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them a look between a grimace and a smile. “I’m not surprised she had parts of the house boarded up.”
    Freya spotted another worn set of doors on an adjacent wall. With a few strides, she reached them and pulled them open, but again, she found nothing but a flat expanse of brick and concrete. “This one is blocked too.”
    “This one isn’t.” Bam stuck her head past the doors she’d opened. “In fact… this wing doesn’t look too bad. Maybe she lived in here.” Freya and Oliver made their way over to Bam.
    Something grabbed Freya’s ankle and she screamed. When she looked down, she saw that part of a broken lamp had caught her leg, and she laughed in relief.
    “Jesus, woman, you scared the shit out of me.” Bam clutched her heart. “This place is creepy enough without you adding to it.”
    A deep red flush settled over Freya’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, I’m just a little on edge. This house…” Her voice faded away, but Oliver offered her a sympathetic look. Freya shook her head and pulled her leg free from the lamp.
    The wing that Bam found was untouched, and though every room was filled with big clunky furniture, the place looked relatively clean. There was some dust, but nothing a quick wipe wouldn’t fix. And the smell was a lot better here too. There was a lingering odour of old people, but not of rot. The wallpaper was a soft yellow colour, spattered with a dainty white fleur-de-lis pattern, and the floor was polished cherry parquet.
    “This is how I remember my aunt. A lot of… stuff… but clean and tidy. Terrible taste in decor, though.” Freya picked up a porcelain figure of a little Dutch girl from a display cabinet.
    “Well, at least we can work with this part. I think we could turn this floor into our own living accommodation. Then we work from there to turn the East and South Wings into hotel rooms. They’re bigger, right?”
    “I think so. You have the floor plans.” Freya glared at Oliver. “I just have vague memories from fifteen years ago.” She rolled her eyes, but Oliver wasn’t watching. He wandered around the living room, opening drawers to cabinets and dressers while his fingers lightly caressed the furniture.
    “There’s a lot of stuff here. We need to figure out what we want to keep.” Oliver held a crystal figurine of a dolphin between his fingers. “Maybe we can even sell some of this stuff online, or to an antique shop or something, to help finance the remodelling. The house is in a worse state than we could have imagined, so we’ll need every pound we can get our grubby little fingers on.”
    “I’d like to keep this though.” Freya pointed at a tall grandfather clock. It was a handsome antique, and instead of numbers, the clock had angels carved in the brass dial. The figures were rendered with incredible detail, and on the top of the wood stood a last angel holding a tiny trumpet.
    “I remember it from when I was little, and I’ve always liked it. You should hear it chime on the quarter hour. It’s very pretty.”
    “These decorative plates look pretty old.” Bam stood on her tippy-toes and pointed at one of the round metal plates that lined the wall. “They look like they’re made of gold, but it’s probably something fake. I mean… if they were real gold, or even just gold plated, it would mean there was a fortune here, right?” There was a soft hesitation in the short girl’s laugh, a tuft of pink-tipped blonde hair escaping the bun at the back of her neck as she bobbed up and down. All three looked up at the wall. There were seven plates in total, hanging at regular intervals, and each of them gold. Oliver and Freya exchanged an excited glance.
    “I remember these,” Freya said, while Oliver climbed up onto a cherry-wood dresser. “My aunt was very proud of them. There was something about them, but I can’t remember what.”
    The dresser groaned under Oliver’s weight, and for a moment, he froze. Then he shifted slowly, and the dresser