Chapter 1
ONE
As it turned out, the house was lovely. No, Kate thought, more than lovely: it was spectacularly, breathtakingly perfect.
She hadn’t expected that, to be honest. The agent’s particulars – such a quaint word for what was, these days, little more than a two-page printout and a listing on Rightmove – had been almost impossible to make sense of, even with the help of the floor plan.
Rooms appeared to open into other rooms almost at random; there were two staircases; the kitchen windows looked out into the sitting room; upright oak beams were stranded in the middle of floors, like the ghosts of long-removed walls.
But when they got there and actually saw it, it all made sense.
Trade Cottage, it turned out, had originally been not one house but three, a small terrace of knapped flint built as accommodation for the retainers of a nearby estate.
The estate had long since shrunk to the other side of the woods that bordered Trade Cottage’s garden, though its traces still lay all around: the farm next to the house was very much a working one, its fields dotted with sheep and dung, but the rusted iron fences and guards around the trees hinted at a past grandeur as parkland.
Even as they made their way up the dilapidated drive, Kate had been imagining the Mitford sisters hunting their ponies across it.
The agent, Damon, had got there before them, his spotless blue Tesla parked a discreet distance from the house so as not to detract from the wow factor of its facade – the big bay window at one end, the ancient oak porch at the other; the former topped by a wisteria, pendulous with blossom, the latter by the carved crest of the estate and a delicate climbing rose.
As Matt parked their Kia alongside the Tesla, Tilly said wonderingly from the back seat, ‘Is this really it?’, and even Will looked up from the game he was playing on Matt’s phone and muttered, ‘Cool.’
They got out and walked slowly towards the front door.
The outbuildings, about which the particulars had been a bit vague – possibly exhausted by the effort of breathlessly describing the house’s interior: As you ascend the second staircase towards the sumptuous main bedroom, dazzling views past wildflower-strewn woods await .
. . – looked to be substantial structures in their own right.
Kate glimpsed a small barn, stables, and an open-fronted thatched shed containing a sit-down mower and a battered old Land Rover.
That was good; converting one or two outbuildings into Airbnbs was the only way they could possibly make this work, even with the bonanza from Matt’s earn-out and the sale of their house in Dulwich.
Damon must have seen them arrive – the door opened a moment before they could knock.
‘Come in, come in,’ he said, stepping back and beaming with almost proprietorial pride as they took in the utterly beautiful entrance hall – not large, but lined with manorial oak panelling.
Kate tried to guess its age, but couldn’t.
‘The story is, a sea captain related to the Pelham family retired here in the 1840s – he was the one who had it converted into a single dwelling,’ Damon was explaining.
‘So some parts are late Georgian, some Victorian – although there’s a bit in the middle that may be the remnants of an older building still.
Tudor, quite possibly. The seller can tell you more – she’s done loads of research on the place.
Anyway, it’s hardly a cottage, I know, but I guess when your frame of reference is Pelham House . . .’
‘And the name?’ Matt asked. ‘Where did that come from?’
‘Ah, yes – Trade Cottage, on Smugglers Lane,’ Damon said with relish.
‘Short for “Free Trade Cottage” originally, I understand. In the eighteenth century, the government slapped tariffs on imports of brandy and rum to pay for the Napoleonic Wars. Apparently, this was one of the main smuggling routes up from the coast, and the sea captain wasn’t above taking a few barrels off his old naval contacts and selling them on.
There’s even a secret cellar under the dining room. ’
‘Hear that, Will? A secret cellar,’ Kate said encouragingly, hoping their son wasn’t being put off by all this talk of Tudors and Georgians. But when she turned to look, she saw he was hanging on Damon’s every word.
‘Come on through.’ Damon opened another door – also oak, and also impossible to date; the latch, she saw, had been hand-hammered in a forge. ‘It’s a bit of a warren, but that’s part of its charm. We’ll say hello to the vendors, then I’m generally just letting people wander.’
So there had been other viewings already, Kate noted. It had only come on the market that week – they’d got an alert from the selling platform. Well, the interest wasn’t surprising, given how unique it was. But no actual offers yet, or Damon would have told them.
A small passage – oddly misshapen, as if tunnelled round obstacles – led into a lovely light-filled sitting room.
This was the room that had perplexing windows opening into it, but, she now saw, that was because it was actually an oak-framed structure that had been added to the rear of the house at a later date.
The spaces between the beams were mostly glass; the view was of the large, pretty garden, but also beyond that, to rolling fields of grazing sheep.
She was trying not to fall in love with the place – she’d had her hopes dashed so many times when they were looking in Dulwich, four years ago – but, at the thought of having her first coffee of the day in this room, overlooking that valley, her heart melted.
‘Hello! Welcome!’ a voice boomed. A tall, white-haired man was coming round a sofa towards them.
He was using canes to support himself – even so, Kate noticed, both knees were buckling slightly – but was clearly determined to greet them properly.
He had to fiddle with the sticks to get a hand free.
When Kate took it, he clasped his other hand firmly over hers as well – as much for support, she thought, as out of hospitality: she could feel a slight tremor in his fingers.
He had clearly once been handsome, possibly dazzlingly so; even now, a lock of white hair flopped fetchingly over one of his blue eyes as he pumped her hand vigorously.
‘Oh, Paul, there’s no need . . .’ A slight woman jumped up from an armchair – that was the thing Kate noticed straight away, how she almost sprang from the chair, the agile movement of someone far younger than her neatly coiffed grey hair suggested her to be. ‘Hello.’
‘Nonsense! Guests!’ the man – Paul, presumably – said cheerfully. He turned back to Kate. ‘Normally I’d have a glass of champagne in your hand as soon as you walked through that door, but I suppose it’s a bit early for that.’
Kate wondered if he meant a bit early in the day or a bit early in the process. Probably the latter, she decided. She knew some sellers liked to stick around for viewings, to answer questions or simply to keep an eye on things, but she’d never been called a guest before.
‘Rosemary,’ the woman said, indicating herself. ‘And Paul. Please, make yourselves at home. Would you like a scone while you look round? I baked them this morning.’ She turned to the agent. ‘Damon?’
‘I don’t mind if I do,’ Damon said happily. ‘Particularly if there’s some of that raspberry jam . . . ?’
‘Masses!’ Rosemary smiled at Kate. ‘Do you make jam? I’m afraid you’d have to, living here. The fruit cage is far too large – we built it forty years ago, when we were younger and more sprightly – and we always get a glut.’
‘Well,’ Kate said apologetically, ‘we live in London at the moment, so . . .’
‘Oh, of course.’ Rosemary turned to Will and Tilly. ‘And what are your names? Any takers for a scone and raspberry jam while you go and choose your bedrooms?’
‘It might be a bit soon for—’ Kate interjected, but the children were already telling Rosemary their names, and she was pointing them in the direction of ‘the back staircase, the one that leads all the way up to the attic, and then why don’t you see if you can find the room with a pony in it.’
Kate watched them beetling off, already appearing somehow energised by the house, or perhaps the country air, or perhaps just Paul and Rosemary’s effervescent welcome.
As for choosing bedrooms – she worried about getting their hopes up, of course she did.
They’d debated whether to even bring the children on a whole day of traipsing round viewings, but there was the problem of what to do with them if they didn’t – and, besides, she wanted them to want this move too.
Leaving London would be a wrench for Tilly and Will, despite the fact they were both, in their different ways, struggling where they were.
It would be better if they were committed to it, even if it did take a while to find the right property.
Although, she thought dizzily, perhaps they already had.
As promised, Damon let them wander, while Paul and Rosemary stayed downstairs in the sitting room – Paul levering himself back into a chair with some difficulty, Kate noticed.
She was surprised they were so relaxed about letting people just roam around their house.
When she and Matt put Liphook Crescent on the market, the estate agent had been under strict instructions not to let viewers out of his sight.
But Paul and Rosemary, it seemed, were more trusting.