George lived in a house—yes, a house, not a hypermodern apartment or a nineteenth-century mansion—in a tiny hamlet near the Swale.
It was pretty and white-painted and not at all like anything I would have imagined for her until I stepped inside and saw how the light, silver-spun from the marina, moved through the space like it was alive.
She’d done the lateral living thing familiar from Matthew’s many, many properties, but I’d always found it on the edge of oppressive before. Intimidation by square footage.
Here there was just a clean, bright openness, full of colourful rugs, nooks I wanted to explore, and furniture I actually wanted to sit on. She had books and paintings. Flowers on the kitchen table. Mugs on the drying rack. Fashion magazines piled up in corners. Such beautiful, ev
