The House in the Clouds - Victoria Connelly Page 0,1
a single moment to breathe in years.
After a spell at art college, Abi had struck out as a freelance designer for a number of companies while working on her own designs in the evenings. It hadn’t been an easy existence and she’d lost count of the number of dreadful flats she’d lived in, sharing with strangers in order to make the rent.
And then something strange had happened. Her “doodling” as her sister always referred to it had taken off and she suddenly found herself flavour of the month. Then flavour of the year. She’d been able to pay for her own studio and then her own shop. Suddenly, Abigail Carey was running a business and a successful one too. Her prints and linocuts were featured in all the newspapers and glossy magazines and several of her patterns were bought by department stores for quality bed linen, cushions and curtains. What a whirlwind it had been.
Smiling as she thought about it all, her fingers found a large silver locket she wore on a long chain around her neck. She didn’t open it, but it was a comfort to know what was inside: that first doodle of the sunflower that had launched her career. It had seemed like such a simple thing to draw. Everybody loved sunflowers, didn’t they? With their happy round faces and those bright fiery petals, they were a symbol of joy and strength, a winning combination, and it was as she thought about them that she determined that she would grow them at Winfield if she made the winning bid at the auction. There was a walled garden and, as she walked around it now, she promised it sunflowers.
She felt sure she should have been asking the estate agent questions, but he’d disappeared a few minutes ago to give her some privacy. After all, this was the kind of property one needed to feel. You couldn’t really take it in with an estate agent giving you a potted history and blasting you with useless details like the measurements of rooms. That wasn’t what Abi was interested in at all. She wanted to reach out and touch the place, running her fingers along the plasterwork and listening to the sound her feet made on the bare wooden floorboards. It was important to get to know a property quietly, especially one that had been empty for the last few years. It needed to be respected, its empty rooms entered silently, reverently and not with the constant babble of an estate agent’s voice accompanying you.
And, oh those rooms! Lofty, light and airy – just like the landscape which the large windows seemed to invite inside so that the two seemed indistinguishable. Abi was glad that they were empty of furniture because she could fill each room from her own imagination and what plans she had for the place. Of course, Winfield Hall was far too big for her to have all to herself. As much as she’d relish drifting from room to room and filling each with her art, she knew that this was a place to be shared.
She remembered those long, grim years of rented flats, the dark and dingy rooms, the uninspiring views of rooftops and litter-strewn streets. How her heart had yearned for such a place as this – even a small portion of it. One room or even a small corner would have sufficed as long as it had one of those glorious windows framing the great flank of a down and the wispy clouds in the heavens above. She’d known as soon as she’d seen the house for sale online that she would share it, but not with just anyone. She wanted to share it with fellow artists and creatives – people who would love the place as much as she did. She had so many ideas for the future of the place. Each room had been so full of light and possibilities. Abi smiled, feeling hugely excited at the thought of what the future might hold.
She took out her sketchbook and started drawing. She drew the grand front of the hall with its beautiful pediment pointing into the blue sky, she drew the walled garden with its swaying grasses and she drew the great bulk of the down behind the house, with its dark saddle of trees and the chalky ribbon of footpath which led into the valley. What a special place this was, she thought, throwing her head back and gazing up into the