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centre of the room, with its tapestry canopy intact and a stained yellow pillow crumpled against the headboard.  The idea it had been there since someone had last slept here, at some point in the early twentieth century, was unnerving.  Forgetting entirely it was kindly Auntie Edie’s family who had lived here, I indulged visions of Byronic lords and swooning heroines. Next to the bedroom was a small dressing room. I peered through the doorway, caught a glimpse of my reflection in a dusty full-length mirror on one of the walls, and retreated.
    Most of this floor was taken up by high ceilinged bedrooms—twelve in all—and adjoining dressing rooms. An exceedingly functional lavatory, bathtub, and washbasin were fixed in one of these rooms and another small toilet and basin in one of the corner rooms. There was no other furniture in any of the rooms. In the eastern part of the house the ceilings were stained and in various stages of collapse, as Anna had warned me. The culprit was the damaged roof and it was here the most serious structural repair was needed. It did not look to be an insurmountable challenge.
    The bedrooms were mostly located towards the back and sides of the house. Along the front was a large room with many windows. The Long Gallery. I smiled, admiring the pride of whoever had named it, for the room was only long in relation to the other rooms in the house. I’d been in plenty of grand stately homes, with real long galleries, and this did not even begin to compare. Still, it was one of the easier rooms in which to imagine the inhabitants of former times admiring the portraits of their ancestors on the walls. The hooks and uneven colouring of what remained of the wallpaper showed clearly where such pictures had once hung.
    There was something wistful about that faded, patchy wallpaper, the shadows of the portraits which occupied these walls. It was such a simple consideration in a house with so much to discover, but it moved me. I wanted to pause for a moment, stop my exploration and think over what I’d learned already, consider my feelings for my new house. The windows in the Long Gallery each had a broad window seat. I perched on one and cleared a small patch of the dirty glass so that I might see out over the parkland.
    The sky was a heavy grey and the daylight had taken on an oppressive yellow quality. I wondered if it was going to snow. I looked out at the bare-limbed trees, jagged and black on the horizon, and at the dull green of the grass. The meadows sloped down to where a small river flowed through the park. Somewhere out there was a bridge over the river. A flock of crows flew past, ignoring the house entirely as they swept by. It struck me at once, as I stared, nothing had changed at all since my arrival yesterday. This house had stood here for hundreds of years, at first glorious, then decaying. As much a part of the landscape as the river and the stark trees. I was nothing in that great scheme of things. But I had to make a mark, I owed that much to Auntie Edie and to this building. It wasn’t really such a big house, as country houses went, but it was as proud as any other, with its Long Gallery, grand staircase, and high-ceilinged Saloon. Winter Manor still aspired to something, even after all the years it had seen come and go. It wanted to be more than it was, it remembered what it had once been. I could empathise with that. I wanted to help it to be all it could be again. Maybe there was a chance I could find my own way to being all I could be in the process.
    My thoughts strayed back to my visitor of earlier that morning. The jury was still out on whether I liked Anna or not. I chose to entirely blank the nagging part of me that insisted on pointing out just how attractive my architect was. Those thoughts were neither appropriate or helpful. So what if I still tingled slightly where her fingers had pressed mine? I wasn’t used to being on my own yet, I was bound to have moments where