Chapter 3

The cottage that Hayley, my tenant, rented was set in front of the main house and separately fenced, with its own entrance. It was the first dwelling that we’d built on my land – his folly, Mark had nicknamed it. Octagonal in shape, the hi gh-roofed cottage had two downstairs rooms – a small bathroom and a spacious lounge-kitchen – and a mezzanine bedroom above.

We’d lived happily in the folly for years until Mark had decided it wasn’t good enough. That we needed a bigger place. And so construction for the main house – aka The Palace – got underway, with machines groaning as they levelled the ground, builders pounding away with hammers and mallets, scaffolding bristling upwards around the walls. Unforeseen cost after unforeseen cost. The massive increase in the price of cement. The local unavailability of the granite kitchen surfaces we’d wanted, which had finally arrived in the country and had been installed just before we’d run out of money. The Great Stove Debate, which had culminated in Mark’s decision, financially disastrous in hindsight, to import a Nardi hob from Italy.

I realised as I walked towards the green palisade that I hadn’t actually been to the folly since Mark had rented it out. With another person occupying it, the building had no longer felt like it was ours and I had stopped thinking about it. I hadn’t even had cause to go round to the front gate.

Hayley was a Goth-type with dyed black hair and pale skin, who always dressed as if she was going to a funeral and, I remembered Mark saying, had a nightclub-related job that kept her busy from late afternoon until the small hours of the morning.

Her black Opel Corsa was parked under the steel carport. The parking area had originally been paved, but now I noticed that thick, toughlooking weeds had invaded the brickwork. The grass in the garden must have been a foot high, and the overgrown flowerbeds provided further tangled proof of Hayley’s lack of interest in her outdoor environment.

I scowled in frustration. The rental agreement had stated that Hayley was to take care of the garden. At one stage, she’d paid Goodness to cut the grass and tidy the beds for her. Obviously that arrangement had fallen by the wayside.

I pressed the yellow button on my buzzer and her gate rattled open. Then I walked up the short stretch of lawn, grass grabbing at my ankles, and knocked on the front door.

I had to knock four times before I got a reaction, and then it was clear that I’d woken Hayley up. She unlatched the door and peered out, shielding her blue eyes against the cruel blaze of the morning sun. Her hair hung in dishevelled locks around her shoulders and, under the oversized charcoal T-shirt she wore, her legs looked pale as bones.

‘Sorry to wake you,’ I said. ‘I just wanted to remind you that you’re overdue with the rent.’

Vaguely, I registered that the folly looked pitch black inside. Hayley must have hung blinds over the windows in order to block out the daylight so she could get some sleep between her crazy shifts.

‘Yes, I know. I tried to call you on Monday but your phone wasn’t working,’ Hayley said. ‘I wanted to tell you I’m giving notice. I’ll be leaving at the end of the month. I paid a deposit when I came here, so you can just keep that in lieu of this month’s rent, if that’s ok.’

‘What?’ I gaped at the girl in disbelief.

Her rent was the income I’d been relying to get me through the rest of the month. The horses’ hay. Goodness’s wages. Money for food and water and electricity.

And something … something for the bond.

‘You should have told me at the beginning of the month,’ I managed to sputter.

‘Well, I tried. I left a message, and then I tried to phone you last week. Twice.’ Hayley’s pale chin jutted defensively. ‘There’s only so much I can do. I actually didn’t want to give notice but, you know, having the power go off for days on end is really inconvenient.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘It was … er, because of an invoice dispute with the supplier. Their mistake, of course.’

She said nothing in reply; I could see she didn’t believe me.

I was about to turn away, defeated, when I heard a snuffling from inside the house and Hayley opened the door wider to allow her dog, a black spaniel, out into the garden.

And that was when I saw it.

Blinds over the windows as I’d expected, yes. But the walls – those lovely eggshell-white walls … Hayley had painted them pitch black.

Without asking anyone’s permission, she’d redecorated the entire interior of the cottage, Gothic morgue-style. It was so dark it looked like negative space. Dear God, she’d even painted the ceiling, and the wooden bookcases that had been built into two of the octagon’s sides were now a matte black in colour. The only trace of illumination in that unholy place came from a single ray of light that shone down onto the grey tiled floor from the gap in a badly fitting blind.

I stared, horrified.

This cottage was unlettable in its present state to anyone except a member of the Addams family. My brain recoiled from the costs this represented. The hours and hours of stripping and sanding, then the painting – to take it from dark to light again would take at least a fortnight, not to mention multiple coats of paint, and would probably cost the equivalent of six months’ rental.

And that, for me, was the final straw.

I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders and glared at Hayley. The fury I felt must have been written in bold on my face, because I saw her actually wince.

‘Who gave you permission to repaint?’ I shouted.

Hayley blinked rapidly. ‘Well, nobody, I … I’ve been here so long, you know, I thought …’

‘You thought? You honestly thought you were going to be able to get back your deposit after leaving the premises in this ruined state?’

‘It’s not ruined …’ she tried, in a very small voice.

‘Oh, yes, it is. You will not be getting your deposit back unless, before you leave, the walls and ceiling and bookcases are all restored to their previous colour. And in the meantime, you owe me the full rent for this month. I want that money transferred into my account by the end of today, or I will charge you interest.’

‘Yes,’ Hayley whispered, cowering back into the doorway. ‘Please, I will do. Please stop shouting, Mrs Caine. I’m sorry.’

My heart was pounding with adrenaline from the outburst and, surprisingly, I found the sensation exhilarating. Gathering my rage around me like a cloak, I turned and strode away.