Grace

Chapter 28

"Here we are nearly," Dad said.

"Oh good," I grumbled.

We hadn't stopped at all on the way back apart from to use the loo at a truckers' caff, we'd been surviving on crackers and water and quite frankly I was fed up with travelling and simply wanted to get out of the car. Conversation had dwindled out about an hour ago and there was only so much music I knew for the penny whistle and I'd run out of that as well. We'd been in the car for seven hours. Seven long hours sat on my now numb bum. My legs were cramping up as well.

"Where are we?" I asked.

"In the mountains," Mum said wistfully. "I grew up about fifteen miles from here and walked all over the place with Bertie." That was the name of the dog she'd had as a child.

I looked out the window and saw mountains rising above us, all covered in the snow which was hiding pretty much everything. To my left was a steep drop and to my right was a sharp, rocky rise. Trees were the only things which stood out from the snow otherwise. All leafless and bare, but holding the homes of winter birds some of which were softly singing. We turned off the single track road onto an even narrower, private road that had been cleared of snow and was gritted over. It swept around to the left in a long, slow curve that soon enough came upon two houses. One was sideways onto the road, a converted set of small cottages. The other, the one we stopped in front of was a big, square cottage with a garage built on the left and had a room over it. A dry stone wall surrounded the houses and garden and on the other side of that were trees.

There were lights on in the other house which Mum said they had turned into a guest house and holiday let. The people in it were only going to be staying until morning so we'd have the whole place to ourselves over the entire holiday.

I only got out of the car when Mum and Dad did. I tried to bring some things with me, but they said it could wait until morning. Dad was going to park in the garage once I'd seen the house and everything would be safe in there. It was also eleven at night and we were all really tired.

On the outside the house looked like most of the other cottages we'd passed – four windows, a front door with a step and generally quiet cheerful, but I knew that a few things had been changed inside.

The door opened to a hallway that I guessed was about fifteen feet long, had a slate floor and white walls. They were decorated with a few pictures. Some of them were of Mum and Dad when they were younger. Most were stills of footage that Jessica, Tony and David had shot from the weekend Mum and Dad visited school. Most were of the three of us walking around the school, looking at my work or just chatting, but a few were individual shots of me working or laughing. They ran in a banner along the walls at about my shoulder height and were behind one long piece of glass. There was another banner of glass below it waiting to be filled.

There were sets of double doors off both sides of the corridor. They were of dark wood with panels of glass to help open the space out and give the illusion of one space. We went into the room on the right first. It was a lounge as long as the corridor. The floor was slate again, but there were big rugs in the two halves of the room. Looking through the window was a large, heavy table that sat six people and there was a deck of cards in the middle of it. The back portion of the room had a deep pile rug and a corner sofa facing a huge TV and sound system. To the right of it was a bookcase half filled with DVDs, to the left side was another bookcase with a selection of drinks and snacks. The ceiling beams were exposed and as dark as you would expect in an old cottage. Again the walls were white, but were offset by the dark furnishings. On the wall opposite the door was a stone fireplace with a log burner inside it.