THE STRANGER IN OUR HOME

Copyright

Published by AVON

A Division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in Great Britain by HarperCollinsPublishers 2018

Copyright © Sophie Draper 2018

Cover design © Lisa Horton 2018

Cover photographs: house © Sandra Cunningham/Trevillion Images;

Sophie Draper asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008320454

Ebook Edition © November 2018 ISBN: 9780008322120

Version: 2018-10-11

Dedication

For my parents.

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Author Note

Acknowledgements

About the Author

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

I am floating between two worlds, the living and the dead. As I lie here in my hospital bed, the faces shimmer above, voices distant and unfamiliar.

Slowly I return. I cannot move. I am a doll, placed exactly as they choose. They’re quite unaware that I’m awake, that I can see and hear – the machines, the trolleys on their wheels, the tubes wriggling from body to bed, the clicks and beeps that mark each breath, each beat a ticking clock, each sigh discharged as if my last.

Today I can see the table. Someone places a small painting beside me. It shows a boy. He sits on a grave under a tree, ivy coiled around his feet. He holds a pear drum.

I know this object. Not a drum, but something else. The shape appals me, a large pear-shaped box, too big for the boy’s lap. The strings that stretch across, the handle at one end, the strange creatures painted on the side. An instrument. It plays the devil’s music. My heart jolts, leaping against my ribs, hammering like a condemned man. The machines fill my lungs with air. I feel my chest expand, stretching until it is so taut I think my body will burst. But no, the machines deflate. Once more I hear their steady beat. I watch the drip, drip of the feed that punctures my arm and my consciousness fades away.

When I wake, I hear hushed tones, regret. They’re talking about me. My mind is surging, willing myself to move, to make one small sign that I’m alive. But the feeling dissipates like smoke in a chimney. I watch the boy. He winds the handle on the pear drum, round and round …

The hours turn into days, then weeks, time sliding between each heartbeat. Slowly memory returns. When I see the sky, it’s white or grey, reflections of the room bouncing off the window glass. And black. Sometimes against the grey is the tiniest streak of black, one small bird buffeted by an invisible wind.

As I lie in this bed, they all think I am as good as dead.

Except I am not dead – not yet. How disappointed they must be.

CHAPTER 1

She was watching me, my golden sister. Her eyes were dark; her hair long. She stood opposite me on the far side of the grave.

The black earth stained my fingers. I folded them in as if to hide the weight of the clump of soil sitting in my hand, damp and clammy against my skin.

My sister had come, despite all expectation.

She held her head upright and her gaze was unwavering. The flaps of her calf-length coat were caught by the wind, revealing a flash of red, her dress, her perfect legs sliding down into perfect shoes, heels sinking into the thick grass. I pressed my lips together and lowered my head. She was like a designer handbag lit up in a shop window on the King’s Road, glossy and beautiful and out of reach.

My stepmother’s funeral was a quiet affair. The small churchyard clung to a slope on the edge of Larkstone village, gravestones like broken teeth, the surrounding hills of Derbyshire cloaked in a fine drizzle that seeped through the thin cloth of my coat. There were a few neighbours, a bearded man standing on his own and an older woman dressed in black silk. I felt as though I should know her. I tilted my head. Her husband stood behind with an umbrella slick with rain and she turned away from me.

And there was my sister, Steph, in her red dress. She had bowed her head too and I could no longer see her face. The wind blew my hair over my eyes, tangling against the wet on my cheek. I let my eyelids close.

I flinched as that first clump of earth hit the coffin below.

I tried to concentrate on the vicar’s words, his voice. I took a peek. He held his prayer book with hands that were open and expressive. His skin was smooth and brown and he spoke with a clear, cultured accent. Not a local. I wondered then what the village thought of him. I wanted to smile at him, but he was too engrossed in the service. As I should have been.

‘Let us commend Elizabeth Crowther to the mercy of God, our maker and …’

Crowther. It still hurt. My stepmother had taken my father’s name, my mother’s name, along with everything else.

‘… we now commit her body to the ground: earth to earth …’

Another clod of black sodden earth hit the coffin. I reached forward and opened my hand.

‘… in sure and certain hope …’

What hope? My lips tightened. I was not, had never been, a believer.

‘… To him be glory for ever.’

More earth tumbled down into the grave. The vicar lowered his head again, we all did, as he intoned a prayer. I kept my eyes open. It was cold, the air spiced with rotting leaves and autumn smoke. A single bee struggled against the wind to land on the cellophaned flowers at our feet. It looked so out of place, late in the year. I watched it hover, a dust of yellow pollen clustered under its belly, tiny feet dangling beneath, oblivious to the drama playing out above.

I risked another look at my sister. I felt a kindling of old fear. She lifted her head and our eyes met and I drew a staggered breath.

Steph.

The back room of the pub was half empty, the walls a dank musty brown, the ceilings punctuated by low beams riddled with defunct woodworm holes. Decorative tankards hung like dead starlings from their hooks and beneath, a cold buffet was laid out on white linen with the usual egg mayonnaise sandwiches and hollowed-out vol-au-vents. An elderly neighbour cruised down the table with its foil trays, prodding this and that as she loaded up her plate.

My sister kept her distance, nibbling on a sandwich, talking to the vicar. A stack of blackened logs in the grate behind them spat and hissed without any sign of a flame. Her blue eyes fluttered across me as I stood on the other side of the room. She was waiting, I realised. Waiting to see what I would do.

I felt my chest tighten, the hands at my side clench. I thought perhaps I should forgive her, that I should be the one to go over and talk to her. Beyond the function room, I could hear the bellow of a man at the bar, the recurrent beeps of a slot machine by the entrance and the slash of rain battering the front door as it juddered open and closed again.

‘Hello,’ I said as I approached. My voice was husky and unsure.

‘Caro.’

Her voice surprised me. It had a distinctive New York drawl. The tone was gentle. If it was meant to encourage me, it had the opposite effect. I didn’t reply. I could hardly bear to meet her eyes. The vicar moved on, scarcely acknowledging me.

Then Steph put her glass down. Her body relaxed, her arms opened. I wanted to step closer, but my feet refused to move. We hugged, a loose, cautious kind of hug, her pale, flawless cheek brushing cool against my skin.

‘I didn’t think you’d come,’ I said.

‘I almost didn’t, but then I thought, why should I let her stop me? She’s gone.’ Those long vowels again, so alien to me. But then it had been many years since I’d last heard her voice. ‘And I wanted to see you. You’re my sister.’ Steph’s expression was cautious, assessing my response.

‘I … I …’ Now I was her sister?

‘I’ve seen your website, your illustrations. They look amazing!’

‘Really?’ I said. I pulled myself up, keeping my tone light and neutral.

‘Yes, really. I love The Little Urchin, with her spiky hair, her nose pressed up against the window.’

My latest book. It was a compliment. I hadn’t remembered her ever giving me a compliment, not when I was little. But Steph’s face was open and sincere. She was different to how I remembered. I wanted to believe.

‘You’re very talented, you know, I always knew you would be creative,’ she said.

‘Oh, well, um …’ Praise indeed, to hear that from my big sister.

‘I mean it. I could never do something like that.’ She smiled. Her arms waved expansively and her coat parted, another glimpse of red.

I shrugged. ‘Thank you.’

She’d cared enough to look me up, when had she done that? It was unexpected. I was suddenly conscious that I knew very little about her, what she did for a living. Was she married? Did she have children? I didn’t even know that. She was seven years older than me and it was quite possible that she had a family of her own by now. I eyed her flat stomach, the clothes. No, I thought, no children. Somehow, I couldn’t see her with children.

A movement caught at the corner of my eye, the curtains at one of the windows flapping in a draught from a broken pane.

‘Can we go somewhere else?’ Steph’s voice dropped. ‘Anywhere you like, but not here.’

I swallowed. It made sense to refuse, my head screaming at me to walk away. It was almost twenty years since she’d left home, when I was nine. She’d been sixteen. We’d had no contact at all since then, despite all my attempts to stay in touch. Christmas, birthdays, they’d meant nothing. Perhaps my early cards had ended up at the wrong address.

But I wanted to. I really did.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘I got a job at a hotel in London, manning reception.’

My sister’s voice was measured and quiet. I could imagine her smart and sleek behind a desk.

We’d found a café in the small town of Ashbourne a few miles away. The smell of freshly ground coffee beans and vanilla seedpods cut across the muted chatter in the room and I lifted my cup to hold its warmth against my fingers.

‘Then they offered me a job in the marketing department.’

She flicked her hair across her shoulders. Blonde, but no roots – it had been brown when we were young. She must have dyed it, I thought.

‘I moved to Head Office and worked my way up. Then I joined the US team. I’ve been based in New York now for six years.’

There was a pause. Her eyes travelled across my thin, gawky frame. Six years. In New York. Yet there had been so many more years when she’d been in London, in the UK. Close enough and yet so far. I didn’t reply, struggling to find a common ground.

We both took another sip from our respective drinks. The traffic beeped through the glass window, a sludge of rainwater washing onto the pavement, green and red traffic lights reflected in the puddles. Colours, I saw everything in colours.

‘And you? Where did you study?’ Steph leaned in over her cup.

‘Manchester. Art and Creative Design.’ I tucked my fingers into the palms of my hands, feeling my short nails scratch against my skin.

‘Really? I somehow thought you’d have gone as far as possible from Derbyshire.’

I bristled. Manchester was only an hour and a half from the village by car, but by bus and coach it was much longer, and you still had to get from the house at Larkstone Farm to the village bus stop. Manchester had seemed a million miles away. The bustling big city, new people, a whole new life.

‘Did you enjoy it?’ she asked.

‘Yes, I did. The course was brilliant.’

I side-stepped the truth: my self-imposed isolation; my lack of confidence; my distant manner.

‘I’m glad.’ Steph stretched out the fingers of her hand, wriggling each one before folding them back into her palm.

There was another silence.

‘And now you’re in London. Bet it’s nice being self-employed, working whenever you want.’ She smiled encouragingly.

‘Hmmm, depends how you look at it. There are so many other illustrators out there, vying for the same jobs for not much pay. It’s not an easy way to make a living.’

Already I was saying too much, filling the space with words, justifying my own ineptitude. Why should I feel defensive?

‘I can imagine.’ My sister nodded, sipping her coffee again. There was a soft chink as she placed the cup carefully back on its saucer. A waft of perfume made me lift my head up. I wasn’t a fan of any kind of perfume.

‘How did it happen?’ Steph’s voice broke.

I flashed a look of surprise at her. Did she even care? I scanned her face, the perfect arch of her eyebrows, the smooth forehead, no lines, as if she never frowned, or even smiled. Like a Greek statue, head turned away, poised in her indifference. Except … the voice was at odds with her face.

‘They didn’t tell me anything,’ she said.

It had been the family lawyer who’d made the call to her. I felt a pang of guilt.

‘I’m sorry I didn’t ring. But I didn’t have your address or a telephone number. It was the lawyers that tracked you down.’

They’d organised the whole thing, the funeral, the reception, much to my relief. They’d rung me too.

‘That’s alright, I understand.’ Steph watched me still, ignoring the implied criticism, waiting for an answer.

I threw a glance at the neighbouring tables, but the occupants were all too engrossed in their conversations to pay any attention to ours. I drew a breath, bringing my hand up to my head, thrusting my fingers into my hair.

‘I … that is, she … she fell,’ I said. ‘Over the banisters from the first floor. Some time during the morning, they said, though apparently she was still in her dressing gown.’

‘How could she fall over the banisters?’ Steph asked.

‘I don’t know. Some kind of accident, I was told. She was found face down on the rug in the hall below. Broken neck. Bit of a mess.’

I thought it best to stop there.

‘Ah.’ Steph hesitated. She cast her eyes to her lap, folding her napkin.

Then she reached out a hand, covering my own. ‘So, it’s only us now.’

I nodded. My eyes searched the fine cracks on the back of her hand. Expert make-up could disguise an older face, but not the hands.

‘Yes,’ I mumbled. ‘It is.’

‘I’m in London after this, for a few weeks at least, in a hotel near Tottenham Court Road.’ She drew a breath. ‘Can we start again?’

I looked up.

‘It’s been too long, I know.’ Her hand was cool over mine, her face earnest.

I held my hand still, resisting the urge to move it. I really did want to believe this different Steph. What had happened to her? I’d never understood whatever it was that had gone on between us. Or between her and Elizabeth.

Her eyes held mine. They were blue. Mine were brown. The street lights wobbled in the wet glass of the café windows, amber yellow.

Steph’s lips parted.

I nodded again. ‘Yes.’

I thought of my stepmother. I tried to picture her body lying on the hall floor. The blood smeared on her lips, pooling on the rug, her red-painted face still smiling, as if to say, as she’d often said:

‘Shall we start again, Caroline?’

CHAPTER 2

The phone rang.

‘Caro?’ It was Steph. She’d promised to ring before she left the UK. I was back home in London and hadn’t heard a thing for days and now suddenly there she was.

‘Hi.’ I could hear crackling over the phone line.

‘Fancy a curry? My treat.’

I caught my breath. ‘That sounds great. When?’

‘Tonight? We need to talk.’ She named a restaurant.

‘Sure, what time?’

‘Seven.’

‘Okay.’

I put the phone down slowly. It felt strange talking to my sister like that, as if we were friends.

We met up, Steph and I, in a curry house behind Leicester Square. We chatted about not very much, avoiding anything to do with the funeral or our childhood.

‘My office is amazing, in one of those skyscrapers overlooking Central Park. I thought I’d faint when I first looked out of the window and realised how high we were!’

I found myself following each word, each lift of an eyebrow, each smile, wondering what Steph was really saying as she talked about her work, her apartment in New York, the glamour of Fifth Avenue boutiques and constant traffic, flashing advertising boards leaching light into a sleepless city sky. Look at me, she was saying, how fabulous my life is, how lucky I am – unlike you, my little sister. That’s what she was really saying, wasn’t she? I caught my bottom lip between my teeth. I didn’t want to feel like this. I wanted Steph to be my friend, to be my sister.

It was the end of the meal when Steph finally brought it up.

‘What about the house?’ she said.

‘Larkstone Farm?’

The house where we grew up. I couldn’t call it home. The waiter was hovering, leaning in to whisk away a plate, his eyes sliding down towards Steph’s long legs.

‘Yes. It’s sitting there empty. It’s not good for the place. And someone’s going to have to go through all that stuff, sort out the paperwork, ready the house for sale. Unless you want to move back up there?’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘It’s ours. Except I don’t want it. Why would I ever want to go back to that place!’ She sounded bitter. ‘Besides, my home is in the States now. I’m seeing this guy … But you – you could go back and live there.’ She hesitated. ‘If you wanted.’

‘Ours? I don’t get it. I mean, Elizabeth had a cousin, didn’t she? It wouldn’t come to us, surely? We were only her stepdaughters.’

‘No, that’s not how Dad arranged it. I went to see the lawyer. When Dad married Elizabeth, he set up a trust. Elizabeth didn’t own the house after he died. She had use of it whilst she was alive, but it reverts to us on her death.’

My sister’s words sank in. And then the thought flashed into my head: she’d been to see the lawyer, on her own? But then hadn’t I been avoiding it myself? I hadn’t wanted to think about the house, all that stuff that had once been Elizabeth’s, that had once been my dad’s.

‘We’ll inherit the house?’ I said. The two of us?

I sat up. I couldn’t quite believe what she was saying.

‘Yes. Except, like I said, I don’t want any of it. It’s been on my mind a lot ever since I found out, I didn’t know what to say to you. But I realise now that I really don’t need it. My life’s in New York and I have more than enough money. It’s the least I can do. Besides, the funeral was bad enough, I couldn’t bear to go back to the house itself, even for a short while.’

She fell silent. There was a moment when I thought she was going to say something else.

‘I don’t know what to say.’ My eyes searched hers.

She shrugged and then smiled.

‘It’s not much of a place, as I recall – probably in desperate need of attention, in the middle of nowhere. I don’t have time for a project like that. It’s yours, honestly. Sell it, keep it, rent it out, move in. I don’t mind. Whatever you want to do with it.’

Larkstone Farm. Compared to London, it was the middle of nowhere. In the wilds of Derbyshire. It wasn’t a working farm, not any more; I couldn’t remember whether it still had any land. Steph leaned across the table and topped up my glass of wine.

But live at Larkstone Farm? It seemed incredible that this should happen right now. I was effectively homeless, bunking down with my friend Harriet, except she’d already left for her new job in Berlin. I had a few more weeks till the notice on her flat ran out. She’d done me a favour, but I was still struggling to find somewhere else affordable.

‘I …’ I tried to gather my thoughts. ‘What did the lawyer say, did you tell him?’

‘I did. It’s entirely up to us what we do with the place. But whether you move in or sell up, it has to be cleared of all her stuff. And someone really should be there whilst that is happening, if only to keep an eye on things. If you want it, it’s yours, that’s all I’m saying. And I’d be glad not to worry about it.’

My mind leapt ahead. I could sell it, buy something smaller, closer to London, giving me some cash to fall back on when the commissions slowed down. Or I could live there whilst I decided what I wanted to do. Now that Elizabeth was gone, why shouldn’t I stay there? It was just a house. To live rent-free would be a huge relief. Did Steph really want to waive her inheritance?

And besides … Maybe I needed to go back, to see the place just one more time, to put the past behind me once and for all. Elizabeth was dead. I was never going back to Paul and I’d had more than enough of London with its sky-high rents and unaffordable houses. I could work wherever I was, couldn’t I?

The thought was exciting, the timing perfect.

‘Why don’t you think about it?’ said Steph.

Elizabeth had married my father when I was a baby, not long after my real mother died. I should have been young enough to think of her as my mother, but somehow I never did. She used to say how I screamed and screamed in her arms, wriggling to get out. Perhaps it was my fault. I had rejected Elizabeth before she’d ever rejected me. Then my father had died too, barely four years later, leaving Steph and me with Elizabeth, growing up at Larkstone Farm. Just the three of us.

As I sat at my painting table, back in Harriet’s basement flat, I could hardly bear to dwell on it. The house, my childhood, my old life in Derbyshire.

I looked up through the window, the one that faced the street. I could see the feet of the passers-by, boots and shoes slapping against the pavement, buggies rolling in the wet, listening to the steady swish of cars cruising down the road. The temperature had dropped since the funeral at the beginning of the month, the first bite of winter in November – so early.

Derbyshire was something I’d pushed to the back of my mind. There, where the rain fell straight and sharp, like needles on your back, punishing. In London it ran along the paving slabs, splashing into gullies, a smooth plane of water brimming with dirt, lapping at your feet. I’d never gone back, not after that first day I went to university. I’d never wanted to go back.

The laptop to my side chimed. I couldn’t resist a quick check. London, it was the life I’d chosen to lead, but it was hard being on my own, here in the midst of all these people.

It was an email from David, my agent.

Dear Caro. Great news, you’ve had an enquiry for a commission to illustrate for Cuillin Books. It’s a collection of fairy tales. Now that should be right up your street. The brief and the text are attached. You’ve got about three months to do it. Let me know what you think? D.

I wriggled in my seat and tapped a reply.

Dear David, that sounds promising. I’ll take a look and let you know.

I liked to play it cool, but the truth was it was unlikely I’d have turned it down, whatever it was. Fairy tales, though. He was right about that; I had a soft spot for fairy tales. I clicked on the file. Then I saw the title.

The Pear Drum and Other Dark Tales from the Nursery.

The Pear Drum.

My fingers halted in mid-air. I felt my stomach heave. It filled my head; the words, each letter a different colour like bulbs around a make-up mirror. And the thing itself, as vivid as the day I first saw it, my stepmother’s pear drum.

I snapped the laptop lid down onto its keyboard, stood up and walked away.

Later, I tried to view it dispassionately. The Pear Drum and Other Dark Tales from the Nursery. It was an odd title for a book of fairy tales. A bit of a mouthful and not the kind of thing you’d give to a young child. It seemed strange that it should appear in my inbox now, after Elizabeth’s funeral, prodding my memories of the past.

I closed my eyes, the words leaping out at me despite my attempts to distance myself. Pear Drum.

The pear drum was something I had deliberately buried in the past. But it was always there, a part of me I could not shift, hidden in a corner of my consciousness. Perhaps that was why I’d ended up in London – as far away from Derbyshire as possible. I was beyond that now. Time had passed.

I would have been about six years old when I first saw the pear drum. I wasn’t sure. The memories of my childhood had always been patchy, especially those first years. But this was perhaps my earliest memory. It was like a black curtain – before the pear drum, after the pear drum. I tried not to think about it too much.

We’d just come home, after some kind of family gathering. Elizabeth was dressed in black linen, pearls about her neck. Elegant – she’d always been elegant. She’d dropped her handbag onto the hall table and grabbed my tiny hand. She pulled me into my father’s old study, long painted fingernails overlapping about my wrist. The room was at the back of the house, behind the stairs. I knew it had been my father’s room from the pictures on the wall, the bookcase and the desk by the window. An armchair was positioned beside the fireplace, the stove blackened with age, the iron griddle top layered with dust. My stepmother didn’t normally use this room.

In the corner furthest away from the window stood a crate, large enough to hide a child in. I pulled back, reluctant to let myself be dragged any further.

‘Stop that caterwauling, Caroline!’ I must have been crying already. ‘It’s time I showed you something!’

Elizabeth let go of my wrist and I stood there shivering, the scent of her perfume conflicting with the lingering smell of old leather and damp unloved books. She was already dragging the lid of the crate open, fingers pulling at the double catch, resting the weight of the lid against the wall. Her arms reached inside and I swear I thought there was a dead body within.

But what she brought out from the crate was the pear drum.

It wasn’t a drum at all. It was like a mechanical violin, or ‘hurdy-gurdy’. Its real name, as I discovered later, was ‘organistrum’, but Elizabeth had always called it her pear drum.

It had a pear-shaped body with strings and a broad, oversized decorative arm. At the wide end was an S-shaped handle which turned a wheel against the strings. But the arm was actually a box into which the strings disappeared. It could be opened to reveal the workings inside, the keys, the ‘little people’, my stepmother had called them. Pressing down on the pegs alongside the box made them dance, creating the notes.

She adjusted the shape of the thing onto her lap as she sat down on my father’s old chair. It was so big each end rested on the chair arms on either side of her. She began turning the handle and the thing fired up. I almost jumped at the sound. It was a drone, hesitant at first. It got louder, a vile, screeching sound that filled the room, forcing me to step back and clasp my hands against my ears. But as I listened, the sound consumed me; loud as it was, it was seductive too, a slow lingering melody filling the room.

It was the weirdest kind of musical instrument you could ever have thought of. But the pear drum wasn’t the problem. It was the story that went with it.

CHAPTER 3

The M1 stretched out in front of me – endless tarmac, sweeping clouds, the trees bordering the roadside skeletal black. London was behind me. It hadn’t taken so long to leave.

It should have surprised me, the ease with which I’d turned my back on so many years in London. Except it did not. Never mind Paul, it was as if I’d been waiting for an excuse, my sudden inheritance prodding my inertia. I’d been in London seven years – didn’t they say that life moves in cycles of seven years?

It wasn’t like anyone was going to miss me. Not Paul at any rate. He and I were done and I certainly wasn’t going to miss him. I missed Harriet, though – I’d just started to get to know her. We’d met at my first public exhibition. She’d been loud and brash and I’d been quiet and shy. She’d made me laugh and she’d said my paintings made her cry. She’d been the voice of reason telling me to get out of there when things had gone so badly with Paul. Her generosity and kindness when I’d needed somewhere to go wasn’t something I was used to. I’d never told her about Larkstone.

She’d been full of remorse over her job in Germany.

‘I can’t leave you like this,’ she’d said.

‘Yes, you can,’ I replied. ‘Absolutely, you can. I got out of there and I have a new life. You’ve been amazing, but now it’s your turn to follow your dreams.’

Harriet had been offered a job in a gallery in Berlin, a chance to experience a new country, to take her own work in a different direction – how could she turn that down? Perhaps that was why the time was right. I had a few friends, work contacts, fellow artists I’d met like Harriet, but no one close. I liked it like that. In an odd sort of way, I was glad she was gone. It was easier keeping people at a distance. I completely understood why Steph had ended up in New York and had never wanted to go back to Derbyshire.

But meeting and getting to know Harriet had made me think. She wasn’t afraid to start again. To brave a new life, to put the past behind her. Leaving the noise and traffic of London felt to me like a snake shedding its old dead skin. I’d packed up everything I had, handed in Harriet’s keys, and here I was, on my way to Derbyshire. I had a new commission to work on as well as the house clearance and, for the moment at least, it was to be my new home.

I lifted my back, flicking on the windscreen wipers as sleet began to slap against the car windows.

Eventually, I turned onto the dual carriageway that led into Derby. The sleet and rain had stopped and there was a break in the clouds through which the sun shone, lighting up the roofs of the houses. The city was a tangle of incomprehensible ring roads and roadworks, but twenty minutes later I was free of it, heading down country lanes, chasing the shadows of the growing dusk.

The village of Larkstone was quiet, a few rainbow Christmas lights blinking on the street. I drove slowly, looking for the right turning back into the countryside. A couple of pedestrians dived across the road, heads bowed against the wind. It was even colder now that the brief sun was lower in the sky.

Someone beeped from behind. A man in a muddy jeep. He was far too close. He beeped again. I touched the brake pedal, enough to trigger the lights. It had the desired effect. In the mirror, I saw his hands gripping the steering wheel, his face scowling. A woman on the street stopped as our two cars drove past. Her expression was fierce, it took me aback, until she broke into a smile, waving at the man in the jeep. I carried on. I felt a surge of satisfaction as the jeep was forced to follow me out of the village, tailing me for a couple of miles until I slowed for the house. The jeep growled up a gear, swerving around me as it accelerated away and down the lane.

The house was at the end of a track, on a hill overlooking the valley. Tall chimneys stood proud against an unexpected blazing sunset sky. I peered through the windscreen, my teeth catching on my lower lip.

It was a tall building, hewn from thick Derbyshire stone, part farmhouse, part fortified manor house. The second-floor windows were tucked in under the eaves and one small attic window peeped out from the tiles above. All the windows were an empty black, save for a glint of red at the top where the last rays of the sun reflected off the glass. A low wall enclosed the front courtyard and two semi-derelict outbuildings sheltered behind. I drove the car forward the last few metres, its wheels skidding over the gravel, spitting stones as it came to a halt.

I sat in my seat, watching the last of the daylight playing on the colours in the stone. Already a picture was forming in my head: the house inked out in black lines on its hill, angry colours exploding in the background, windows like bullet holes peppering the walls. My fingers itched to draw. I felt a strange kind of lift. The house, its history, its memories, it was like I needed this. Elizabeth’s death was a fresh start, for me and Steph, and the house.

I slammed the car door shut and searched in my handbag for the key the lawyers had sent.

Something soft touched my ankles. I yelped in surprise. It was a cat, her head rubbing against my legs. I reached down and she seemed content to let me draw my fingers through her fur.

‘Hello there, Puss.’

She was small and black, save for a single white sock on her front paw. Half-starved by the look of her. I made to pick her up but that was too much. She skittered away, jumping onto the wall to look at me reproachfully.

‘Okay, fair enough,’ I said, fingers finding the keys.

I swung round towards the house. Water stained the front step and dripped from the leaves of the shrubbery around me. A security light bounced on as I stepped up to the door and the key turned smoothly in the lock. The house, it seemed, didn’t know whether I was friend or foe.

It smelt stale as I entered. I snapped the switch on the wall. The hallway was instantly familiar, the smell, the clock, the objects around me. The walls were lined with paintings, scenes of rural Derbyshire, the crags at Mam Tor, a pheasant stalking a field; it was all as I remembered, except somehow different. There was a space on the wall marked by a dirty grey outline where a picture had once hung and the hall table with its two drawers was thick with dust – even the cut-glass bowl that sat on top was grimy with dirt. How long had it been like that? Longer than the six or seven weeks since Elizabeth’s death in the middle of October. The house mouldered in genteel neglect and I felt a prickle of unease; my stepmother had been fastidious in her housekeeping when I was younger.

Two rooms led from each side of the hall and a wide staircase hugged the back elevation. A tall window overlooked the stairwell and my eyes were drawn to the banister above. Its richly polished wood curved up to the first and second floors. A patterned rug sprawled on the stone floor beneath, a rust-red stain at its centre. I felt my chest contract. Why hadn’t someone taken it away? It was a stark reminder of the manner of my stepmother’s death.

I wondered how she’d fallen. With a piercing scream, or a silent thud? They’d said it had been an accident. Had it been a sleepless night blundering in the dark? No, hadn’t they said morning? I couldn’t imagine how someone could fall over a banister. They’d also said there’d been signs of excess alcohol in her system. When had Elizabeth started to drink? I tried to feel sympathy for her, gawping at the stain, fascination and horror holding me still, the rug a simple testament to Elizabeth’s death.

I moved forwards, snapping on all the switches I could find, flooding the house with light, determined to chase away the ghosts.

An hour later the Aga in the kitchen creaked as heat seeped into its old bones. A table dominated the room, perfect for painting. I slung my last box onto the wooden worktop. Fishing out the contents – tubes, brushes, small tins and cloths – I lined them up like precious toys, spacing out each item. Next came the laptop, phone, dongle and printer, juggling cables until they trailed across to the sockets and my emails filled the screen. A welcome connection to the outside world. Not quite so alone.

I returned to the hall. All my possessions stood in pathetic isolation, dwarfed by the grandeur of the house and the triple-height ceiling over the stairs.

In the sitting room I found Laura Ashley florals, scented candles and a TV. This was where my stepmother sat, on the big sofa, her favourite blanket neatly folded on its arm. I snatched it up, striding from the house to dump it in the bin. Adrenalin fired in my veins. I swept through the entire ground floor, harvesting photos, magazines and papers, soap and towels, even a stray cardigan from the kitchen, still smelling of her – I held it between my fingers and dropped it into a black bin bag as if it were contaminated.

I had to drag the rug from the hall out the front door. It was a heavy wool and felt as if a body were rolled up inside. The thought was almost comical, except it made me nauseous. I felt guilty, as if it were my fault, as if I’d killed Elizabeth myself and was now removing the evidence. It made no sense, but the feeling was there, with every item that I found, soiled by her touch, her scent, her sweat, her very blood.

The purge had only started, but it was enough for now. The rest, including upstairs, would have to wait. I scrubbed my hands, ate the remains of a pot of salad, fetched my duvet and climbed onto the sofa. I tried to sleep, lying there too aware of the size of the house, the emptiness of the rooms above my head, the wind whistling at the windows outside and the clock ticking in the hall.

The cat was there again in the morning, sitting on the window sill outside. Behind her hung a pall of winter mist. She watched me through the glass. I pretended not to notice. Her head turned as she tracked my movements, her eyes blinking with curiosity. I scrounged a cup of coffee from a jar in the kitchen, standing in the midst of more of Elizabeth’s stuff, things I’d missed the night before – a basket of unwashed clothes, newspapers, scribbled Post-it notes stuck to the fridge – the kind of clutter that fills every house. I sighed. I’d had no actual plan for the day, but now I set to work, once more focusing on the ground floor.

I couldn’t face upstairs, the bedrooms on the first floor – Elizabeth’s, Steph’s – and my old room on the top floor. Not yet. As I worked, I didn’t want to think of Elizabeth, so I tried to remember Steph instead. In the hall, I paused to look up the stairs.

She’d been a girly girl. Not like me. Her dressing table with its big mirror had been her pride and joy, crammed with make-up and brushes, hair tongs and all the paraphernalia of beauty. I might have been younger than her but even when I was older I never knew what to do with all that stuff. I wanted to paint real pictures, not myself.

‘Caroline!’

A voice fired across my thoughts. A memory of her voice. Elizabeth. Sharp and cultured and authoritative. I was standing at the bottom of the stairs, dithering about going up. My hand was on the polished balustrade, and I could clearly remember that voice, calling me from the bottom of the stairs.

‘Come here!’

I’d been in my room, right at the top. Maybe seven or eight years old? I’d put my book back onto the bed and slid reluctantly from the covers.

‘Caroline!’

I was wearing only knickers and a vest as I stood at the top of the stairs, my short bare legs pale white against the shadows of the upper floor. Elizabeth was on the landing below, outside her bedroom door, silhouetted against a blaze of yellow sunshine. Steph was in her bedroom, opposite Elizabeth’s, sitting at her dressing table. She was applying eye shadow and the door was open so she could hear every word.

‘Come here, Caroline!’ Elizabeth again.

I descended the stairs until I was standing right in front of her, rubbing the sweat on the palms of my small hands against my thighs, as I always did when she called me to her.

‘Look at you. Can’t you even be bothered to get dressed?’ Elizabeth snorted.

She seemed so tall and elegant and I stood there not daring to look up.

The slap whipped against my face, throwing my head backwards. It brought tears to my eyes, the sting of it burning on my skin. Elizabeth bent down to look at me, her face within inches of my own. She spoke loud and slow, as if I was particularly dim.

‘Get … dressed …’ She turned away. ‘You disgust me, Caroline.’

My hand had reached out for the banister, my fingers too small to meet around the wood. I glanced up and Steph caught my eye. I could feel my cheek stinging. Elizabeth was still within earshot and Steph hadn’t said a word, her blue eyes watching me as I climbed the stairs again.

My stomach growled. I’d scarcely brought any provisions from London. I needed food, so I decided to check out the village shops. Perhaps it was also an excuse to get out. The car bumped along the lanes and I parked alongside the village green, sandwiched between an old Ford Escort and a gleaming black and silver motorbike.

Larkstone wasn’t exactly a thriving commercial centre. Eight miles north of Ashbourne, it was too off the beaten track to be particularly touristy, but it had a pub, a Co-op and a butcher’s. I wondered if I would recognise anyone, or more likely if anyone would recognise me. It had been ten years since I’d left for uni. As I walked along the street, I saw roads and terraced cottages juxtaposed by uneven pavements. An old-fashioned but familiar lamppost stood on the corner by the Co-op, black paint peeling from its length. Still lit, a flare of white highlighted the mist that floated around it. That lamp had obsessed me; I’d sketched it over and over again when I was at school. Even later, when I was at uni, I would draw it from memory; there was something about the shape of it, the repeated glass, the cracks in the panes, the state of decay. I dragged my eyes away from it. Villages had a way of holding onto the past in this part of Derbyshire.

I went to the butcher’s first. The shop had the dull metallic stench of animal flesh, the counter laid out with neat folds of fat sausages, blood pooling beneath the steaks, bacon piled high.

‘Hello!’ I said.

The assistant looked only a little younger than me.

‘Can I help you?’ she said, smiling.

‘Er …’ I stood there mulling over what to get. Even the bacon rinds were perfectly aligned to show the stamp printed on the skin.

‘I’m sorry,’ the assistant said, ‘but do I know you?’

I looked up. Perhaps she knew me from school but I didn’t know her. I struggled to picture faces from the playground.

‘Maybe,’ I replied. ‘I used to live here years ago. Up at Larkstone Farm when I was a kid.’ I didn’t know why but the words came reluctantly to my lips.

‘Oh.’ She fell quiet. Then, ‘I’ll be right back.’ And she disappeared through a door to the rear of the shop.

I lifted my head, annoyance prickling. A man appeared, a large stained apron covering the expanse of his belly. He was followed by the assistant and the two exchanged glances as they entered the room. Did they know me? They must have known Elizabeth. Had they seen me at the funeral? The other faces there had been a blur, my thoughts mostly concentrated on Elizabeth and Steph. The woman stepped back to allow the man to take over.

‘We’re closed,’ he said.

‘Oh?’

I was taken aback. It seemed unlikely that the butcher’s would be closed at this time of day, with the door open and inviting.

‘Phone order,’ the man said. ‘We’ve got a large phone order. You’ll have to come back later or go to the supermarket.’ He nodded towards over the road.

He was clearly lying. What on earth? I stood there, dumbfounded.

‘Um, sure.’

I left the shop and turned back to look through the window. The butcher and his assistant were talking. The woman lifted her head towards me and there was something about her expression. I felt a flush of embarrassment, like I’d been caught stealing. Anger swept over me. Closed, really? What was their problem?

I crossed the road to the Co-op. A small queue gathered at the desk. I lowered my head, flipping up my hood, still aware of the heat on my cheeks. So much for company, now I felt the need to hide. I picked up a basket and headed down the aisle; it didn’t take long to choose what I wanted. As a last thought, I grabbed a couple of tins of cat food and made for the till.

‘Hello, Sheila, two packets of your usual?’

The assistant was addressing a middle-aged woman in front of me. She turned to pluck two cigarette boxes from the shelf behind her.

‘Thanks, Em,’ said the customer. ‘And a book of stamps.’

‘First or second?’

‘Oh, second will do. Have you heard? We think we’ve found it.’

I wondered what it was.

‘Yes, Pete was in a minute ago. Crying shame.’ The assistant opened the till, fishing for the stamps.

‘The sheep must have got run over last night. Some idiot driving too fast.’

I winced. A sheep hitting a car would have been nasty, for both parties.

‘Pete’s really angry, he loves his animals.’ The woman opened her purse.

‘Where did he find it?’ The assistant seemed to have forgotten about payment. There was a shuffling of feet behind me.

‘Outside Elizabeth’s house.’

The hairs on the back of my neck pricked up.

‘Well I suppose that makes sense, he’s got the field opposite, hasn’t he?’

‘Yes.’ The woman sighed, clutching her purse. ‘But the body was hidden in the verge – took a while to find it. Not much left of it either – the foxes had already had a go. Pete’s gone to fetch the trailer to shift it and ask his brother to help. But he’s annoyed with himself. It must have escaped the night before. Normally Elizabeth would have spotted it and given him a call.’

‘Well, she couldn’t have done that no more,’ said the assistant. ‘Twenty-one pounds seventy, love. Isn’t the house still empty?’

There was the chink of money and a rattle as it was stashed away in the till.

‘Pete said there was a car outside first thing this morning. Reckon one of the daughters has finally turned up.’

‘Really? Which one? The flashy one or the nutcase?’

I felt my ears burn, humiliation flooding my body. I lowered my head, fingers pushed deep into my jacket pockets. What was wrong with these people?

‘Don’t know, the car’s a bit crap, Pete said. Perhaps it was that car which hit our sheep?’

I ground my teeth. What right had they to make that assumption?

‘Oh, well, tell that lovely husband of yours how sorry I am when you see him.’

‘Sure. Thank you. See you tomorrow.’

The woman lifted a hand and left. I presented my basket and waited patiently. The assistant ignored me as she scanned the items but threw me a look when she got to the tins of cat food. My eyes dropped and I paid the bill as quickly as I could.

Back in the car, I pulled over when I got to the bottom of the drive to the house. On the roadside, they’d said. I told myself I needed to see what I’d been accused of, but perhaps the truth was that I’d always been drawn to the macabre, the visual trickery of the surreal, an artist’s fascination for the biological structures behind our physical façade. My car eased onto the verge and I stepped out.

The wind had picked up, with a bitter edge, bending the trees on either side of the road, already twisted and contorted from years of exposure on the hill. My hood whipped down and my hair caught in my eyes. One of the poppers on my coat was broken and I had to grasp the folds of it over my chest to keep the flaps from bursting open.

There it was. The feet were visible through the long grass and a tangle of briers growing in the hedge. It was just about recognisable as a sheep. The head was intact, but the body had been badly damaged, not just by a car. Entrails splayed across its woolly coat and something had tugged and pulled at the flaps of skin. The eyes were wide open, bulging from the skull, and its tongue lolled uselessly between its teeth. I couldn’t help but think of my stepmother, how her body must have looked lying on the floor at the foot of the stairs. I tried to push the image from my mind, gazing at the animal. Judging by the state of it, that hadn’t happened today.

I thought – what if it had been me? Yesterday, as I’d arrived? I’d been tired those last few miles, not particularly alert. What if I’d hit the sheep myself? No, I didn’t believe that. I would have felt the impact. And there was that car behind me. The driver would have noticed too. Surely, he’d have reacted if either one of us had hit an animal that big.

I reached out with my foot, giving the carcass a nudge. A bevy of flies rose up from the body, flying in ever decreasing circles before settling down to their business again. I felt my stomach flip. It was disgusting. But a sheep was just a sheep, wasn’t it? Another animal bred for consumption, its death inevitable one way or another. Like all of us, I thought.

I looked around me. I saw the last few leaves hanging on the trees, great piles of damp and blackened vegetation heaped on the verge below. I saw the remains of a pheasant cleaved to the tarmac further down the road, berries that clung shrivelled and inedible, rejected even by the birds. Already I’d alienated my neighbours without doing anything wrong at all. The strange looks at the butcher’s, the assumption of my guilt over this sheep, made without a shred of proof, and the vague gossip about Elizabeth’s two daughters.

‘The flashy one or the nutcase,’ they’d said – I certainly wouldn’t describe myself as ‘flashy’.

I’d only just arrived, after an absence of ten years. Why would they say that about me? I felt a sense of helplessness. Already it was as if I’d never left. This was meant to be a fresh start, wasn’t it?

CHAPTER 4

‘Caro? Is that you?’ It was Steph’s voice on the phone, distant and contorted.

‘Hi Steph, how are you?’

‘Oh, I’m fine, fed up with this weather, that’s all.’

It had been raining in New York, apparently.

‘But at least I’ve got a trip to Miami coming up – for work,’ she continued.

‘When do you go?’

‘Day after tomorrow.’ Steph sounded harassed. ‘Early flight. Which means an even earlier cab to the airport. It’s only for a few days though.’

‘Oh.’

Miami sounded very glamorous. You didn’t get business trips like that with book illustration.

‘Everything okay with the house? You got in alright?’

‘Sure, yes. It’s a bit cold and damp, you know.’

‘Well, yes, I s’pose. Been empty for a while.’

Steph paused. Somewhere in the background I could hear movement. Then she spoke again.

‘Listen, I’ve spoken to the lawyer. I’ve told him I don’t want any of it.’

‘Are you sure about that?’ I felt a stab of guilt. Steph had said she was well off, but still … ‘I mean, the house must be worth a fair bit of money and some of the things here are antiques. There’s all Dad’s old stuff too, you know, books and pictures – from when we were little. Don’t you want some of that? It’s your inheritance as well.’

‘No. No, thanks. I’ve moved on and I don’t want anything that reminds me of those days. Anyway, how would I get all that stuff over to the States? It’s like I said, Sis, I don’t need the money. Really.’

Sis. It felt good hearing her use that word, after so many years of silence.

‘Well, it’s very generous of you.’

In truth, I was delighted. I’d been penniless for years, scarcely managing on the fees from my work. It had been a mistake moving to London. Whether I stayed or sold up, to have a home, rent-free, even the prospect of a modest independent income, was amazing. Life-changing stuff. I hadn’t thought Steph really meant it, but now it was clear that she did.

I didn’t linger on the guilt. She didn’t need the money, she’d said. You could see it in her clothes, the make-up, no cheap brands there. And the house hadn’t been her home for almost twenty years, had it? It was her choice. Still, I asked one more time.

‘Are you really sure, Steph?’

‘Yes. Caro, if I could undo the past, to make it up to you that I never got in touch, I would. We’re family. I shouldn’t have let my feelings about Elizabeth and the whole situation get between you and me. Can you ever forgive me?’

Forgive her? I didn’t know about that. I chewed my lip; I hadn’t tried that hard to contact her either.

‘Do we need to think like that?’ I said. ‘Forgive each other? What’s important is now. Only I wish you didn’t live so far away.’

‘Well, this time I promise I will keep in touch. I get over to the UK quite a bit these days. I’ll let you know when I’ll be around next and we can meet up. We’ll hit the shops, eh? Get you some nice clothes, a haircut.’

I flinched at that, remembering her quiet look at my wild hair. Paul had sneered at my hair, even when things had still been good between us.

‘… and go to a show. I’d like that, Sis.’

That word again.

‘Sure, I’d like that too.’ I smiled down the phone.

‘Right – gotta go. Oh, and calls are stupidly expensive from New York. You got Skype?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Great.’

Steph reeled off a Skype address and I noted it down.

‘Add me and I’ll Skype you every now and again. It’ll be nice to see your face. You take care, Caro. I’ll be thinking of you!’ Steph called off.

The house was too quiet after she’d gone. Steph had never really been a sister to me. But now? I scanned the kitchen, my painting gear laid out on the table, my laptop, the emails filling up the screen with rubbish. I clicked delete and stood up. Time to check out the upstairs.

I was reluctant to use the bedrooms on the first floor. No way was I going to sleep in Elizabeth’s room and, though I couldn’t explain it, I didn’t fancy the other ones either. But I needed a proper bed, I didn’t want another night on the sofa. I hung back, feet on the first step, then curiosity got the better of me and I climbed the stairs to the top floor.

My old bedroom was right under the eaves. It was the most neglected of all the rooms and hadn’t changed much. It didn’t surprise me, I could just picture my stepmother shutting the door after I’d gone and forgetting all about it. There was a single bed under the window overlooking the back of the house, a desk against the wall and a lamp tinged with yellow. A bookcase stood between a wardrobe built into the eaves and a small Victorian fireplace. The ceiling was low and, in the middle, a large spider dangled from a web strung out across a hatch into the roof. A fly was caught in its strands, still moving as the spider wrapped it with thread. I wanted to pull out my sketchbook, to record the shape of it suspended like it was, pencil lines capturing the spider’s legs, the way they tapered and moved, weaving silk with the delicacy of a pâtissier making spun sugar. I lowered my head. The room had seemed bigger when I was little.

I opened the wardrobe. The doors stuck; the wood had swollen and loose flakes of paint fell onto my fingers. Inside smelt of charity shop clothes, damp cardboard boxes and old bedding. I fished out a soft toy, a felt penguin. Its beak was bent and worn, its once white breast grey from a thousand childish cuddles. I’d had it for as long as I could remember. It was missing when I’d looked for it when packing to go to uni. I hadn’t realised then that I wouldn’t be back, even once; that I’d have to find jobs in the holidays to support myself. I held it for a moment, stroking its beak, then placed it gently on the floor.

I reached further into the cupboard. More stuff. A wooden doll, her clothes worn ragged, and a Monopoly set. I grimaced at the board game – I’d been thrilled to get it all those years ago, but I’d never had anyone to play it with, neither Steph nor Elizabeth had ever been interested. I would set up the bank, line up the penguin and doll and we’d play like that, the three of us. Sometimes I won, sometimes they won, that in itself had been the game, which toy would win. Sad, I thought. What a sad little girl I’d been.

I shut the wardrobe door and turned to the bookcase. Books had been my escape. Peter Pan, Five Go to Smuggler’s Top, Black Beauty, all classics. The Little Mermaid caught my eye, a picture book, its glossy pages smooth beneath my fingers. It had arrived in the post one year. I’d been first to the door that day. I wasn’t sure about the name on the card, some relative on my mother’s side, Elizabeth said. Whoever it was had never come to visit, at least as far as I knew. It had been a fantasy of mine, my mother’s relatives hammering at the door demanding to see me, but that had never happened. I pulled the book from the shelf. There was something about the story of The Little Mermaid. The sea princess who has to lose her place in the family and give up her beautiful voice, whose every step with her new feet felt like walking on a thousand shards of glass. Even then, she still didn’t get her prince. I’d read that story again and again.

The bed was by the window. My refuge, there where the light was best, where I could look out over the hills and immerse myself in stories of another time, another place, away from my existence at home. Something caught my eye, the corner of a book peeping out from under the bed. I reached down to pull it out. A collection of fairy tales. It had been one of my favourites. How could I have left it behind? Had that too been missing? I frowned.

I brought the book to my nose, drinking in the old-book scent, a mixture of woody glue and grass cuttings, old paint and vanilla candles. The pages fell open in my hands. It was as if the black ink already stained my fingers, my hands tracing the beautiful line drawings – princesses with long rope-like hair; trees gnarled like old man’s hands; lilies, roses and wild garlic blossoming around the words, winding about the letters. It was the book that had inspired me to paint, the fine detail, the insects under the leaves, the sense of a hidden, lush world of fantasy.

I’d first met Paul at the British Library, at an exhibition on fairy tales. There’d been old woodcut prints and illustrations from all the books I remembered from my childhood. H.J. Ford’s illustrations from The Fairy Books of Andrew Lang, Arthur Rackham’s prints for the collections of the Brothers Grimm, I’d been in heaven moving slowly from one display to the next. I was standing in front of a book, the pages open at the full-page picture of a cat perched like an owl upon a branch. By day she made herself into a cat. Its expression scowled at me, teeth and claws etched angrily onto the print, the dark shape of the animal like a black cloud bursting onto the sky. I’d scarcely noticed Paul at first, as I peered down at the book.

‘Not exactly the cute, cuddly kittens you see on Facebook,’ he’d said.

I’d swung round to look at him. He was tall and slim, dark-haired with a neatly trimmed beard and high pale cheekbones that made his eyes leap out from his face. He looked like he must be a writer or a poet, someone who spent his time in the proverbial garret, too intensely absorbed in his work to spend time outside in the sunlight. It turned out he was an accountant, working for the one of the firms that had sponsored the exhibition.

‘I don’t like cute, cuddly kittens,’ I said, only half a truth. I stood up and made to move on.

‘She was a witch,’ he said. ‘She turned women into birds, and men into statues.’

‘I don’t like stories about witches,’ I said. ‘It’s misogynism, pure and simple.’

He nodded in agreement. ‘Not helping the reputation of black cats, either. But look at the fur on her haunches, the way it echoes the lines of the storm clouds behind, and the tint of orange in her eyes. It’s not the cat that was being drawn but the repressed anger within.’

His hands were slender, pointing at the image, and a smile illuminated his face. As we talked, I imagined him standing trapped within the stained-glass window of a Victorian church like one of those translucent tortured saints. I found myself wanting to paint his face, to capture the angles of his features, the long line of his neck. One of my favourite artists had been Modigliani, known for the exaggerated necks and seductive features of his subjects. I felt the warm heat of a blush seeping across my face. Paul – even the letters of his name sparked that image in my head, long and lean, his legs white against the covers of my bed. Paul had been the man from my teenage fantasies, intelligent, courteous, patient. By the time we first slept together all my nervous reservations had gone.

I let the book drop from my fingers onto the floor of my old bedroom. I thought about the commission. The Pear Drum and Other Dark Tales from the Nursery. I hadn’t even started it and already two weeks had gone by. Too busy packing up to leave London. Or had I been avoiding it?

It was there on my phone, an attachment to David’s email. I reached into the wardrobe, pulled out a musty eiderdown, and dragged it over to the bed by the window. I propped up the pillows, arranged the eiderdown about my body and curled up with my phone, swiping through the emails to download the manuscript, then pausing to look out of the window. The sky was pastel pink, white mist shrouding the valley, trees fanning out against the horizon. The height of the window made me feel distant and alone, safe. The file loaded up and I scrolled through the contents, quickly passing over The Pear Drum to stop at a story I recognised, The Wild Swans. I settled down to read.

There were eleven brothers spurned by their new mother; their father, the king, under her spell. They’d been transformed into eleven black swans, their long bodies drooping as they flew low over the valley. Their sister, the youngest, mourned their loss and swore to turn them back. She spun and she sewed, weaving nettles into flax, blisters bubbling on her skin. Each night she crept out into the graveyard where the nettles grew, gathering what she needed. Each day she sewed the shirts. Ten she made, one after the other, glad to start the last.

But by then her stepmother had discovered her plan.

‘She’s a witch!’ she cried, persuading the king to have his daughter burnt at the stake.

One final shirt the sister had to make, sewing as quickly as she could, as the cart dragged her towards the fire, as the guards pulled her against the stake, one last shirt floating up into the air, not quite finished, as they bound her hands behind her …

The swans appeared, darkening the sky, their cries drowning out the crowd as they swooped down. Scooping up the shirts, they slipped them over their feathers, transforming back into men. The truth was out, the princess was saved, the stepmother put to death, the brothers restored to their family. Except the youngest, number eleven. He was fine, almost. Apart from his arm. It was still a feathered wing, you see, where his sister hadn’t quite finished his shirt.

I looked out of the window, the late sun burning up the hillside, streaks of mist streaming out across the valley like a line of swan brothers. I could see them as clear as day, the swans, pink eyes blinking, red beaks snapping, hissing, crowding round their sister, beating their wings, pushing her, almost crushing her in their eagerness for freedom.

I closed my eyes. I could feel her hands fighting back, the panic rising in her chest. This time it was me. Boys, girls too, crowding round me, pulling at my hair, kicking at my feet. Voices shouting, laughing, their hands reaching out to tug the feathered wings from my back …

I shook my head, as if to loosen the image from its grip. It was just my imagination, too vivid. It was how I experienced stories, as if I were there, the action a tangible thing, reaching out to touch the shapes and colours as they formulated in my head, buzzing around me like a swarm of bees. Crazy girl, that was what Paul had used to say, laughing, when I tried to explain to him how I felt about stories, about painting.

But this was different, this time it was more. My heart was racing, my knees trembling, my lips moving as if to scream. It felt real. A memory – but of what? My feet had gone numb. I unfolded my legs from under my body and swung them out onto the floor. Perhaps it was something at school? It felt that way with all those children. I wriggled my toes. I tried to picture the classroom in the village school, a building not far from the church. But it was too vague.

It was freezing up here, no heating in the room. I wasn’t going to sleep here, I decided. I levered myself from the bed, left the room and shut the door behind me.

CHAPTER 5

It was the next day, after another night on the sofa. I was perched on a stool in the kitchen, my hand sweeping across the paper, sketching with a light, confident motion the wings of a black swan. I’d been fired up by that first story, eager to get started on the commission in between clearing the house. As the image grew, my heart warmed to him, my swan prince, his eyes soft and human.

There followed a series of pictures, paper floating frantically to the ground as one sheet after another was rejected. I couldn’t capture him properly. The feathers were too bold, the angle of his wing too taut. I couldn’t fathom his expression. Was it fear? Was it joy? Was he wilful, wild and free? The lines had to be perfect, so pleasing to the eye that I couldn’t stop looking at it. I wasn’t there yet. Then at last, I had it. This, the youngest prince, my prince, was sweet and innocent, untouched by the human world, the purity of his black feathers a mirror to his sinless soul. Now I was happy, I stopped. The secret to a good picture is to know when to stop.

My fingers ached. I tipped off the stool and pulled on a coat, deciding to head down to the village. Or maybe I would go into Ashbourne. There were tea shops there and more people. I craved human contact, albeit the impersonal kind.

As my car swung out from the bottom of the drive, another car appeared behind me. It was the jeep again, I recognised the driver, the same impatient craggy-faced thirty-something who’d beeped at me before. He seemed content enough this time, driving behind me, a large dog hanging out of the front passenger window despite the cold. When we got to the village, the road widened and he accelerated past.

Larkstone was quiet. The cottages that lined the road were built with solid stone, curtains drawn, blinds lowered, as if the whole village was closed to me. The Co-op shop window was full of local adverts and Christmas-cracker boxes piled high in a stack, but the doors were locked, the lights were out and no one stirred on the street. Only the butcher’s lights were on. Tinsel was strung across the window and a pheasant, hanging from its neck, bumped against the glass. A figure moved away from the door and a blind dropped into place.

I decided Ashbourne was definitely a better bet.

I managed to nab a space in the market square car park and ambled down the hill to the main street. It had a pleasant buzz to it, fairy lights in every shop, traffic passing slowly under the street decorations. I didn’t really have a purpose. I wanted to soak in the atmosphere and the voices around me.

There were various gift shops. I thought, why not buy something for Steph for Christmas this year? But what did you buy for someone who could afford to waive a substantial inheritance? Perfume? A silk scarf? Those seemed eminently suitable for Steph, but a little boring. I wanted to give something more personal, something that I’d taken my time over, that spoke to us both, even after all these years of silence between us. One of my pictures, I thought. She’d said how much she liked them. I’d give her one of my pictures, something I’d painted especially for her.

There was an artists’ supply shop on St John Street and I went inside. I wanted paper the right size to fit into a table-top picture frame. The shop was a tiny space, pungent with the smell of oil paint and varnish. I lingered awhile, appalled at the prices – I usually bought my supplies on the internet. I selected a pad of thick watercolour paper, adding a pack of pencils, paid for them and left. Back out into the cold air and the damp.

I couldn’t have been looking where I was going. I ricocheted off a passing man.

‘I … I’m so sorry!’ I cried. My pad had landed on the pavement and the pencils were rolling out of their box. ‘Damn!’

‘Fucking bitch, don’t you look where you’re going?’

I recoiled from the man’s language, the aggression in his face. He stepped towards me, a huge athletic man with thick blond hair, his face right against mine. His hands were grasping my shoulders as if he were about to shake me. I felt fear ripple down my spine.

‘I … that is …’

‘Leave the lady alone, Angus!’

Another man appeared, forcing his way in front of me, knocking back the ugly hands from where they gripped my shoulders.

‘You don’t want to get physical now, do you?’ he said.

He had his back to me, this new man. He was tall too, and brown-haired. At his feet was a large dog. I stared in dismay; it was the one from the jeep. It sat on the pavement, tongue hanging out, panting, quite relaxed. It was more than how I felt. The dog watched its master and I watched the two men. I was shaking, desperate to rub off the feel of those hands on my shoulders.

The animal rose up onto its feet, a low growl in its throat. The blond man’s posture shifted, aggression distorting his face.

‘She’s a fucking stupid—’ said Angus.

I backed up, ready to run.

‘Well that may be,’ interrupted my rescuer, ‘but not worth getting an assault charge for, eh?’

How dare he, I thought. What was the point of coming to my aid if he then colluded with this oaf to insult me? I felt my anger rise, my courage re-grouping. I bristled behind him.

Angus, whoever he was, took a moment to think about it. There was an uncomfortable standoff. Then he seemed to concede, nodding to the stranger, kicking my block of paper as he marched off. The dog sat on its haunches and cocked its head to look at me.

I reached down for my things, even more annoyed when I considered how much they’d cost. The paper was marked, the pencil leads broken; I wished I’d never come out. The man looked at me from on high. Was that pity or exasperation on his face? It didn’t help.

‘What are you staring at?’ I said ungraciously.

‘Nothing at all,’ he said. ‘Here, let me.’

He bent down to pick up a stray pencil.

‘I’ve got it … thanks …’

No thanks. I tucked the pad under my arm, snatching the pencil from his hand and turning aside, refusing to look at him. I walked away, side-stepping the dog, picking up speed with the urgency of embarrassment.

But the man followed me. He caught up, walking alongside without a word. I tried to walk faster, but he kept pace. I stopped.

‘What do you want?’ I said.

‘I want to know that you’re okay.’

‘I’m okay, now go away.’ I bit my lip at my rudeness.

‘You’re staying at Elizabeth Crowther’s old house, aren’t you?’

‘What’s that got to do with you? You know her?’ That second sentence was a mistake, an invitation for him to engage.

‘Knew her, yes.’

I nodded, acknowledging the correction. But you weren’t at the funeral, I thought. At least, I didn’t remember seeing him there.

‘We were neighbours. Let me introduce myself. I’m Craig. And you must be Elizabeth’s daughter, Caroline?’ He held out a hand.

I ignored it.

‘I was her stepdaughter, and it’s Caro, actually.’

I’d always hated Caroline, Elizabeth had called me that. I started walking again.

‘I live at Lavender Cottage, it’s further up the lane, past your drive.’

So that explained why he’d appeared to follow me the first night. I didn’t reply.

‘Look, that guy was pretty nasty, back there—’

‘Who was he?’ I saw his flash of irritation at my interruption.

‘Angus McCready.’ He gave a sigh. ‘Let me make it up to you. Let me buy you a cup of coffee. There,’ he pointed to a coffee shop on the other side of the road, all big chunky wooden tables and artsy ironwork chairs.

‘Thanks, I appreciate your help, really, but my parking’s about to run out.’

A white lie.

He looked taken aback. Maybe he wasn’t used to being blown off by a girl. He was, after all, quite good-looking.

‘No problem,’ he said. He stopped walking. ‘Drive carefully!’

His words were softly ironic. But I wasn’t listening, I was already heading back up the hill to my car.

The drive home seemed painfully long, though in reality, speeding, it must have been no more than fifteen minutes. The lane was overhung with trees, the headlamps of my car picking up the droplets of water clinging to the roadside grass. I kept looking in the rear-view mirror, expecting to see the jeep with its dog hanging out of the window. But the road was empty and I noticed the remains of the dead sheep near the house had gone.

I couldn’t wait to get inside. I shoved the key in the lock, leaning against the door as it clicked shut. I turned around holding out one hand, fingers straight but trembling. I snapped the chain into place on the door, reaching up to bolt it top and bottom. Only then did I draw breath.

Okay, there were plenty of men like Angus, bullying creeps who couldn’t even show a bit of respect for a stranger, let alone offer up some sympathy for a brief moment of clumsiness. But since I’d dumped Paul, I’d been reluctant to admit even to myself how I felt about men.

Paul had been a nice guy, too nice. At the beginning. Not that nice wasn’t good – I really wasn’t into the exciting, dangerous type – safe was good, safe was safe. I’d barely dated anyone for longer than a week until Paul. As time went by, I was drawn into his friendship. We met for dinner, we went to the theatre, we headed out of London for day trips to Brighton and the seaside town of Southwold. Then he asked me to spend the weekend with him in Bath. I knew what that meant. Here was someone that wanted me, we had a future, didn’t we? I’d never thought that might happen, I wasn’t the glamorous type, the kind of woman most men went for. I didn’t see what was coming.

‘Limpy, lumpy Caroline!’

The words punched into my brain from nowhere and I sucked in my breath. A little boy voice – another memory from school? Where had that come from? I leaned my head against the front door of the house, feeling the wind outside battering against the wood, roaring through the gap at my feet, the iron bolt cold beneath my fingers.

I made for the kitchen. With unsteady hands I reached for a bottle of wine skulking in a corner of the worktop. I poured it out into a mug and sat down.

I didn’t normally drink, perhaps the odd glass in front of the TV once I’d finished work. The liquid seemed to move in the middle, a regular ripple, circling out from the centre of the mug. It shone under the bright kitchen lights, my heartbeat reflected in the liquid, the beat transferring from hand to drink.

I lifted the mug to my lips and drank it down in one swift, grateful, needy gulp.

CHAPTER 6

I had to choose a bedroom – I couldn’t carry on like this, what was wrong with me? The sofa, which on my first night had seemed so inviting, was now excruciating, the cushions hard and lumpy, the ridges of the seams digging into my hips. I tucked the blankets under me and rolled over, one hand flung out, feet hitting the armrest. I resolved to sort out a proper bed in the morning.

The house was quiet, except for the tick of the clock in the hallway and the wind rattling down the chimney and buffeting the windows. I’d left the curtains open and snowflakes lightly touched the glass, slipping down as they melted. I lay on my side and drifted off, only to wake again some time later in a pleasantly floating state, aware, yet limbs hypnotically frozen in sleep.

Clack, clack, clack. The noise pierced my slumberous state. The wind had died down and it was a sharp, staccato sound, at odds with the peacefulness of the house.

Clack, clack, clack.

I moaned, unwilling to relinquish my warm, now comfortable position. But the noise penetrated, demanding a response. I’d had some kind of dream, something to do with a bird stuck in the chimney of my old bedroom, black feathers covered in soot clouding my vision, choking in my throat. It had left me on edge and in my sleepy daze the clacking sound momentarily sent shivers down my back.

I rolled onto my feet, dragging the blanket about my body. It was cold, far colder than normal, even in this house. I reached for the lamp, but it didn’t come on. A power cut? I looked towards the window. The air was thick with wide, slow-falling snowflakes, this time the kind that really settles. Snow was rapidly building up on the ground, the front drive white, the low walls too, and an eerie blue light filled the room. I knew what was coming, it had happened so many times before, when I was a child. I made a mental check of the fridge. There was enough food for a few days and for a moment I quite liked the idea of being snowed in, up here on the hill, cut off from the world in my snowy kingdom. Except it hadn’t been like that before, with Elizabeth.

But where was that noise coming from? I wondered if it was the boiler, something that had worked itself loose, or pipes contracting in the cold. Had the boiler broken down too? I pushed on my slippers and padded through to the kitchen.

I started to fill the kettle. Then I berated myself – no electricity, remember? I turned to the Aga; it was oil-fired and still warm, thank God for that – heat and something to cook by. I filled a saucepan and set it down on a hotplate.

A flurry of wind caught the side of the house, whipping the branches of a tree, clattering against the window frame. Was that the noise? By now I was too awake to sleep again. It was relatively pleasant in the kitchen and the sitting room felt uninviting. I rifled in a drawer where I thought I’d seen a hot water bottle and pulled it out. I fished out a candle too, jamming it into the empty wine bottle from the day before. I sat down on a chair to wait for the water to boil.

My thoughts turned to the man in the jeep. My rescuer, Craig. There was something about him. Maybe it was his height, or the way his hair grew, unkempt, curling at the back. Why was I even thinking about him? Just because he’d taken an interest in me. The cottage had always been empty in my childhood. I bit my lip; I hadn’t banked on a neighbour that close, I’d been looking forward to the isolation. I stood up to peer out of the hall window. I could see the cottage he lived in, further up the road, its roof snuggled close to the ground where the road climbed and fell away.

I returned to the kitchen. My phone was still on the table, where I’d left it after drawing the swan prince. Reading from my phone wasn’t quite the same as reading a physical book. I thought of all those stories where the moonlight on a particular night could make the letters of a book come alive, or reveal the secret opening of a door cut into rock, shimmering, brightening, an arc of light bursting into life as the door magically opened onto a world of princesses and fairies, goblins and monsters, promises broken and resolved.

I’d stolen a book once – why had I only just remembered that? – from the mobile library van, in the days when they still had such things. I’d loved it so much I couldn’t bring myself to return it. Thief. I rolled the word around in my head. That was me. The sense of guilt gave me a brief shiver.

I picked up the phone, swiping the screen until the file jumped into life. I looked down the list of stories in the commission:

The Foundling.

King Rat. I knew that one – wasn’t that about a boy who liked to play jokes? He got turned into a rat at the end of the story.

The Stubborn Child.

I almost laughed when I read this one – with satisfaction, not humour. A snippet of a tale in the way that some folk tales were – short and ambiguous. Perfect for me to put my own stamp on. The water was boiling, I filled my hot water bottle and made myself a cup of tea. Hugging both, I sat at the table, pulling the candle closer. Reaching for a pencil and paper, I began to draw. The old house empty around me, the wind struggling at its walls, the snow like cold fingers clawing at the windows, the clacking in the distance, it all merged within my head. And I was there, an uneven sequence of sketches sprawling across the page.

In a graveyard, a woman dressed in black stood watching. She was standing beside a mound of newly dug earth, her head bowed, her hair caught beneath a long black veil. The grave was small, a scaled-down stone at its head. In the fading light, the letters were unclear.

The ground was moving at the woman’s feet, the earth breaking, cracking. Something thrust out from beneath. A hand, a small white arm, the black soil clinging to its skin. The fist was closed tight, the whole thing stiff with rage.

The mother stepped backwards in alarm, her feet neatly booted. The child’s arm stretched out, the fingers uncurled, feeling for her legs. But the mother wasn’t having it and she kicked the hand away.

The hand reached out again, scrabbling for a hold in the dirt. This time, the mother bent, batting it down and stamping on it. She picked up a branch fallen from the trees. The child’s hand moved once more, persistent and imploring, stubborn. Now the mother lifted up her branch and brought it whipping down upon the arm.

The arm shot back into the ground, shrivelling from sight. The soil folded into place and the grave fell quiet.

What kind of story was that? These stories were intriguing, like little windows into human weakness – mothers don’t always love their children, I knew that. What made a mother anyway? An accident of birth, marriage or an inner instinct to love and care? And who knew what was behind this story? Perhaps the boy deserved his fate? Perhaps he was a fairy child, a changeling, substituted into the mother’s family to torment her? As the thoughts passed through my mind I picked up a stick of charcoal and began to draw again.

The last picture lay before me, the lines so heavily smudged that my fingers were ingrained with black. It was a grave. But this grave was ripped apart, the soil piled high on either side. A tall yew hedge stood behind, each branch, each twig bending in the same direction. Line after line, twig after twig. So close together, it seemed as dense as the earth beneath. At the bottom of the hole was a child, a boy, his eyes wide open. The hole was too deep for his escape. He was sitting, his knees pulled tight under his chin, his arms wrapped around his legs. It was a young boy, maybe nine years old? Defiance etched onto his face. Then he moved, one arm reaching out. Upwards. Towards his mother. Towards me.

I let the stick of charcoal drop to the table as if it stung. It broke in two. I had become completely immersed in my drawing, my interpretation of the story, and the image was so austere, so … disturbing … moving. Why did I think that?

CHAPTER 7

Clack, clack, clack.

The noise broke into my thoughts. Where was that stupid sound coming from? I leapt to my feet. It wasn’t the Aga, or the trees outside. It was coming from somewhere else in the house – upstairs. I thought maybe one of the bedrooms on the first floor.

I turned towards the stairs. I didn’t want to go up there. I was okay down here, where the rooms were familiar, where the outside was easily accessed. But at night, upstairs was something else. Even my old room. Unexplored rooms that hadn’t been used for all those years, their memories struggling under a thick layer of dust.

There it went again, louder and more persistent. The noise. I couldn’t ignore it.

I climbed the stairs, one step at a time, one hand sliding on the banister. It was a long way down, the grand height of the building soaring over my head and beneath too. The wood was smooth beneath my touch and as I reached the first floor, the point where my stepmother had fallen, I gave a small cry and snatched my hand away. A large splinter stuck out from the fleshy part of my palm. I stared down at the banister. I hadn’t noticed before that it was scratched. I pulled the splinter out and sucked my hand. But now the bare wood jarred against the finely polished surface. Had that been something to do with Elizabeth’s accident?

My other hand reached for the wall switch, flicking it on/off, on/off … the electricity still wasn’t working. It seemed deliberate, vengeful – why would I think that?

Clack, clack. Don’t be ridiculous, I thought. It’s only a noise, a branch against a window, a pipe knocking in the wall. Suddenly, the hall flooded with light, the power back on, and I blinked. I looked down. Even from the first-floor landing, the drop to the hall below seemed dizzying. There was the front door, the table by the wall, the space on the floor where the rug had been, the ground still bearing a faint tell-tale stain of red.

Then I heard a different sound. The familiar ping of an incoming Skype call, my laptop in the kitchen. I almost skipped down the stairs, dashing into the kitchen, grabbing for the mouse to answer the call, cursing as my mug of tea crashed to the ground.

‘Hi, Sis.’ It was Steph. ‘Sorry it’s so early.’ Her face quivered into focus on the screen.

I didn’t reply. I looked at the clock. It was almost seven in the morning. Dawn wasn’t far off. It would be two am in New York.

‘Caro? Are you there? I saw you were online – I’ve just got in from a night out. Thought I’d see if the connection worked. Are you okay?’

‘Yes … no, really I’m fine.’

I spoke too quickly, actually not sure that I was. But I was pleased to hear her voice. The electricity coming back on must have triggered a reconnection to Skype. Blood welled slowly from my palm and I was unsettled.

‘How’s it going?’ she said.

‘Okay – well sort of. There was this guy in Ashbourne who was a bit nasty.’

‘Nasty? Oh Caro, what happened?’

I gave her a potted history of the incident outside of the artists’ shop.

‘That’s horrible, some people are prats. Don’t let it get to you. But this man who tried to help, he sounds nice – what did you say his name was?’

‘Craig something. He said he’s my neighbour, the cottage down the road.’

‘Oh, I think I know that name.’

‘You know him?’

‘Sort of. That sounds like Craig Atherton.’

I waited, expecting to hear more. ‘And?’

‘Well, there’s not much to say. I remember him from school. He was cool. You won’t have known him, he’d have been in the older class. I heard he’s a carpenter now, he’s on Facebook.’

The village school had been tiny, only two classes, that much I did remember. And Steph was right, I had no memory of a Craig Atherton. I tried to picture the man as a boy, kicking a ball around in the playground with his mates … No, it didn’t gel – I couldn’t remember him at all. But that didn’t surprise me, most of the kids had kept their distance, I’d always been the outsider.

I opened my mouth to speak, but Steph was before me.

‘Look Caro, I’ve gotta go, it’s really late over here. I just rang to check in with you. I wanted to know that you’re alright.’

I felt the warmth of her voice enclose me. Only Steph could have understood how I must be feeling, back here in this house.

‘I’ll call again, if you like, tomorrow evening, your time. Take care of yourself. Bye!’

‘Bye!’ I said.

I felt unexpectedly bereft. But Steph had already signed off.

As the morning progressed, the weather didn’t improve. The sky was heavy and grey and whirling with large snowflakes. The house was like a fridge and I went to find another jumper. When I got back to the kitchen my mobile rang.

‘Hello?’

‘Miss Crowther? Is that Miss Caroline Crowther?’

‘Yes.’

‘Hello, Gareth Briscoe here, from Briscoe, Williams and Patterson.’

‘Oh, hi.’

I gripped the phone and sat down. It was the lawyers, the ones who were handling probate. They were Elizabeth’s lawyers really and it had been Briscoe who’d organised everything. His voice was low and deep. I imagined a portly fellow, propping up the bar at his gentleman’s club, cracking open another bottle of Châteauneuf-du-Pape.

‘I understand you’re now at the house.’

‘Yes.’

‘And all is well, you have what you need to settle in?’

‘Oh, yes, thank you. Everything’s fine.’ Sort of.

‘Wonderful.’

Briscoe sounded uncomfortable, I wasn’t sure why.

‘I’m glad you felt able to move in for a while,’ he carried on. ‘And deal with the contents, it’s not an easy job after losing a loved one.’

Loved one – didn’t he realise? Probably not and why would he? I’d never met him, and it didn’t seem likely that Elizabeth would have ever discussed with him the exact nature of our relationship.

‘It’s a big old house and not in the best of condition. It’s been a bit neglected over the years too. And I don’t know to what extent the funeral directors …’ he gave a cough ‘… cleaned up.’

After Elizabeth’s fall – that’s what he meant, didn’t he?

‘I’m sorry, I’ve no wish to distress you,’ he said.

I began to warm to the man; did he have a family, grandchildren? He sounded genuinely concerned.

‘No, it’s okay – I’m fine.’

I thought of the rug that had been in the hallway, the stain underneath. Briscoe, with the best of intentions, was serving only to remind me of what had taken place. Elizabeth lying dead in the house. I suddenly wondered who had found her. How long had her body been lying there? A few hours, a day, longer? Slowly decomposing in this house? No one had said. Had that been the reason for the musty smell? It hadn’t occurred to me when I’d agreed to come that I would be living in an isolated empty house where someone had recently died. Or that there would be visible evidence of her death. I shifted on my feet, straightening my back. I wasn’t superstitious about that, was I?

Briscoe coughed again.

‘Good. Don’t worry about the bills, heating, et cetera, they’ll be charged to the estate whilst probate is still pending. Just send me any invoices and statements that you find, or anything that comes through the post, and I’ll deal with them. It’s all in hand, but I have to warn you, in a case like this, probate can take a while.’

‘A case like this?’ I asked. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh well, only that the property in the estate can take time to value and unravel. Everything has to be totted up, for inheritance tax purposes, you understand. We’ve had an estate agent visit the house already, but the investments may take a little longer, and the trust is quite complicated.’

The trust – Steph had already explained about the trust.

‘Hang on, did you say investments?’

‘Yes.’

‘I didn’t know anything about any investments.’

‘Ah, well, it’s mainly stocks and shares that are bound into the trust, and the estate includes a small cottage.’

‘A cottage?’

I heard a murmur of voices in the background. Was that the rattle of a tray being placed on a desk?

‘Yes, Lavender Cottage. I believe it was rented out. The tenant is still there, a Mr Atherton.’

‘Oh.’

I felt my heart sink. Craig, the man in Ashbourne, had been Elizabeth’s tenant. And was presumably now my and Steph’s tenant.

‘So it might take us a while to settle things and resolve probate, but I promise you that everything’s in hand.’

‘Thank you, Mr Briscoe. I appreciate the call.’

After he rang off, I sat there looking through the kitchen doorway, into the hall with its pool of light from the window on the stairwell. I felt the blood rushing to my head. The rug might be gone, but there was still that stain, a disturbing reminder of what happened. I’d never been one to get superstitious, but now all those films and stories about restless spirits and ghouls lurking in abandoned houses came rushing into my head.

The last thing I wanted to do was to get down on my hands and knees and scrub Elizabeth’s blood from the stone floor.

I decided to distract myself. I turned out the drawers of the hall table, emptying leaflets, maps and business cards onto the floor, kneeling to rifle through them. The business cards were illuminating: Dave’s TV aerials, Ashbourne Window Cleaners, Larkstone Butcher’s. So, Elizabeth had been a regular at the butcher’s? Not really a surprise, but did that have something to do with their apparent snub to me? I shook my head. I pushed the papers and cards into a pile to throw away.

There was a knock on the door. I started, not expecting visitors in this weather, well, in any weather for that matter. I clambered to my feet, scooping the papers into my arms. I unbolted the front door and opened it cautiously.

My eyes widened. It was Craig. I kept the door half shut in front of me.

‘Hello?’

His jeep was parked on the drive behind him, with a trailer full of logs, huge tyre marks in the fresh snow.

‘Log delivery,’ he said cheerfully.

‘I didn’t order any logs.’

‘No, but your mum did. Before she died.’

‘She wasn’t my mum.’ It was all I could think of to say.

‘Oh, yes, right, sorry.’

I couldn’t take my eyes off him. His weather-worn face was framed by a thick grey scarf and the upturned collar of his jacket.

‘Well, she ordered and paid for them in October and I never got the chance to deliver them, given what happened. So, I thought I might as well deliver them now that you’re here. You’ll be in need of them in this weather. We’re about to get snowed in. Have you had a power cut?’

‘Yes.’

I supposed it must have happened to him too if both houses were on the same line.

‘Hmm, thought so. It’s back on now, but it’ll go again, always does. I’m guessing these logs will come in handy.’

I stood there, papers from the clutch in my arms drifting to the floor.

‘Well, come on, I can’t stay here too long or my car will get stuck on your drive.’ He lifted his hands, catching snowflakes floating in the sky. ‘And then you’ll have to invite me in! Do you want them or not?’

‘Paid for, did you say?’

‘Yup.’

‘Okay.’ I gestured to the wall to the far side of the driveway. ‘Can you pile them up under there, please.’

‘Sure thing, ma’am!’

I grimaced as he turned back to the trailer.

I disposed of my papers and watched him from the safety of the sitting room window. It felt mean not helping him, but for the life of me I couldn’t bring myself to join him, to talk to him. It had only been a couple of months since … I hadn’t spoken to Paul and the thought of interacting with any man after … Craig wore a path across the snow, to-ing and fro-ing, neatly stacking logs. He moved with a sure-footed smoothness, bending, lifting, reaching. My eyes couldn’t resist following the lean line of his body. He was a strong man, practical, you could see it in the way he moved.

But I’d always felt uneasy with the physical, outdoors type of man. Those like Angus, the man I’d crashed into. I winced at the memory. He’d been the epitome of everything I disliked, brawny, aggressive. I was more attracted to the intellectual, creative type, wasn’t I? Like Paul. But look where that had got me.

I had moved in with him after about a year. He’d seemed impatient by then, anticipating the closeness our relationship had brought. I was intoxicated, eager for the next stage in my life. Here was someone who wanted me, loved me. He hadn’t said those words, not quite yet, but I wasn’t mistaken by the way his eyes followed me, the pressure of his hands upon my arm in the street, the way he rang me every day. It was like it was a relief to him when I moved in. He’d driven to fetch me from my old digs. He looked surprised at the amount of stuff I had – there were a few suitcases with clothes and shoes and the like, but mainly it was boxes filled with painting gear, paints and brushes and folders overflowing with my work. He’d scowled when he saw all that piled up in his flat; his place was always neat and strictly ordered. But he knew I worked from home, he’d been to visit me many times, so he must have known what to expect, surely? I had my eye on a corner of his dining room, by the window that faced north. The light was bright but unheated, perfect for what I needed. I’d mentioned it and he’d nodded absent-mindedly. I’d got it so wrong. As I was to discover.

So why did I now find myself watching Craig?

No, this man was different, I realised, from both Angus and Paul. I didn’t know what to make of his kindness, not just the logs but the stacking of them too. I resisted the urge to offer him a mug of tea, to be grateful, friendly. What was he after? Was he checking me out? Or had he decided to keep his new landlady sweet? The thought hovered in my mind.

A little while later, he knocked on the door.

‘All done. There’s enough there to see you through a good few weeks. It’s well-seasoned wood, so you can use it straight away.’

He’d put some plastic sheeting over the top. He followed my eyes and nodded.

‘That’ll keep it dry. By the looks of things, we’ll be snowed in for several days. They never clear this road, it only comes to you and me, then loops round the hill to the other side of the village. It’s not worth their time. Have you got plenty of food?’

I dipped my head. We’d been snowed in so many times – Elizabeth and Steph and I, and later just Elizabeth and I. It came with living in this house. To most kids it would have been exciting, the thought of all that snow and no school. But it had filled me with dread, the long days with nowhere to go, hiding in my bedroom, trying not to be noticed, to not get into trouble. To avoid Elizabeth.

The winter when I turned eleven had been particularly bad. The snow blew in great drifts through the hedges and filled up the lane. Out the back of the house the entire garden had been buried under four feet of snow – reaching half way up the back door to the kitchen. At the front it was even worse – the car had been buried completely and the wind blasted a layer of snow against the windows so that you could scarcely see through the glass. There was no way I was getting into school, even on foot.

Steph had left two years earlier and it was just me and Elizabeth in the house. She’d sat in the sitting room by the fire most of the day and I’d kept to myself upstairs on the top floor. After Steph had gone, Elizabeth had stopped cooking a sit-down family meal. She’d eat on her own on a tray in the sitting room, leaving a meal for me to eat in my room. Now, with the snow, it was like someone had flipped a switch. For the first time she told me to cook for myself. I was old enough now, she’d said. All day, every day, and I didn’t speak to a single person, living off baked beans and cereal until the milk ran out, then it was cheese and biscuits and anything I could scrounge from the fridge. There was no radiator in my room and it was so cold that I wore fingerless gloves and a triple layer of jumpers, sitting under the blankets in my bed by the window, tracing the myriad star shapes of the frost flakes that grew on the inside of the glass.

It was then that I’d got frightened. What if the snow never melted? What if the snow queen flew down from the North Pole and breathed ice on the whole house, turning it into a giant iceberg marooned in a sea of white? What if the noisy geese that migrated in autumn returned early to break chattering and gobbling through the windows to steal all the rest of our food? What if I awoke to hear the wolves howling hungry in the distance and came down to find my stepmother frozen solid to the sofa, a human block of ice? How would I get out, how would I eat? Who would ever come looking for me?

But it wasn’t like that now. I wasn’t a frightened, over-imaginative child. And the house was mine, I could roam each room to my heart’s content, enjoy my solitude and the time to paint. Thanks to Craig I had a huge pile of winter fuel and could sit in front of a roasting fire, and I’d seen plenty of tins in the cupboards.

‘Caro?’ he said quizzically.

‘Yes,’ I said, coming back to reality. ‘Oh, I’ll be fine.’

‘I’m that way,’ he pointed north. ‘About five minutes on foot. You have any problems, you call me, okay?’

He pushed a business card into my hand. Atherton Woodcrafts and Log Supplies. There was a picture of a log fire, a kitchen and a web address.

‘Thank you,’ I said.

‘No problem,’ he replied.

I clutched the card in my fingers. He was smiling and the warmth of his expression made me feel ungracious. I knew I’d been rude before. All he’d done was honour a purchase Elizabeth had made before her death – what was wrong with me? I tried to think of something to say, something more friendly.

‘How’s your dog?’ I said.

‘Patsy? She’s at home, having a snooze. Well, bye then.’

He loped back to his jeep, turning towards me before climbing in.

‘And she’s not my dog,’ he said. ‘She was Elizabeth’s.’

Before I could respond, he’d got into his car. As he drove away, the swirling snow dropped like a curtain behind him.

CHAPTER 8

Later that evening, I sat by the fire enjoying my new logs. The flames spat and crackled and I watched them dancing green and yellow as sparks disappeared into the chimney. The soot clinging to the stack glowed, colours flaring and fading like shooting stars in the night. As the heat began to build, I couldn’t help but feel encouraged. It was more than the heat, it was the sense of home a fire brought to a room, even here in this house, where I’d been so unhappy as a child. It wasn’t the house, I reasoned, it was the people who lived in it.

I felt Craig’s card in my pocket. I pulled it out. Atherton Woodcrafts and Log Supplies. I decided to look it up on my phone.

There was a picture of Craig, sleeves rolled up, presumably in his workshop. Beside him was an old-fashioned woodturning lathe. It looked a bit like a trestle table but with an upstand and wooden arms that held the piece being worked on. A large wheel led via a drum belt to a long pedal beneath. I could imagine it turning as the pedal thumped. For a moment it reminded me of the pear drum. On the wall behind were shelves laid out with a host of tools and a large lavender bush nudged up against the window.

‘Kitchens, furniture and joinery. Logs supplied by arrangement,’ said the strap line, ‘Specialist in hand-crafted oak.’

I almost envied him. I worked with paper and paint, pictures from my head. He worked with solid wood, creating tangible, functional objects. From the photo galleries that followed, some of the furniture looked very beautiful. I felt a softening in my attitude; he was someone who worked with his hands, who created things like I did. And he’d taken in my stepmother’s dog, how many neighbours would do that? I chewed the inside of my cheek. It hadn’t seemed to occur to him to offer to give it to me, but then what would I do with a dog? I’d never had any pets, had never wanted one. I wasn’t good with animals.

I realised then that I was avoiding the real tasks, faffing about with hall table drawers and distracting myself with speculation about the house and Elizabeth. This wasn’t a holiday, I had a job to do. In fact, two. I set the printer going, churning out a full copy of the commission text. Tomorrow, I would do some sorting in the house first, then later I’d paint. Painting had always been my reward.

When I was thirteen, the school took us to the art gallery in Derby. We were deemed old enough to explore the different floors of the gallery on our own without the teachers, as long as we stayed in groups of at least three or four. I hung around with a group of girls whilst the teachers were in sight, but once the staff had wandered off, the girls turned on me and shooed me away.

‘Can’t you find your own friends?’ said Kathy Taylor.

‘Why don’t you go to the prehistoric room on the first floor – you’ll be amongst your own kind there!’ Paula March and Susan Pritchard sniggered behind my back.

I was more than happy to abandon them. I climbed the stairs to the first floor, meandering through the galleries till I came to a room marked The Joseph Wright Gallery. Here the walls were painted a dramatic dark grey. Huge paintings in heavy gilt frames hung all around me and the lighting was dim to protect the artwork. I felt enclosed, as if I’d walked behind a curtain to a hidden space, a sequence of scenes in a theatre, each picture peopled with actors playing out a story. In one, a woman in eighteenth-century dress leaned over a man prostrate on the ground. She was partly turned away, one hand held up as if to ward off an assailant. In another, a seascape showed black cliffs towering to left and right, the centre lit up like a scene viewed through a telescope, the oppressive walls of rock giving way to pale silver water and a tiny boat, miniscule figures clinging to the deck.

On the furthest wall was the biggest painting, a blurring of russet browns and red. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw the scene of a family gathered round a kitchen table, several adults of different ages and two girls. The elder held her sister as if to comfort her, the younger child’s head turned away in shock. The table was filled with scientific instruments, poles and jars and rubber tubes, their purpose unclear. The faces of the onlookers were lit from beneath and the candlelight flickered in their eyes, throwing shadows on their skin. It took me a while to figure out what was going on.

I read the label. An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pump. Now I understood. The bird was trapped in a bell jar and a wild man with long hair gesticulated to his audience. His other hand wound a handle on the box beneath the jar and the bird had its wings splayed and beak open as if it were gasping for air. No wonder the two sisters – I assumed they were sisters – looked so distressed. The scientist was demonstrating a vacuum. With each turn of the handle he was starving the bird of oxygen.

I stood mesmerised. Each detail was painstakingly accurate. But the story was told by the contrasting light. Colour, shade, light and dark playing out the drama. I wanted to reach out and touch the painting, to feel the brush strokes that had created such a work. My eyes darted from one face to another, reading their reactions, each character, each object, each shade of colour contributing their own notes, like a symphonic piece of music.

I knew then what I wanted to do. I was going to paint. I wanted to tell a story with the same skill and flair. To channel the emotions that I felt, to observe and interpret and shock and please. I felt the buzz of it fill me with hope.

I drew, I read and learnt and practised and painted in every moment of the day. At the house, Elizabeth had no idea. She had no interest in whatever it was that preoccupied me. She never came into my room. I smuggled the materials back from school and the art teacher turned a blind eye to my thefts. I think she’d guessed what it was like for me at home. Slowly my efforts improved and I developed my own particular darkly curious style.

I rose early, the next day. It was still snowing. Outside was pristine white, thick snow covering every surface. The road, hedges and fields were indeterminable, rising up to meet a similarly white sky across a non-existent horizon. The trees hung out their arms in petrified silence, white giants riveted to the hillside like they’d been caught out in some fantasy game of Freeze Tag. There was a childish joy in seeing all that virgin snow; even the sheep in the field opposite the drive were just frozen white blobs huddled near the gate close to the feeding rack. I lingered at the window.

It was time to tackle the bedrooms. It wasn’t something I looked forward to. Elizabeth’s room was the largest, with a window overlooking the front of the house and its own bathroom. The bed had an expensive-looking quilt and a set of six pillows. Six, for goodness sake, three on each side, one in front of another. On the bedside table were a pair of glasses and two books. Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None and a collection of short stories. Beside them was a small china box painted with blue flowers. Inside were yellow pills. I had no clue as to what they were for.

I gripped the black bin bag in my hand and swept up the glasses, the box and a nightdress I’d found neatly folded under the pillows. The books I couldn’t bear to throw away. The next hour went quickly. I dived into the wardrobes and drawers, dragging out every item of clothing, every dress, jacket and blouse, even the underwear – urgh – pants, bras, tights and petticoats; no one wore petticoats any more, did they? Everything I could find I stashed in plastic bags ready for the charity shops of Ashbourne. Her clothes were expensive, formal suits, dresses and matching shoes, respectable and impressive. I could imagine Elizabeth wanting to make an impression, appearances had always been important to her. She hadn’t been short of money then, despite the state of the other rooms in the house.

There were a few more practical countryside clothes too, the kind you might see the Queen wearing as she strode along the Scottish hills followed by a flotilla of corgis. I thought of the dog, Patsy. I’d never seen Elizabeth with a dog. When I’d known her she’d always been a stiff, clean-loving type, not one for mud in her kitchen and a slobbering dog leaping in her face or lolling out of the window of her car.

Her car – there was no sign of it outside. She must have had one, I thought vaguely.

Had she been lonely? After Steph and I had gone? I didn’t believe that. The few times I’d rung up, to check that Elizabeth was okay, she’d never been interested in talking to me. A short exchange and a cold, sharp tone had been more than enough to tell me that she really didn’t want to hear from me. Had it been the same with Steph? And yet, there had been a dog, a warm, living, breathing animal that didn’t talk back, that learned to do what it was told, but thrived on love and attention. It made me think: the dog had been well cared for, you could see that, Elizabeth must have treated her well. Had the dog been her weak spot, her one little indulgence? Had she mellowed in those intervening years?

And what about Craig? Why had he ended up with her dog? Elizabeth’s neighbour stepping in to care for it. Had they gone for walks together? Had she visited his workshop, talking about his craft, or the weather, or the people in the village? Had he fixed her kitchen, arriving each day with a toolbox in his hand to build the cupboards and worktops? Had she watched, as I had earlier, whilst he worked away at them, sanding them down, smoothing the wood, oiling the grain and polishing them?

It made me laugh, Elizabeth admiring her younger neighbour. She’d been sixty-one when she died. Women that age didn’t have lovers, did they? Of course, they did, but Elizabeth and Craig? No, not lovers, I decided. But he’d been kind enough to take in her dog.

The make-up was the worst thing. It was stuffed into a single box on a shelf in the en suite, a room that looked like it had been newly renovated. The shower gleamed with that brand new, never-been-used look, and a strong vinegary smell of freshly applied mastic clung to the surfaces. In the corner by the floor, someone had missed out the grouting between the last few tiles. Elizabeth, it seemed, had died before she could enjoy her new bathroom. It repulsed me, touching such personal things, the eye shadows, the powder compact, the little brushes and sponges she’d used to apply it all.

Then I found the medicines. There was a whole load of them, in one of those posh hatbox kind of bags, designer crocodile plastic, in bright lipstick red. There were pills and creams and tubes of this and that, with various painkillers tucked into the pockets, some of which looked pretty lethal. You could have poisoned a battalion with all that stuff, a much kinder way to go than pitching over a banister. She must have been ill, suffering pain. I didn’t know how I felt about that. I put the medicines in a separate bag for the pharmacist. It wasn’t the kind of stuff you wanted to put in the bin.

I stripped the bed, cramming the bedding into more bags, unwilling to sleep on them, her sheets, her pillows, the very thought made me sick. I was soaked with sweat by the time I’d lugged all those bags down the stairs, piling them up in the dining room.

Already the day was fading. I still couldn’t decide where to sleep. Elizabeth’s room was the biggest, the smartest, with that view over the front and its own bathroom. But it was the last place I wanted to be. Perhaps if it were redecorated? I tried to imagine it art-gallery white, my paintings on the wall and a simple contemporary bed. No chintz, no fuss, no heavy curtains blocking out the light, not one whiff of my stepmother or anyone else.

A crash reverberated through the house. My head swung upwards.

I was standing at the bottom of the stairs, one hand clutching a bin bag. Had it come from the top floor? Or was that the attic? I wasn’t sure. I was reluctant to go up there. Was it an intruder? In this weather? Who’d want to break into the house in the middle of a snow storm, the road was surely impassable by now.

There it came again, another crash and a blood-curdling yowl. I started, unable to prevent the hairs rising on the back of my neck. It sounded exactly like the tom cat that used to pick fights with my neighbour’s cat in London. In this house?

I took the stairs two at a time, following the yowls. They were louder and more intense with each step. Up to the second floor, past my old bedroom, to a door on the right. The attic. I thrust the door open. Something shot past my legs, racing across the landing. I caught sight of a black animal as it leapt down the stairs. I spun on my heels and ran after it. Down both floors. It belted across the hall floor and skidded to a halt at the front door where it crouched low, glaring at me, hissing. I stayed on the last step.

A cat. It was the same cat as before, but not as friendly. The fur down its spine was all fluffed up. It bared its teeth, whiskers lifting, gums whitening as it hissed again. Something had spooked it good and proper. I was spooked too.

I looked behind me but there was nothing, no reason apparent for the animal’s distress. How had it got trapped in the attic? I took a pace forward and it – she? – ran again, scooting through the gap of the sitting room door. I followed just in time to see her dive under the sofa.

I stood for a moment, chewing my lip. Did I really want a cat in the house? To make friends with it? It wasn’t as if I was staying long. I thought of the cat food I’d bought at the Co-op – why had I done that? I walked out of the room and shut the door.

I climbed the stairs, right to the top, till I was standing in the entrance to the attic. The door was open, exactly as I’d left it. There were a few narrow treads, boxed in, leading up to the attic itself. Where the main stairs were carpeted, these were bare and wooden, the walls likewise. It was much darker than the rest of the house. I reached for the light. It wavered, buzzing, struggling to stay on as I took the steps, one by one, my shoes overly loud against the wood.

The attic was right under the eaves. As I emerged into the space I shivered, hugging my arms, a blistering draught tugging at my hair. I peered through the dim electric light which pooled on the floor between the roof beams. A single small window had been cut into the sloping wall, the highest window visible from the drive. It was totally inaccessible from the outside. The window was wide open, snowflakes blustering in.

How had it got open? I looked around, but there was nothing, no one as far as I could see. Just vague shapes, old bits of furniture and tea chests covered in blankets and dust sheets so that they loomed out of the shadows like trolls and goblins lurking in the woods. A gust of wind caught at the window and it slammed shut. The draught pulled it open again. Clack, clack, it went as the casement shuddered. Finally, I had the source of that noise from yesterday. It must have been the attic window all along, slamming in the intermittent wind.

I reached for the handle, relief making me bold. It was real, not some imagined bogeyman. The handle was ice cold, grasping at my skin, burning it, unwilling to release me as I struggled to close it. Looking at the frame, it seemed to me to have been forced. Perhaps a crowbar, or some other tool, bashed or levered against the fitment from the inside till it had twisted and no longer fit. How had that happened?

The window wouldn’t shut completely. Even when I got it to hold firm, the outside air blew through the gap, sucking at my hand. It must have been like that for days, even weeks: everything near the window was wet, or frozen, white as if Jack Frost himself had cast his spell. My fingers trailed along the roof struts, leaving a wet line in the ice.

Day had almost gone. More snow was already smothering the window frame, blotches of white slapping against the glass, too fast for it to melt, too thick for it to slide down. The electric bulb fizzed overhead, blinking on and off like an angry fly attacking a lamp, useless but persistent. I surveyed the space.

I moved forward, avoiding the beams as I edged along the narrow height of the room. Dust flew up from under my feet, sparkling in the bleary light. I coughed, then stopped. What was that? A scratching noise?

I scanned the lumps and bumps on the floor. A few items, too big to be covered, rose from the ground. A tailor’s dummy, a spindle-back chair, newspapers tied up with string. Ice clung to the print and I rubbed it clear, the paper damp beneath my touch. I could make out the headlines. February, 1953: East coast floods cause devastation. Lives lost in bleak winter disaster. The blades of a broken fan moved slowly round, clicking as they did. Had I nudged it by accident? I didn’t think so. What had scared the cat so much it had shot out of the attic like that?

I slid my eyes back across the room. There was a definite movement, a small lump beneath one of the sheets. It twitched and jumped, stopped and jumped again, wriggling towards me.

I reached for a cricket bat propped up against a chair. My fingers tightened around the handle. The lump disappeared, the fabric sinking to a loose fold on the ground. It was quiet, the single bulb flickered on then off, on then off … I was plunged into a fusty gloom.

Something scuttled over my foot.

I yelped.

It stopped, mid-run, right in front of me. A rat, black and greasy, beady eyes glinting in the twilight. It was huge, its fat body bulging over in the middle as it sat back on its haunches, fixing me with its glare. I felt fear sweep over me. I absolutely loathed rats. It was so close, so revolting, so big … I lashed out with the cricket bat, screaming at the thing. It fled across the dust towards the stairs.

‘No! Don’t you go into the house!’ It was a useless cry.

Both hands gripping the bat, I swung it wildly. Thunk! It hit the stairwell, wood splintering beneath. The rat darted out through the doorway, onto the landing. It streaked across the carpet towards my old bedroom. I leapt forward, pulling the bedroom door shut just in time, holding the handle as if the little bugger could have reached up and opened the door. It stared at me, surprised at my audacity. My heart was racing, my breath came in short, staggered puffs and I stood there watching, the skin on my back, my neck, my arms crawling, cricket bat still in hand.

Then the rat moved, turning tail to scamper down the stairs. One floor, two floors, just like the cat, only this time it bounded into the kitchen. I ran after it. The rat skittered alongside the cupboard kickboards, searching for an opening. I slung my bat onto the table and threw open the back door as the rat approached. It sniffed the cold air, gave me one last beady glance and bounced through the gap. I slammed the door shut and stood there, catching my breath.

That was what had scared the cat. A rat, a lone rat trying to live its life, seeking the warmth of the house – all farms had rats. That was why they had cats too. What was wrong with me?

I had a fleeting image of another rat, its yellow teeth chattering in my face. A nightmare from when I was little? I felt my fingers itching for the cricket bat.

I resolved to let the cat stay.

CHAPTER 9

‘Hi, Steph.’

I was in the kitchen, the cool blue light of my laptop shining out across the table. Even a few hours later, I was still shaken after dealing with the rat. I’d lit a candle to cheer myself. The tiny flame danced in the corner of my eye as Steph’s face wobbled and blinked and came into focus.

‘You okay? You sound a bit down.’ Steph’s voice was a surprising beacon of familiarity.

‘Oh. I’m fine, but it’s horrible going through all her stuff.’

Steph nodded. ‘I can imagine. Rather you than me. How’s the weather? We’ve had a great blizzard here in New York. All flights are cancelled. I didn’t get to Miami. The whole place is under wraps, state of emergency and all that. We’re not supposed to leave our homes even to go to the shops whilst it’s like this.’

I nodded. I’d watched the news whilst eating my tea, seeing the reports of a sequence of east coast blizzards in America and how they’d reached us from across the Atlantic.

‘Yeah, it’s a whiteout here too, I won’t be able to drive anywhere for a few days in this, but I’m well stocked up. Craig, my neighbour, has been round with a load of logs.’

‘Has he?’ Steph was smiling, reaching out for a mug of coffee. ‘And?’

‘Oh, he didn’t stay long.’

There was a pause. Maybe Steph was hoping I might fill the silence with more details.

‘I’ve got a cat in the sitting room,’ I said.

It was still there, supplied with a plate of cat food and a bowl of water. I’d have to let it out in a bit.

‘Really?’ Steph sounded distracted, disappointed perhaps that I wasn’t giving up more information about my kind neighbour.

‘Yeah, the cat turned up in the attic. God knows how it got up there.’

I decided not to say anything about the rat.

‘And how are things with your work, are you managing to do some painting too?’

‘Oh, it’s good. My agent’s sent me a new commission for fairy tales and some of the stories are …’ I brought my hand up to cough. I wasn’t sure exactly what word to use, but I didn’t want to admit the effect they were having on me. ‘I’ve got loads of ideas.’

I didn’t mention the book included the story of The Pear Drum.

‘That’s nice.’

My sister sipped at her mug, hands curled around it, clothed in a casually elegant mohair sloppy jumper. There was an awkward silence.

‘Which one are you working on at the moment?’ she asked.

‘The Juniper Tree.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s about a young boy and his stepsister. His father has remarried and the stepmother hates him, wanting his inheritance for her daughter.’

‘Oh right, that sounds familiar. Why are there so many evil stepmothers in those stories?’ Steph leaned back in her seat.

I laughed. ‘This one’s particularly gruesome. The stepmother kills the boy and feeds him to his father.’

‘Yuk! Murder and cannibalism, what happened to happy ever after?’

‘Fairy tales aren’t always what Disney would have us believe. It’s not like my usual commissions, this one’s not really for children.’ I grinned.

Steph laughed. ‘I should think not, from what you’re telling me!’

Later, after the call ended, I started to paint.

The house was quiet, the cat asleep on the sofa, apparently no longer distressed. I glanced outside. The night was arctic clear, the snow sparkling. As I stood in front of the kitchen table, brush in hand, I felt calmer, happier, I was in control with a paintbrush. Time didn’t matter, here on my own, surrounded by nature’s very own blank canvas.

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