Winter at Pretty Beach by Polly Babbington (inspirational books txt) 📕

the little blue man on the right-hand side and landed directly outside a majestic four-storey old Victorian house on the other side of Pretty Beach.

‘Wow! Strawberry Hill Lane - I didn’t even realise these were four-storey. It’s that little lane that comes all the way in from the farm, the one a few roads back that links down through to the wharf. I’ve never walked up there properly. We must have been just about able to glimpse those rooftops there when we went for that picnic at the farm in the Summer,’ Sallie said, excitedly.

As they sat there staring at the solitary picture on the internet they worked out that it was actually five storeys if you included the basement. It was located at the end of a run of six just about detached old Victorian villas. A tall building with square bay windows to each floor, the woodwork on the windows painted a faded yellow, the falling off plaster a blue-grey. Steep steps led up to a huge Victorian entrance door and the front garden was surrounded by black iron railings and a large, overgrown magnolia tree.

They moved the little blue man around the maps to the back of the house - it appeared to have a long garden to the back and a small tumbledown garage or outhouse at the very back with a personal door and old-fashioned timber garage doors topped with windows opening onto a tiny lane.

Sallie turned the computer back to her and tried to expand the image.

‘Looks too good to be true, Ben,’ she said squinting at the screen.

‘Hmm. Right well you better get showered and ready, we’ll have a tidy up here and then we’ll walk over there, shall we? Shouldn't be too cold.’ He said, taking out his phone to check the weather map.

A few hours later they’d cleaned the apartment, put their coats and hats on and headed out down the laneway and over to the other side of Pretty Beach where Sallie had first arrived on the bus when she’d moved down from Freshlea.

They’d stopped in at Holly’s to grab a take-away coffee and given Holly an update on Nina, then they’d strolled along in the cold air, hands cupped around their coffees chatting about the Orangery wedding and how funny Tillie was.

They walked all through Pretty Beach, past the sand dunes and down onto the pavement past the restaurants and through the park Nel had first told Sallie about when she’d arrived on the bus and then strolled down to the wharf. Then they followed a tiny, winding road up and to the left until they got to Strawberry Hill House.

Sitting right on the end there it was. Tall, majestic and Sallie couldn’t work out what to think of the paint colours - yellow windows and blue-grey plaster which had fallen off in places wasn’t quite the colour palette she was thinking for her dream new home. They looked down the narrow lane with the double yellow lines, devoid of cars and not a single soul in sight.

Sallie and Ben perched on the wall with black railings at the front and looked up and down the deserted road. On the other side, a narrow grassy strip led to the back of another line of Victorian houses with ornate gable trim, facing down towards the sea their sheds and outbuildings neatly packed together at the back, their dark slate roofs glinting in the sun.

Five minutes later Shane Pence came marching up the road.

‘Sorry guys - nightmare to park over this side, though we all love the double yellows in tourist season, right? Now I will say that this place has parking behind it and permits so it wouldn’t be a problem from that angle if you actually live here, and it’s got a garage, though that needs some, err, help. There’s no way I’d live over this side of town without parking - that’s one of the reasons I got in touch, actually - this one has it all.’

‘No worries, Shane,’ Ben said jumping up from the wall and holding out his hand to Shane.

‘Okay, so it’s a bit of a tricky situation here - it’s probably not even going to go to market officially. They contacted me to see if I have anyone on my books who might be interested in an offer. The old guy who owns it has an, errr, well between you and me, he likes the slot machines. The daughter and son live on the second and third floor and well, long story short they need to sell it to pay off some of his debts. But here’s the but - they are only willing to sell it for a good price otherwise she’s going to go back to work and pay off the debt that way. Keep that to yourselves, but I wanted to give you the heads-up on the deal here.’

‘So, they know we’re viewing?’ Sallie asked as they stood on the pavement looking up at the imposing old house.

‘Oh yeah, of course. I told them I’ve one couple who have been actively looking for an old property for a while. Right, let’s go in,’ he said, extending his arm out towards the gate.

They opened the black iron gate, stepped across a tessellated tiled path and up fourteen steep steps to an enormous, glossy black double front door. A huge seashell was attached to an old brass knocker, old brass letterboxes sat beside each other underneath and two footed pots stood either side of the doorway with a stained-glass window above. Ben squeezed Sallie’s hand as they walked into the large, wide hallway. A stripped timber set of stairs swept down with a curved handrail to the left, a patterned Minton encaustic tiled floor played out in front of them and four stripped pine doors with heavy white porcelain door knobs led off from the main entrance area.

Everywhere they looked, on every surface were little knick-knacks, porcelain figurines, framed botanical prints and piles