The Reluctant Elf (Kindle Single) Read Online Free PDF Page A

sudden change in water temperature. Our plumbing is going to poach our guests if we let them shower.
    ‘Hang on honey, I’ll draw you a bath instead.’
     
    Mabel has found Mingus, who turns out to be a rather rough-looking cat. He was asleep in the dining room cabinet where Aunt Kate keeps the white linen tablecloths (now covered in brown and black fur). Mabel has decided that Mingus loves her, based on the fact that he’ll purr if she strokes him long enough. He seems perfectly happy in his role as her new best friend and I’m glad she’s got the diversion. It isn’t easy always being the only little person in a grown-up world.
    I throw the tablecloths into the industrial tumble dryer in the cellar. Hopefully most of the hair will come out in the filter. If not we’ll have to convince the guests that mohair tablecloths are the newest mealtime accessory in Snowdonia.
    I’m not fooling myself. I know we’ll never clean/arrange/paint/fix in time. We’ve got to prioritise. Aunt Kate must have planned to get the rooms painted, so I send Danny to the guest bedrooms to see what he can do.
    Meanwhile I make a start on the downstairs hall, which looks even worse now that the newly cleaned windows let in all the daylight. In some places the walls are so pockmarked that they look like the scene of an execution. Painting over them will just give us freshly painted pockmarked walls.
    Aunt Kate, what could you have been thinking, booking the reviewer in for Christmas? Did you really believe you’d get everything done in time for him to give you the rating you need?
    Even as I ask myself the question I know the answer. Of course she did. She believes she can do anything.
    This is, after all, the woman who opened a home for retired opera singers in northern Wales.
    In fairness, it was her friend Ivan’s idea and, at first, his investment.
    They were friends from their touring days in Europe in the seventies, and there was nothing she wouldn’t do for Ivan. When he retired, at the ripe age of fifty, he was determined to give something back to the art that had given him so much.
    Aunt Kate had always been a wandering soul, so why not move to Wales? They used some of his family money to buy the house and offered a home to ageing singers for nearly ten years. It was rare for a tenant to be able to pay them anything, but for a while they were able to make ends meet using Ivan’s remaining savings and then an equity release loan against the property.
    The money ran out at nearly the same time that Ivan’s luck did. Aunt Kate nursed him through his final curtain call and he left all he had to her – the house, the land and the unpaid equity release loan.
    That’s why I’m sitting in a crumbling house contemplating the holes in the walls.
    I can hear Danny saying something from upstairs.
    ‘Be right up.’
    When I push the bedroom door open it slams shut in my face.
    ‘Don’t come in!’
    ‘Sorry. Are you painting the door?’
    ‘Erm, yes? Oh bugger.’
    ‘Danny, what’s going on? I’m coming in.’
    It looks like the world’s largest seagull has taken aim at Danny. ‘Spilled a bit of paint, did you?’
     ‘A bit. Sorry. I’ll try to be more careful.’
    ‘Just see if you can get some on the walls, okay?’
    ‘I’m not exactly a painting pro,’ he says. ‘Which is ironic since I went to art school.’
    ‘Did you really?’
    ‘You don’t have to sound so incredulous. Yes, I did, really.’
    ‘I’m sorry.’ I stare at the walls. ‘I guess I can see some Jackson Pollock influences in your work.’
    ‘I stick to sculpture now,’ he says. ‘If I scrub the mould off first and do just one coat I should be able to finish the rooms by tomorrow. Without fixing the damp though, the mould will come back in a few weeks.’
    ‘That’s okay. This is a short-term fix. If we can pull it off then Aunt Kate can properly fix up the house later. All we have to do is make everything hold together for a week.’
    ‘You