Free The Shadow Year by Hannah Richell

eBay.’
    Lila gives it a couple of twists and then places it onto the shelf next to the pint glasses. ‘Never could get the hang of them.’
    As they climb the creaking staircase, Tom warns her round a perilous-looking hole in one of the steps near the top. ‘Careful, some of these have seen better days.’
    She skirts the hole and they arrive on a small landing with two rooms extending off it on either side. It’s immediately obvious that while one is watertight the other leaks rainwater down the inside of the chimney breast. ‘It probably needs new roof tiles and flashing up there,’ she says, eyeing the water pooling on the floorboards. There are faded cotton curtains hanging at each window, the pink roses that once bloomed on the thin fabric only just visible. Mattresses lie on the floor in each room, a moth-eaten patchwork quilt still spread across one of them. A cracked mirror hangs at a drunken angle on one wall while another oil lamp and an empty drinking glass are perched on the seat of a wooden chair. Lila moves into the corner of the room to inspect what looks like a bundle of rags and realises it’s a dusty holdall, out of which spill several items of clothing – a white cotton dress now yellowed with age, an embroidered smock, a pair of stripy woollen tights and a washed-out polo neck.
    She moves to the other window where a ceramic jug stands on the sill bursting with the pale-moon seed heads of dried honesty. She reaches out to touch one of the translucent white discs with a fingertip and watches as it crumbles like ash next to the empty shells of long-dead insects. Something about the sight of the dried plant, the forgotten clothes, the oil lamp and empty glass perched on the chair beside the mattress, fills Lila with a deep and sudden sadness. This was someone’s home. Someone once dressed in those clothes, cared enough to pick those stems of honesty, to place them there on the window sill in the pretty jug where they could catch the light. She wonders who they were and why they abandoned all this here – whether they expected their possessions to be here still after all these years, just waiting for a stranger to discover them.
    Back downstairs she and Tom perch together on one of the wooden benches and drink coffee from the thermos flask they packed earlier that morning. Lila sips from her plastic mug and tries to put aside her emotions and survey the cottage with a detached, professional eye. She knows it will need a lot of work to make it habitable.
    ‘It’s pretty bloody desolate,’ says Tom, as if reading her mind. ‘Feels like we’re in the middle of nowhere.’
    Lila nods. He is right; there is no traffic noise, no dogs barking, no sirens – nothing but the soft pattering of the rain on the roof. The whole place gives off a strange, melancholy air. ‘It’s quaint,’ she says, trying to raise a smile.
    ‘I wonder who it belonged to.’ He blows across the surface of his coffee. ‘I’m not sure I can see your dad here.’
    ‘No,’ agrees Lila, looking around at the squalor. Her father was all about home comforts, good food, fine wines and expensive cigars. ‘We both know he was no angel . . . he had his booze . . . his women . . . but this place?’ She shakes her head. ‘Even if he did own it, why would he leave it to me in such strange circumstances? Why wasn’t it part of his will? Why all the secrecy? It doesn’t make sense.’
    ‘So who?’ asks Tom.
    Lila eyes him a moment. ‘Someone he knew? One of his girlfriends? God knows there were enough of them . . .’
    ‘A mistress, handing over the love nest?’ Tom looks dubious.
    ‘What else then?’
    He shrugs.
    Lila nods and stares around at their surroundings. ‘It’s a perfect mystery.’ The sound of the rain eases slightly and she wraps her hands around her mug, warming them against its sides.
    ‘Did you call the solicitors?’
    ‘Yes. They were very cagey. Wouldn’t tell me anything. Said they “had to respect