The Reluctant Elf (Kindle Single) Read Online Free

way around the kitchen. Perhaps if I’d lived with Mabel’s father things might have been different, but that was never going to happen.
     
    Mabel, Danny the driver and I arrive back at the B&B, me with a lighter bank account and Danny with a grin on his face.
    The house’s prospects haven’t improved in our absence. If anything they look even more dire.
    ‘Time to go inside,’ I say to Mabel, taking the hand she offers me. A tiny part of me hopes that we’ll be surprised. Maybe Aunt Kate concentrated her efforts inside where her guests spent the most time. Then who’d care if the outside was a bit shabby?
    Aunt Kate used to be an opera singer, so maybe she’s draped the rooms in sumptuous velvets and brocades. She always had an eye for lovely furniture, and dragged me along Notting Hill's Portobello Road and Grays Antique Market nearly every weekend that she visited. We searched for chairs or tables with elegant legs (Aunt Kate has a thing for elegant legs), brocade footstools and gilded mirrors. All those purchases over the years must have found their way into the B&B.
    By the time I wriggle the key in just the right way to open the large wooden front door, I’m nearly sure it’ll look like the prop room at the Royal Opera House.
    I take about two steps inside the dim hall. ‘Oof. Shit!’
    ‘Mummy, are you okay?’
    I don’t know which to rub first, my throbbing toe or my knees where they’ve hit the floor. ‘I’m fine, I just tripped.’ Motherhood is full of small lies.
    ‘You said a swear word.’
    ‘Yes, that wasn’t very clever of me, was it?’
    ‘I guess your Aunt planned some renovations,’ Danny says. When he sheds his giant coat I can see that he’s a bit older than he first seemed, and a few years older than me, probably in his early thirties. ‘There must be fifty tins of paint here.’
    Exactly why they should be in the middle of the front hall is another matter. As I look around, my hopeful bubble bursts. This is no Royal Opera House.
    Three tall windows run along one side of the wide hall and a staircase climbs up the other side. But the grimy windowpanes let in only weak light.
    ‘We may as well try to see what we’re dealing with.’
    I hoist up the sash panes on every window so the daylight can reach the darkened corners.
    ‘It’s yucky,’ Mabel says.
    It’s worse than yucky. The walls are pockmarked with holes and painted a dreary yellowish brown.
    ‘Who’d use that colour in a house?’ I ask.
    ‘I think it was probably a different colour to start with,’ Danny says. ‘It’s yellowed over the years.’
    It’s got the patina of nicotine-stained fingers and the far corner is streaked with water damage. The varnish is worn off the floorboards where feet have trod over the decades, and everything needs a good wash. Whatever Bronwyn does with her time here clearly doesn’t involve soap and water.
    Slowly we walk through the rest of the house like fearful tomb raiders. Every gasp from Danny or Mabel makes me jump, expecting the worst. It’s obvious that the house was once grand. Probably before the First World War. The sitting room is large, overcrowded with Aunt Kate’s elegant-legged tables. I run my hand over a small mahogany side table.
    ‘Mabel, do you remember when we found this, in that skip in Highgate?’
    She smiles. ‘You climbed in with the rubbish.’
    The things I do for my Aunt. ‘And we brought it home and Dad stripped it?’
    Mabel’s smile fades. ‘Mummy? Will Aunt Kate die like Granny and Grandad did?’
    ‘Ahem, I’ll have a look upstairs,’ Danny says, considerately absenting himself.
    I lead Mabel to one of the silver and red Chinese silk sofas.
    ‘Honey, the doctor said that Aunt Kate should be okay when she wakes up. She’s only sleeping now so that her body can heal itself.’
    ‘So she definitely won’t die?’ Mabel’s eyes search my face. I wish I could give her such absolute certainty.
    ‘I don’t think she will. I’m not