The selling agent who was due to meet him here had extolled its virtues to Piers when he had initially expressed an interest in it, adding helpfully that because the property was already empty Piers could move into it virtually as soon as he wished.
Yes, this property was almost perfectly suited to his needs, unlike the farmhouse which was the only other remotely suitable property the agent had had on his books.
As he had pondered before, there was no doubt whatsoever in his mind that Georgia would go for the farmhouse. She would probably insist on raising a brood of chickens, which she would want to have wandering about in the farmyard, and no doubt she would want to turn at least one of the outbuildings into temporary accommodation for all the animal waifs and strays she would insist on adopting. He would be lucky if he didn’t find himself financing a donkey sanctuary, as well as providing a refuge for wild, untrainable dogs, and their children would probably grow up to be as animal-mad as their mother, so that his would be the only lone voice of sanity and restraint in the entire household.
Not that both she and their children wouldn’t do their very best to subvert his desire to keep their lives as animal-free as possible. He could see it now: the lone school hamster who was brought home ‘for the holidays’ and who never went back; the stray cat who made her home with them and unexpectedly produced a litter of kittens; the pony his daughter would insist on having—and he would, of course, give in.
‘But she’ll have to clean it and feed it herself, I’m not getting up at the crack of dawn every day to do it...’
To his consternation Piers realised that he had not only spoken his thoughts out loud but that, for one moment, his imagination had produced such an intensely real mental picture for him that it was as though his imaginary daughter was actually here, standing in front of him, her mother’s dark red curls bouncing with determination as she besieged him with pleas and entreaties.
Her mother’s red hair... Georgia’s red hair... But he wasn’t...he didn’t... The clanking of the automatic wrought-iron gates opening alerted him to the estate agent’s arrival, bringing a thankful end to his disturbing thoughts.
* * *
‘It would be the perfect property for a man in your position,’ the agent enthused as they finished viewing the house and he locked the front door. ‘It fulfils all the criteria you gave us.’
‘Yes,’ Piers agreed unenthusiastically.
‘It’s got vacant possession, and I know that the owner is prepared to negotiate on price,’ the agent persevered.
‘Mmm... What time is my appointment to view the farmhouse?’ Piers asked him briefly.
‘The farmhouse?’ The agent’s smile turned to a small frown. ‘I have made an appointment for you to view it,’ he began cautiously, ‘but I must warn you, it is in need of some quite serious renovation.’
‘I imagine it must be,’ Piers agreed urbanely. ‘It is over two hundred years old.’
‘Well, yes, and if you were wanting a period family house then...’ He paused and shrugged. ‘I have to warn you, though, that we already have at least one seriously interested buyer, despite the fact that its survey showed the house could be subject to serious flooding if the river was ever to rise above its banks...and...’
‘Has it ever done so?’ Piers asked him quietly.
‘Well, no...at least not in the last hundred years,’ the agent conceded. ‘But, as I’m sure you’ll agree once you’ve viewed it, it comes nowhere as near to fulfilling your specifications in the way that this property does.’
It was quite plain to Piers that the agent was trying to push him into buying the house he had just viewed, and on the face of it he knew that he had to agree with everything that the other man was saying. After all, he hadn’t raised any points that Piers hadn’t already seen for himself. The farmhouse was a family home, and, to judge from the carefully worded estate agent’s blurb, in need of having a considerable amount of money spent on it, whereas the one he had just looked at needed nothing other than his own furniture. Even the floors were polished wood and didn’t need carpeting. It cried out for the kind of minimalistic décor that went perfectly with the kind of business image he ought to want to portray.
Crumbling plasterwork and an Aga were not the right backdrop for someone who was selling himself and his skills as an expert in the writing of the most technologically advanced computer software in the marketplace. He would have to have one of the outbuildings virtually rebuilt to house all his equipment, and even then...
Abruptly Piers dragged himself back to reality. In a bygone age a man suffering from what he was suffering from might genuinely have believed that Georgia had cast some kind of spell over him. But to think that was to believe that Georgia wanted him in her life, and she had made it more than evident that she had no such desire at all.