Page 12 of The Christmas Retreat
Then she cunningly added, knowing how interested I’d be in the prospect: ‘The workmen are finally bringing those trunks of Arwen’s things up from the basement tomorrow. They couldn’t do it before, because the owners of the next-door house have been around a lot lately, but now they’ve gone abroad till after the New Year. Aren’t you dying to see what’s in them?’
‘Of course! But I’m staying put till I absolutelyhaveto leave,’ I insisted stubbornly.
I didn’t confess that the thought of the busy, crowded streets of London made me feel panicked, or that the prospect of living at the flat, even for a short time, gave me claustrophobia.
Evie seemed to guess some of this, however. ‘You need to get over your agoraphobia, Ginny.’
‘I haven’tgotagoraphobia!’
‘You’re borderline, at the very least,’ she said. ‘I know you only go out when you absolutelyhaveto, and the only person you ever see is that farmer from down the road.’
‘Eli’s a smallholder, not a farmer.’
‘Same difference, just on a smaller scale,’ she said unanswerably.
‘I’ll be fine, and I’m going to step up my internet search for a new place. I’m a cash buyer so once I’ve found somewhere, I can move quickly.’
I’d have to, seeing I had to be out of the cottage by the first day of February!
‘Let me know what you find in those Pandora’s boxes when you open them tomorrow, won’t you?’ I asked.
‘OK, I’ll ring you, or email if you don’t answer because I don’t suppose you’ll hear the phone if you’re wearing those headphones.’
Then Evie handed the phone back to Liv, whose clear, crisp voice said, ‘Ginny, even if you don’t want to move in here, why not just come for a couple of days’ break from all the noise and disruption? I’m sure it would do you good.’
‘I daren’t. Goodness knows what would happen in my absence if I did!’ I exclaimed, then added firmly, ‘Sorry, I’ll have to go now. Someone’s at the door.’
This was not an excuse to put the phone down; there reallywassomeone hammering at the front door.
A big, potbellied workman stood on the doorstep, the one who had been so surly when I’d pointed out I’d need to get my car in and out across his trench. His habit of addressing all his remarks to my boobs didn’t endear him to me, either.
‘I don’t suppose you could make us a cup of tea, love?’ he asked, with a leer that I expect he thought was an ingratiating smile.
‘You suppose right,’ I snapped, and shut the door in his face.
*
By late afternoon next day, when Evie still hadn’t let me know what she’d found in those two boxes, I was almost beside myself with curiosity.
My flurry of text messages went unanswered and it was evening before Evie finally rang.
‘At last!’ I cried. ‘What’s happening? Did you get into the boxes?’
‘Yes, and the game’s afoot, Watson,’ she said.
When she quotes Sherlock Holmes, it means she’s scented a mystery and her bloodhound instincts have been stirred. Once she’s set on a trail there’s no deflecting her.
‘The boxes were locked and we hadn’t got the keys, but once we prised them open, we discovered all kinds of clues to Arwen’s past, her connection with Milly and her brother, Edwin. Putting them all together has been like making sense of a jigsaw puzzle when most of the pieces are missing and you don’t have the picture.’
‘But youhavemade sense of it all now?’ I asked eagerly. ‘What have you discovered?’
‘We proceeded methodically, recording what we found,’ Evie went on maddeningly. ‘We opened a large cabin trunk first, which I now suspect was packed by Arwen following herfather’s death and left in Milly’s care – I’ll come to the reason for that bit in a minute – because it was full of mementos and personal documents relating to her parents, Mary and Lewis Madoc, including two framed studio wedding day photos of both Arwen’s parents and grandparents, which I found particularly interesting.’
‘I’d love copies of those,’ I said.
‘Then I’ll get Liv to organize that for you,’ she promised. ‘I already knew Lewis Madoc was a portrait artist who had continued working in a somewhat Impressionist style, and I’ve now checked out a lot of his work, but it was a wonderful surprise to find two of his small portraits carefully packed at the bottom of the trunk. They’re of Arwen and her mother. The resemblance between them is striking.’
‘What do they look like?’ I asked eagerly.
