food … my stomach turned at the memory of piles of over-boiled cabbage and tough roast beef. And while all this torture was going on, that grandfather clock clack-clack-clacked in the background.

I stepped back, my blood running cold. Stale air wafted across my nostrils. Age and furniture polish and un-aired rooms, mixed with notes of June’s gardenia perfume. So much hatred in this house, so many bad memories. Had they infected it somehow, seeped into the walls, ready to taint my artistic vision?

A warm hand fell on my shoulder. Robbie’s face appeared out of the corner of my eyes, his kind eyes wide with concern. “You okay? You look a little freaked out.”

I gave him a small smile. “I’ll be fine. I was just remembering coming here as a kid.”

“It wasn’t a trip to the sweet shop, right?”

“Not even close. I’ll tell you all about it one day, when I’m really, really drunk. Come on.” I placed my hand over his and squeezed it. A strange electric pulse ran down my arm. That had been happening a lot lately. It’s just your nerves playing tricks on you. “Let’s go see our marital home.”

Robbie grinned. I screamed with glee as he swept my legs out from under me, lifting me into his arms. “Not so fast. We need to do this properly. My future-wife should be carried over the threshold. Otherwise, our whole marriage is cursed. My mother told me so.”

I burst out laughing. Robbie approached the door, but with my legs dangling over his arm, I was too wide to fit through. He frowned. Instead of simply turning himself sideways, he tried to tip me up, dipping my head down toward the verandah. I screamed as I grabbed at his neck to hold on, my shrieks dissolving into laughter.

“I’m billing you for these shenanigans,” the lawyer snapped. This only made us laugh harder.

Finally, Robbie managed to squeeze me through. He carried me across the entrance hall and plopped me down at the base of the stairs. From here, I could see through into the formal dining room to the left of the front door, and the ladies drawing room on the right. The dining table was set with my grandmother’s fine china, the crisp white tablecloth perfectly square, the napkins neatly folded at each place, and all the silver out on the sideboard. At any moment, I expected her to appear at the door like an apparition, scolding me that if I couldn’t sit quietly at the table like a proper lady, I could go to bed again without any dinner.

I’m going to order a feast of takeaways to eat at your table, I thought gleefully, my stomach rumbling just thinking about it. Indian food, Turkish kebabs, sushi … all the ethnic food you refused to eat because you couldn’t abide those horrible foreigners on English soil. I’m going to drink a beer straight from the bottle, without a coaster, and there’s nothing you can do about it.

“This place is insane.” Robbie touched one of the dining chairs as he stared up at the high beamed ceiling, his eyes bugging out of his head as he took in the crystal chandeliers, the heavy mahogany furniture, and the grim portraits of long-dead relatives that crowded the walls.

I crossed the hall and stepped into the drawing room, my combat boots making a loud clap clap clap as they left the rug and hit the oak floor. I ran my hands along the high back of the Chesterfield sofa. Two matching chairs on either end faced inward, all the furniture turned away from the tall windows obscured behind thick drapes. Behind the settee, in front of the marble fireplace, the tea table was set out with June’s Royal Doulton tea service – a crocheted doily lining every plate. More drab portraits and boring British pastoral paintings adorned with walls. There wasn’t a television in sight, nor a used coffee-mug on the table, nor even a book lying half-read on the chair arm.

The whole place remained frozen, a time-capsule of my childhood terror. My grandmother lived every day in this house, but to look at it now, it appeared as though she’d never lived at all. It was a mausoleum to her stupid English snobbery, her need to cling to some glorious colonial past that had never really existed at all.

That’s all about to change.

As I glanced around, the possibilities whirled through my head. I imagined the chairs gone, replaced by funky Scandinavian furniture and bright throws. I pictured the walls painted white, hung with artwork, and the dark mahogany bookshelf in the corner bursting with books about art and tattoos and really filthy romance novels. I pictured a little bar in the corner, and a stack of board games under the coffee table, and people in bright clothing filling the space with fun and laughter and possibilities. I pictured a bra hanging from the crystal chandelier after an absinthe-fuelled night of debauchery with some divine international artist …

At the back of the sitting room, a low arch led into the dark-panelled study, with its gleaming marble fireplace and window seat. Leather-bound books that were never allowed to be opened and priceless ceramic vases lined the shelves on either side of the fireplace. My grandmother had barely used this room – it was a “male” domain and when Grandfather George died, she kept it only as a shrine to his maleness. The room even smelled like him – stale tobacco smoke and racism.

A door in the living room led into the hallway. Directly behind the entrance hall was the door to the ballroom – my favourite room in the whole house. I’d only been allowed inside once, and even then I wasn’t to touch anything. June never held a single ball or event, which was a glorious waste of owning a ballroom in the first place. I planned on remedying that as a matter of great urgency. Excitement fluttered in my chest as I shoved the door open.

Darkness clung to the vast room, shrouding its features in gloom. A damp smell flooded the hall. I coughed as I entered, stumbling along the back wall, pulling open the curtains and flinging open the tall windows to allow fresh air and afternoon sun to permeate the space.

And what a space it was! Here, the high-beamed ceiling was painted white, accentuating the vastness of the room. Striped wallpaper adorned the walls above the wood panelling, marred only by thick cobwebs hanging from the corners and dangling from the chandeliers. The delicate carvings on the marble fireplace on the opposite wall were completely obscured by a thick layer of dust.

“Wow.” Robbie spun in a circle, his eyes wide as he took in the place. “This is dead pure brilliant, it is. This room wouldnae be out of place at Raynard Hall. How awesome is it that it’s yours?”

“I know!” I jumped into his arms and he spun me so my feet flew out in a wide circle. The room was so big there wasn’t any danger of my feet hitting the walls.

Robbie set me down. Exhilarated, I raced into the hall, eager to check out the rest of the house and delve into the corners I’d never been allowed in before. “Come on,” I yelled to Robbie. “I want to show you something awesome.”

He followed me down the hall into the kitchen. The kitchen was in a separate building – built of brick instead of wood to make it more fire resistant – and connected to the main house by a dark corridor. An old meat store and milk room were accessible by a short garden path. I pointed them out to Robbie through the window.

“This place is brilliant,” Robbie said, walking over to inspect the stove.

“You’re telling me.” I moved around the table in awe. I’d been in this room once or twice before, but only when I’d wriggled out of my mother’s grasp and chased my brother in here. My grandmother, who had a live-in maid to clean and cook her meals to torment with cruel remarks about her Romanian heritage, didn’t believe women “of our breeding” should set foot in the kitchen. From what I remember of the kitchen, it had been right out of the Victorian era, complete with an old wood-fired Aga.

Now, it was completely different. This must be the only room in the whole house my grandmother had modernised – a gleaming gas Aga replacing the old wood-fired model, gleaming modern surfaces polished to a high shine. I flung open the door to the butler’s pantry, hoping what I wanted to show Robbie was still there.

“Ah, hah!” New shelves lined the walls of the pantry, still stacked with cans and cartons. But in the back corner, the outline of a narrow door, with only a thumbhole for a handle, could be seen against the wood.

“What is it?”

“A secret passage.” I tugged the door open and showed Robbie the staircase inside. “The servants used to use it to move between this floor and their attic bedrooms without using the first floor hall or main staircase. In the early days, the family had a lot of guests, and they didn’t want them to accidentally run into a maid during their time in the house.”

“Did your grandmother ken this?”

“Oh sure. June would sometimes let my brother play in here,” I said, remembering his squeals of delight from my place at the tea table. “But never me. Girls shouldn’t run inside.”

Robbie swept a hand toward the staircase. “What she don’t ken …”

Grinning and giddy with mischief, I leapt up the stairs two at a time, excited to see where they led. At the top of the stairs, a small door was bolted shut from the inside, I guessed so the lady of the house could lock the maids in the attic as punishment.

It took a bit of wiggling to lift the bolt, but finally I shoved the door open, and crawled into the small, dark space.

The walls sloped steeply inward, and were lined with thick planks of rough wood. It took me a few moments to realise I was in the roof of the house. A tiny dormer window at the end of the room, thick with dust, let in a faint stream of light across a small brass bed, a narrow stool and a tiny wooden trunk.

“What is this place?” Robbie asked, as he twisted his shoulders to fit through the tiny gap, and collapsed into the room.

I sneezed into my hands as clouds of thick dust, disturbed by our presence, curled around us like smoke machines at a EDM gig.

“These were the servants’ rooms,” I said. I crossed the room to where there was another low door. Sure enough, it emerged onto a narrow hallway, the sloping roof on the other side creating a space so small you’d have to crawl through it. I noticed two more openings further along the hallway. “There are three rooms up here. Isn’t this insane? They’re kind of creepy, like something out of a horror film.”

“I think it’s cosy,” Robbie crossed the room to the window, staring down at the back garden. “Did people really live up here?”

“Of course, although not while I was alive,” I said. “When my mum was growing up, I think she said her nanny lived up here. She was also the family cook. June had a cook and cleaner, too, but I think she had one of the first floor bedrooms. You can’t ask someone to live in the attic these days.”

“This is all so … Downton Abbey.”

“Tell me about it. And remind me to mock you for watching Downton Abbey.”

“Alex loves it. I used to watch when I lived at the Hall.”

“When you live with me, you can watch whatever you want.” I ducked down and crept out into the hall, peeking into the other two bedrooms. At the end of the hallway, I followed another narrow staircase down to the rear of the first-floor landing, hidden around a corner so it couldn’t be seen from the main staircase. The narrow boards creaked beneath my feet as I shuffled down backwards to keep my balance.

Robbie followed me down. He started throwing open doors, peering in at the dark bedrooms, his face wrinkling. “Every one of these is more hideous than the last.”

“Gee, Gok, I didn’t know you were so into interiors.”

Robbie shrugged. “I’ve never been inside a house like this before.”

“Never?”

“Well, Raynard Hall, but Alex and Ryan have done so much redecorating that place doesn’t really compare. This house seems … frozen in time.”

“There are literally hundreds of frozen houses like this all over the country. You seriously never went to see a National Trust house when you were in school?”

“I didn’t go to school.”

“What?” How could he not have gone to school? Wasn’t that illegal? “You never told me that.”

Robbie stepped into a garish pink bedroom, a weird expression on his face. He fingered the edge of a lace curtain. “Angus, Caleb and I were all educated – if you could call it that – in the pack. Our mother taught us to read and write and do basic maths. My father didn’t place much value on learning, so he gave us no assistance. We had no resources, no field trips, no books apart from the pack ledger. None of us took our O levels.”

“Yikes.” That was horrible. Robbie didn’t talk much about his childhood in the pack. From what little he’d said, I gathered it was pretty tough. But not even going to school? I placed my hand on his shoulder, but he shrugged it off.

“I don’t want your pity, Bianca. Especially not today. Forget I said anything. Focus on the house.” He rapped a mahogany door with his knuckles, the sound like a gunshot through the hall. “This house may have some hideous wallpaper, but I can see the potential – everything you imagine for this place. It’s gonna be a lot of work, though.”

“You have no idea.” I pulled him down the hall. “Just wait until you see the master bedroom.”

At the end of the hall, a short staircase led up to a secondary landing, where a pale blue chaise lounge stretched beneath a bay window. This was another part of the house I’d only ever seen once, and only because I’d snuck up here one night when I was supposed to be sleeping. As I headed up the final mahogany staircase toward the thick door leading to the room beyond, I hoped it was as ghastly as I remembered it.

I threw the door open, excitement clenched in my gut. Yes. It was exactly as I remembered.

From beside me, Robbie’s eyes widened as he took in the spectacle. Roses covered every surface of the turret bedroom, from the garish rose wallpaper to the roses splashed across the carpet and the rose duvet covers and pillows. Even the dresser mirror had roses carved into the frame. I crossed the room and drew back the rose drapes, revealing the door that led out onto the secret balcony, hiding in the slope of the roof.

“What do you think?” I grinned, stepping onto the balcony and throwing my arms wide.

“It’s …” Robbie screwed his face up.

“Yes?”

“I have no words.”

“Try me.”

“It’s right pure brilliant, if you like roses.”

I snorted. “I’m going to have terrible nightmares of roses crawling out of the walls to strangle me in my sleep.”

“Don’t be daft. All it needs is a little paint, a match, some lighter fluid … and it’ll be perfect for us.”

My head snapped up as his words registered. When I looked at his eyes, something there made me start.

“Robbie, you remember this is a fake marriage, right? We’re not sharing a bedroom.”

“Aye, right. Of course I ken.” A shadow passed over his face, but then he smiled again. “I absolutely do not want this room.”

“Good. You have your pick of the other rooms on this floor. Now get out here and look at my balcony.”

After a short walk around my balcony, we toured the rest of the rooms on the first floor. Robbie’s face twisted with terror as he took in the froufrou wallpaper, frilly valances, and lacy curtains. “I think I’ll take the attic bedroom,” he said. “The one with the secret passage down to the kitchen.”

“The servant's’ room? You can’t. Robbie, that’s in the attic. It’ll be freezing up there. And the bed’s tiny. You are … not tiny. You’ll hardly have any room for your stuff.”

“I know. I just … I think I’ll feel more comfortable there. I can’t really deal with all this … rich people guff. Besides, I have direct access to the kitchen for midnight snacks. I cannae pass that up.”

“If you’re sure …”

“Aye, I’m sure.”

Downstairs, the lawyer waited in the hall, tapping her foot impatiently on the hardwood floor in time with the grandfather clock. “Sorry,” I said, in a voice that didn’t contain an ounce of remorse. “We got lost in the attic. What else do you need from me?”

“I just need you to sign these papers,” she said irritably, waving the stack under my nose. “Your mother has given you permission to take the keys and enter the house to make any necessary preparations and to store your chattels. As soon as the marriage is officially registered, you can move in.”

I bent down to sign the papers. A scrawl of my signature, and it was done. Primrose House was mine, pending our marriage in just thirty days time. I shoved the papers into the lawyer’s arms, and she left in a hurry, leaving Robbie and I to stare at each other across that huge, empty entrance hall. Robbie took my hand and squeezed it.

“We going to do this, and it’s going to be amazing.” he said, grinning that beautiful smile at me.

I grinned back, but this time, my smile was forced. As I stared into his eyes, all I could think about was that sparse attic room and the way his face had contorted as he’d told me that he’d never been to school.

I’d never realised before that there was so much about Robbie I didn’t know. What you’re doing is cruel. Elinor’s words drummed against my skull. But this wasn’t supposed to be about Robbie, it was about the art house. It was about making my dream come true, and creating a safe place where people like me and Robbie could come when they didn’t have family who supported them. I should have been ecstatic, so why was my stomach flipping with nerves?