I peered down the first driveway we passed and glimpsed an imposing Victorian mansion. The property appeared to have substantial gardens around it, but the overwhelming impression was that it was embedded in the woodland. It made me shudder.
The next driveway offered a view of two homes. One was as grand as the first place, if not more so. Sharing a driveway with it was a more modern, architect-designed property, probably no more than ten years old. The modern place looked to have been built on land sold off by the bigger house. Though the driveway was shared, the design and distance between the two houses must have ensured reasonable, but not total, privacy for both. These properties, too, were nestled into the woods.
“I don’t like it here,” I said. Claustrophobia had me in its grip. My hands were trembly and my palms clammy.
“It’s okay,” Dan said. “You’ll see.”
“Please turn around,” I said, but he kept driving as if I hadn’t spoken.
The lane curved and just beyond the curve, it ended abruptly. Posts with barbed wire strung between them signaled you could drive no farther. Beyond them there was more woodland. One more driveway opened to our left, flanked by ornate stone columns. One of them bore a name: Cossley House. Dan turned into the driveway. It was pitted and overgrown.
“Please,” I said. “I just want to go home.”
Dan stopped the car halfway down. “You have to trust me,” he said. His smile had gone, and he cradled my face between his hands. “Look at me,” he said. “Pull yourself together for me.”
I nodded and he let go. His insistence unsettled me. I felt no better.
We drove the last few yards in silence. At the end of the drive was the finest house of all, a true mansion, but it had been neglected. There was another car in the drive and as we pulled in, the door opened and a man stepped out. He was about our age, with prematurely thinning hair and cheeks that were fatly red with the afterglow of many good lunches. He was an estate agent, I realized, he had to be, though there had been no “For Sale” or “For Rent” sign at the end of the drive.
Eliza came to the same conclusion. “You’ve been ambushed,” she said. “Dan wants to buy this place.”
Dan got out of the car without saying anything and before I knew it, he was on the steps of the house shaking hands warmly with the agent. I followed, slowly.
“You must be Mrs. Harper,” the agent said, descending the steps toward me, hand outstretched. “Welcome! I’m Henry. It’s lovely to meet you.”
I suffered Henry’s bearlike handshake and knew I was going to have to endure this viewing because it would humiliate Dan if I refused to stay. I thought I would get through the tour as quickly as possible and get out of there because I would never, in a million years, agree to buy this house. Henry unlocked the large front door and held it open for us.
I didn’t even want to step through it, but Dan pushed me not-so-gently in the small of my back and I entered the hallway, onto a pale limestone floor, inset with smaller black diamonds. The space was dominated by the staircase, which was dusty, but as elegant as any I’d ever seen. Delicate spindles and dark wooden treads outlined a sinuous climb toward a light well set three stories above us. I stepped into the pool of murky sunlight it cast on the floor and looked up and around. It was obvious that while one or two rooms had been renovated, the rest of the place had not.
This place is way too big for us, I thought. And way too grand. It’s all wrong. We’ll rattle around in it. It’s almost a total wreck. A money pit. I hate it. And I can never live beside Stoke Woods or Charlotte Close. Never.
The sound of the door shutting startled me and I swung around. The agent had left us to it.
Dan put his arms around me. “It’s one of Bristol’s finest mansions,” he said, “and one of its most historic. Houses like this only come on the market once in a lifetime.”
“I can’t live here,” I said. “And you know why.”
“Give it a chance, for me. Please? Imagine how beautiful we could make it if we finish the renovations. I could project-manage, maybe even do some of the work if we get you a proper assistant. We could put our touch on it.”
“He really loves it,” Eliza said. She sounded horrified but also intrigued, and I knew it would damage us if I insisted on leaving now.
I was also having to face up to something: the hole in Dan’s life that had been left by his failed writing career had clearly not been filled by his becoming my assistant, or by his new, moneyed, pursuits. I’d suspected it, but hadn’t really thought about what it might mean for us because when I was writing I had no mental space for anything else. However, it felt very real now.
But if Dan wanted another project, it wasn’t going to be this house. He was going to have to think of something else.
“Look around at least,” Eliza said. “Let him think you’re giving it a chance.”
It was good advice. “Show me everything,” I said, and tried to look interested. Dan beamed. He took my hand and led me into a renovated kitchen where most of the external wall had been punched out and replaced by glass. It overlooked a side garden that was grassed and surrounded by dense hedges. Shiny gadgets had been built or tucked into every crevice of the cabinetry, and the island was the size of the kitchenette in our flat. It had no charm. There was nothing homey about it.
“We could make the whole house as amazing as this,” Dan said. He was practically purring.
“Well, it’s something,” I said.
“Come,” Dan said. He led me back across the hallway and turned a door handle. “Ready for the big reveal?”
I nodded and he pushed the door open with the flourish of a magician pulling a rabbit from a hat.
The room was vast, an absolute dream if you are the type to have pretensions to grandeur. It had an ornate ceiling and the walls were maybe twelve feet high, two of them punctuated by sash windows offering views of a long lawn at the back of the house that was bordered, simply, by the low wire fence that demarcated the edge of Stoke Woods.
I was transfixed by the sight. The oaks were gathered along the perimeter of the property like sentries who have stood still for so long that their flesh has warped and turned to bark. I felt as if my past had walked right up to the boundary and was waiting for me there. Waiting to remind me of Teddy. Waiting to punish me.
I couldn’t pretend any longer. I turned to tell Dan that I absolutely could not contemplate living here, that it would be impossible for me to return to this location, but the sight of him stopped me.
He stood in the center of the room, in the midst of the remains of a fallen ceiling rose, which had created a starburst of debris on the parquet. Sunshine cut through the windows and pale light played across his face and his body, burnishing his narrow shoulders, glinting from his glasses. His grin widened as he pulled an object from his pocket and held it up in the dusty shaft of light. It was a set of keys.
“The house is ours,” he said. “I bought it for you.”
Eliza swore and I felt a powerful wave of nausea before my knees gave out from under me.
6.
Crushed plasterwork was digging into my backside and I could taste fine dust in the air, too. Dan was cradling me. I sat up cautiously.