The niggles came back more powerfully. She really should reach out to Looney’s father. If Charlotte sold the house, there was no guarantee they’d be invited to move to her next place. Izzy’s house style (slob) was the total opposite to Charlotte’s (immaculate). Charlotte had been lovely about helping them out in a crisis, but they were out of sight in the granny flat. If she had to downsize and the Welsh cottage had already been let, then Izzy might well have to find yet another place to live.
Oh, well. There was nothing she could do about it right now, and Charlotte had said she wouldn’t think about selling the house until the spring if at all, so …
Izzy did a slow twirl in the centre of the room, soaking in the antler lighting fixtures, the dozen or so individually framed pressed flowers, the hand-carved lampstands shaped like owls. ‘It’s like staying in a quirky art museum.’ She shivered. ‘A museum without any heat.’
Charlotte, who’d just walked through from her room, tugged her gilet a bit closer round her. It was a lovely shade of maroon that really made her green eyes ping out against her pale skin. Pale skin made paler by the cold? Or worry about Freya, in the wake of Monty having buggered off to his brother’s place. Or was it to his parents’? Somewhere near Bristol anyway.
‘I suppose it must cost quite a lot to heat the whole house with only Freya’s father and brother here on their own.’
‘Good point.’ Izzy nodded at the four-poster bed. ‘I thought Freya was the only arty-farty one, but you said her brother made this bed?’
Charlotte nodded, a slightly wistful expression softening her features. Was it for the bed, or Freya’s hunky brother who had helped them haul in their nine thousand bags?
Izzy ran her hand along the thick silver birch tree branch that made up one of the four posters of the huge, fairy-tale bed, then pounced on the squeaky mattress, beckoning for Luna and Charlotte to join her. ‘Did you see these cushions? I bet Freya made them. They have that Frey-Frey touch, don’t they?’
She made fancy hand gestures round the flannel and wool throw pillows, as if she were a model on the shopping channel. They really were spectacular. Ink and tartan cut-outs stitched onto all sorts of different fabrics, with the odd embroidered embellishment. Red deer. Otters. Highland cattle. All of them anthropomorphized to look as though they were at some sort of Highland Mad Hatter’s tea party. They were wonderful. The embellishments showed off Freya’s amazing skill at capturing the tiniest details. A miniature kingfisher dipping its beak into an exquisite cup of tea. A stag, with its head cocked, as if it were listening to the sounds that the wind beyond the window was carrying.
Luna, who hadn’t taken up the invitation to jump on the bed, was still exploring the room. Opening doors and drawers, oohing and aahing as she went. ‘Mum! Look! It’s a secret passageway!’ She held open a door that Izzy hadn’t spied, took a step in then hesitated. ‘Can you go first?’
‘Of course, Booboo!’ Izzy bounced over to the door. This sort of bravery she could do.
She dramatically tiptoed along the short corridor and tried to open the door at the end of it. ‘Nope. Locked. Maybe it’s one of those olden days passages where the rich people snuck into one another’s rooms without the servants knowing.’
Charlotte laughed, ‘Izzy, your imagination is about a thousand times more fertile than mine. I would’ve thought it was for the servants to carry wood to each of the rooms for the fires in the morning.’
‘Do they still have servants?’ Luna was wide-eyed with wonder.
‘Fraid not, Booboo.’ Izzy fluffed her daughter’s billow of ringleted hair. ‘There aren’t many folk who have a fleet of servants to light their fires these days.’ Or men to sneak round and have secret affairs with, for that matter. Although if this led to Rocco’s room and she switched with Charlotte …
Izzy jumped when someone knocked on the door then opened it. Freya’s father. ‘All right girls? I was just wondering if you fancied me lighting the fires in your rooms? Take the edge off.’
Izzy and Charlotte burst out laughing. Charlotte instantly fell over herself apologizing, saying, yes, absolutely, that would be wonderful, but would it be a waste seeing as they were all going to be down in the kitchen soon enough?
‘Fair enough, then.’ Lachlan Burns, who still had a full thick shock of white hair and bright, engaged blue eyes, started to walk away and then doubled back on himself. ‘I think there are a few of those electric bar jobbies – you know, the heating elements. Any chance you fancy following me up to the attic and seeing if we can’t unearth them?’
‘Absolutely!’
Izzy, Charlotte and Luna trooped behind him as they worked their way round the twisty-turny corridors to yet another door at the far end of the house.
‘Where does that go?’ Luna asked, clearly in awe of Lachlan who had a vague resemblance to Sean Connery.
‘Up to the attic. Untold treasures up there.’ He wiggled his eyebrows to great effect. Luna, it was clear to see, was smitten. Izzy felt a bit sad Looney wasn’t meeting ‘the old Freya.’ The one who could whip up enthusiasm for a fancy-dress party in the blink of an eye. The one who took the phrase ‘I wonder if …’ as a thrilling challenge rather than yet another chore. Poor Freya. Life seemed to have sucked the whimsy out of her lately.
Charlotte whispered something about how Freya had wanted them to pay attention to whether or not he remembered things. Izzy nodded. Okay. She was worried about her dad. Her mum had died. Monty was weirdly gone. Bright side of the coin? She grew up in a freaking awesome house and – judging by Lachlan’s chitchat as he led them round the attic, pointing out his own grandmother’s rocking chair, an old saddle they used to put on a much-loved Highland cow and a huge stack of gilt frames Freya had bought with her ‘pin money’ at all of the old farm sales they’d been to – he had all his marbles in the right order.
One thing, at least, she could stop worrying about.
Would that Izzy could do the same. Maybe if she just told everyone, they’d take over like they had with the Welsh cottage. Make her appointments, nod wisely and ask the right questions of the consultants. Ensure her daughter was always loved and secure and never once had to worry about being anything other than being a little girl. If there was a next time. Maybe the consultant would give her the all clear. Perhaps the oncologist would playfully chide her for worrying about the tickly little cough she’d felt developing. Or the achiness that seemed to be creeping into her bones. Maybe he or she would smile and say, ‘This is Britain! The symptoms you’re experiencing are caused by the cold! Not cancer.’ Then they’d laugh and hug and never see each other ever again.
‘Don’t you think so, Izzy?’
‘Sorry, what’s that?’
‘The attic. Don’t you think it’s a lot like Lady Venetia’s?’ Charlotte gave her a funny look. One that intimated she thought Izzy had been off in cloud-cuckoo-land again. She was right, of course. Dreaming the impossible dream was one of her specialities.
Izzy forced herself to tune into Charlotte, who was nattering away to Lachlan now, telling him he would just love Lady Venetia. That the two of them should meet up one day. They’d really hit it off.
‘Oh, no,’ Lachlan waved her off. ‘There was only one woman for me and she’s alive and well in here.’ He patted his heart, then busied himself with handing them each an electric heater.
Bless. As if Freya’s dad would ever leave the farm. Freya said that since her mum had died, the only reason he even ventured to St Andrews – an entire mile away – was to have his monthly lunch with ‘the lads’. The same lunch he’d been having every month for the last fifty-six years. Roast beef, tatties and veg. But never as good as your mother’s. Freya had imitated as she told the story. No. Nothing beats your mother’s touch. Nothing at all.
They paused when Freya rang the bell hanging just