It was the latter that had upset her greatly, since the aforementioned, charming, soft grey sandstone building was the residence of their housekeeper Josie, and her husband Jake, Belle Isle’s gardener and handyman, and of their two children, who had gone away for Easter. She will have to terminate their employment, she had reflected, which turned her stomach. She remembered Josie breast-feeding her baby, and how satisfied she seemed. And she recalled Jake, emptying the sand from their three-year-old’s shoes, smiling and hugging him, all in the same moment.

Now, turning off the shower and reaching for a soft white towel, she recollected how last night she had trailed half consciously past the front-of-house neon lightbox, following the laneway that led to the building’s large circular driveway, and had entered its stately grounds. At the sight of the site’s sign she had reached an all-time low, and drawing the car to a halt under the portico, she had leaned forward over the steering wheel and wept. Her siblings and their solicitors had wasted no time. Securing the car at this ingress, she had entered without looking at a single thing, and had gone immediately up the stairs to bed.

But it was now a new day, and Elodie had applied a gentle Clinique compact cream make-up, and light raspberry glacé lipstick. Adding a dash of Moment Suprême, she looked and felt fey and lovely, her neck snugly ensconced in a black cotton choker that delightfully offset the sleeveless, flared black cotton voile dress she was wearing, itself enchantingly chasubled in a chic, soft-ruffled, shoulder-loose, muslin châle. With her windswept soft flaxen curls, and thus attired, leaning backwards, from the far edge of the terrace, she appraised the quality and grandeur of Belle Isle in the early morning’s rising mist.

The building itself was two-storied, French provincial, with shutters and light stucco walls, enhanced by a pair of curved one-storey rooms fetchingly flanking each side. Her parents had told her that the wings were modelled on an early nineteenth century house designed by some colonial architect, John Verge, in a suburb somewhere westward. She’d forgotten its name. Thus the unexpected English regency influence, with projecting porch and the use of four gently bowed French windows. Two of these windows and the main door opened into a large living room, which extended the width of the house between the two wings.