Page 19 of The Cottage at Brambleton Hall

‘You are overworking it,’ he said. ‘An omelette is not something one wrestles into submission.’

Sammy folded her arms and watched. ‘There’s a step I’m missing, isn’t there?’

‘A number of them.’

‘Sorry.’

His jaw tightened. ‘Miss Jenkins, I am not concerned that you cannot prepare an omelette. I am concerned that you accepted a position in which cooking forms part of your responsibilities.’

‘I can cook.’

‘Can you?’

The question was delivered so politely it was almost worse than if he’d raised his voice.

The mound of discarded eggshells seemed to stare up at her accusingly. ‘Perhaps not as well as I thought. We mostly eat take-outs,’ she said. ‘It’s efficient. Chloe swears by it.’ She chewed her lip. ‘I may have . . . overstated my cooking ability slightly. I can learn.’

Magnus turned the heat off. ‘It is better to start with a truthful assessment of one’s abilities.’ Sammy glanced at the remaining eggs lined up in a tray in date order. There were . . . fewer than there had been. ‘Good thing you’ve got chickens,’ she muttered.

‘Indeed.’ He plated the omelette, then moved to the table. Sammy followed, her hands fluttering as he adjusted what she’d already set, adding napkins, side plates, water glasses, all placed precisely as if there were a series of chalk marks on the table for each one.

‘At least I got the cutlery right,’ she said.

‘It was a promising start,’ he replied. ‘If you wish to observe a professional standard,’ he added, sitting at the head of the table and placing his notebook on his right, ‘the Smugglers Inn, the village pub, provides an excellent example. Rose and George run their establishment properly.’

Sammy felt her spirits lift imagining a cosy village pub with roaring log fires and mulled wine in winter. ‘Should we go there for a staff outing perhaps?’ Sammy said.

Magnus regarded her in a way that suggested she’d just said something deeply inappropriate. ‘No.’

‘Right,’ she said quickly. ‘No. Of course not.’

She picked up her plate, instinctively stepping aside to eat.

‘Sit,’ Magnus said.

Sammy hesitated, pulled out a chair and sat, a little stiffly. ‘Right. Sitting,’ she said.

Magnus made small note in his book.

For the rest of the day Sammy traipsed around the house after Magnus, trying to memorise the layout. She counted forty rooms. In the kitchen she found a sheet of paper and a pen, and sketched a map, visualising it pinned on the wall of ‘the housekeeper’s room’, soon to be hers.

At six o’clock Magnus closed the house, then he led Sammy along a narrow path cut through the gardens. The light was still bright, spilling across the long flower borders where birds hopped in the shade of flowers, and insects buzzed from one temptation to the next.

It was quiet in a way she wasn’t used to. No traffic, no doors slamming somewhere down the street. The soft crunch of their steps, the distant call of a bird she couldn’t name, a squirrel rustling in the trees beyond the manicured gardens.

Everything looked managed. Lawns mown short, borders edged sharply, no leaning plants, no gravel on the grass, as if it remembered where it belonged.

Without meaning to, Sammy slowed down.

After a few minutes she spotted a line of three stone cottages – two joined, one set a short distance apart – each with a small garden. Magnus halted outside one of the semi-detached cottages. ‘Your accommodation,’ he said.

The garden next to hers looked enchanting. It drew her in; a path slipped between the beds as though it had always been there. A solitary deck chair was positioned under the shade of a tree, facing the garden rather than the house. Plants spilled over each other, a riot of colours, shapes, textures and heights. And a mingling of scents: sweet, and something spicy.

Magnus unlocked the door.

‘Oh,’ Sammy said, stepping inside. ‘It’s . . . this is really lovely.’

It was spotless. A small kitchen with a separate sitting room – a step up from the Swansea flat; upstairs a bathroom and two bedrooms. She toured the space slowly, stepping carefully as if to avoid marking the floor. Bland paint, practical furniture, beds made with tight, hospital corners, a whiff of polish in the air. The cottage felt less like a home, more like a well-behaved idea of one.