Free Chloe by Freya North Page A

unparalleled gifts of the Aga and Carl. He was smiling, you see. Without interruption.
    (
At me?
    At you!)
    He’ll be there still, Chloë; his open face, his broad smile creating those dimples that have quite unnerved you. That are because of you.
    Stop it! I’m going with Gin.
    â€˜It’s clicked, my girl! We
have
met before and I do now remember you,’ said Gin as she showed Chloë a fine Chippendale chair in the corner of the bathroom.
    â€˜I don’t think so,’ started Chloë, visibly racking her memory.
    â€˜Did too!’ announced Gin, ushering her to an incongruous dressing-room bedecked with chintz and dainty china trinkets. ‘Though I must say, I’d’ve passed you in the street – not that we were likely to ever be on the same street had Jocelyn not brought us together now.’
    Gin motioned Chloë to sit beside her on a fanciful
chaise longue
. Chloë, who could not think of anything to say, did the same as Mrs Andrews and laid her hands daintily in her lap, as befitting the room.
    â€˜Oscar!’ beamed Gin, leaping to her feet and folding her arms triumphantly across her breast. She led the way to her bedroom. With arms still folded, she heaved herself on to the edge of an impossibly high mahogany bed in a perverted reworking of a Cossack dance. Finally aboard and legs swinging, she said ‘Oscar’ again, with apparent delight.
    â€˜Oscar?’ gawped Chloë, who was now about the same height as the Cossack.
    â€˜Gracious girl! Your horse!’
    â€˜Pardon?’
    â€˜Your
horse
, of course. Fifteen hands, bay thoroughbreddy thing with a white blaze, sock on the off fore, I seem to remember. Ridden in a grackle. Lovely paces, jumped like a bean. Oscar!’
    Chloë was stunned and only the sight of her flabbergasted reflection in a pretty Queen Anne mirror brought her back to the present.
    â€˜My first one-day event?’ she squeezed out in a whisper.
    â€˜Indeed!’
    â€˜When I was fif
teen
?’
    â€˜If you say.’
    â€˜Did you have jet-black hair?’
    â€˜I did indeed! Went grey overnight when I learnt I’d inherited this place from my brother. Actually, rather when I heard he’d shot himself in the barns the other side of the lane.’
    Now Chloë folded her arms too and then stood stock-still awhile, rapidly playing a cine-film of her youth on the wall of her mind’s eye.
    â€˜I
do
remember you, Gin!’ she said eventually, uncrossing her arms and clambering aboard Gin’s bed. ‘Jocelyn brought you along and we all had whisky in the horsebox!’
    â€˜Including Oscar!’
    â€˜Including Oscar.’
    It seemed that the upstairs was exclusively Gin’s and the downstairs exclusively the animals’. It was therefore some surprise to Chloë that none of the extravagantly furnished rooms upstairs at the farmhouse appeared to be allocated to her. Before, that was, Chloë learnt of The Rafters.
    â€˜I’ve put you in The Rafters!’ boomed Gin as she slung down the ruffle blinds in her bedroom.
    â€˜I thought you’d like it up there,’ she continued, pushing Chloë back along the corridor towards the bathroom. ‘You
could
have the spare room next to mine but as I
ronfle comme un cochon
, I thought you’d be safer and sounder in The Rafters.’
    â€˜As you
what
?’ asked Chloë as politely as possible, thinking that it must be French but not as she knew it.
    â€˜I snore like a pig!’ explained Gin quite soberly. ‘
Comme un cochon
,’ she stressed as she introduced Chloë to a steep staircase hidden by what she had previously presumed to be the airing cupboard door at the back of the bathroom.
    â€˜Just remember,’ said Gin, with a sparkle in her eye, ‘to give a hearty three knocks when you’re coming down – I’m not a pretty sight in the bath, and even less so on the loo!’
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