The Snow Globe Read Online Free PDF

her mother was standing in front of the Christmas tree with a clipboard and pen. Scattered around the tree and across the floor were the tattered boxes and crates Daisy had helped Mr. Blundell bring down from the attics.
    â€œWe really do need to get the thing decorated,” said Mabel.
    The
thing
? It was a tree. A magnificent Christmas tree, thought Daisy, staring up at it.
    â€œThe electric lights will only be a problem if your father gets involved,” Mabel went on. “He has an uncanny knack of breaking the wretched things.”
    More
things
. What was wrong with her? They were beautiful lights. Prettier than any others Daisy had seen. “Blundy said he’d help me decorate the
thing
tomorrow morning.”
    Her mother slid her a look. “It could’ve been done by now, Daisy. If you spent less time wandering about dreaming, less time chatting on the telephone—which, may I remind you, is very costly and
not
what it’s designed for—you would achieve more . . . And please don’t roll your eyes like that,” she added.
    â€œSorry.”
    â€œWe must make sure the tree’s decorated and the lights are up
and
working before your father arrives home,” Mabel said. Then she turned and marched off down the passageway toward her boudoir.
    Maybe she was cross with Howard, Daisy mused, watching her mother disappear into a doorway. He had not been home in more than two weeks. But it was a busy time for him. He had had various dinners and functions to attend up in London and had long ago stopped asking Mabel to accompany him, because, as everyone knew, she didn’t enjoy those sorts of events and preferred to be at Eden Hall. And yet, though Mabel claimed to love the place—and ran it like a sergeant major, Daisy thought—she no longer seemed to enjoy it in the way she once had. She spoke about it as though it was a job, and a job she had grown weary of. She was like a Henry James heroine, one of those formidable women whose sense of duty left them unable to breathe properly.
    When Daisy stepped outside, the sky was translucent. A fiery sun shone through the black trees and danced on the moth-colored stone. She found Stephen shutting up the greenhouse, a solitary figure in the peaceful shadows of the walled garden, where hen coops and a long-vacated rabbit hutch stood in a far corner. There, too, were the little house and wire-covered run once inhabited by Sherlock, Daisy’s tortoise, who’d failed to wake from his hibernation the previous spring and whose grave lay on the other side of the wall, next to that of a goat named Charlie.
    â€œYou were right,” said Daisy, walking up the brick pathwaytoward Stephen. “It seems it was all just some massive publicity stunt.” She had decided it would be indiscreet to share Mrs. Christie’s personal problems with him.
    â€œWhat was?”
    â€œMrs. Christie . . . her disappearance.”
    â€œOh, that.”
    He was unusually quiet, and she followed him back to the yard and watched him as he began to stack logs on a wheelbarrow.
    â€œWhat do you think of my coat?” she asked, referring to the long fur coat her grandmother had given her, and suddenly desperate for him to look up at her.
    â€œNoonie’s?” he asked, glancing at her only very briefly.
    â€œNot anymore. She’s given it to me.”
    â€œIt suits you,” he said, without any smile.
    â€œSo what are you doing tonight? Do you want to come and play some cards? Listen to the wireless? You know my grandmother’s just bought another—so she can have one in her room, next to her bed, and the new one in the drawing room.”
    He stretched his arms up into the air, interlinked his fingers and brought them down on his cap. “I don’t think so, Daisy . . . not tonight.”
    The lights in house were being switched on, illuminating the gritted courtyard, pulling them out