Page 22 of Joker in the Pack

The cottage may have seen better days, but plywood and a padlock rather than a proper front door? Even in my worst nightmares, I hadn’t imagined that.

Mickey grimaced. “I didn’t want to say anything…”

“What? What is it?”

“The ambulance crew had to break into the house to help Eleanor.”

“She took ill in there?” I’d been so busy worrying about packing, and my landlord, and the endless paperwork, that I’d barely thought about how she died. A heart attack, according to her death certificate, but I’d assumed she’d passed peacefully in hospital. “Poor, poor Ellie.”

Flowers. I should take flowers to her grave. Presumably, she’d been buried in the local churchyard, and in a village the size of Upper Foxford, that shouldn’t be too difficult to find.

It would have to be a small bunch of flowers, though, at least for now. Without the need to pay rent, I could afford to live now, but things promised to be tight. Lilac Cottage would cost more to heat than my old flat, and I’d learned my lesson over the burst pipe.

Mickey held out the key. “Do you want to do the honours?”

As I took it, a flutter of excitement stirred in my belly. Would the inside be nicer? Until the paperwork was finalised yesterday afternoon, I’d barely allowed myself to think about the house, too afraid that the place would be snatched away from me by some administrative glitch at the eleventh hour.

But my luck had finally changed.

As we’d driven up from London, the three of us squashed into Maddie’s Ford Fiesta, we’d tried to guess what Lilac Cottage would be like. Lilac… Even the name sounded pretty.

“My money’s on seventies wallpaper,” Maddie had said. “You know, with the big flowers.”

Mickey grinned at us in the rear-view mirror. “That’s making a comeback at the moment. My sister just used it in her lounge. But I reckon it’ll have an avocado bathroom suite, dodgy carpet, and one of those old CRT televisions.”

“And it’ll be all musty and stink of mothballs. I stood next to a guy on the Tube yesterday who smelled of mothballs.” Maddie wrinkled her nose. “I didn’t even realise people still used them.”

“Me neither,” Mickey said. “Let’s hope it doesn’t have damp. That can play havoc with your furniture.”

Good thing I’d sold most of mine then, wasn’t it?

“Guys, it’s bad enough that I’m moving to the middle of nowhere, without the thought of having to live in a time warp.”

Maddie patted me on the hand. “Only trying to be realistic. It’s hardly going to be a palace, is it?”

I laid my head against the car window and groaned. Yes, she was right. But at least it came at the right price.

When Mickey said “cottage,” my imagination had run wild, thinking of one of those chocolate-box affairs with white walls and a cute thatched roof. A couple of overstuffed armchairs in the lounge, some chintzy curtains, and a bedroom where you had to duck under a quaint wooden beam to go inside. I could visualise myself living somewhere like that, even if it was clinging to the edge of civilisation by the ivy twisted artfully over its front porch.

But I could already see from the outside that my daydreams had been wide of the mark. In the next county, most likely.

Brown. That was the overriding theme of Lilac Cottage. Drab brick walls, paint peeling from once-beige window frames, the makeshift front door. The only hint of colour on the cottage itself was the green moss growing all over the roof.

Mickey winced as he poked at the window frame nearest the front door. “These need replacing. Painted at least.”

The whole cottage needed replacing. Preferably with a tidy apartment near shops and a Tube station. Butterflies battered my stomach with heavy wings as I reached for the padlock. How bad would the inside be?

Judging by the creak, nobody had oiled the hinges in years, and as I stepped over the threshold into the dim hallway, I found Maddie had been right about the mustiness. Ick. I reached out for the light switch and clicked it.

“Why is nothing happening?” I hissed.

“The electricity’s probably been cut off,” Mickey said. “Eleanor wasn’t around to pay the bill, was she?”

Another job for tomorrow, or rather, the day after, what with the first of January being a bank holiday. Good thing I’d brought a torch.

Mickey peered down at a set of shelves next to the front door, the only furniture in the otherwise empty hallway.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

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