Prologue
The raven watches the stone house on the crossroads through the long year.
Freezing winter turns to gentle spring and then to summer, and his dark feathers heat like the sticky tarmac of the narrow lane that bakes and shimmers below him. He knows his mate is long dead, but he remains, constant, perched on the uneven wall, watching and listening. At night, in the cooler air, he feeds and drinks and calls out, but there is never a reply.
The house does not give up his mate. His mate is dead. He knows that. He should have moved on. Found another to share his solitary life. To nest in the worn rock cavities on the moors. To enjoy the endless skies. Perhaps a better mate. But still he watches.
He does not like the house. He has never liked the house. It stirs something inside him that speaks so loudly of danger that when he heard her cries, he did not follow her in, but now he finds he cannot leave. Not yet. Not yet, he croaks, parched, into the sky, as his black eyes stare and wonder if anything will live within those walls again. The house stares back at him, defiant. No, he does not care for the house.
Summer cools to autumn, and as winter stirs once more, a long year of watching over, he is almost ready to take flight, to start again, when suddenly cars arrive and doors open. His mate does not emerge—his mate is dead, he knows this—but his feathers tremble in the wind as he watches, curious now.
Life is coming back to the house.
1Emily
The house looks different from how it did in the photos.
Freddie pulls the car up close to the front door and smiles across at me before getting out. I try to reciprocate but my heart is sinking. The pictures were taken in summer when the front garden was full of color and life. Now, as I push the car door open and swing my bad leg out before gritting my teeth against the pain and hauling myself inelegantly onto my feet, everything is covered in icy gray mist and the ground is hard and dead.
I lean heavily on my stick. My joints are sore from sitting for hours on the drive, and the sharp air is like icing sugar in my lungs, making me want to cough with every breath, the wind coming in from the moor cutting into me despite my thick coat. The quiet of the frozen countryside makes my stinging ears ring. Everything is awash with shades of gray, but still it makes me squint. There’s too much to take in.
“What do you think?” We both rest on the bonnet of the car as I contemplate my answer, looking up at the large house looming over me. Larkin Lodge is written in thick black letters above the imposing front door. Larkin Lodge. Our new home.
The house stands alone on a hill, the drive simply a turn off a country lane, marked by old low stone walls. Beyond, all I can see is moorland, wild and untamed, a spattering of snow here and there that has refused to melt. No sheep or cows. Just uneven ground and rough shrubs amid rocky outcrops.
“I feel like I’m in a Brontë novel.” I take his arm, and our feet crunch loud on the gravel as we move toward the front door.
“Does that make me Mr. Rochester? Are you my Jane Eyre?”
“Well, you’d better not have another wife locked up in the attic here, otherwise you’re in trouble, my friend.” I don’t tell him it’s Wuthering Heights that had come to mind and how that one doesn’t end so well for the characters in it, the ghost of Cathy pleading at the window to come inside. Freddie only knows Jane Eyre because he claimed to like the classics when we met and I’m sure he quickly scanned a couple, when in fact the years have proven that he’s more a a-few-Lee-Childs-on-holiday reader than a proper bookworm like me.
“It looks different in the flesh. It’s like it’s suddenly real.”
“It is real.” He unlocks the door with an old-fashioned key and nods me inside. I step across the threshold, and while the immediate air—the exhale—that rushes out to greet me is not exactly cold, neither is it warm, as if Larkin Lodge is perhaps as unsure of me as I am of it.
I do relax a little as the door closes behind us and the warmth from the radiators finally envelops me. There are polished wooden floors and a feature central staircase that is both imposing and austere, but there are also fresh flowers in my vase from Heal’s sitting on the stylish Rose & Grey hallway table Iso bought us for our tenth anniversary. Freddie promised he’d have all the unpacking done by the time the hospital let me out, and he’s been true to his word on that.
Farther into the house I peer into a bright sitting room, or drawing room, or whatever people who have more than one living room call a second or third downstairs room, and our teal Loaf sofa, wine stain and all, is waiting there for me to collapse on.
“It’s bigger than I thought.” I’m trying to be happy, but I’m having a massive pang
of missing our little garden flat in Kentish Town and feel a little sick. What have we done? I know I’m being childish. It was my dream, after all, a house in the country, away from the madness of London, with space and air to breathe, and it was me who first saw Larkin Lodge online and made a lot of noise about escaping everything and how it would be perfect.
I didn’t, however, expect to wake up from a coma several months later and find Freddie so enthusiastically suggesting we sell and move here that I heard myself agreeing. But then I hadn’t been expecting to be in a coma either, and I hadn’t expected the gut punch of being let go from work after I’d done so much—so much I didn’t want to think about—to get the promotion secured just before my accident.
“Marriage is teamwork,” he’d said as he held up the keys in the rehab center. “You wanted a life in the country, and I’m on board with that.” The move kept him busy at least. Freddie has never been good with worry, and while I lay between life and death, getting all the pieces in place for me to nod a yes to kept him busy.
It would be a lie to say I’ve had no excitement about the move too. I have. From my hospital bed it felt like exactly what I needed—a fresh start—but as the days ticked round to leaving, the excitement trickled away to something close to regret as the reality of my situation sank in. I wanted the safety of the known. The comfort blanket of my familiar nest to lick my wounds in.
Freddie’s still looking at me, expectant, and I give him a big grin, shaking away my gloom. A year to recuperate fully, that’s what Dr. Canning said I needed. The quiet country life will probably be good for me. And it is a beautiful house. I have to get used to it, that’s all.
“I guess we live here now,” I say.
“I guess we do,” he answers.
2Freddie
Jesus, I can’t believe I’m in this mess.
It’s getting dark outside, marginally preferable to the endless suffocating gray of the awful winter moors, and even though the heating’s on I’m cold again. There’s always a draft in this bloody house and it does nothing to improve my mood.
The warmth of the Aga stove seeps through my jeans as I lean against it, boiling water for pasta. My phone’s on silent in my pocket, just in case, and I can hear Emily’s stick tapping as she explores the house, her walk a slow echo of her usual confident—overconfident—stride. The sound makes me feel worse.
I am not a good person. How could I have done this to her? How can I still be doing it to her? After what she’s been through. Everything she’s been through. The guilt—the constant fear of discovery—is a cancer inside me. How have I got myself so trapped?
I turn on the radio, needing distraction, some cheesy nineties local radio station, and whistle along, feigning normality, as I add pasta to the boiling water and dig around in the cupboard for a sauce.
I can sort it. I have to. It’s all going to be fine. It is.
As long as Emily never finds out.
3Emily
There are so many rooms downstairs I feel almost dizzy. My walking stick tap taps on the wooden floor, and I keep one hand on the cool walls as I slowly explore. The wallpaper’s thick, lining every room thus far, the different damask patterns in the flock like braille under my fingertips. The rich colors—faded greens, yellows, blues, and reds—remind me of ladies’ evening gowns from long ago, stretched out across the walls like skin. The formality of the colors against the dark wood floor makes the rooms oppressive and austere and full of shadows. Uninviting.
The house, I decide, as I move from room to room, is like a prim governess judging me disapprovingly for my baggy jeans and sweatshirt. It doesn’t help that several rooms are still unused, the air filled with dust and abandonment. God knows how long the place has been empty, but I make a mental note to get some paint samples as soon as possible. Light, bright colors will make a world of difference. Bring some joy to the place.
Along with the kitchen and sitting room that I’ve already seen, there’s a dining room, a drawing room, and another room that Freddie’s turned into a games room, as well as a smaller room that may have been a study since there’s a desk pushed up against the wall, maybe left by the previous occupants, and beyond there a downstairs toilet and a utility or storage room.
Past the kitchen there’s a corridor leading to what must have once been tack and boot rooms. There’s no wooden floor in those, just uneven flagstone, freezing underfoot, and high, narrow windows that need a winder to open. They’re colder than the other rooms too, no pretense at heating, and I guess we could use them as a pantry or storage room.
I head back to the warmth of the central hallway, where I can hear Freddie whistling along to the radio as he cooks on the Aga. I’ve always wanted an Aga. I get a frisson of happiness at that, a hopeful moment that once I’m used to this house, it’ll be okay. I wish we’d moved in summer. I wish Larkin Lodge felt like it had looked in the photos. I wish I could stop being so ridiculous.
I climb the stairs to the middle floor, slowly and carefully, my right leg taking every step, the left following behind, and the creaking wood gives away my slow progress. No running up and down with no thought of danger for me. Maybe never again. One serious brush with death brings every danger into sharp focus. It changes a person. I grip the handrail tight and finally turn the corner.
From up here I can’t hear Freddie anymore, only the rattling of the landing window from a breeze outside, and I tighten up the lock to quiet it before continuing. Three double bedrooms and two bathrooms. The doors’ hinges creak as I push them open. The largest of the bedrooms is made up, the pink duvet cover a spark of brightness amid the dour, and has our things on the bedside tables, and in the nearest bathroom I find the beautiful roll-top bath I’d seen in the photos—which makes me happy because I’ve always wanted one of those too—and all our toiletries.
There’s a steeper staircase leading up to the third floor where the primary suite is, but, as Freddie warned me, until my leg is stronger, there’s no way I can contemplate making it up there. I go back into the bedroom Freddie’s allocated to us and look out the window. The thin mist of earlier has become a thick fog, wound around the house in the darkening sky like a shroud, and if I want to see the views or garden I’m going to have to wait until morning.
“It’s ready,” I hear Freddie call up from the bottom of the stairs. “Hope you’re hungry.”
As I turn my back on the creeping fog, I hear a creak from somewhere in the upstairs corridor. It’s long and slow, almost deliberate. Too close to be downstairs. Has Freddie come up to get me?
The landing, however, is empty and quiet. It’s just an old house, I tell myself, shaking away my unsettled feeling. Old houses creak like old bones.
4Emily
I’m dreaming, I know I’m dreaming because although I’m back on that narrow cliff path, I’m wearing a hospital gown and a ventilator mask on my face and not my shorts and T-shirt.
I’m walking ahead of Freddie, like I was then, annoyed at the heat of the Ibiza sun that burst through the clouds just as we’d reached the trickiest part of the hike and at the baked sandy stones that make my footsteps unsteady. I didn’t even want to do this walk; I wanted to stay by the pool and have some time to myself. But Mark and Iso paid for the whole holiday, the luxury villa, the ridiculous chef, and none of us could say no. Cat is up ahead with Russell, and I know she’s not struggling but she didn’t want to come either. I could tell. The six of us, different-colored threads once wound tight around the spool of friendship, now unraveling, pulling in different directions.
It’s all slower in the dream than it was, as if with each step I’m being dragged through honey to the inescapable future. Freddie’s close behind me, and while we’re making an effort for the others, we’re in foul moods with each other. We haven’t had sex once since we came away and it’s really starting to piss him off. I walk a little faster, trying to put some space between us—a space big enough for all my secret guilt—and a few pebbles scatter over the edge. It’s not a sheer cliff edge here but maybe a fifteen-foot drop undulating to fifty in places. Far enough to kill yourself, for sure, and hearing the noise, Iso looks back at me. Iso, hair white-blond, perfectly beautiful, my oldest friend—is she even really my friend anymore or are we habit?—shields her eyes with her hand to check I’m okay, but I wave her and her perfect thighs on.
“I’m okay,” I call out to her. In reality, I’m so very far from okay. I’ve done something terrible, I’m consumed by a guilt that stops me sleeping and has left me with a growing reminder of my mistake, and in moments everything is about to get very much worse.
“You don’t have to, you know.” It’s Russell’s voice and in the dream he’s momentarily there beside me, before I start to climb the incline I’m about to fall from. “You can turn back now.” In the dream he whispers with a stale breath. “Bad things are that way. You’ll die if you go that way.” He starts to fade then, evaporating as I look at him.
“It’s too late,” I answer, confused. “I’m already there.”
The rest of the dream replays as it happened. I hear Freddie muttering behind me about going faster, close on my heels, pressuring me to speed up. I take a large stride and bite my tongue to stop myself from saying a million things I might or might not regret, and instead I focus on the promotion and starting my new role in ten days and the lie I’ll tell Freddie so he’ll never know, and then, as I swat a fly away from my face, I stumble forward. At least I think I stumble—or did he knock into me—and as I turn to confront him, my ankle twists under me, I lose my balance, and as I tilt backward—no no no no—I stretch my arms out to Freddie, my hands grasping for him. He reaches out. He does. I know that. I see that. So do the others, turning back to see why I yelped, but his fingers don’t even brush mine and I’m sure he could lean farther forward, and our eyes meet and as mine plead, all I see is fear—and is that relief?—in his. And then I start to fall.
In the dream I go from the endless terrifying fall straight to the broken bones and the beeping hospital machines and the sepsis and the fever and the coma and the—
Death is cold. Even
when just for a little while.
Death is so very, very cold. ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2025 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
