The Four of Us Read Free Page A

the sky was taking on the daffodil light of early evening. She had a couple of hours, perhaps less, in which to do all her essential unpacking and sorting out, for once it was dark her only lighting was going to be the oil lamp she had brought with her.
    â€˜There will be no electricity until you arrange to have it reconnected,’ Marcus Black had said, ‘the telephone ditto. You will find the water turned off at the mains when you arrive, unless, of course, you arrange in advance for it to be reconnected.’
    Well, that at least she had done. And she would telephone the electricity people in the morning. As the heavily laden Corsa bucketed up the rutted track, she became aware of the two fields, one on either side of her. ‘There’s some grazing pasture and a donkey paddock,’ Marcus Black had told her and, in her ignorance, she had imagined merely small corners of waste land.
    Hardly able to believe the riches that had been heaped upon her, she drove into the cobbled farmyard and switched off the engine.
    Immediately half a dozen hens erupted from one of the outbuildings in an agitated flurry. She fought the urge to remain firmly out of their way. If there were hens here, then they were her hens, and the sooner she got used to them the better. Who, though, had been looking after them and feeding them?
    Taking the bunch of keys he had given her out of the glove compartment, she stepped out of the car and picked her way between the hens towards the house.
    The front door was painted a green that had seen better days. On the doorstep was an empty bottle with a rolled piece of notepaper wedged into its neck.
    She stretched out her hand.
    Dear Mrs Dove , the note read. I’ve looked after the hens and there is a fresh supply of logs and a fire laid. The key left with me, in case of emergency, I have posted through the letterbox. Matt Trevose. PS. The logs are in the woodrick .
    The tension she had felt in the seconds before reading the note ebbed. Somewhere nearby was a conscientious neighbour. Grateful to Matt Trevose for the care he had taken of the hens she took a deep breath, slid the key into the lock and opened the front door.
    The stone-floored entrance hall was larger than her Rotherhithe living room. There was a gaily coloured rag rug on the flags, a grandfather clock against one wall, an oak chest with brass corners and side handles against the other. A staircase with wide, shallow treads rose from the centre of the hallway, its faded stair runner held in place by brass rods. On the right of the staircase the hallway was deeper than on the left, running off into a passageway that was blocked at its far end by a door. Other doors, one on the right-hand side and two on the left-hand side, led off the hall.
    Leaving the front door open behind her, she crossed the hall and opened the first of the left-hand doors. It was a study with books floor to ceiling on three walls, a small, prettily tiled fireplace and a window that looked out on to a garden. In front of the window and taking up nearly all the available space was an ancient roll-top desk.
    The second door on the left led into a sitting room. There was a chintz-covered sofa, a Victorian armchair and a glass-fronted display cabinet filled with china. A glorious Persian rug, its once vibrant reds and blues gently faded, graced the wood floor. There was another rug, white sheepskin, in front of the fireplace, which, much grander than the fireplace in the study, had a bed of knotted newspapers topped by fire-lighters and logs in its grate. The door on the opposite side of the hall led into a dining room, the door at the end of the passageway into a kitchen.
    It was upstairs that the surprise came – though not in the bedroom that had clearly been Amelia’s. There, the walnut bedroom suite looked ancient enough to have belonged to Amelia’s mother, the overall heaviness redeemed by the golden light flooding in through the south-facing