The Magic Cottage Read Online Free

like members of a cautious advance party; a clearer area, obviously trampled down over the years, spread out ten or twelve yards from the building, with smaller trees – plum and crab-apple I thought, though I was no expert at the time – standing fruitless (and somewhat dejected, I also thought) closer to the cottage. On this side, because Gramarye was built into the embankment (or rise) the cottage appeared to have only two storeys, and was as round as an oasthouse. The apparent ‘ground’-floor windows were arched at the top and Midge had already left me to press her nose against one.
    ‘Mike, come and look,’ she called, ‘it’s fabulous inside.’
    I joined her and was as impressed as she – although ‘fabulous’ was stretching it a bit – for the curved walls accommodated three longish windows which must have enabled the room to capture the sun’s rays throughout the day. Opposite, and through an open doorway, I could make out a hallway with stairs leading up and down; presumably another door led off into the squared section of the building from the hall. Sunlight fairly glowed from the walls, no shadowed corners to be found, even the dirt on the windows unable to suppress the radiance from outside. It looked warm and happy in there, despite the bareness. And oh yeah, it looked inviting .
    ‘Let’s sit for a moment.’ I’d noticed a weather-beaten bench tucked in the corner where the straight wall of the cottage peeled away from the circle; the wooden seat looked as if it had either taken root or had grown from the very earth itself.
    ‘I want to go inside,’ Midge replied impatiently.
    ‘Sure, in a minute. Let’s just take stock of what we’ve got so far.’
    She was reluctant, but moved with me to the bench, where we sat and gazed out at the nearby woods. They seemed thick and impenetrable, but at that time not the least bit sinister.
    ‘It’s wonderful,’ Midge sighed needlessly. ‘So much better than I expected.’
    ‘Oh really? Between you and me, I thought you expected quite a lot.’
    A frown marked her face, but didn’t make her any less pretty. ‘I – I just knew instinctively it was going to be right.’
    I held up a hand. ‘Wait. We haven’t been in there yet.’
    ‘We don’t need to.’
    ‘Oh yes we do. Let’s not get carried away here. The ad said in need of renovation, right? That might just be enough to push it over our price. The outside alone’s gonna need a lot of repair, and God knows what the inside’s like.’
    ‘We can take that into account when we make our offer.’
    ‘I think that’s already been done by the agent. He told you over the phone the kind of price they’re looking for, but unless we go under that we could have trouble finding the cash to make the place liveable.’
    I was saying all the wrong things to Midge, but I had to make her face up to the reality of the situation. She studied the ground as though an answer might lie in the soil. When she looked up again I could see stubbornness had set in – no, not exactly stubbornness, Midge wasn’t that kind of person; let’s call it a quiet determination. She was generally pretty soft, pliable even (a facet that often annoyed me when her agent pressured her into accepting commissions she didn’t really want either because of timing or subject matter), but underneath that lay a resoluteness which surfaced only when she knew she was absolutely right about something, or needed that particular trait to carry her through a difficult time. I suspected, in fact, that her quiet determination had been born out of bad passages in her life, and believe me, Midge had had some.
    My arm went around her shoulders and I hugged her to me. ‘Just don’t want you to build your hopes too high, Pixie,’ I said softly, using the nickname saved for tender moments. ‘So far, I like the place myself, even though the location scares me a little.’
    ‘It’ll be good for your work, Mike,’ she replied, and there