CHAPTER 2 #2
I picture Dorothea as she was back then.
A woman in her late fifties with long, sandy-blonde hair held back from her face with a red neckerchief and wearing paint-splattered dungarees.
She was tall, willowy, attractive, with the most beautiful silvery grey eyes I’d ever seen, well-spoken, blunt, quick to laugh and, well, like nobody I’d ever met before.
Her outfits were always thrown on haphazardly and she favoured suede Birkenstock clogs with socks, yet on her, it all worked.
She was stylish, like an elegant, ageing supermodel.
I’d liked her instantly. I was a nervous, meek teenager, used to making myself small, so as not to take up too much space in the world, trying to be unseen by my bad-tempered father, but there, in Dorothea’s studio, sitting cross-legged in a patch of sunlight as I devoured my mum’s old Penny Vincenzi novels, Casper on my lap, while she painted, I felt calm.
I felt safe. I thought her paintings were strange and floaty, like a confused dream, but I’d admired her creativity.
I’d confided in Dorothea, once, about my wish to be a writer one day.
She hadn’t sneered like my father had, her brow hadn’t crumpled with worry like my mother’s had at the notion of chasing an impossible fantasy, she hadn’t scoffed and taken the piss like Alison.
Instead, Dorothea had listened seriously and told me I could do anything, be anyone I wanted to be if I worked hard enough.
She’d cupped my chin with her long, slender fingers, the nails encrusted with paint, and sighed, almost wistfully.
‘It’s so much easier for your generation,’ she had said.
‘You’re not bound by convention or forced to marry young.
You’re not restricted by an outdated class system.
’ I hadn’t understood what she’d meant, not really, not then.
As far as I could see, Dorothea was a strong, independent woman, free.
Josh lets go of my hand and I reach into my coat pocket for the keys to let us inside.
Instantly we are rendered speechless. I’d forgotten just how huge the space is.
There are doors facing each other across a wide hallway, an intricate archway and the magnificent staircase, carpeted with a duck-egg blue runner.
The floors are a creamy stone and the walls are painted a pale blue.
Original cornicing runs around the high ceilings and there is an antique dresser to my left.
Next to the stairs is a coat stand with a red mackintosh hanging from it and a checked umbrella that I assume belonged to Dorothea.
My eyes rove around the hallway, taking in the photographs and framed artwork that I recognize as Dorothea’s on the walls going up the stairs.
I feel a pang when I realize it’s barely changed since I was last here.
I almost expect Dorothea or my mother to come out of one of the rooms to greet us and I’m hit by melancholy.
But I also can’t help but imagine Dorothea’s prostrate body lying here, at the foot of the stairs, and I blink the image away.
The air is musty and the withered flowers that droop sadly over the side of a narrow glass vase have cast their crispy dead leaves along the top of the bureau like a foul-scented potpourri.
It’s so at odds with how the place used to smell: a mixture of Dorothea’s Givenchy perfume and the cut roses, sweet peas and irises from her garden which she’d always dot around the house in anything she could get her hands on – empty milk bottles, old champagne flutes, vintage glass medicine bottles she’d found in charity shops.
‘I didn’t realize it would be furnished,’ says Josh, stepping further into the hallway and running his hands over a Louis XVI-style chair that has been pushed against the wall.
‘But then I suppose she has no family, so where else would it go? It all belongs to you now. To us. Do you think this is an antique? I bet it’s worth a bit.
’ He runs a finger along the dresser, and I want to tell him to stop.
He’s like a magpie. These were Dorothea’s things, not items to be pawned.
I feel a surge of protectiveness towards the house and everything in it.
I want him to go. To leave me to wander the house by myself, to let myself wallow in my memories of that idyllic summer before everything changed.
But I can’t say all this to him, of course.
He wants to share in my joy. He’s never going to fully understand my oscillating feelings.
Thankfully his phone rings and he retrieves it from his pocket with a frown.
‘Damn it. It’s the office. I better take this,’ he says, pulling off a glove with his teeth as he heads out of the open front door.
I can hear his voice floating towards me, his words clipped and polite, which makes me think he’s talking to his boss.
When he returns he’s wearing an apologetic smile.
‘I need to go into work. I’m really sorry, babe, but we can come back at the weekend. ’
I can’t leave. Not yet. I’ve not had the chance to look around the rest of the house, let alone the grounds. ‘Um … why don’t you go and I’ll get a taxi to the train station.’
His smile wavers. ‘Really?’
‘Yes. I want to have a proper look around.’
I can tell he’s disappointed, but he gives a small nod. Then he kisses the side of my head. ‘See you later, then.’ I watch as he reverses out of the driveway and backs out onto the narrow country lane, and I’m thankful to be alone at last.
Silence rings in my ears. That summer I was last here the place had been buzzing with people and animals and life.
In my mind’s eye dust motes floated in the sunlight that slanted through the windows, beaming down on well-worn Persian rugs; dogs lolloped on squishy sofas; chickens strutted across the lush green lawn; birds twittered in the wood and the honey scent of buddleias filled the air.
I’m probably looking back at that time through rose-tinted glasses.
I retrieve my phone from my bag and scroll to Alison’s number. And then I hesitate. How am I going to tell her? I stare down at my phone for a couple of seconds, before changing my mind and slipping it into my coat pocket.
I sigh as I make my way through the hall and down the short flight of stairs into the kitchen.
The runner is more faded than it was sixteen years ago but the kitchen is exactly the same: cream-painted French-style cabinets, rustic stone floor tiles and the black Aga on the far wall, the wooden table with mismatched chairs in the middle of the room.
I picture the functional but ugly kitchen in our tiny flat with its sharp-edged modern units, black work surfaces and odd shape.
This kitchen was always the beating heart of the house.
It was where we all congregated, where Harry would come and visit me and we’d sit drinking homemade lemonade, giggling over some shared joke while my mum pretended not to listen. I close my eyes, remembering it all.
When I open them again I jump in shock.
A man is standing in the garden, watching me.