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The door buzzed and Kate pushed it open. She took a deep breath and stepped inside, swearing as her bike caught on the door and pulled off a strip of ancient paint. She was hit by the smell of wood polish and fresh flowers, coming, she realised, from a plug-in air freshener in the corner of the room. In front of her sat an enormous desk, slightly too orange to be made of actual wood. The woman behind it looked up as Kate entered, failing to hide her surprise at the bike in Kate’s hand.

“Morning,” said a smiling, plump woman with bleach blonde hair and a button missing from her too tight shirt.

“Morning, I’m here for a one-thirty appointment, but I’m a bit early.”

“No problem at all. Take a seat. Tea? Coffee?”

“Tea please.”

Her bladder was fit to burst after all the tea she’d drunk on the train, but accepting seemed the polite thing to do.

“Milk? Sugar?”

“Just milk, please.”

“No problem. I’ll be back in a tick. Oh, and could you tuck that bike behind my desk? Could be a health and safety hazard.”

“Sure,” said Kate, standing to move her bike. Her legs groaned at the movement. She’d forgotten how many hills there were here, and how few cycle lanes, for that matter. City life had spoiled her.

A door creaked open and an enormous man appeared, bending to move beneath its frame. Kate took in his three-piece suit, pink, flowery shirt and felt her cheeks redden at the mud stained skinny jeans she counted as smart-casual wear.

“Miss Trenain, good to meet you,” he said, reaching her in two strides and crushing her hand in a warm handshake. “That’s a Cornish name, if ever I heard one. How long since you were last here?”

“Twenty years.”

“Goodness me, the place must have changed a bit since then.”

Kate nodded politely. From what she’d seen in the hour she’d been in the Duchy, not much had changed at all.

“Right, come on through.”

*

An hour later, Kate found herself standing with the giant solicitor outside the thinnest house she had ever seen. It had taken less than five minutes to walk there from the solicitor’s office, and she could’ve done with a longer walk to wrap her tired brain around what had just happened. The house was hers. Nanny Cornwall, as Kate had known her, had left it to her in her will. The same Nanny Cornwall who cut Kate and Mum out of her life after Dad died. The same Nanny Cornwall who yelled at them in the street never to set foot in her house, or town, ever again.

Keys jangled as the solicitor pulled them from his pocket. “Shall we?”

“Just a sec.” Kate parked her bike up against the railings and spread her arms wide. She leaned against the house, her fingertips touching each end. “It’s smaller than I remember,” she said, smiling for the first time that day.

“Wait till you get inside. It’s a Tardis. Trust me.”

Kate did trust him. The man reminded her of a teddy bear she’d had as a child. She stepped back and let him open the front door.

“Ladies first,” he said, motioning for her to lead the way.

Kate stepped through the door and was hit by a musty smell mixed with lavender, and a sadness that weighed down on her chest and made it hard to breathe. She walked straight into the living room. A scruffy armchair nestled in one corner, a lace cloth covering the head rest. It faced a sofa that when Kate sat down, pinched and prodded her with springs fighting their way through its fabric. On a dark wood table sat a book and a pair of reading glasses.

“Are you all right Mrs Trenain?”

Kate couldn’t speak, not even to correct him that she was a Ms, not a Mrs. She didn’t trust herself to open her mouth. What would come out? A cry? A scream? A howl seemed the most likely option. The owner of the reading glasses had been her closest living relative. As an adult, it should’ve been up to her to take care of her, move past the memory of that awful last meeting and try to mend frayed family ties.

“Come on, I’ll show you around.”

Kate followed the solicitor (call me Bob) out of the sitting room and into a narrow hallway. To her left, stairs covered in threadbare carpet led upstairs, and in front was another door.

“The dining room is through here, and the kitchen.”

Bob bent down as he went through the door. The dining room felt wider than the sitting room, a lot wider.

Source: www.allfreenovel.com
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