True Colours Read Free Page A

ago. At the time we’d been living in a poky little flat in Leicester, quite close to the school where I taught. It was hopelessly cramped. There was nowhere for Rex to set up a studio so he’d been working in the living room and I was sick and tired of his drawing board and other paraphernalia cluttering the place up. We’d been talking of getting a foot on the property ladder for some time but the weeks kept passing and we hadn’t got around to doing anything about it.
    It was on a Sunday afternoon and we were out for a drive. We’d promised to look in on my parents to see their new house and we’d stopped to ask directions to the village where they lived when I spotted the house. The rain had stopped and, getting out of the car to stretch my legs, I spotted an agent’s ‘For Sale’ board leaning drunkenly by tall wrought iron gates almost obscured by foliage. Hidden behind a screen of tall silver birches on the edge of a village, the little Georgian house seemed to beckon invitingly. If I’d thought about it at the time it might have occurred to me that the lurching agent’s board, stained green with algae, and the general air of neglect was a sure sign that the house had been on the market for some time, but at that moment I was too enchanted to think practically. While Rex was asking a passerby for directions I unlatched the squeaky rusting gate and peered inside. The gravelled drive was weed infested and overhung with tree branches but I could glimpse the house, its windows winking in the sunlight. Solid and square, it looked like something straight out of Jane Austen, the kind of house I’d always seen myself living in. I felt excitement quicken my heartbeat as I rushed to get Rex.
    He had been maddeningly cautious. ‘Ye-es, it’s attractive, I grant you, in a distressed kind of way, but it looks as if it’s been empty for ages. It’s probably falling to bits. It’d cost a bomb to put right.’
    ‘Not if we did most of the work ourselves,’ I argued. ‘It seems like fate that we stopped in this very spot today, like an omen. Aren’t you excited?’
    He pulled a face. ‘Not really, no.’
    ‘Well, let’s at least get in touch with the agent and take a look round?’
    ‘Oh God, must we?’ Rex groaned. ‘Hey! Wait a minute, what are you doing?’ I’d already fished my mobile out of my bag and was punching in the agent’s number that was printed on the ‘For Sale’ board. ‘You’re wasting your time, it’s Sunday,’ he wailed.
    ‘Estate agents are always open on Sundays,’ I pointed out, already listening to the number ringing out at the other end. ‘It’s when they do most of their business.’
    A few minutes later it was all arranged. We had an appointment to view the house on the way back to Leicester later that afternoon.
    My parents had bought their new house in the country to retire to. I’d been surprised when they told me their plans. I thought they’d never retire from the chain of hairdressing salons they’d created together, let alone bury themselves in a village like Little Penfold, miles from the bustling city life they’d always enjoyed. Since Rex and I married I’d been on slightly better terms with them than before. When I was a kid they literally never had time for me. I was what’s known as a latchkey kid. When I was little there had been a kindly woman who had collected me from school and given me my tea. She’d wait with me till Mum came home, hopefully in time to put me to bed. I’d envied kids like Fran, whose mums were always there, waiting for them at home time, taking them to the park on the way home, buying them sweets or ice creams. By the time Mum got home she was always too tired to read me a story or even talk to me much. When I went on to secondary school I was given my own key which I wore on a ribbon round my neck so that I could let myself in when I got home. It was impressed on me that having your own key and being trusted to get your own tea