‘It is a lovely picture. Who did paint it?’
Yes, well, there was the rub.
‘I found it in the house. It wasn’t signed.’
‘Well, someone who lived there was very talented.’ She took another forkful of cake, then said, ‘What you need is a plan.’
‘This is the plan,’ she admitted. ‘Well, one of them. I’ve made a sort of Sleeping Beauty story. Pictures of the stairs covered in leaves, furniture shrouded in dust sheets, cobwebby attics, glimpses of the view through dusty windows, matching the room with sound bites from the history, and put it on YouTube.’ She played it through.
‘It’s very...atmospheric.’
‘Thanks. That’s exactly what I was going for,’ she said.
Her mother sighed. ‘This is all very arty and interesting but what would you have done if Miles Morgan hadn’t...’ She made a vague gesture, clearly not wanting to say the words. ‘To recover the situation?’
‘Well, I would have suggested...’ She stopped. Keep it simple... Okay, she couldn’t afford to hire a firm of contract cleaners but maybe, just maybe... ‘Mum, can I offer you a proposition?’
‘You can offer me another piece of that cake,’ she said, pouring out the tea, adding a splash of milk. ‘What kind of proposition?’
‘Well, you can see for yourself that Hadley Chase is a beautiful country house set in amazing grounds. It has a chalk stream with trout fishing for Dad and the boys, rods included,’ she added. She’d seen them hung on racks in one of the storerooms. ‘There are views to die for, and Hadley is a classic English village with thatched cottages, a centuries-old pub and a village green. I know it’s not Cornwall,’ she said quickly, ‘but it will be free.’
‘Well, that sounds delightful and incredibly generous of you, considering it’s not your house,’ her mother replied, suspicious rather than enthusiastic, ‘but you seem to have glossed over the delightfully atmospheric cobwebs. And didn’t it say in the paper that the staircase was about to fall down?’
‘There is nothing wrong with the staircase that a vacuum, a duster and a little elbow grease won’t fix.’ She waited for the penny to drop. It didn’t take long.
‘So when you say “free”, what you actually mean is that we’ll be spending our holiday dealing with the dust and the leaves and whatever else is lingering in the corners. In other words, giving the place a thorough scrub?’
‘Not all of it,’ she protested. ‘Just the main rooms.’
‘And the bedrooms, unless we’re going to camp on the lawn. And the bathrooms. And the kitchen.’
‘I’ll do the kitchen before you get there. Really, it’s not that bad.’
Her mother sipped her tea.
‘Seven days, eight adults,’ she prompted. ‘All I’m asking is an hour a day from each of you and in return you get to stay in an ancient and historic manor house. I promise,’ she continued before her mother could raise any other objections, ‘that no one at the WI will have holiday pictures to beat yours. Not some pokey little cottage, not even an apartment in a stately home, but the whole place, four-poster beds and a ballroom included, to yourselves.’
‘I don’t know, Tash—’