'Anything would be an improvement on your last curate,' I agreed with feeling. 'Michael something, wasn't it? Very Low Church, never smiled, always bubbling over with hell-fire and damnation?'

'That's the one.'

'Whatever happened to him?'

'I managed to have him transferred to a parish up north. I felt I'd done my penance,' Tom said, smiling. 'Anyway, back to the subject of my day off. I promised the parents I'd stop in this week and see how you were getting on. How are you getting on?'

'Quite well, thanks. I've got most of the downstairs rooms sorted out, I think.'

'It looks very nice.' He let his gaze roam the sun-filled, spacious room. 'It really is a lovely house. I am impressed. Are you going to give me the grand tour, or'—his gaze fell on the overloaded coffee table—'do I have to help with the washing up first?'

I assured him that the washing up could wait, and began the tour in the room we were in.

'Well, this, naturally, is the sitting room,' I said. 'I need to buy a bigger carpet to protect this floor, and the curtains of course will have to go....'

'I see what you mean.' Tom eyed the garish floral chintz speculatively. 'The windows themselves are nice, though. And I genuinely like the fireplace. What's through here?' He indicated a connecting door on the far wall.

'Dining room.' I led him through.

'Julia!' My brother's tone held admiration. 'Where on earth did you get that dresser?'

'It's quite something, isn't it? It came with the house.'

The dresser was late Victorian, solid walnut, and nearly nine feet tall, its top brushing the plastered ceiling of the dining room. I suspected it had come with the house only because it would have needed a crane to budge it. The single piece of furniture so completely dominated the long room that one barely noticed the lack of table or chairs. On either side of the dresser, two tall windows looked out over the back lawn, adding to the impression of stately elegance. From the dining room we walked through a swinging door into the scrubbed and Spartan kitchen with its old-fashioned pantry, then out through the narrow passageway into the paneled front hall. After a brief detour into the study, where Tom might easily have settled himself for the remainder of the day had I not dragged him out again, we climbed the angled staircase to the upper floor.

'Now, I haven't done anything up here since the day I moved in,' I warned him, 'so some of the rooms may be a little messy. Just so you don't expect much.'

'Blast these ceilings.' Tom ducked too late and stepped onto the landing, rubbing the back of his head. 'Made for midgets. How many bedrooms do you have?'

'Four. But I'm only using two of them. These two'—I indicated the closed doors to our left—'are just for storage, at present.'

'Very sensible.' Ever curious, Tom poked his head inside the first room and peered around. It was a long, narrow room, separated from my own by the attic stairs that ran behind the end wall. The light coming in the twin windows was partially blocked by the branches of a pear tree growing close against the front of the house. The other storage room occupied the front south corner, and the fact that it had only one window was compensated for by the presence of yet another fireplace.

'You'll have to learn to chop wood, love,' my brother commented, and I pulled a face.

'Come off it, Tom. You've seen me light a fire before. The whole house would go up like a Roman candle.'

Tom grinned, and bent to examine the carved wooden mantelpiece. Leaving him there, I moved on ahead to the next door, which belonged to the small back corner room that I'd chosen to use as my studio. I hadn't bothered to check on my supplies or equipment yet, having determined not to think about work for this first week, but it suddenly struck me that, since Tom was here, he might be coerced into helping me assemble my drawing board. I was not normally inept when it came to routine mechanical tasks, but this particular drawing board—devised by a sadistic Swedish designer—always managed to defeat my best efforts, and left me sitting frustrated and helpless amid a jumble of chrome poles, assorted tools, and one less bolt than the directions called for.

Come to think of it, I thought, brightening, I hadn't actually seen the movers carrying the table upstairs. Maybe it had been lost in the move. I pushed open the studio door, took two steps into the room, and stopped dead in confusion.

There was nothing there. Nothing of mine, anyway. Except for a low, narrow bed pushed against the back wall, and an antique clothespress in one corner, the room was completely empty.

'Well, that's odd,' I said out loud.

'What's odd?' my brother called back.

'This furniture isn't mine,' I told him, moving back across the hall to the front bedroom. "They must have put my studio things in one of these rooms instead. There should be an easel and my drawing board and that great ugly chair. I just can't imagine where ...'

My voice trailed off as I rummaged amid the boxes, and my brother's shadow moved past me into the hall.

'Julia,' he said, a moment later. 'Come here.'

I found him standing in the doorway of my studio, hands on hips. 'Now,' he said, as I joined him, 'what do you see?'

I looked, blinked hard, and looked again. It was all there—the easel, the studio furniture, the untidy boxes of paints and brushes and paper ... everything, just as it should be. Moreover, there was no sign to be seen of the bed or clothespress.