Chapter 231

• Why had it been left to decay and rot? She felt like a magician, being asked to transform the empty rooms into something liveable and clean. A fairy godmother, longing to make the decrepit villa a happy place—a home.
• Yet how on earth could she accomplish such a task? She, who had never known a home? Zoe gazed at the tattered drapes at the windows, suddenly remembering her childish effort at making curtains from a cut-up dress that had no longer fitted her. They’d been ridiculous raggedy things, the hems stapled because she’d never learned to sew. Yet Zoe had been so proud of them; they’d lent something warm and alive to the sterile hotel room with its plastic shades and stained bedspread. Her mother, however, hadn’t even noticed.
• Zoe sighed, the memory depressing her. Why was she thinking of such things now? Was it simply because she’d never cleaned a house—a home—before? She’d kept to hotels and restaurants, impersonal places, jobs and people you could walk away from.