Guilt in the Cotswolds Read Online Free Page B

small kiln at one end of the kitchen, with two shelves of dusty equipment close by: a cutting wire with wooden handles, a collection of spatulas and some plastic bottles containing coloured slip that proved to have dried up. No clay was to be seen, and no finished products, which made Thea think it had all been abandoned a long time ago.
    Soon after ten, she took Hepzie outside for her routine toileting and then led the way upstairs. The bedroom was large and handsomely furnished with mahogany wardrobe, chest of drawers and dressing table. There was an oak chest, and the headboard on the big, high bed was a semicircle of painted wood that was like nothing she had seen before. However Richard had managed to turn the mattress without assistance, she did not know.
    Hepzie jumped cheerfully up, despite the height, and Thea followed a few minutes later. She felt hesitant and oddly guilty. This was another woman’s private room, the bed her own personal space for countless years. She, Thea, was a usurper, with no real right to be there. Mrs Wilshire wasn’t dead. Instead she was in a kind of limbo, the twilight of her days, no longer the same autonomous person she had been, as she waited for the end. How would that feel, Thea wondered. Surely there must be resentment, sadness, resistance, and a craving for all the familiar things that this house contained. Could anyone truly possess the maturity to go willingly into that last phase, full of clean surfaces and excessively cheerful carers? If you still had your wits about you, didn’t that make it worse? Would you have to pretend that it was all all right?
    It was a very comfortable bed. Soft and deep, it offered a haven from the world. A person might live in such a bed, strewing books and biscuits across its considerable expanse. In the past, people had ‘taken totheir beds’ and never got out again. It would have to be a bed such as this, to make any sense. There was something deliciously Victorian about it, and Thea felt she ought to wear a long cotton nightdress with tucks and ruches, and a flannel nightcap.
    People really should be allowed to take their own mattress into the residential home, she thought. It was such a central factor in one’s life. She remembered her father’s affection for the big marital bed he and her mother had bought when they were first married. Maureen Johnstone regularly told the story of how carefully her new husband had selected the mattress and how important it had always been to him. Mrs Wilshire might well have felt the same. Perhaps her Richard had been born in this bed – almost certainly he’d been conceived in it.
    She and Drew, she decided, would buy themselves a top-quality new bed, as soon as they finally came to live together.
     
    Friday morning was there in a flash, after a fabulously good sleep. The spaniel hadn’t moved a muscle all night, the sheets and blankets had moulded themselves to Thea’s body perfectly, and her dreams had been full of contentment.
    There were significant differences to this commission from the usual. Primarily, there were no animals to care for. No delicate elderly dogs or stand-offish cats. No lonely donkey or disconcerting parrot. Nothingdownstairs needing food, exercise or love. Another difference was that the actual owner of the house would not be returning to assess her performance. Richard Wilshire might qualify as a replacement, but he would not have the emotional connection that his mother would. What was more, when he came back, everything would have changed. His reaction was uncertain, but Thea was determined to do a good job and earn the fee she’d been promised.
    ‘To work!’ she announced aloud, sliding regretfully out of the hospitable bed. Its height meant that she almost had to jump off the side, being a short person. It was a moment of nostalgia, taking her back to childhood days when she had barely managed to climb on and off her parents’ handsome bed. She was liking it here,