The House on Cold Hill

3

‘Shit!’ Ollie said, standing in the stinging wind and rain, inspecting the damaged door. ‘Go in the porch, darling,’ he said to Caro. ‘And you too, Jade. I’ll unlock the front door in a sec and bring the stuff in from the car.’

‘In a moment, Dad,’ Jade said, looking down at her phone.

‘It’s OK, I’ll help you,’ Caro said.

As she jumped down, he put his arm round her. ‘The start of our new, beautiful adventure!’ he said, and kissed her.

Caro nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said. She stared up at the vast front of the building, and at the balustrading above the columned porch, which made it look very grand. The house they had just left was a large Victorian semi in Hove, a short distance from the seafront. That had been pretty grand, with six windows on the front and five bedrooms. This place had eight bedrooms — ten, if you included two small box rooms in the attic. It was huge. Gorgeous. But in need of more than just tender love and care. Turning her head away from the wind, she looked back at Ollie, who was trying to shut the car door, aware that both of them probably had very different thoughts going through their minds.

She knew he was thrilled to bits that today had finally come and they were moving in. She’d been driven along by his enthusiasm, but now they were actually here, their bridges burnt, new people already moving into their old house, she was suddenly, unaccountably, nervous. Nervous about a whole bunch of things.

This place was ridiculous. That was one of the few things they’d agreed on. Totally ridiculous. It was far too big. Far too expensive. Far too isolated. Far too dilapidated. And just plain too far. Too far from friends, family, shops. From anywhere. It needed a huge amount of work — starting with rewiring and re-plumbing. Many of the windows were rotten and their sash cords were broken. There was no loft insulation and there was damp in the cellar, which needed urgent action.

‘It’s beautiful, but you’re bonkers,’ her mother had said when she first saw it. Her father had said nothing, he’d just climbed out of the car, stood and stared at it, shaking his head.

Why?

Why?

Why, Caro was wondering, had she agreed?

Neither of them had ever lived in the country before. They were townies, through and through.

‘You have to have vision,’ Ollie had repeatedly told her. His dreary parents, whom he had always rebelled against, were now confined within the walls of their old people’s sheltered housing, which they had entered far too young. They’d never had any vision; it was as if their entire lives had been one steady, plodding journey towards their eventual demise. They seemed to embrace all the ailments old age threw at them as if these were some kind of vindication of their planning.

‘Sure it’s a wreck but, God, it could be so beautiful, in time,’ Ollie had enthused.

‘It might be haunted,’ she’d said.

‘I know your mother believes in ghosts, bless her, but I don’t. The dead don’t frighten me, it’s the living I’m scared of.’

Caro had learned, early on in their relationship, way before they were married, that once Ollie had his mind set on something there was no dissuading him. He wasn’t an idiot, he had a great commercial brain. And besides, she had secretly liked the whole idea of a grand country lifestyle. Lady of the Manor of Cold Hill House.

Ollie removed his arm and opened the rear door for Jade, but his daughter, engrossed in her iPhone, carried on Instagramming.

‘Out, sweetheart!’

‘Give me a minute, this is important!’

‘Out!’ he said, reaching in and unclipping her seat belt, then lifting out the cat carriers.

She scowled, and pulled her hood up over her head, jammed her phone into her hoodie pocket, jumped down, then made a dash for the porch. Ollie lugged the carriers over and set them down, then ran back to the car, opened the two halves of the tailgate, grabbed a suitcase and hauled it out, followed by another.

Caro tugged out two of her cases, then trailed him into the porch. He put the bags down and fumbled with the vast assortment of keys on the ring that the estate agent had given him, selected what he hoped was the right one, slotted it in the lock and turned it. Then he pushed the heavy front door open, into the long, dark hallway.

At the end of the hallway to the right was the staircase up to the first floor. Beyond that, the hall led into a small, oak-panelled anteroom with three doors, which the estate agent said was called the atrium. One door, to the left, went through into the dining room, one on the right was to the kitchen, and the third door opened directly on to the grounds at the back. The estate agent had told them it was rumoured that the oak for the panelling had come from one of Nelson’s ships, Agamemnon.

Ollie was greeted with a strong smell of floor polish, and a milder, zesty smell of cleaning fluid. A firm of professional house cleaners had spent two days in here, sprucing it up for them. And because of the poor condition of the house, the vendor’s solicitors had permitted them to do some essential decorating of their basic living areas before completion.

Jade followed him in, holding the cat carriers and looking around curiously, followed by her mother. Ollie dumped the two suitcases at the foot of the staircase, then hurried back outside to greet his in-laws and the removals men, the first of whom, a shaven-headed man-mountain in a Meatloaf T-shirt and ancient stone-washed jeans, had just jumped down from the cab and was looking up at the house admiringly. He’d admitted, proudly, to Ollie a couple of days ago, while boxing up their possessions in the old house, that he’d only recently come out of jail for an offence he hadn’t actually disclosed.

‘Bleedin’ gorgeous place you’ve got yourselves, guv!’ he conceded. ‘Love that tower.’ Then, cupping his hand over his roll-up, seemingly oblivious to the elements, he leaned forward conspiratorially and nodded up at the first floor of the tower. ‘Planning to put the missus up there when she gets a bit antsy?’

Ollie grinned. ‘Actually, it’s going to be my office.’

‘Good one!’

He saw Caro’s mother clambering out of the driving seat of the Volvo, or the Ovlov as he jokingly called it. A doughty lady, and a Brighton and Hove magistrate, Pamela Reilly, in a hooded anorak and baggy waterproof trousers, looked at this moment dressed for a polar expedition.

Her husband, Dennis, who, like his daughter, had always been a consummate worrier, was suffering from early-stage dementia and becoming increasingly forgetful and erratic. A retired Lloyds actuary, his profession had suited him perfectly. A career spent in calculating risk, he now applied that same skill set to everything he encountered in his retirement. A diminutive, balding and meek man, he was dressed in one of his habitual three-piece tweed suits and City livery ties, beneath a fur-trimmed coat and a black astrakhan hat that gave him the appearance of a bonsai Russian oligarch.

Twenty minutes later, after the kettle had boiled on the Aga, and tea and coffee had been distributed in mismatched mugs — all they had been able to find so far — and a packet of digestive biscuits torn open, they had an organized team. Caro stood at the bottom of the stairs, just before the atrium, directing the items which the chain of removal men carried in. Dennis stood at the top with a list created by Caro’s organized mind of what went where, studying it with a furrowed brow in childlike concentration, occasionally looking around in total, but enthusiastic, bewilderment. Jade let the cats out of their carriers, closed the kitchen doors to keep them contained, then went exploring.

Ollie stood with Pamela in the porch, with a checklist of which of the carefully labelled boxes should go into the house, and which belonged in the outbuildings around the rear, for now, until work inside the house was completed.

The shaven-headed man-mountain lugged a massive box, labelled BEDROOM 1 (MASTER), past them, with a grin.

Ollie ticked it off the list. He watched Caro, inside, look at the label and direct the removals man up the stairs. Then, as the man disappeared from sight, Ollie glimpsed a shadow crossing the atrium, like the flit of a bird across a fanlight.

His mother-in-law turned to him with a smile, her eyes wide open, almost bulging in excitement. ‘Did you see that?’ she asked.

Pamela, despite being an extremely well-respected magistrate, had a fey side to her. Early on in his relationship with Caro, Pamela had confided in him that, although she wasn’t sure if she was actually psychic — whatever that really meant — she would always know when someone was going to die, because she would have a recurring dream. It involved a black raven, a lake and a tombstone with the person’s name engraved on it.

What had she seen?

Caro was already uneasy enough about moving here, to this isolated property, without her mother spooking her out. It was the last thing he needed on this first day here, the first day of their new, dream life.

‘Did you see it?’ she asked again.

Her smile suddenly irritated him. There was a smugness, a told-you-so something about it.

‘No,’ he said, emphatically. ‘No, I didn’t see anything.’