Kiss Me Forever/Love Me Forever. Rosemary Laurey

      The house was as cold as a damp towel and this was early May. What would it be like in November? Or February? But the hour she spent in the phone booth on the corner paid off. By four o’clock Dixie had electricity and water reconnected and a promise of telephone service in the next week or so. She’d also discovered the impossibility of cleaning house with cold water.

      “Could you make sure the water heater’s working?” Dixie asked the service man from the electric board.

      “You don’t have one,” he replied in the sort of voice used on a slow-witted child—or a foreigner. “That Aga of yours does the water.”

      “That thing?” Dixie asked, looking at the cream-colored behemoth that filled the kitchen fireplace.

      “Yup,” he replied, shifting his tool belt. “One of the originals, that is. Looks like a prewar one to me.” Which war? The one with the colonies? “’Course, you could get it converted. Be a lot easier if it ran on gas or oil.” He showed her the location of the meter at the back of the cupboard under the stairs, behind mops, brooms, an antique vacuum cleaner and a pair of wooden skis, and the location of the fuse box in the basement. “Need to get the place rewired,” he warned her as he left.

      Dixie stared at the Aga in the empty kitchen. She’d barely come to terms with the china sinks and wooden draining boards, to say nothing of the open fireplaces in every room and the absence of any form of furnace. Now it seemed she heated water on a stove. Would she have to chop down trees to get a decent shower? Her great-aunts had a fortune in the bank and lived like pioneers. If she had a phone, she’d call Sebastian Caughleigh and insist on selling the house before Monday.

      “Hello. Mind if we come in?”

      Dixie opened the door to her acquaintance from the car park.

      “Oh, it is you,” she said. “I knew it had to be. I’m Emma Gordon, your neighbor, just across the way.” Her head nodded towards the new houses on the other side of the lane. “And this is Sally Smith.”

      The second woman smiled. “Welcome to Bringham. Thought we’d pop over and see if there’s anything we can do.”

      “Have you any idea how to get that thing going?” Dixie pointed to the lurking Aga.

      They had.

      A search through the outbuildings discovered a shed of what looked like coal but which the others called “anthracite.” Emma ran home for charcoal and a box of three-inch-long matches. “Swan Vestas,” she explained. “They’re easier for things like this.”

      Dixie took her word for it.

      Lifting what Dixie imagined must be a cooking surface, they tipped in a bucket of anthracite, a good couple of handfuls of charcoal and a few twists of paper. Satisfied the fuel had caught, Emma dropped the lid back and smiled. “Give it a couple of hours and you’ll have it going. My mum had one. Just top it up twice a day. It’ll be brilliant in the winter.”

      Dixie decided not to stay long enough to find out.

      Emma went home a second time and returned with a large, brown teapot, a bottle of milk and a tin of gingerbread. “You look as if you need it,” she said, setting everything on the kitchen table.

      Dixie didn’t argue, but felt a stiff gin might do even better.

      “Staying to sell the house?” Sally asked.

      “I don’t know. I thought I’d take a month or so to decide.”

      “It’ll be nice to have someone living here,” Emma said. “Ian and I worried about vandalism or squatters.”

      “Vandals?” Dixie asked, remembering Wednesday night. “Have you seen anything odd?”

      Emma shrugged. “Lights sometimes. The villagers say the old ladies haunt it. More likely local yobs out on a lark.”

      “I thought I saw a light, the night before last.”

      “You were here after dark?” Emma seemed either impressed or horrified.

      “Just strolled by. Admiring my property, I suppose.”

      “It is a beautiful house,” said Sally, “or will be after a lot of work. It’s a shame they let it go so, but it must have been hard for two old ladies on a fixed income.”

      Dixie wasn’t about to tell the level the income had been “fixed” at. It still gave her shivers when she thought about it.

      “I’d be careful around here at night. It’s a bit lonely. Get good locks if you’re staying.” Emma sounded like Gran. “And let Sergeant Grace know. He’ll keep an eye on things. The police house is on the left, past the church.”

      Between the two of them, they’d have her life organized—but it didn’t feel like an intrusion. They were two women concerned about a third being alone. They knew the neighborhood and Dixie sensed she’d need friends if she stayed.

      After they left, Dixie ran the geriatric vacuum over the ground floor and took down all the drapes and heaped them on the backseat of her car. She’d find a cleaner in the morning and get in touch with the locksmith, and Stan Collins. She’d need the car for at least another month.

      With the windows clear, the house seemed lighter and airier. Tomorrow she’d open all the windows and let out the mustiness of the years. She found herself back in the low-ceilinged kitchen. The room fascinated her. With small windows overlooking the kitchen garden, it seemed another world from the spacious drawing room and paneled dining room. The world of servant and mistress perhaps? Except her great-aunts had lived alone. Before, when Gran and her sisters had been girls, things must have been different. Dixie imagined rosy-cheeked parlor maids and a plump cook seated around the scrubbed pine table.

      Not for the first time, Dixie wished Gran had talked about her youth. She’d always evaded any questions and discouraged Dixie’s curiosity. “Life’s good here,” she’d say. “Don’t shovel up history.” When a teenaged Dixie wanted to visit Gran’s sisters on a much discussed, but never accomplished, backpacking tour of Europe, Gran shook her head. “A pair of nasty, spiteful old hags. You don’t even want to know about them.”