Page 21 of Joker in the Pack

“Both, I think. I can’t quite believe this.”

He chuckled. “It’s not the first time I’ve seen that reaction. I’ll put the kettle on.”

Mickey bustled around while I stared at a smudge of dirt on the wall opposite, numb, half expecting a camera crew to pop out of thin air and announce this was all a joke. Try as I might, I couldn’t remember much about Aunt Ellie. She’d never paid me much attention. Apart from my birthday party and the argument, the only solid recollection I had was a visit to the Natural History Museum one rainy Saturday, when she’d tagged along with Mother and me and spent most of the time yawning.

“Where’s the milk?” Mickey asked.

“Sorry, there isn’t any. Cutbacks.”

“Black it is, then.”

He sat opposite me, cross-legged, and I took a sip from the mug he handed over. He may not have put any milk in, but he’d certainly found the sugar.

“So, what now? You mentioned a fee, but I don’t have any money. The website design business hasn’t been too lucrative lately.”

“You’re a web designer?” He scratched his chin, looking thoughtful. “Maybe we could come to an agreement?”

Two hours later, we’d got through several gallons of tea and a packet of chocolate digestives Mickey found hidden behind the baked beans—slightly elderly but still edible—and he’d become my second-best friend.

Not only was Mickey a researcher extraordinaire, he part-owned Heir Today, Gone Tomorrow with a friend he’d met at university. While they shared a love of history and family trees, neither was particularly proficient with computers. The company had only been going for a few weeks and was in dire need of a decent website.

“I’m not so great at the business side of things,” Mickey confessed. “My partner was doing that part, but his wife’s just had a baby and the lack of sleep’s getting to him.”

“Well, I can build you a website, design you a logo, organise flyers—anything you like—if you’ll help me with my forms.”

“Deal.”

A handshake sealed the arrangement, and that was how, two weeks later on the thirty-first of December, Maddie, Mickey, and I found ourselves standing outside a rather shabby-looking cottage in the quaint little village of Upper Foxford.

CHAPTER 8

“ARE YOU SURE this is the right place?” I asked Maddie. “It’s bigger than I thought.”

And a whole lot uglier.

Mickey held out the piece of paper with the address on it, and Maddie compared it to the map she’d printed out from the internet.

“Yep. Lilac Cottage. This is it.”

The bottom of the rickety wooden gate scraped over the path as Maddie pushed it open, and we followed her towards the house. And when I say followed, I mean we shoved our way through overgrown bushes and stepped over the tendrils of ivy that criss-crossed the path like mutant spaghetti.

“Imagine what a mess this’ll be in the summer,” Maddie muttered.

“I don’t think I want to.”

Mickey reached out and rubbed the fragrant leaves of a rosemary bush between his fingers. “You enjoy cooking, right?”

“Yes.”

“At least you’ve got garnish.”

To me, rosemary came in a plastic bag from Waitrose rather than in tree format. Living in London my whole life, I’d never had more than a cluster of decorative pots and a barbecue area outside, even when I lived with my parents, and I couldn’t deny my feeling of panic as I gazed around the jungle I was about to call home.

“Where do I start?” I spotted two beady eyes glaring at me from next to a tree. “Is that a fox?”

Maddie took my arm and led me towards the cottage. “One step at a time, Liv. Tackle the house first.” She looked towards the roofline and back to the ground floor. “That might take a while.”

“Why is the door made from plywood?”

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