Chapter Two Caroline Bath, Somerset November 1975 Having survived shopping, which wasn’t at all the trial I was expecting and turned out to be fun, I’m now writing this in my new bedroom. I’d thought when we first got here that I might as well be Catherine Morland because the houses haven’t changed since Jane Austen’s time, and stepping inside the hallway and the reception rooms on the first floor you might be forgiven for thinking you’d gone back in time. It’s very Georgian, furnished with tourists in mind, and scented with the magical fragrance of a house that’s only ever known brimming flower bowls of milky narcissus and heady lilac in spring or spires of delphiniums and plump roses in summer. It’s full of the sights and smells of life lived luxuriously - elegant Chippendale furniture, watered silk on the walls, embroidered cushion covers on satin sofas in the drawing room, and giltwood pier glasses set between the windows. The scent of fragrant wood smoke, wax can...