Another Heartbeat in the House by Kate Beaufoy Read Free Book Online

bushes to a gateway, through which was a courtyard flanked by outhouses.
    The rear of the house seemed less remarkable than it had the first time Edie had been there: the windows appeared smaller, the eaves pulled down lower. The paint on the door was peeling, the drainpipe had come away from the wall, the guttering was sagging in places and weeds sprouted from chimneypots. Some of the windows were cracked – one had been boarded up with a sheet of plywood – and a patch that had once been a vegetable garden was overgrown now with giant rhubarb. Nobody had loved this house for a long time.
    Edie got out of the car and stood looking around while the driver pulled her luggage out of the boot and Milo skittered about, clearly intoxicated by the scent of hedgerow creatures. The fare came to five shillings; Edie handed over five-and-sixpence as she bade the driver farewell, then watched as the car lumbered across the courtyard and back through the gateway. She listened to the receding sound of the engine as it descended the tunnel of trees to the road below.
    Then there was silence. It was the kind of perfect silence you can hear. Edie turned to the house, and smiled. It looked back at her with the merest hint of challenge, waiting for her to make the first move. They regarded each other for several moments before Milo returned from his recce.
    The front door key was under the stone by the boot scraper as Mrs Healy had said. It was a long iron key with a clover-shaped bow, and it turned easily in the lock. The door swung open, and the house breathed out.
    â€˜All right, Milo. Here we go!’ said Edie.
    The vestibule was as she remembered it: panelled in painted wood, the floor laid with quarry tiles. To the right was a fireplace, disused now and blocked up; above it was mounted a trophy case containing a stuffed fish. The salmon Uncle Jack had told her about, Edie conjectured: when she had last been there it had housed a stuffed pheasant. A recessed window seat upholstered in faded tapestry afforded a view of the courtyard; Edie noticed that tendrils of ivy had pushed their way through the casement. At the foot of the staircase hung a framed watercolour of the lake painted by her aunt, alongside a wall clock that had stopped at ten minutes to ten o’clock. She mentally ticked off the first three items to go on her inventory: trophy case, watercolour, clock. She’d look at them properly another time; right now she wanted to explore.
    Milo was curious too. He had given the doormat a thorough sniff, he had scrambled up the staircase and somersaulted down again, he had beamed at her to show her what fun he was having, and now she could hear his clickedy claws skittering down the corridor that led to the heart of the house. She hefted her case inside, shut the front door, then turned into the corridor that ran the length of the building.
    The first door opened into the room that she and Hilly had loved because the windows opened straight onto the terrace, like an Italian palazzo. It was a double sitting room with stucco-worked ceilings, a pair of fireplaces, and windows draped with heavy velvet. Under the dust-sheets, the furniture resembled a herd of slumbering beasts. Edie felt loath to disturb them, but did so carefully, as if to avoid a rude awakening. She caught sight of her reflection in a flyblown pier glass as she tugged apprehensively at the edge of a cloth, thinking that she looked like an actor who had stumbled into the wrong period piece.
    The first time she had come here, the furniture had looked old-fashioned. She saw now that it was not only old-fashioned, but dilapidated, too. She supposed that since Uncle Jack had grown to realize that none of his children would take the place on, it had been allowed to disintegrate. Brocade upholstery was frayed and worn, with antimacassars draped strategically to camouflage stains. Surfaces that had been French-polished now bore ring marks where no one had