‘Yes, everything is fine. I just had,’ she pauses, ‘I just had an unwanted visitor but I’ve sent him away. I don’t suppose we’ll see him again, but perhaps it would be an idea to close the back door while you’re here.’

‘You’re the boss. No one will get past me, though; your worldly goods are safe as houses while I’m here.’ He looks around the room. ‘I should be finished in a couple of hours, there’s just a bit of tidying up left to do.’

She tucks her diary into her rucksack and shoulders the bag. ‘Thank you. As I say, I don’t think he’ll return, but that’s very reassuring to hear. I’ll be home at about three. If my lodger arrives before me, and I don’t think she will, please don’t mention the visitor; I wouldn’t want her to be alarmed.’

He nods. ‘My lips are sealed.’

She leaves by the scullery door and pulls it closed behind her.

Chapter 68

August 2011

The next day, exactly a month after the last grey envelope, there is another one. The mail falls onto the doormat on the same day as the spice parcel from Sally Soodles and this time it’s Georgia who picks it up. She studies the envelope for a moment and then carries both items through to the freshly plastered kitchen where the new smooth finish is a sun-kissed pinky brown, and not yet completely dry. The way the old lumpy walls, pockmarked with rawl-plug damage and a hundred nail holes, have been transformed into this completely flat surface seems almost magical, and Georgia is eagerly awaiting the day when the first coat of paint can go on.

She stands in front of the window where the enamel sink had previously been and looks out along the garden to the chairs under the plum tree, and wonders if she should open the envelope. When there had been a lot of official envelopes a few years before, she had been respectful and not asked about them, seeing it as none of her business. But eventually, after her last lodger left, there had been a final letter from the Sheriff Court.

She puts Tess’s envelope on the high mantelpiece above the now gleaming range, and goes down the two steps to the scullery. Instead of the old stone divided sink, once used for laundry as well as washing dishes, there is a stainless-steel model with a mixer tap, something Georgia has secretly coveted for a couple of decades. She wonders what Isobel, who was still visiting the house well into her seventies, would have thought about this new look, and about having an automatic washing machine instead of the old twin tub, and the mangle before that.