Free Chloe by Freya North Page B

herself at last, Chloë contemplated a bottle of mane-and-tail conditioner by the bath before opening the door to The Rafters. The stairs leading there were not carpeted and she trod the boards forever upwards in a symphony of creaks and groans.
    The Rafters were vast, half the house at least though the furniture had been arranged to subdivide the space further and create some vestige of cosiness. Thus, in the furnished half of the area, the beams had been painted dark green, the panels in between pale primrose. There was a skylight and a dormer window with small fussy curtains of pastel floral persuasion. They rose and fell conversationally with the breeze. (In March, she would learn they rarely touched the sill, the gales causing them to hover constantly at a ninety-degree angle to the window-pane.)
    She looked over to an old iron bed in the corner with a faded kilim at the foot. Next to it was a Regency dressing-table and a stool covered and further filled in the curtain fabric. In the centre of the floor space, a sheep fleece lay like a martyr. A grand old cupboard of the C. S. Lewis type stood sagely in the middle of the room and in line with the first painted beam. Chloë opened it and stepped inside, clacketing the wooden hangers and smelling mothballs. Between the wardrobe and the stairwell was an old, battered armchair over which a tartan travel blanket was slung. It looked conspiring and inviting and was immensely comfortable when she sat deep into it to peruse her lair.
    That night, Chloë excused herself after supper and washing-up duty, and before a session of Monopoly was to start. She had caught Carl’s eye many times over the meal and because her stomach leapt into her mouth each time, she found she could eat very little. He had dried while she had washed and though he chattered away most amiably, to her horror one-word answers were all that she could contribute. Each time she felt a longer sentence brewing she would catch sight of his lovely wrists, or his chiselled jaw smattered with fair bristles, and find herself confined to ‘Really?’ or ‘Oh?’ or, worse, a chirrup of a giggle. So she used the excuse of the long rides by train and horse, and the excitement of it all, to gain an early night, and hiked up to The Rafters and into bed with her writing pad instead.
    Halfway through a letter to Peregrine and Jasper (in which she mentioned Carl more than once or twice in passing) she felt a certain itchiness which could not be attributed to the fine cotton sheets nor the antique patchwork eiderdown on top. There was something in between. Something heavy and coarse. She rolled back the eiderdown. Of course. There, staring Chloë uncompromisingly in the face, an old New Zealand rug lay spread-eagled. Built for the coldest, wettest weather. Designed for horses living out in the fields in winter. Its green canvas waterproof shell was uppermost leaving the woollen lining to prickle its way through the cotton sheets. For a while, Chloë stood quite still, wearing her now perfected Skirrid End Jaw Drop. Slowly, a smile spread over her face. She sniffed at the rug and found it to be quite clean, the faintest smell of its long-gone wearer pleasant in the distance. She heaved it over so the woollen side was uppermost, rolled the eiderdown back and slipped deep down into the warmth.
    â€˜Really rather sensible,’ she reasoned to The Rafters, ‘so warm and snug. As a bug in a New Zealand rug!’
    She would finish the letter tomorrow. She was feeling pleasantly tired and pondered on a wistful innuendo about something from New Zealand keeping her warm at night, until slumber led her away and she slept, deep, dreamless and warm until dawn poured through the skylight the next day.
    Mr and Mrs Andrews watched over her, this time in the form of a postcard reproduction from the National Gallery. It
was
them but they were very little and the closer Chloë looked at them, the more they