‘It is to me,’ Will said. ‘Do you enjoy it?’
‘Yeah,’ she said, thinking about it. ‘I did. But I think I decided about two minutes ago that I don’t want to do it forever.’
Will shrugged. ‘No one wants to do anything forever, surely.’
‘Hmm, probably not,’ Lucy said, finishing her coffee and contemplating ordering another one. ‘Perhaps I’m just distracted by all this house stuff. There’s suddenly a lot to organise, although actually no more than there was yesterday. And then there’s all the stuff left behind to sort. I feel reluctant just to bin things because it was someone’s life.’
Will nodded. ‘I know. I helped my parents sort my granddad’s place years ago when he passed away. A whole life in one little cottage and then bit by bit it all went to the charity shop or the skip if it was past repair. And then it was empty and that was that. Just be grateful Dido wasn’t a hoarder. Have you been in the attic yet?’
‘No. I forgot all about the attic actually. God, perhaps that’s where all the knick-knacks are hiding, because there is barely anything in the house. And what there actually is in the house, is mostly very … odd.’
‘Like what?’ he asked.
She told him about the poster informing those who had been sent to concentration camps that they were entitled to compensation. When she’d finished summarising the document Will said, ‘That is odd. Also very interesting.’
Lucy nodded.
And then Will said, ‘Were your family Jewish then?’
‘I didn’t think so,’ Lucy said. ‘Dido and her sister Persephone were our first cousins once removed so I’m not completely sure. We’ve just organised a Christian burial for Dido so if she was Jewish, Clara and I have got a lot to answer for. Also Dido was a churchgoer so …’
‘They might have been Jewish,’ Will said, ‘and pretended not to be.’
‘To stay alive? During the war, do you mean?’
Will nodded. ‘Stranger things have happened. Especially here. If they were Jewish and didn’t register as such, they might have been able to get away with hiding it, especially by going to church.’
‘But I didn’t think the poster was making reference to it being a holocaust issue,’ Lucy said, trying to think back to the exact wording of the poster. ‘I thought it was about punishment. Oh, I don’t know.’ Lucy sighed. ‘There were some shorthand notes my sister and I found in the house. I can’t read it well, but I’m fairly sure one said the word “resistance” and so I did half wonder what had happened in the house during the war. Maybe nothing, but then why is that poster there? It’s so confusing and horrific, actually.’
‘It was all horrific. My knowledge of the Occupation is scant I’m afraid so I’m not really going to be of much use, but if you need a hand making sense of any of it, I’m happy to help.’ Will stood up and took his finished coffee cup to the counter before stopping at Lucy’s table again. ‘What are you doing tomorrow night?’
‘Nothing,’ Lucy said and then wished she had a hobby so she could have replied with an answer that sounded a bit more interesting.
‘If you’re free and want to come over, I can make us some dinner and perhaps we can do some digging. See what that poster is all about.’
She suddenly felt warm and paused before answering. ‘That would be lovely. Thank you very much,’ she said rather too formally.
‘Eight o’clock?’ he said, fiddling with the zip on his jacket. ‘Bring some of those things you found and we can take a look?’
When she nodded, he waved goodbye and winked. Then looked startled that he’d done it, shaking his head as he left the coffee shop.
Lucy laughed and then glanced absent-mindedly at her laptop screen, its screensaver well into its rotating inventory of scenery from around the world.
The next day Lucy sat at the desk in the study of Deux Tourelles and used her phone’s data to connect her laptop to the Internet. As she typed mindlessly from the notes provided by the holiday company about a brand-new five-star hotel they were promoting for Christmas, she knew without thinking about it that she just wasn’t inspired enough. Was Clara right? Was Lucy just paddling through life? She had loved it once – the freedom of all this. But also, it was easy, second nature. And wasn’t that the goal? It wasn’t that well paid but that was always the way now. And if Lucy jacked her clients in at any point then there were a thousand freelancers queuing up behind her to shove her out of the way and jump into her shoes.
Her cup of tea had gone cold and the study suddenly felt stuffy. Even though spring hadn’t yet quite turned to summer, it was so close, Lucy could sense it. Today wasn’t a hot day but it wasn’t a cold one either. She pulled off her cardigan, swung the desk chair round and went to the back of the house, opening the kitchen door that led out into the garden. She stood against the doorframe and looked out thoughtfully at the overgrown mass. The grass needed cutting. Rose buds were present but tightly closed, ready to bloom in only a matter of weeks. But for now they displayed only the faintest hint of what lay inside, a shimmer of tightly furled green with tantalisingly pale edges.
Lucy had remembered Will saying he helped Dido out a little in the garden. The elderly lady had clearly not been that interested in gardening, or perhaps she’d had no one to do it for her and was too frail herself to engage in such a task. As such the garden could do with a little nip and a tuck. She’d seen tools hanging in the back of the garage and went to find some of the smaller, sharper ones along with an electric mower.
Once she’d finished mowing, it looked so much better and she inhaled the green aroma of freshly cut grass. Then she looked around at the wildness. She knew how to prune. Her mum had shown her the basics years ago and so she started snipping and neatening up the garden, lacerating her fingers on thorns in the absence of seeing any gardening gloves in the garage.
After a few hours mostly spent hacking away at a bush that had grown over something in the garden, Lucy was worn out and desperately thirsty, but knew if she stopped to go inside and get a glass of water that she’d never go back into the garden again. And she so wanted to know what it was she could see between the rose bushes and the red-brick garden wall. She pulled at the bushes, being careful not to grab hold of any thorns, snipped and cut and pulled away until she could see an ornate curved metal garden bench. It had once been painted a glorious shade of deep racing green and fragments of paint remained scattered here and there across the bench. The rest of it had given way to rust.
Odd that something could be so engulfed in bracken and weeds, left to rot as if no one cared for it. It had once been beautiful, Lucy was sure. And the aspect from this part of the garden was stunning, facing to the back of the wide house, looking up at the two turrets from which the house got its name, the exterior coated in ivy and the rest of the rose garden. From this bench you could sit and survey everything. Lucy smiled. She would make a point later of looking up how to restore it, what kind of paint and varnish she would need. It wouldn’t take her long to bring it back to life again.
Life. It was what this house sorely lacked. It was a beautiful house. It needed children in it. It needed a family to fill all those bedrooms. Lucy had felt it – the overarching feeling of sadness that emanated through its walls. If she’d been a superstitious person she might have said it had a ghostly air about it. But so far, nothing had gone bump in the night. It was just loneliness; she was one woman living alone, albeit temporarily, in a five-bedroom petit-manor house, and that didn’t feel right. So how had Dido done it?
She wondered about Persephone, Dido’s sister: when had she left and why? Had she moved away and married? Or had something else happened to her? Lucy tried not to think about the notice about concentration camps. There was hardly any trace of Persephone in the house now and no one at Dido’s funeral had mentioned her. But then, there was hardly any trace of Lucy at Clara’s house.
