Where I Found You by Brooke Amanda

Author:Brooke, Amanda [Amanda Brooke]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harper
Published: 2014-03-10T04:00:00+00:00

16

As Maggie knocked on the heavy wooden door, she breathed in the scent of lilacs. As always it evoked thoughts of Elsa but on this occasion the fragrance was completely natural and had floated across from the garden. She had forgotten Kathy had lilac trees and as she waited for the door to be answered, she wondered if it was too late in the season to extract some oils from the flowers in the same way Mrs Jackson once had to make her soap.

Kathy swung the door open wide. ‘I hope you’re hungry,’ she said.

Harvey sniffed the air in anticipation. ‘She didn’t mean you,’ Maggie warned as they were ushered into the house. She was hoping to be the first to arrive to give her a little extra time to get her bearings. She knew the house well enough but even a subtle change in the layout of furniture could lead to jarred limbs and stubbed toes and she would rather make those painful mistakes without Judith’s pitying gaze.

Carefully wiping her feet on the thick bristles of the welcome mat, Maggie stepped into the cavernous entrance hall. Then her heels clicked against porcelain tiles and echoed through the house. Her first visit had been eight years earlier and while her initial impression had been that of a substantial home, it would be James’s later descriptions that had given it the grandeur it deserved. It was a large Georgian villa, three storeys high, four if you included the basement. Many of the features were original, including the black-and-white tiled floor she was now standing on. James was called upon now and again to keep the place from falling into disrepair and it was as much a labour of love for him as it was for Kathy and Joe. It had been the couple’s family home for the last thirty years or so, but now their children had families of their own, it had become what Kathy lovingly termed ‘a money pit’.

‘I can’t believe you’re finally giving it up,’ Maggie said as she breathed in her surroundings. Beneath the pungent aroma of garlic and herbs wafting through from the kitchen there was a distinctive old house smell. She picked up the scent of dried-out wallpaper sealing in decades of history.

‘There are some rooms I don’t go in from one month to the next,’ Kathy explained, ‘and when I do it’s only to air them or check that the ceiling hasn’t caved in. It was an easy enough decision to take, in the end, and we’ve already had a few enquiries about renting it out.’

‘Another addition to the family portfolio?’ Maggie remarked without a hint of envy. She had no idea how many properties Kathy’s dad had acquired over the years but she’d gathered that it had given his wife quite a headache when she had been forced to take over the business when he died. At close to ninety, Kathy’s mum was a wily businesswoman, by all accounts, but had finally accepted that she couldn’t go on forever.

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