Not the designers’ country kitchen of the glossy magazines but the sort that had evolved over several generations of use into a comfortable and practical space. The room was dominated by a vast range cooker that sat in an even more vast arched brick fireplace. A big flat-bottomed kettle rested on one of the hotplates and a black cat on another. Free-standing cupboards and a huge pine dresser stood against the cream painted walls, and the floor was composed of uneven flagstones. Over the family-sized stripped-pine table, a vintage clothes airer suspended from the central beam was draped with tea-towels and hung with strings of onions and bunches of herbs. Children’s pictures were pinned to the American-style fridge with magnets, and a small pair of red sandals lay where they had been kicked off, next to one of the chairs. At the opposite end of the room stood a grandfather clock and the biggest sideboard Daniel had ever seen. In front of a smaller fireplace, on a rather threadbare square of carpet, stood three mismatched armchairs, a sofa and a coffee table weighed down with magazines.
