Just One Night

True, there was some furniture, old rather than antique, dusted rather than polished, but there were certainly no flowers, no perfumed scent, nor, not surprisingly, was there any cat.

‘What is it?’ Ran asked her.

Hard on the heels of the acute envy she had felt when she had first seen the exterior of the house came a pang of sadness for its inner neglect. Oh, it was clean enough, if you discounted the air possessing a sharp, almost chemical smell that made her wrinkle her nose a little, but it was a long, long way from the home she had so lovingly mentally created.

She heard Ran moving around in the hall behind her.

‘I’ll take you up to your room,’ he told her. ‘Have you got something for your headache?’

‘Yes, but they’re in my luggage which is in my hire car,’ Sylvie told him grimly.

In the excitement of seeing the house her headache had abated slightly, but now the strong smell in the hallway had made it return and with interest. She could no longer deny that lying down somewhere dark and quiet had become a necessity.

‘It’s this way,’ Ran told her unnecessarily as he headed towards the stairs.

Once they might have been elegant, although now it was hard to know; the original staircase no longer existed and the monstrosity which had replaced it made Sylvie shudder in distaste.

The house had a sad, forlorn air about it, she recognised as she reached the large rectangular landing, carpeted again in the same revolting dun-brown as the hallway below.

‘Did your great-uncle live here?’ Sylvie asked him curiously.

‘No. It was let out to tenants. When my cousin inherited he moved in here, and after his death... I thought about selling it, but it’s too far off the beaten track to attract the interest of a buyer, and then once I’d made the decision to hang onto the land and farm it seemed to make sense to move into the house myself. It needs some work doing on it, of course...’

Sylvie said nothing but her expressive eyes gave her away and Ran continued coldly, ‘Well, yes, I can see that to someone such as yourself, used to only the very best that money can provide, it must be rather a come-down. I’m sorry if the only accommodation I can offer you isn’t up to your usual standards...’ Ran’s eyes darkened as he reflected on the elegance of Alex’s home and the luxury she must have enjoyed with Lloyd, but to Sylvie, who was remembering how Ran had once seen her living in the most basic and primitive conditions, when she had been part of the group of New Age travellers who had set up camp on Alex’s estate, the look he was giving her seemed to be one of taunting mockery.

‘You’re down here,’ Ran was saying as he led the way down a corridor with doors off either side of it, pushing one of them open and then standing to one side as he waited for her to enter.

The bedroom was large, with two long windows that let in the glowing evening sunlight. The old-fashioned wooden furniture, like the tables in the hallway, was spotlessly clean but lacked the warm lustre that it would once have had from being lovingly polished by several generations of female hands. The empty grate in the pretty fireplace, which she would have filled with a collection of dried flowers or covered with an embroidered firescreen, was simply that—an empty grate. The curtains and the bedding were modern and, she suspected, newly purchased for her visit. The same depressing brown carpet as downstairs covered the floor.

‘You’ve got your own bathroom,’ Ran told her as he crossed the floor to push open another door. ‘It’s old-fashioned but it works.’

As she looked into the bathroom past him, Sylvie said wryly, ‘It may be old-fashioned to you, Ran, but this type of plain white Edwardian sanitaryware is very much in vogue right now.’

‘There are wardrobes and cupboards on that wall,’ he told her unnecessarily, indicating the bank of built-in furniture. ‘I haven’t had the chance yet, but tomorrow I’ll bring up a desk from downstairs.’

‘I’ll certainly need somewhere to put my laptop,’ Sylvie agreed. ‘But I will also need to have a room somewhere, I think preferably up at the Hall itself, to work officially from. But that’s something we can discuss later.

‘Where’s your housekeeper?’ she asked him. ‘I’d like to meet her...’

‘Mrs Elliott... She’ll be here in the morning. I can introduce you then.

‘Look.’ He glanced at his watch and then told her, ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to leave you. I have to go out, but if you’d like something for that headache...’

‘What I’d like is my own medication,’ Sylvie told him acidly, ‘but, since that’s not available, thanks but no, thanks. I need my luggage,’ she added pointedly.