Free Guilt in the Cotswolds by Rebecca Tope

the swing of it now. But I haven’t been into the attic yet. I’m more and more worried that I shouldn’t be doing it at all without knowing where your father is. If you’re going to see your gran, maybe you could check it with her?’
    ‘No, I can’t. I told you – she doesn’t know aboutyou being here. I wouldn’t dream of telling her.’
    ‘Well, I might chicken out of doing the attic.’
    Millie grimaced. ‘I was always terrified of going up there. I remember when I was little and came here one time, there were two boys visiting Gran and they shut me in and took the ladder away. I screamed the house down and the father of one of them thrashed them both.’
    ‘Heavens!’ said Thea. ‘Who were they?’
    ‘Cousins of some sort, I think,’ she said with a frown. ‘I was too little to understand how they were related.’ Her face showed how hard she was trying to remember. ‘I’d forgotten the whole thing until now. Now I think about it, one of them must have been Brendan. The other one was just a friend, I think.’
    ‘Not Martin?’ asked Thea, remembering something that Norah Cookham had said the previous day.
    ‘Do you know Martin?’ Millie’s eyes widened. ‘Has he been here?’
    ‘No, no. I just heard the name.’
    ‘He’s Gran’s nephew. Terribly rich and successful. Dad hates him.’
    Thea did her usual mental gymnastics where family trees were involved. ‘Cousins, then,’ she concluded. ‘Your father and Martin. His son is your second cousin.’
    Millie shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. So you might leave the attic, then? Does that mean the job’s almost finished?’
    ‘That depends. It would take a while to put everything back as it was.’
    ‘Well, don’t go yet. I need you to mind the dogs. You’d probably enjoy the attic, and the ladder’s much easier to use now. Gran had a few restructuring jobs done, including that staircase and the hatch at the top. It’s got wiring and everything now. You could use it as a bedroom if you wanted to. There’s a Velux window, as well.’
    Thea had been resisting the prospect of groping in the dark roof space, accessed only by a wobbly ladder. Now she knew there’d be light and perhaps a proper floor, it took on a more inviting aspect. ‘My fiancé’s coming this afternoon,’ she said. ‘He’ll help me for a bit.’ She frowned as she thought over what Millie had just said. ‘You wouldn’t think the house needed any more bedrooms, even if your grandfather was still alive at the time. Why go to all that expense?’
    ‘Grandpop wasn’t alive. He died when I was three. I don’t remember him. No – the idea was that we’d move in here and live with Gran, when I was about eleven. I don’t know what went wrong, but it never happened. There was some falling-out, I suppose. I have a sort of memory of my mother shouting about it, and being in a foul mood for months. Probably she just refused to live with her mother-in-law. She was probably right that it would never have worked out. They never talked about it afterwards, but I think my dad was always disappointed. He really loved this house when he was little. I think he’s changed his mind about it since then, though. The way he’s neglected it is pretty bad.’
    A momentary silence served to remind Thea that she should be working. ‘Well …’ she began.
    ‘I have to go,’ said Millie at the same time. ‘Thanks ever so much for having the girls. They’ll be no trouble, I promise.’
    ‘You didn’t give me much choice,’ said Thea, with a weak smile to soften the words. ‘And I must admit I was finding it a bit strange not to have any animals to look after. That’s what people usually want me to do, you see.’
    ‘Of course, if Dad turns up, he’ll come and collect them right away. You might only have them for a few hours. Who knows?’
    Who indeed , thought Thea. The disappearance of Richard Wilshire should probably be worrying her rather more than it was.
    Millie made her