It’s describing the lead characters house, she’s showing a stranger around. Any thoughts or suggested improvements welcome, would like to know if it makes sense and if you get a clear enough picture of the house. I can see it quite vividly in my mind, but don’t know if I’m describing it that well. I know there’ll probably be some typos (they seem to be more obvious once I post bits on here).
After breakfast I take Nick on a tour of the house. Most of the rooms are closed off, to save on bills, so we rush through a billiards room with no billiard table, a dining room with no dining table, an empty drawing room and deserted conservatory. The rooms are cold and lifeless, containing only dust and a few abandoned pieces of furniture; although you can tell the rooms were once grand and richly furnished. They have the air of rooms that have never been lived in and loved.
It would surprise people to learn that most of the house isn’t that old. My family have owned the land for generations, originally living in the castle on the hill. That was destroyed, hundreds of years ago, and all that remains is the old tower. Many years later my ancestors claimed the old chapel and priest house, knocking part of it down and rebuilding it into a much more substantial residence. This was added to and expanded over the years, until it burned down towards the end of the nineteenth century. My great grandfather built this house, onto what remained of the old chapel. He finished just in time for the First World War to take away all the staff needed to run it. He’d planned to use it as a holiday home in the summer and a hunting lodge in the autumn. However, he lost all his money sometime between the two world wars. I think he would have sold it, but there’s some kind of covenant on the land, preventing its sale. I can’t say I really understand the legal tangle my family have wound around themselves over the years.
No one lived here for a long time, until my father was a boy and my grandfather started to use it as a holiday home. My father had many fond memories of long summers spent here. We were lucky to have this place to run to.
I try to explain some of this history to Nick as we make our way upstairs, but I think I may just be babbling and repeating myself. Bypassing the bedrooms, we go to the very oldest part of the house, the library. My favourite place in the world. The library.
It’s a long, low-ceilinged room, with many small, arched windows spaced along its walls. Books everywhere, piled on the floor and jostling together on the shelves, calling to me like so many old friends. Until now, Nick has looked at everything with a dull and lifeless gaze. Now, he seems to perk up, a flicker of enthusiasm in his eyes which I see him try hard to extinguish. He goes to my father’s desk, still as cluttered as the day he left it. Nick picks up a book, another copy of the book currently on my own nightstand. He runs a finger across the embossed name and title on the spine.
The extract breaks off just before the dialogue starts.
The nightstand is in the bedroom. Nick picks a book off the desk, which is the same as one Isabel has in her bedroom (her father wrote the book, so they have a few copies)
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