Free The Orphan Choir by Sophie Hannah

afraid you’re going to be stuck with our scaffolding and sheeting for a while.’
    ‘Can’t you do it in sections?’ I ask. ‘Cover the windows one floor at a time, or do the back first and then the front?’
    ‘Sorry,’ Imran says. ‘It’s just not the way we work.’
    ‘Even if customers want you to work a different way?’
    ‘Lou,’ Stuart mutters.
    ‘It’d double the costs if we had to get the scaffolders out twice,’ says Imran.
    ‘Then we’ll pay double!’
    ‘No, we won’t,’ says Stuart. ‘Lou, don’t be crazy. It’ll be fine. Like Imran says, you’re at work all day –’
    ‘Not at weekends! And what about the Christmas holidays? Joseph will be home then.’ I turn to Imran. ‘Will you be finished by the fourteenth of December? I’m not bringing my son home to a house with no natural light. I’m not! I’ll tear the plastic sheeting off myself if I have to.’
    ‘It’s unlikely to be finished that soon,’ says Imran. ‘Sandblasting’s a fiddly job if you do it right – and I’m a perfectionist. Look, call me oversensitive, but the vibe I’m getting isn’t one of unbridled enthusiasm. Maybe you two need to—’
    ‘We need to go ahead and get it done,’ Stuart insists, cutting him off.
    It isn’t only the light that we’ll lose. The views will go too. Nothing but blackness at every window.
    ‘There must be an alternative,’ I say, panic building inside me. ‘I’m not agreeing to this if it means living wrapped up in a dark box for months. I’ll move out! You can live in the dark on your own,’ I snap at Stuart.
    ‘Lou.’ He puts his hand over mine. Looks worried. ‘You’re tired, and you’re massively overreacting.’
    ‘You are a bit, Lou,’ Imran agrees. ‘I’ve been doing this for years. People get used to the no-light thing. Honestly – you’ll be surprised how soon it seems normal. And if we don’t do it, we’ll have peoplequeuing up to complain within half an hour of us starting the work. If you were in the depths of the countryside with no neighbours for miles around, we could forget the sheeting and you could keep your light, but …’ He shrugs.
    Countryside: the word lodges in my brain. I heard it very recently. Where? No, I didn’t hear it; I read it. On wet newsprint.
    I look down at the tea-stained
Sunday Times
‘Home’ supplement in front of me and see a full-page advertisement for something called Swallowfield: ‘Where Putting Nature First is Second Nature’. No, that can’t be right. Swallowfield must be its name, whatever it is, and the rest is advertising. ‘The perfect peaceful countryside retreat, only two hours from London.’ There’s a background picture of fields at dusk, separated by hedges; a row of trees in the distance; a sunset of purple and orange streaks. On top of this, blocking out parts of the idyllic scene, are three other pictures in small boxes: a woman’s bare tanned back with a row of round black stones dotting her spine and a white towel covering her obviously toned bottom; a large outdoor swimming pool with water that looks dark green and stone fountains at its four corners pouring new water into it; and a long, one-storey house that seems to be made almost wholly of glass with only the oddstrip of metal holding all the glass together. The caption reads: ‘Our award-winning Glass House’. It’s beautiful. Like a jewel, with nothing around it but green emptiness.
    I like all the words I can see on this page. I like them a lot more than what Stuart and Imran are saying.
    A gated second-home community in the Culver Valley
. That might be two hours from London – a little bit more, actually, more like two and a half – but it’s only an hour from Cambridge.
    The perfect peaceful countryside retreat.
    Our heated outdoor green slate 25-metre swimming pool, open to residents and their guests 365 days a year.
    A hot stone treatment at our award-winning
£10
-million Lumina Spa.
    There’s a phone number. For a