Untimely Graves by Marjorie Eccles Page B

yet been able to bring himself to get rid of all her furniture and belongings. However, as Daphne pointed out, it wasn’t very sensible to leave the place unlived in, and so he’d agreed to rent it to the Hunnicliffes as temporary furnished accommodation.
    It was the end one of a row of pint-sized artisan-type dwellings, as the house agents referred to them, meaning two up and one down, with a kitchen tacked on and bathroom made from the tiny second bedroom. Now wedged in between blocks of council flats on the one hand and fairly swanky properties on the other … but nothing was perfect, Cleo told herself. It was here, in Lavenstock, not far from either the library or a bus route. You could walk into the town centre easily if you were so minded. Everything she needed, really. But …
    ‘You’ll have to pay me rent,’ George said sternly, and Cleo nodded happily, seeing this face-saving gesture for what it was, knowing he wouldn’t overcharge. ‘So I hope this cleaning job pays well. Otherwise you’ll have to get a proper one, won’t you?’
    ‘That’s blackmail!’
    ‘I know.’ He grinned.
    He was a good egg, really. Her mum, too. They must have been cooking this thing up for some time.
    Filled with a new energy, she couldn’t wait, and walked on air up to her new abode, stopping only to get in a few essential supplies at Sainsbury’s. Brandishing the keys like a trophy, she unlocked the front door.
    She felt a little choked as she stepped in, and stood blinking for a moment. She’d never been inside the place since Phoebe had died, and the sight of all her familiar things brought her vividly back to mind: the embroidered cushions, her footstool, the crocheted duchess set on the sideboard. There also Cleo saw evidence of the quiet continuance of her modest life in the collection of knick-knacks, valueless to anyone else, but which had meant so much to Phoebe, as well as the clock presented to her father on his retirement and, in pride of place, her wedding photograph.
    Going into her aunt’s house had always seemed like entering
a time warp, and seemed even more so, now that she was no longer here, part of it. Phoebe had lived in this little house for well over sixty years, and practically everything in it was exactly as it was when she and Jack had set up home when they were first married. She’d never seen the need for much modernisation.
    The front room was all geometric shapes, fashionable at the time, the fireplace a perfect semicircle of fawn and eau-de-nil Art Deco tiling, without a mantelpiece, set against what Phoebe had called ‘a nice biscuit-coloured wallpaper’. The square dining suite was in limed oak. A matching step-sided china cabinet stood in one alcove, in the other a square-columned standard lamp, complete with its original parchment shade painted with flying ducks. Three more flew diagonally across one wall.
    But people went in for this sort of thing nowadays, paid a lot of money for it, and the Honeybuns had probably been charmed, seen the whole thing as a genuine period piece, which is just what it was. Cleo looked at the only picture in the room, placed high on the wall, a curious depiction of Spaniards apparently about to do the tango, made from coloured silver paper mounted on black velvet, occupying the wall over the sideboard. The mirror over the fireplace had peach-coloured glass insets either side. Good Lord, she might well be living in an Aladdin’s cave! Every time she sat down on the fawn uncut moquette three-piece suite with its curved-to-the-floor padded arms, she’d be terrified of spilling her coffee on it.
    Talking of which … she went to make herself a coffee, as a sort of rite of ownership, to carry around while she inspected the entire place and thought how she might adjust it, without disrespect to Phoebe, to her own more chaotic living requirements.
    The kettle boiled, and as she reached for a mug, she noticed with shocked disapproval that Angel Honeybun had