Page 43 of The Cottage in the Highlands

“Yes. Of course. For your co-operation.”

Lily’s small mouth puckered with deliberation. As she agonised over my request, my attention was drawn to a broken bread maker stashed in the far corner of the kitchen. Lily’s gaze followed mine. She stuck her chin out. “What are you looking at?”

“Your bread maker.”

Lily laced and unlaced her hands. “What about it?”

“It looks like it might be broken.”

Lily sniffed.

“I would make sure you were generously compensated so you could replace that and still have some money left over.”

She mentally chewed over my proposition. She glanced down at the slumbering Harley and back up at me. “And you promise there would be no impact on the interior of the house?”

“None at all. I would make it clear that the photoshoot was in the garden and nowhere else.”

Lily processed this. I could see conflict waging a war in her expression.

“You can trust me. One hundred percent.”

Lily made an agonised sigh. “All right,” she agreed after a few more moments, with a stiff nod of her thick silvery head. “You can use the gardens of Merry Wood for your magazine. But the inside of the house remains out of bounds. Is that clear?” She pursed her lips. “If there is so much as one plant trodden on in that garden, I will sue the lot of you and see if I don’t.”

I was so relieved and bouncing with excitement, I could have hugged her. But I didn’t. She wouldn’t have liked it. Instead, I thanked her so profusely, she told me to be quiet as I was making her uncomfortable.

Then she informed me she would make a fresh pot of tea.

“So, I thought about the metallic shadow on the models and having them pose like the statues beside them?”

Ebony, the make-up artist, nodded her braided hair at my suggestion. “I’ll make sure each of them has bare lips then. Make it all about their eyes and complexions.”

The garden of Merry Wood was throbbing with activity. Tall circular lights glowed like inquisitive eyes onto the grass. The three models were languishing in louche poses and the stylist and photographer were engaged in a heated discussion about “what constitutes fluidity and atmosphere”.

It was a frosty morning in mid-November with the winter sun spreading her golden paintbrush over the tips of the trees and weaving across the long grass.

The fashion stylist from Goddess, Angelica, had brought with her an array of wispy skirts, shirts, trousers, and tops in the flimsiest gauze and silk, together with long padded coats for the models to shrug on in between photos to stop their teeth chattering. As agreed, we had opted for shades to complement the new Avanti make-up range, so the clothes (such as they were) were all vanillas, steels, ghost grey, and marshmallow colours.

Ebony had slicked each of the three models’ hair back from their chiselled faces, so that their mermaid shiny skin did all the talking.

I took a long, charged mouthful of my takeaway coffee. Thank goodness Athena had agreed to run with my idea. I had sold it to her, concentrating on the wild garden/statue vibe, stressing that spooky stories weren’t just popular at Halloween, but at Christmas too (think Scrooge) and that it would be a great fit for our festive issue.

I had taken a series of pictures of the gardens on my phone to show her and she had marvelled at the atmosphere of it all.

Now, I was hovering about at 8am on this Monday morning, with the determined frost still glinting on the grass and a raft of sleepless nights worrying about it all still taking their toll on me.

The three models of the moment – Esther Drew, Carina Salazar, and the only male model out of the three, who was known simply as Dante – had been preened and glossed and were strutting backwards and forwards, mumbling to Baz, the photographer.

Like everyone else, I’d seen their faces gracing all the magazines, but having them up close now, in the middle of a sprawling garden early in the morning, was a strange experience. It was also an enlightening one.

Esther Drew never smiled. From what I could see, she didn’t possess great teeth, but had a waterfall of dark-blonde hair and legs like a gazelle.

Dante was forever flexing his six-pack under his shirt and reminded me of a show pony. Carina Salazar was a dusky beauty who liked to sit and read self-improvement books between shots.

Baz asked Esther to drape herself around one of the Merry Wood statues. “Now tilt one of your cheese-grater cheeks against the statue, darling. That’s it. Look at me. You’re killing it! Killing it!”

I glanced up the lawn towards Merry Wood. It was as if the house were watching all the comings and goings, from those unoccupied still rooms of hers.

I promised Lily that the garden would be left how we found it. I had expected her to turn up on some pretext, to make sure no one was taking liberties, but there had been no sign of her so far.