The daylight was fading to gold as Meg, Penny, and Harper traipsed into the kitchen and dumped their packages on the table.
“Fix yourselves a snack. I’m going to check on the guys,” Meg told them. Parched, she grabbed a bottle of the pink vitamin water Alec had bought and headed into the corridor towards the front of the house, swigging.
She finished the bottle in one go as she stood at the base of the grand staircase, draped in its entirety in plastic dust sheets and frosted now with plaster dust. “Donnelly!” she shouted up the stairs. Silence.
Meg set her empty down, then turned and saw a blue card on the floor by the front door, under the letterbox. She went over and picked it up. On the front it bore the BT logo and a scrawled message: “We called today, but there was no one home. Please contact our scheduling office for another appointment at your convenience.”
Shit. Of course they’d come when she wasn’t here. Alec had been in his studio, no doubt, and Donnelly hadn’t heard them at the door.
She opened the front door and went out, looking around in case Donnelly and his son were out there, but there was no sign of them. She walked around the east side of the house and came around the back just in time to see them loading up their truck.
“There you are,” Meg said, walking over to Donnelly senior.
The man tossed the last of his tools into the back and turned to face her. “We have a little problem,” he said.
“What?”
“Let me show you.”
Meg followed Donnelly inside. He led her all the way upstairs to the attic on the top storey. “We started in this room back here, as you instructed,” he said, breathing heavily from exertion as they entered what Meg had come to think of as the Secret Room, with the beautiful arches in the walls and the skylight with the stained glass.
Donnelly waved an arm at a tarpaulin that now covered an area in the centre of the floor. “And this is where we stopped,” he said.
Donnelly grunted as he bent over and pulled back a section of the tarp, and then lifted about a square metre of old plasterboard. He looked at her expectantly, as if this explained everything.
Meg took in a breath. Beneath the plasterboard lay a stunning multicoloured mosaic worked in tiny Victorian glass tiles. She could only see a small piece of it, but there were a sun, a moon, and stars, and what looked like symbols of the zodiac worked into a large round pattern.
“It’s original,” Donnelly said.
“It looks in perfect condition, too … Why did you stop?”
“My lad’s not usually superstitious, and neither am I, but we thought, with the history of the place and all, that you’d want to keep it covered.”
“I thought you understood,” said Meg. “The history of the place is what we’re here to restore.”
Donnelly straightened up fully and looked at her under his bushy grey brows. His gaze was long and penetrating.
Finally he spoke. “Then I’m afraid, Mrs Hamilton, that you’re on your own.”
To Meg’s amazement, the man turned and walked out of the room.
She caught up with him on the stairs.
“What are you talking about?” she said, hurrying behind him. “Wait!”
But Donnelly kept descending. “I have a reputation, Mrs Hamilton. Small, but enough to keep me in work. If word spreads that Sean Donnelly invited the wrong kind of publicity, I’ll lose my business.”
They were back down in the entryway now.
“What do you mean the wrong kind of publicity?” Meg asked, facing him.
Donnelly’s dark eyes were hard. “There have always been rumours that Radcliffe built the place as some sort of temple, but it was so long ago that, thankfully, that’s all they are—rumours. Now I’m not so sure.”
“But surely you don’t believe all that nonsense!” Meg was completely taken aback by the man’s attitude. Was there some other problem he wasn’t telling her about?
“Did my husband come in here? Put you off in some way?”
Donnelly snorted. “No, not at all. This is nothing to do with him.”
“But it’s just a work of art,” Meg protested.
“No,” Donnelly said. “It’s a work of the devil.”
He made to leave, but Meg grasped his arm. “That’s just ridiculous.”
“Is it?”
“Sorry, but yes.”
Donnelly sighed and continued reluctantly. “He killed his wife in some sort of ritual.”
“Who did? You mean Radcliffe?”
Donnelly nodded. “To get her revenge, she haunted him day and night, till he threw himself from a window and died. Right about this time o’ year, I believe. If I were you, I’d persuade your American banker to tear it all down and start from scratch.”
And with that, Donnelly was out the front door and gone.
Meg stood in shock for a minute. Donnelly had left the door open. She walked over, closed it, then changed her mind and went outside.
The Donnelly lorry bounced around from the backyard, lights on now in the dusk, as the pair of workmen headed for the main drive and the roadway to town. Meg stood in the way of the truck, waving her arms until it slowed and came to a stop. She walked around to the driver’s side.
Donnelly rolled his window down.
“Don’t you at least want to get paid?” Meg asked.
“I’ll send ye a bill,” Donnelly replied. Then he gunned it, and the lorry was gone.
Meg continued across the terrace to Alec’s studio. Before she quite got to the door, Alec stepped out, one hand wrapped in a towel.
“Hello!” His voice was bright, as if it were a cheery, carefree Saturday morning.
Meg felt her irritation rise. “Have you been buried in there all day?”
“How was the beach?” Alec continued blithely.
“You missed the BT man.”
“Shit, sorry babe.” He headed towards the kitchen door.
“Stop for a minute, Alec. I need to talk.”
He stopped, but appeared distracted.
“Donnelly just quit,” she continued. “I have to find someone else, but if we’re going to make our deadline, you’ve got to pitch in.”
Alec had a dreamy look on his face that only irked her further. “Will you sit for me?” he asked.
“Alec, this is important. Could you just concentrate on what I’m saying for one minute?”
“I need a couple of sessions, that’s all.”
Meg exploded. “For fuck’s sake! I can’t do it on my own!”
“I’m sorry, Meg, I’m right in the thick of it, I really can’t—”
Meg interrupted him, her anger in full throttle now. “Alec. This is our paycheck. Our only paycheck, remember? And thanks to your last exhibition, if you can even call it that, we need it bad. We have no money, Alec.”
“I’m going to fix all that. What I’m working on now will change our lives forever.”
“Listen. I understand how you must feel, and I’m happy that you’ve found something new. That’s really great. But right now, I need your help more than I need your art.”
Alec looked at her blankly. Meg knew her words had been cruel, but she was past caring. This was an emergency, with nothing less than their family’s continued viability at stake.
“Alec?”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“You got it.” He bent towards her and kissed her cheek. “I’ll set aside some time in the afternoons.”
With that, he drifted inside.
Meg stood in the falling dark and took a few deep breaths. It wouldn’t do to reenter the house and upset the kids. But she was seething with frustration and anger.
As she stood there in the last of the light, she noticed that the Donnellys had at least pulled the fountain out of the ground and positioned it nearer the house, in the former courtyard area, as she’d asked.
She walked over and studied its tiered, scalloped stone basins. Scrubbed up a bit and operational, this would be lovely, she thought. Have to find something to get that off, though. She stepped over to a spot on the perimeter of the lower basin and scratched at it with a fingernail. Some kind of a dark stain was embedded in the stone. She’d have to come up with a poultice—diatomaceous earth might work, depending on what it was. She scratched again with a fingernail—ouch!—and drew her hand back sharply, as if stung. The tip of her index finger was bleeding. Meg squinted in the fading light. Just a nick.
She put the finger in her mouth and went inside.