Maddy’s Christmas Wedding (Little Duck Pond Cafe #37)

CHAPTER SIX

I’m essentially a nosy sort of person, so of course I wanted to see inside. In fact, I was probably almost as keen as Ellie.

After we got hitched, Jack and I were planning to continue living in his place until we got around to buying a house together, which we were planning to do sometime the following year. Houses – and the buying of – had been on my radar for a while, so I was quite keen to see inside this one . . .

*****

I sniffed the air cautiously as we wandered around the ground floor rooms. The house smelled stale. But I supposed that wasn’t surprising since it hadn’t been lived in for so long. It would need a lot of renovation, though, to turn it into the family home Ellie was imagining.

Not that the shabby interior had put her off at all.

‘Do you believe in manifesting?’ she murmured with a delighted smile on her face. ‘That if you keep focusing hard on something, you can make it happen?’

‘Erm . . . maybe. I mean, I kept focusing on how a tree in Jack’s back garden looked like it might fall through the garden shed roof in a high wind. And guess what?’

‘It smashed into the shed?’

‘No, it fell the other way. And wrecked the fence instead.’

She looked a little irritated. ‘So the point of that story is?’

I made a face. ‘Er . . . not sure. Sorry. Carry on. You were focusing?’

‘Yes, well, I just think our brains are capable of far more than we realise, and we can actually make things happen by using their previously untapped power.’

‘You’ve been talking to Fen, haven’t you?’ Fen believed in the power of crystals to heal. That sort of thing.

Ellie grinned. ‘Funnily enough . . .’

‘So you’ve been focusing on this house and trying to manifest it into your life?’

She nodded eagerly. ‘That’s what Fen said I should do, so I thought it was worth a go. I didn’t really think there was anything in it, but a week after I started focusing on finding the perfect house for sale, while lying in the bath – water’s very spiritual, according to Fen – I saw that this place had actually come onto the market! So that’s a bit weird, right?’

I shrugged, thinking it was likely a case of pure coincidence, but if Ellie wanted to believe there was something magical at work here, I wasn’t going to spoil it for her. It was clear she was already madly in love – even before she’d even stepped over the threshold.

‘I can smell rising damp,’ I hissed, as Rose, the estate agent, slipped away to check her mobile which had just started ringing.

‘Can you?’ Ellie shot me an anxious look and gave the air a sniff.

‘No. But it looks as if there should be a damp smell,’ I whispered, glancing around the extremely dated kitchen. There was scruffy salmon pink lino on the floor, and the wallpaper, a strange orange boxy design, had clearly been there since enormous shoulder-pads were the fashion of the day. It had one of those machines to ‘boil’ clothes that vintage enthusiasts on Bargain Hunt would be going into paroxysms of ecstasy over.

‘Obviously, it needs updating,’ said Ellie.

I snorted. ‘You’re telling me it does.’

‘Yes, but look at all the original features!’ Her eyes were shining.

‘Is a crack in the wall an original feature?’ I murmured, staring at an angry-looking split in the plaster that I feared had ‘subsidence’ written all over it.

‘No. I mean the coving. Look!’ She pointed upwards. ‘And the ceiling rose. Isn’t it beautiful?’

I nodded, conceding that it was. ‘Lovely.’

‘And did you see the dado rails in the living room? Actual dado rails! Imagine what they’ll look like when they’ve been restored.’

‘It could be fabulous, yes, but restoration work costs money.’

‘Oh, stop being so practical,’ she scolded me with a smile.

‘That’s why I’m here, isn’t it? To give my opinion.’

‘Of course. Yes. But the thing is, I’m finding it really difficult to argue with my heart. You know what I mean? I just feel it, deep down inside.’ She pressed her hands dreamily over her chest. ‘You’re going to laugh, but it’s almost as if the house is communicating to me . . . sort of whispering in my ear that I belong here. We belong here, as a family. Zak, Maisie and me.’

‘Are you on something?’

Smiling, she flicked her eyes to the ceiling. ‘Maddy, if you can’t say anything constructive . . .’

I chuckled. ‘But I’m being constructive. It’s just you can’t hear me because of that . . . voice in your ear. And look, you cannot buy a place that’s called Bogg View!’

‘I know. Awful, isn’t it? But that can easily be changed.’ She grinned. ‘It’s mad, I know. But there’s no harm in looking upstairs. Is there?’

‘No harm at all. In fact, I can’t wait to see what’s up there.’

Ellie frowned at me. ‘A bit of dry rot, cracks in the windows and the remains of a murder victim in the wardrobe, no doubt,’ she said dryly, just as the estate agent came back into the kitchen.