The House on Cold Hill

  Ollie grinned and looked at his wife. ‘It’s stunning. We are going to be very happy here. It’ll just take a bit of getting used to our new lifestyle.’

  ‘I liked our old lifestyle,’ Jade retorted. ‘I liked Carlisle Road.’

  Ollie squeezed Caro’s hand. She squeezed back. Then she turned to their daughter. ‘We’ll make sure you see your friends whenever you want to. And you’ll make new friends out here.’

  ‘Yeah? What? Cows? Llamas? Alpacas?’

  Caro laughed and tousled Jade’s hair. Her daughter pulled her head back, irritated; she never liked her hair being touched. Caro wanted so badly to feel good about being here, to share in Ollie’s enthusiasm. She was determined to make an effort. As a city girl, she’d always dreamed of living in the countryside, too. But on this rainy September day, heading towards winter, all the work they had to do on the house seemed daunting. And she’d never in her life lived without neighbours. Noise. Human life. ‘You love animals, Jade, darling,’ she said. ‘You wanted a dog – we could get one.’

  ‘A dog?’ Jade said, her face suddenly animated. ‘We can really have a dog? A puppy?’

  ‘Yes!’ Caro replied.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Well, we could perhaps start looking around the rescue homes as soon as we’re straight here.’

  Jade brightened considerably. ‘What kind of dog?’

  ‘Let’s see what’s around!’ Ollie replied. ‘I think a rescue dog would be nice, don’t you, lovely?’

  ‘Something fluffy?’ Jade asked. ‘Big and fluffy?’

  ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Big and fluffy.’

  ‘How about a labradoodle?’

  ‘Well, let’s see, darling!’ Caro laughed. Ollie smiled. Everything was going to be fine. Their dream life in their dream new home. Well, project of a home, anyway.

  Caro opened the car door and the howling gale blew it back on its hinges, bending them, the door mirror hitting the front wing of the car so hard the glass shattered.

  ‘That’s seven years’ bad luck!’ Jade said.

  ‘Lucky I’m not superstitious,’ Ollie replied.

  ‘Mum is,’ Jade said, breezily. ‘We’re doomed!’

  3

  Friday, 4 September

  ‘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.’

  4

  Sunday, 6 September

  Jade, her long fair hair clipped back, dressed in jeans, socks and a crop top, with a note to herself written in blue ink on her left hand, was in her bedroom, which had wallpaper that she thought was a bit naff. She had spent much of this first weekend sorting her things out, with the occasional help of her mother. Her favourite song, ‘Uptown Funk’ by Bruno Mars and Mark Ronson, was blasting out from the Sonos speaker on top of a wooden chest of drawers.

  It was Sunday evening and she was bored of unpacking now. Stuff lay ankle-deep on the floor, and Bombay was curled up on the patchwork quilt of her wrought-iron bed. The tortoiseshell moggie, which had adopted Jade within hours of being brought home from the rescue centre three years ago, lay contentedly amid a pile of cushions, her head resting on Blankie, the grey blanket Jade had had with her since she was an infant, and nuzzled up against Jade’s yellow, bug-eyed minion. Above the cat, Duckie, her gangly, mangy cream duck, with yellow feet and yellow bill, that she’d had almost as long as Blankie, its feet entwined in the metal latticework of the headboard, hung down gormlessly. Suspended from the other side of the headboard was her purple dream-catcher.

  She’d had to admit, reluctantly, that this was a nicer room than her previous one, although it was a yucky pink. About five times larger, and – big bonus! – it had an en-suite bathroom, with a huge, old-fashioned bathtub with brass taps. She’d already luxuriated in it last night with a Lush bath-bomb, and felt like a queen.

  On the curved shelves on the far side of her bedside table, she’d arranged some of her silver trophies, including her Virgin Active Brighton Tennis Club Championships, Mini Green Runner-up 2013 and Star of the Week Dance Club, 2013, along with a photograph of the rear of a pink American convertible with a surfboard sticking out of the back seat. Next to it was propped her guitar in a maroon case, alongside a music stand on which lay a curled book titled Easy Guitar Lessons. She’d already unpacked most of her books, and put them on the shelves on the opposite wall. All her sets of The Hunger Games and Harry Potter were in their correct order, as well as her collection of David Walliams, except for one, Ratburger, which was on her bedside table. Also next to it on the table were piled several books on training dogs, as well as one she loved, called Understanding Your Cat.

  In front of the huge sash window was her wooden dressing table, minus its mirror which her father had not yet fixed into place. The surface was littered with cans of her body sprays, bottles of perfumes and Zoella products. Her orange plastic chair sat in front of it.

  She was feeling lonely. On weekends in Brighton she would have walked round to Phoebe, Olivia or Lara’s house, or they would have come round to her, and made music videos together, or she’d have seen Ruari. Right now her parents, and her gran and gramps, were flat-out downstairs, busy unpacking boxes and getting the house in some kind of order – at least, the rooms they could live in for now, until the builders and decorators had got the house straight. Which was going to take months. Years. Forever.

  The large window looked past the row of garages, over the vast rear garden and the lake, a couple of hundred yards in the distance, to the paddock, and the steep rise of the hill beyond. Her mother had told her the paddock would be perfect for the pony she had always hankered after. That brightened her a little, although she was keener at this moment on a labradoodle puppy. She’d spent a lot of time googling dog rescue centres and labradoodle breeders, and looking up all sorts of possible alternatives on Dogs 101. So far she’d found no rescue places or breeders in their area with any puppies, but there was one breeder about an hour away who was expecting a litter soon.

  It was coming up to eight o’clock. No doubt one of her parents would be up soon to tell her ‘no more screen time’ and to get ready for bed. She went over to her dressing table, picked up her phone, and for some moments gazed wistfully at a video clip of Ruari, with his sharp hairstyle, nodding his head and grinning to a piece of music. Then she dialled Phoebe on her FaceTime app.

  It was still light outside, despite the dark clouds and the rain, which had not relented throughout the weekend, pattering against the rattling window in front of her. ‘Uptown Funk’ was playing again at full blast. That was another plus about this new house – her room was at the far end of the first floor, with empty rooms between, so she could play her music as loudly as she liked without her parents coming in to tell her to turn it down. Mostly in their previous home she’d had to resort to wearing her headphones. At this moment she didn’t even know where the headphones were. Buried somewhere in one of the four huge boxes of her stuff that she had still not yet unpacked.

  Beep, beep, beep.

  The phone went dead.

  ‘Co
me on, come on!’ The internet connection here was rubbish. Her dad had promised to get it sorted tomorrow, but he was so useless at dealing with things it would probably take a week, knowing him. They were all going to have to change phone providers. God, it wasn’t like they were in the back of beyond or anything – they were only ten miles from Brighton. But at this moment, they might as well have been on the moon!

  She tried again. Then, dialling for the third time, she suddenly saw Phoebe’s face filling the screen, blonde hair hanging over her forehead, and her own face in a small square in the corner.

  Her friend, grinning and chewing gum, said, ‘Hey, Jade!’

  Then she lost the signal, and Phoebe with it. ‘Come on, come on, come on!’ she shouted at the screen, and redialled. Moments later she was reconnected.

  ‘Sorry about that, Phebes!’

  ‘You OK?’

  ‘I am so not OK! I miss you tons!’

  ‘Me you, Jade! Mum’s in a shit mood with Dad, and taking it out on me. And all the gerbils escaped. It’s, like, not been a great day. Mungo was running around with my favourite, Julius, in her mouth, with his legs wriggling, then she shot off down the garden.’

  ‘Did she kill him?’

  ‘Dad buried him – what was left of him. I hate that cat!’

  ‘No! Did you get the rest of them back?’

  ‘They were all under the sofa in the sitting room, huddled together, looking terrified. Why would they want to escape? They had everything they needed – food, water, toys.’

  ‘Maybe they don’t like the weather and decided to go south for a holiday?’

  Phoebe laughed. Then she said, ‘“Uptown Funk”! Turn it up!’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘What do you think – I’ve bought the latest Now CD for Lara for her birthday?’

  ‘Does she still have a CD player, Phebes?’

  There was a long silence. Then a defensive, ‘She must have.’

  ‘I don’t think we have one any more.’