One Christmas Morning & One Summer's Afternoon by Tilly Bagshawe

intently, both on where she was walking and on not glancing towards Daniel, she made her way out of the Great Hall and into the corridor. It was cooler out here, and quiet, and the change of atmosphere soothed her. With no signs indicating where a loo might be, Laura headed upstairs. A sash window on the landing had been partially opened to let in some crisp night air. Through it, Laura could see thick, heavy snowflakes falling and felt a childish delight. However inconvenient it might be to her adult self, with the play scheduled for tomorrow, there was a magic about snow, and particularly Christmas snow, that could not be denied. It meant purity and hopefulness and the promise of a bright, white future, a fresh start. It was what she had come here for, she and Peggy, back to Fittlescombe, to the place she’d been happiest. Not Daniel Smart, nor Gabe Baxter, nor John Bastard Bingham could take that away from her.
    Upstairs, with nothing looking obviously like a bathroom, Laura started opening doors. Most of the rooms were bedrooms and had clearly not been redecorated for decades. Chintzy Laura Ashley wallpaper suggested a woman’s touch at some point back in the 1980s. Laura found herself wondering when, exactly, Tatiana’s mother had died. She must have been very beautiful to produce a daughter like that.
    The style of the rooms was old-fashioned and simple, with nothing to suggest the family’s vast wealth. Most of the furniture was solid Victorian mahogany, and the odd watercolour painting hanging on the walls was the only attempt at adornment. Rugs were Persian and tatty, and the beds were made up with sheets and blankets rather than duvets, giving them a look of a boarding school dormitory.
    Bedroom, bedroom, bedroom. Laura was starting to wonder whether there were any bathrooms at all, or if Furlings’s guests simply peed out of their windows, when the fourth door opened and a distinctly dishevelled Lisa James fell out into the corridor, giggling.
    ‘Oh! Hello.’ She blushed when she saw Laura. ‘I was just … we were, erm …’
    Gabe Baxter sauntered out behind her. His shirt was untucked and he was wiping away very obvious lipstick marks with a handkerchief.
    ‘Hi,’ he said to Laura, unsmiling.
    ‘I was just looking for the loo,’ she found herself explaining. For some reason she was blushing furiously, as if it were she who’d been caught
in flagrante
.
    ‘Well, you found it,’ said Gabe tersely. Taking Lisa’s hand he led her towards the stairs.
    Shutting the bathroom door behind her and locking it securely, Laura undid the hook and eye on her dress and sank down gratefully onto the loo. It felt wonderful to be able to breathe and enjoy the cool sensation of porcelain against her skin. Less wonderful were the livid red welts around her ribs from where her bodice had dug into her skin, not to mention the familiar feeling of tension that seemed to follow every encounter she had with Gabe Baxter. Laura didn’t know what it was about Gabe. How he always managed to throw her off stride. All she knew was that she felt foolish around him, as though she had a giant piece of spinach permanently stuck to her teeth. And her stomach was full of something. Not butterflies – that was far too pretty an image. Something
like
butterflies, but unpleasant. Moths. Or bats.
    With an effort she pulled herself together, refixing her hair in the mirror and wiping away an unfortunate mascara smear with a piece of tissue. For one awful moment she feared she was going to be physically unable to winch herself back into her dress. But, after much frantic tugging of fabric and sucking in of the stomach, she succeeded in refastening the hook and eye and yanking up the zip. Feeling a bit more sober, tossing back her mane of dark curls with a confidence she didn’t feel but was determined to project, she walked back along the corridor towards the stairs. But after a couple of paces she froze.
    She heard them before she saw