Flowers in the Rain & Other Stories by Rosamunde Pilcher Read Free Book Online

with a cement mixer and a selection of shovels and wheelbarrows.
    Picking his way across the churned mud, he now had a view of the back of the house, and saw that on this side a whole new extension had been constructed, the new roof tiles melding with the slope of the old. Planks led across pools of mud at the side of the house to the main door, at the front, which stood open. It was a very beautiful panelled door of stripped pine, and from beyond it came the cheerful sound of pop music.
    He made his way across the plank and banged on the door.
    “Kitty!”
    The music stopped. She had switched off her transistor. A moment later she appeared at the door, looking much as she had yesterday except for a smear of brown varnish down one cheek.
    “Tom. I didn’t think you’d come.”
    “I said I would.”
    “I thought you’d be too busy helping Mabel.”
    “I’ve been working like a slave, but thank God she turned me out. She said I was to come and buy you lunch.” He stepped through the door and looked about him with interest. “What are you doing?”
    “I’ve just finished Crispin’s bedroom floor.”
    “Where is he?”
    “He’s gone to spend the day with the schoolmaster’s family. They’re terribly kind. My best friends, really. The schoolmaster’s wife is keeping him for tonight as well, and she says I can change for Mabel’s party in her house, and have a bath. It’s not very easy getting dressed for a dance if you’re living in a caravan.”
    “No, I can see that. When are you moving in here?”
    “It ought to be ready in about two weeks.”
    “Have you got any furniture?”
    “Enough for just the two of us to start with. It’s not a very big house. Just a cottage. Not very grand.”
    “It’s got a frightfully grand front door.”
    Kitty looked delighted. “Isn’t it beautiful? I got it from a scrap merchant. I got all the doors from scrap merchants or junk yards. You know, people pull down lovely old houses because they are falling to pieces or somebody wants to build a factory in the garden, and sometimes somebody has the wit to save all the doors and the window-frames and the shutters. This one was so handsome I made it my front door. I think it looks really impressive, don’t you?”
    “Who stripped the paint off?”
    “I did. I’ve done a lot of other things as well. I mean the builders have done all the professional work, but they’re terribly nice men, and they don’t seem to mind having me under their feet all the time. And if you have to pay people to strip paint off doors, it costs the earth, and, you see, I haven’t got very much money. Anyway, come and look round. This is the kitchen, and we’re going to eat in here as well, so it’s got to be a kitchen-dining-room…”
    Slowly they inspected the house, going from room to room, and Tom’s natural interest grew to a sort of amazed admiration, for Kitty had somehow managed to see in a derelict cottage the possibilities of creating a house that was quite unique. Every room had its charming, unexpected feature. An odd little window, a recess for books, a soaring tongue-and-grooved ceiling, a skylight.
    The kitchen was flagged with red quarry tiles that she had found on a dump, painfully cleaned, one by one, and laid on the floor herself. From the kitchen an open stair rose to Crispin’s attic bedroom, which had a long, low window where his bed would be, so that he could lie in the mornings and watch the sun rising.
    The sitting-room had not only a small charming Victorian fireplace but a gallery as well, with access by means of a ladder that Kitty had had riveted to the wall.
    “That’s where Crispin can go to watch television. He can get away by himself and not have to talk to people.”
    A fire burnt cheerfully in the grate.
    “I lit the fire to see if it would draw properly. And to dry the new plaster out a bit.”
    “Was the fireplace here?”
    “No. I rescued that from a dump, too, and set the blue-and-white tile in