The Last Days of Summer: The best feel-good summer read for 2017

“I’ve heard a lot about you from Ellie,” he said, which explained the chill. Even if she hadn’t spilled the whole story to this stranger, I was under no illusion that she’d have spoken about me in anything approaching glowing terms.

“Oh good. Listen, I’m fine carrying my own case, honestly.” I had four whole days stretching ahead to spend time with people who disapproved of me. I didn’t really feel up to starting off with someone I’d never even met before.

Edward took two long strides across the hallway and snatched up my bag. “Not a problem.” He gave me a short, tight smile, then swung round to face Isabelle, suitcase swaying in his hand. “Which room is she in?”

“My room,” I said, as if that should be obvious, at the same time as Isabelle said, “You’d better put her in the Yellow Room.”

“Right-ho.” Edward hefted the case up the first few stairs.

“Hang on. What’s wrong with my room?” It was, after all, my room. I snatched the case out of Edward’s hands.

“Caroline’s sleeping in it.” Isabelle looked vaguely regretful for a moment, but it didn’t last. “But really, Kia, it is a little girl’s room, and Caro’s too big for the box room, now. She’s almost ten. She needs her own space.”

Caroline – our last-minute-accident baby sister, and the shocking evidence that our parents were still having sex into my secondary-school years. How could she be ten already? How much had she changed in the last two years? How much had I missed?

“It’s my room,” I said again, even as my brain acknowledged the ridiculousness of this statement.

“Your room is the candy-stripe confection in the attic?” Edward reached out and retrieved the case from my hands again, his long slim fingers brushing against mine as he took the handle. I gritted my teeth against the slight shiver his touch gave me, even in the warm summer air.

“My grandfather helped me decorate that room.” One long summer when my parents were abroad and Ellie and I had stayed at Rosewood for six glorious weeks, instead of sweating it out in our semi in the suburbs of Manchester. It had taken an age, because Nathaniel had been working on Rebecca’s Daughters at the time and would regularly disappear into his study for hours in the middle of painting the walls.

Edward grinned. “Strange. Nathaniel never struck me as a candyfloss kind of guy.”

“Who are you, anyway?” It didn’t seem fair. I’d been home mere minutes, and I was already being mocked by strangers.

“I’m your grandfather’s assistant,” Edward said, making his way up the stairs, lugging the case alongside him.

I looked to Isabelle for confirmation. “I know,” she said. “We were surprised too. But he’s been here over a year, now.” And no one had mentioned him to me – not even Nathaniel. Which said more about how far I’d run away than the seven hours it had taken me to get back by train that day.

Edward reached the top of the stairs and paused, obviously waiting for me to follow. I looked at him with a new appreciation. The last assistant Nathaniel had hired, six months before I left for the wilds of Scotland, had lasted approximately a fortnight before falling down those very stairs in his hurry to get away from Rosewood. Granddad did not work well with assistants.

“Well, okay then.” Picking up my handbag, I turned back to Isabelle. “Do I really have to sleep in the Yellow Room?”

“It has a lovely view of the Rose Garden, darling.”

“But all the roses are in here!” I waved an arm at the overflowing buckets of blooms.

“Don’t be melodramatic, dear. There are plenty of roses left. We’re only using the yellow ones, anyway.” She plucked a few leaves from the bottom of a rose stem and added the flower to the bucket. “Besides, these are just for the house displays. The florist is doing the stands and centrepieces outside.”

That sounded like an awful lot of flowers. “But the Yellow Room’s all… yellow.” There was a muffled snort of laughter from the top of the stairs, and I mentally glared at Edward, wondering what it was about Rosewood that made me thirteen again. “Never mind. I’ll go get freshened up, and maybe by the time I get back my parents will have found their way home.”

“Perhaps. Kia…” Isabelle paused, as if trying to decide whether to speak again or not. Finally, she said, “Did your grandfather say particularly why he wanted you to come back?”

I blinked in surprise. “It’s a family occasion. I assume he wanted us all here.”

Isabelle gave a sharp nod, and turned back to her buckets of roses. “Of course.”

Confused, I turned to follow Edward. But I couldn’t help wondering what Isabelle thought Nathaniel was up to this time.

“There you go, then,” Edward said, placing my bags on the window-seat. “I’ll leave you to settle in.”

I nodded, gazing around at the sunshine walls and golden blankets, wondering how many guests had visited twice, after being put to stay in the Yellow Room.

Probably all of them – at least any that had been invited back. A weekend at Rosewood had been a highly sought-after ticket, back in the day. Well, according to Isabelle, anyway.

“Actually,” I said, trying to sound decisive, rather than just unsettled, “I think I might go and find Great-Aunt Therese. It must be almost time for her afternoon tea.” Never mind that I’d spent seven hours on various trains and really could do with a shower; first, I needed to feel home again. And after that very lacklustre welcome from Isabelle, I knew I wasn’t going to find that feeling in the Yellow Room. At least Great-Aunt Therese might be pleased to see me.

Assam tea and a Victoria Sandwich in Therese’s cottage garden were more familiar to me than even my attic bedroom. Nathaniel had moved his younger sister into the cottage on the edge of Rosewood’s gardens as soon as her husband died, the year I was born, when she was only forty-one. Almost every afternoon that I had spent at Rosewood since had always paused for tea with Therese at half past three, first with my mum and Ellie, and later just the two of us.

Edward shrugged indifferently. “I’ll come with you, then. May as well see if she’s finished collecting leaves for your grandmother. Pre-empt being sent.”

“If you’re Granddad’s assistant, why aren’t you assisting him rather than Grandma?” I asked, as we trotted out into the sunlight. It felt odd to be at Rosewood with a stranger – especially one who seemed far more at home than I did.

“He’s having one of his Great British Writer days. Doesn’t like anyone hovering, in case it disturbs his flow.” Which might explain why Edward had lasted longer than the other assistants. A keen sense of when to get lost.

“So you’re just making yourself useful until he needs you again?”

“Got to earn my keep somehow.” Edward gave me a quick smile as he turned off the drive and onto the long, rambling path that led, eventually, to Therese’s cottage.

He didn’t seem inclined to any further conversation, and I found my attention drawn instead to the familiar sights along the way – the huge magnolia that overhung the path, the strange fountain statue that Isabelle had found on holiday in France one year and had shipped back, the wild flower patch my mother planted which, over the course of a few summers, overtook almost a whole lawn.

As we reached the bend in the main path that led down to the abandoned ruin of the old stables and Therese’s tiny cottage, my great-aunt appeared in the distance. Therese was unmistakable with her 1950s silhouette of full skirt and tight cardigan even when, as now, her arms were full of eucalyptus leaves.

Edward squinted up into the sun, the light bleaching his sandy hair even paler. “This looks like another of those ‘earn my keep’ moments,” he said. “Isabelle will only send me back for them later, anyway.” He jogged away down the path to relieve Therese of her leafy burden. He had a point; Isabelle never came down to Therese’s cottage if she could send someone else. In fact, I didn’t think I’d ever seen her there. “I’ll take these up to the house for you, Mrs Williams,” I heard Edward say. “Save you the trouble, since I’m heading back anyway. Besides, you’ve got a visitor.”

Therese’s pale blue eyes widened and her red lips pursed as I came close, and I wondered what changes she saw in me. But then she smiled, and I was eighteen again, home from university as a surprise one weekend, folded into her expensively perfumed embrace and thoroughly kissed, leaving lipstick marks on my cheeks. Therese was an anachronism, a throwback to a decade she’d only just been born for, with her fifties costumes and curled and pinned hair. But she was a part of Rosewood for me, every bit as much as Isabelle’s cocktails before dinner and Nathaniel’s stories.

“It’s so good to have you home,” she said, leading me inside, and I blinked away unexpected tears as I realised just how much I had missed her. At least someone was pleased to see me.

Therese’s cottage was as I had left it, filled with knick-knacks and jugs full of sweet peas and dishes laden with glass bead necklaces. The only difference, as far as I could see, was the vast collection of clothes that hung from every hook and corner and ledge in the lounge. And the hallway. And running up the stairs. Dresses and skirts and blouses and coats and handbags, with gloves and scarves and tops and shoes spilling out from old steamer trunks, stacked carelessly against the walls.

Therese had always been a bit of a clothes horse, but this was taking things to extremes, even for her.

I peered into the lounge from the hallway, and saw that in amongst all the accessories, my favourite photo of her still sat on the mantelpiece. Therese, aged nineteen, pale and pouting in black-and-white with crisply waving hair surrounding challenging pale eyes. It must have been taken in the tail end of the sixties, I’d worked out once, but Therese looked like a screen siren from thirties Hollywood. It was one of a very few photos I’d seen of Therese out of her fifties costume, and even that was out of sync with the rest of the world – but fitted perfectly at Rosewood.

Rosewood existed in a bubble all of its own, out of time, because that was the way Nathaniel liked it. I wondered absently how Edward was coping with the lack of internet at Rosewood. Maybe I’d ask him later.

Picking up the picture frame, I studied the photo, finding familiar lines in the much younger face. She kept it up as a reminder, Therese always said. A reminder that she’d been beautiful once. Before life happened.

Turning to watch her potter around the tiny kitchen, filling the kettle and warming the pot, I knew that she was still beautiful. Why had she never remarried? “Once was enough,” she always said, but she’d only been forty-one when Great-Uncle George had died. Therese would have been quite a catch, with her perfectly pinned hair, slim waist, beautiful outfits, and her pale blue eyes. She and Isabelle together as young women must have been a formidable sight.

Great-Uncle George had always been a little bit of a mystery. He’d died before I was born, so all I really had to go on were occasional snatches of parental conversation, when the adults thought I wasn’t listening. I’d asked, once, but hadn’t really received any satisfactory answers.

As far as Ellie and I had been able to piece together, George had been some hotshot trader in the city when he met Therese and they’d fallen instantly in love. They’d married shortly after and gone to live in London, where he showered his new bride with lavish gifts of jewels and dresses. Isabelle, it seemed, was always a little sore on this point.

Still, and this was the part that didn’t make any sense, when George had suffered a fatal heart attack at the age of only forty-seven, creditors had swooped in and taken the house, the furniture, the cars, and most of the jewels. Therese had showed up at Rosewood with a suitcase of evening gowns, planning to stay only until she was back on her feet, and she had never left.

Isabelle mentioned that part often, pointedly, usually when Nathaniel and Therese had their heads together, laughing over some private, shared joke the way only siblings could. The way Ellie and I used to.

In fifteen years’ time, would I be back at Rosewood, begging asylum again? And if so, would Ellie resent my presence as obviously as Isabelle had always resented Therese’s? Probably.

“We’ll take tea in the garden,” Therese said decisively, smoothing a lace cloth over a plain silver tray, and laying out the china cups, sugar bowl, milk jug, and a plate of chocolate-covered ginger biscuits. “Will you bring the pot, Kia?”

Wrapping the handle of the delicate teapot with a clean tea towel, I did as I was told, and followed Therese out through the back door into her tiny, hedged garden.

Therese’s flower beds were tended and nurtured daily, and carefully trained to appear as a hodgepodge cottage garden. Lupins and delphiniums and foxgloves loomed over fuchsias and snapdragons; sweet peas clambered up canes set against the cottage wall, sending their familiar scent past me on the breeze.

In the middle was a small, circular patio, occupied by a wrought-iron bistro table and two chairs, glowing warm in the late afternoon sun.

Therese settled her tray down on the table, took the pot from me and motioned for me to sit down.

“So,” she said, pouring the first cup, “you’ve come home.” The ‘at last’ went unsaid.

I nodded, picking up a biscuit to nibble. “Nathaniel called and asked me to. Said he had plans for the Golden Wedding.”

“God save us from my brother’s plans.” Therese settled into her seat. “I’m glad he did, anyway. I was worried that your invitation might go mysteriously astray if it was left to Isabelle.”

I winced. “I never did actually receive an invitation.” Isabelle was always meticulous about sending invitations. I remember being made to handwrite invites for my eighth birthday party, not only to all my classmates, but also my own sister, even though she was sitting next to me as I wrote it. If Isabelle had wanted me there, I’d have been sent an invitation. And the fact I hadn’t… Well, it stung like a needle pressed up against my heart.

“Typical Isabelle,” Therese said, selecting the biscuit with the most chocolate coating. “They were hideous, anyway.”

“So Nathaniel said.” I sighed. “I can’t believe he didn’t tell anyone I was coming.”

“I imagine that you’re part of Nathaniel’s plan. You know how he likes surprising people,” Therese said. “More fun that way. Besides…” she laid a hand on mine “…this is your home. You have as much right to be here as anyone else.” Maybe I could just stay in Therese’s cottage for the duration, I thought.

Therese polished off the cookie and reached for her teacup. “Now, tell me about Scotland.”

So I did. I told her about my flat on the edge of Perth, and how it wasn’t much to look at from the outside, but I’d finally got the inside the way I wanted it – cosy and bright. I told her about the newspaper, about my job, and when she said, “But what are the prospects like? When are we going to read you in the Guardian?” I distracted her with a story about a police press conference on an operation to confiscate alcohol from teens in the local park that had to be curtailed when half the cans and bottles went missing.

Therese laughed in the right places, but somehow I still got the impression that she was just humouring me. And, as I finished my last story and my cup of tea, she pounced.

“So, tell me about your young man,” she said, picking up the pot and refilling my cup. “Because I can’t believe you haven’t got one, pretty girl like you.”

“Just one?” I laughed, hoping vainly to throw her off the scent. Yes, there was a man, of sorts. But Duncan and I were casual, fun… and just a little bit too complicated to explain to an elderly relative. Still, it might not be a bad idea to let everyone know that I’d moved on, that I had a new life, a new romance in Perth. Even if that wasn’t quite the truth.

“Only one that means something, I’m sure.” Her voice was placid and immovable. “So, tell me about him.”

“Well, his name’s Duncan,” I said, sifting through my mind for what could be considered safe to talk about, and how to say it without using the words ‘friends with benefits’. “He works with me – he’s our new editor, actually. Brought in from Edinburgh earlier this year.”

“Ah, so it’s all quite new, then?” Therese leant forward. “I understand. Still all flowers and romance and sex all day on Sundays. Still in that private, special world where there’s only the two of you.”

Quite aside from the fact that hearing my great-aunt talking about all-day sex sessions had rendered me incapable of speech, there was just no way I was going to explain to her that, actually, it was less flowers and romance and more the second part, so I just smiled weakly and nodded.

Therese patted my hand and said, “I understand,” again.

“Anyway,” I said, regaining my voice, just in time to change the subject. “I meant to ask – what’s with the clothes shop inside?”

Her face lit up with an excitement I’d only ever seen on her before at the Harrods sale. “So you noticed my little enterprise! Caro helped me set it up.”

I wasn’t quite sure when my baby sister had become an established business guru, but then, I still wasn’t entirely sure what the business was. “Really.”

“Oh yes. She figured out with me how to get an account on eBay, and PayPal, and how to list things and set prices. Turned out that there was quite the market for some of my old evening dresses and such.” Therese smiled a little ruefully. “Only it takes a lot of restraint to only sell, and not be tempted to buy.”

“So, all that stuff inside…”

“Waiting to be sold on,” Therese said, firmly. “See, it turns out that a lot of people want to get into vintage wear, but don’t know where to start, or what size to buy. So that’s my USP.”

Which sounded more like something you’d use to track ghosts than sell clothes. “USP?”

“Unique selling point. They send me their measurements, and a photo, and a bit of information about them and what they want the clothes for, and I put together a one-of-a-kind vintage outfit, including all accessories, for their specified occasion.”

I blinked. That was actually a really good idea. “That’s… great.”

In a sudden movement, Therese was on her feet, motioning for me to stay where I was. “Actually, I have something that would be perfect for you,” she said. “For tonight. Just wait here.”

She was back within moments, holding out a navy dress on a satin padded hanger. “To wear for dinner.”

I reached out a hand to touch it. The dress was of a style that had been popular in the 1930s, and the cut was exquisite, with fluted cap sleeves and a silky bow at the neckline, above the narrow waist belt. The cotton was soft and worn under my fingertips, but the colours were still crisp and bright. It was only as I looked closer that I realised; this was the dress Therese had worn in the photo on the mantle.

“It should fit, I think,” she said, pushing the hanger into my hands. “You’ve lost weight since you’ve been away. Hold it up against yourself.” I did as I was told, and she looked at me critically.

“It’s lovely,” I said, swishing the skirt from side to side. “But you don’t think it’s a little… too much?” Even at Rosewood, dressing for dinner didn’t usually require evening gowns, as such. Not that this was – it was just a hundred times nicer than anything I had in my suitcase.

“Nonsense,” Therese said. “George always said that a person could never really be overdressed – merely better dressed than everyone else. Now, you’ll need the shoes and a bag too, of course. You’re a six, yes? Come with me.”

She trotted back into the cottage and I followed obediently. Maybe a makeover was just what I needed to get through the rest of the visit. Maybe Ellie wouldn’t remember what I’d done if I looked like someone else.

I returned to the main house some time later, laden down with hangers and bags, to find the place deserted. Assuming that people were getting changed for dinner, I followed suit and sneaked up the stairs to my allotted room, pulling a face at the yellow walls as they glowed in the slowly fading sunlight.

On the other hand, I realised, the one good thing about the Yellow Room was that it had an en suite. I decided to take advantage of it, hoping that a shower might wash away the ache that comes from sitting on trains too long, and the tension that came simply from being home. Besides, tea with my great-aunt had left my head overflowing with thoughts, and some hot and steamy water was the best way I knew to flush them out.

The shower didn’t help as much as I’d hoped. In less than an hour I’d be sitting down to dinner with my entire family, something I hadn’t done in two years, and I was going in with nothing but a vintage outfit and a vague hope that Nathaniel had a plan.

I didn’t even know how much Ellie had told the family, or how much they’d guessed, about what had happened.

And then there was Greg.

Tonight, I’d see Greg for the first time in two years. For the first time since the wedding.

Two years, and I still wasn’t ready. I wasn’t sure I ever would be.

Part of me wanted to see him, more than anything. To get it over with. To know, for sure, that there was nothing there between us any more. To be certain that my heart wouldn’t beat too fast when he was in the room, that I wouldn’t find my eyes drawn to him every few moments.

To show that I was no longer in love with my sister’s husband.

The rest of me just wanted to put the inevitable off for as long as possible.

The love Greg and I had shared had been childish, irresponsible – and all-encompassing, for a time. The sort of love that makes you abandon caution and sense and morals. The kind of love that causes pain.

I never wanted to feel that sort of love again.

But seeing Greg was nothing compared to my terror at seeing Ellie again. I could take any reaction from Greg – anything from love to hate. It didn’t matter; it couldn’t change anything now.

But Ellie… the thought of seeing the same hate in her eyes as the day she found out, of knowing for certain that nothing had changed, and never would – that filled me with the same paralysing fear that had kept me away from Rosewood for so long. When I was hundreds of miles away, there was still a chance that she might have forgiven me. Once I saw her again, whatever she felt was the truth, and I couldn’t spin it into possibilities any more.

And that idea frightened me more than anything.

I ached across the shoulders, and my eyes still felt gritty, but at least I was clean. Wrapping one towel around my hair and another around my body, I wiped beads of water away from my eyes and opened the bathroom door, letting the burst of steam obscure the alarming yellow of the bedroom walls.

My skin burned, and I knew I’d be bright pink from head to toe. I liked my showers hot – hot enough to leave me gasping for breath when I stepped out.

Pulling the towel from my head I shook my wet hair out across my shoulders, and clutched the towel around my body tighter as I crossed the room to open the balcony door. Fresh air filled my lungs as I stared out over the Rose Garden. Edward was there, I realised, his blonde head moving between the remaining blooms. Isabelle had been right; I did have a magnificent view of the Rose Garden. I felt I could almost reach out and pluck one from its stem.

Suddenly, something else in the garden caught my eye. Another figure, too pale in the sunlight. She seemed to move in a different plane to Edward, as she ran her hands over the decapitated rose bushes, as if to her they still bloomed.

Was it really the Rosewood ghost?

I leant further out across the balcony railing to get a better look, until a rush of cold air told me that my towel hadn’t leant with me. I grabbed for it, yanking it back up over my breasts, but not before Edward turned towards the house again.

Even at a distance, I could see the sardonic eyebrow he raised at my state of undress. Then he turned his gaze away and walked slowly towards the other gardens.