Ann blushed. ‘I’m not at all! But I do like the pine-needle colour he suggested below the rail in the hall, and the pale sage above. I wasn’t sure about the green, because of all the worrying stories about arsenic, but he says that’s not used any more, and anyway it was a lot of nonsense. You would have had to eat a whole roll of wallpaper before it had any effect.’

Isobel smiled to herself and lifted her face to the sunshine. ‘It’s a good job you like all the embossing, I expect it would be a beast to scrape that stuff off. At least the plain paper isn’t so difficult to remove.’

Ann wrinked her nose, and sniffed. ‘Do you remember the Lincrusta being hung? The whole house stank of linseed.’

‘How could I forget? The decorator took over my kitchen and boiled the paste up on range in a great big pot. He told me it took at least three pounds of flour to a gallon of water, and it had to boil thoroughly so the flour would open up. He didn’t trust me to watch the pot for even a minute. And then he beat the mixture over and over until it was soft, as though he was making a cake. I remember thinking I could make an awful lot of cheese scones with three pounds of flour.’

‘The work is going so much more quickly now Rab is helping him. It’s wonderful how bright the rooms look without all those dark colours, but it does feel quite strange.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘It’s just all a bit sad, as though I’m erasing my family. Ursula took me to choose the wallpaper for my bedroom after the fire. And Father objected and said the colours were too modern, and that he liked things the way they were.’ She shook her head. ‘And now we are making a bonfire in the garden every week and burning the papers she chose for the rest of the house.’ She paused. ‘I wondered, you know, when I was older, whether she was getting rid of my mother. Papering over all the surfaces she would have seen.’

‘Like a dog marking its territory, you mean?’

‘Ugh, what a horrible thought.’ Ann shuddered. ‘But yes, I think you may be right. Obliterating her and all her nasty ways. I remember going to the decorator’s shop to choose the paper for my room from big sample books. I knew it was perfect as soon as I saw it. Cream background with forget-me-nots and pale green leaves. It was our secret, Ursula’s and mine, a suffragette bedroom under their very noses. The decorator kept putting books of deep red florals in front of us and we kept saying no!’

‘It’s such a pretty pattern.’