Sleeper’s Castle: An epic historical romance from the Sunday Times bestseller

She groped in her pocket and warily eyed the screen. To her relief it was her mother.

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘Have you arrived safely, darling? How is it going?’ Her mother was obviously outside in the garden of her home in Bosham in Sussex. She could hear the scream of seagulls in the background and the lonely whistle of an oystercatcher.

‘It’s fine. A lovely place, just as I remembered.’

‘And the cat?’

They had discussed the cat at length before Andy set off for Wales. Her mother’s cat was a wild, unsociable and slightly vicious Siamese whom her mother, unaccountably, doted on. He was the complete opposite of Culpepper in every way. ‘He’s enigmatic and I think a little puzzled as to why I am here. But he has graciously accepted all his meals so far.’

Her mother laughed. ‘That’s what matters. Have you stocked up with lots of food for you as well?’

‘Of course. And Sue has left me plenty of wine.’ Besides the two bottles on the dresser, Andy had found a wine rack in a pantry off the kitchen.

‘And you’re not going to be too lonely?’

Andy thought for a second before replying. ‘No. I’ve already met one neighbour who seems very nice. We had coffee in Hay together this morning, and there’s a gardener here as well.’ Her eye was caught by the sight of Bryn through the window. He was walking back to the bed where she had first accosted him. He began to fork the ground again and as she watched she saw Pepper reappear to sit in almost the identical spot on the path to watch him. ‘This house has a wonderful feel. I’m going to be very happy here.’ To her relief her mother didn’t ask about the gardener. They exchanged brief family news and then she hung up.

Andy did not find out what, if anything, Bryn did for lunch. After establishing that he was still digging round the back she opened the front door and went out to collect flowers from the front garden. Bringing them back indoors almost guiltily she put them in a glass and took them through to leave on the table. Later she would sketch them as an exorcism of the orchid period and a welcome to the new, wild, herbal Miranda Dysart experience. The thought of outwitting Bryn pleased her enormously. She doubted he would have minded her picking a few flowers, but she was not going to give him the chance to comment either way. He left at about five o’clock. She heard the engine of his van start up as she was sitting painting by the light of a powerful desk lamp which she had found in a corner of the room.

Bryn threw his tools into the back of his van, climbed in and sat back, closing his eyes with a sigh. Part of him had been dreading meeting the new tenant. He replayed his last conversation with Sue in his head. ‘OK. I’ve found someone to look after the house, so I’ll be off tomorrow.’ She had looked at him with a quizzical smile. ‘Now don’t you bully her,’ she said with feeling. ‘She’s been through a tough time. All she needs is peace and quiet.’

Bryn had given a snort of laughter. ‘Wrong place to come then, I would have thought.’

‘Yeah, well luckily you’re here to dig, not think!’ She had punched him affectionately on the arm. ‘Look after the place, Bryn.’

When he arrived this morning there had been no sign of a car outside the house and Bryn had felt his spirits rise. Perhaps the new tenant had not materialised after all. He had been hoping in a way he would find a message: Sorry, Bryn. She couldn’t make it. Can you look after Pepper. Obviously that wasn’t going to happen. When he had heard a car pull in later he had felt real disappointment. He studied Andy’s car thoughtfully. It was a dark blue VW Passat. At least ten years old. He sighed. Sue had given him nothing to go on. ‘Been through a tough time’ could mean anything. It was typical of her to give him the minimum of information. She wasn’t interested in the detail of people’s lives. He doubted if she even knew where he lived. She never asked questions, she gave instructions. In another person he might have assumed she was shy or maybe arrogant, but neither word applied to Sue. Single-minded described her best. She was focused. Small talk did not form part of her DNA, but that suited him. He had been through tough times too and a gossipy, gushing woman was the last thing he needed. He pictured the new arrival again. Appearing in the garden when he was digging over the beds she had given him a shock. She had moved quietly, almost creeping up on him. She was tall, slim, no, perhaps thin described her better; on the edge of gaunt. She was an attractive woman, or had been, her clothes casual, no make-up, her hair wild in the wind. He wondered why she was moving here to the deep country, seemingly alone.

She hadn’t pushed him for information, although he could see she was curious to know about him. How much had Sue told her? Probably nothing. Presumably they were both as in the dark as each other. He opened his eyes and stared ahead across the lane towards the hills, then with a sigh he reached forward and turned the ignition key.

Andy gave him ten minutes to drive down the lane and then cautiously went outside and checked the parking space. Her car was now alone. She felt an overwhelming sense of relief. The next hour she spent exploring the back garden, every inch of it. The terrace outside the back door sported huge tubs of rosemary and lemon verbena and scented geraniums, plants which she guessed would have to go into the greenhouse come the really cold weather. Beyond the terrace was the first of the patches of grass. The garden rose quite steeply behind the house, just as it fell away steeply in front. It was large, unorthodox, laid out to favour Sue’s herbs rather than any aesthetic plan. There were small areas of lawn and borders with what might be described as flowers rather than herbs, but on the whole the paths wound between islands of medicinal plants. The bed on which Bryn had been working was now neatly dug and raked. Other beds were obviously stock beds for herbs which Sue used often: marigolds, their flowers almost luminous in the fading light, and trimmed lavender. Beside these were more decorative beds, with old roses, and there was a vegetable garden, neat and well stocked. There were two sheds, one for garden tools and the other Sue’s drying shed. As she opened the door Andy was swamped with the rich scent of herbs. Bunches hung from lines of hooks on the ceiling and there were drying racks ranged against the walls. The racks were empty, but the hanging herbs looked fresh.

Culpepper accompanied her on her tour and she found herself addressing him again. ‘Look, I don’t want you telling him I came out the moment he had gone, do you understand? We’ll work something out once I know which days he comes.’ She stopped in her tracks. ‘Oh God, I hope he doesn’t come every day. That would be the pits!’

Culpepper did not reply.

Andy went indoors at last and, making herself some tea, sat at the kitchen table with a newspaper she had picked up in Hay that morning. Unexpectedly the aching loneliness that had overwhelmed her after Graham’s death began to envelop her again. It wasn’t being alone that she minded, it was being here without him. He would have loved the life here. He would have enjoyed every aspect of this house: the architecture, the history, the garden, even her discomfort with the presence of a gardener who, let’s face it, had intimidated her. He would have hooted with laughter and turned the whole episode into a huge joke.

Putting the paper down, she sat back in the chair and closed her eyes. Almost without realising it she found herself thinking again of Graham’s garden; their garden in Kew.

Rhona Wilson woke with a start. She was still sitting in her chair by the window but it had grown dark outside and she was very cold. She sat there, her head back against the cushions, trying to work out why she was there. She had been tidying the room, going through the drawers of Graham’s desk. She was a tall woman, well built, attractive still. She had looked after herself: her carmine-dyed hair cut into elfin spikes, which, satisfactorily, made her look years younger than her actual age; her manicured nails always immaculate; her complexion carefully preserved from the sunlight; her muscles toned from an hour a day at the gym. Why then did she feel so utterly exhausted and old? Then she remembered. She had been methodically going through his desk, pulling out drawer after drawer, staring at the contents, slowly allowing her rage to build. She remembered this desk. It had been given to them by her aunt shortly after they had married. She had thought of it as a hideous old-fashioned blot on the landscape. She hated old furniture. She wanted to fill their house with modern designer items which she had envisaged choosing with Graham on weekend forays to Habitat or Heal’s or even New York. They did weekend forays all right. To places like Stow-on-the-Wold and Burford, and they returned to Kew with car boots full of yet more ghastly old stuff which he crooningly referred to as antiques.

She had already had a man in from the auction house in Richmond. He had looked round at Graham’s stuff and almost visibly shuddered. ‘Brown furniture,’ he had said, as though it was contaminated with the plague. ‘Valuable once, but worth almost nothing these days, I’m afraid.’ She gave a grim smile, wishing Graham could have heard those words. How they would have annoyed and hurt him!

Their first quarrel had been over furniture, and probably their last as well. He would stroke it with those long sensitive fingers of his as though it was alive, touching it in a way he never touched her. ‘Think where this has been,’ he would say. ‘Think, Rhona, how many generations of people have sat at this desk and written down their thoughts and their dreams.’ She shivered at the memory. Well, that desk was due for a whole lot of new memories. When the auctioneer sent in his valuations she would tell him to take it away with all the other furniture, whatever it was worth. They could burn it for all she cared, as long as she was left with a clean, empty house. She hadn’t had any choice with buying the house either. Graham had inherited this large Edwardian monstrosity from an old aunt. However she shouldn’t complain too much about that now. The estate agent had told her the house was worth well over two million pounds. She licked her lips.

She had tipped the contents of the desk drawers out into a heap on the carpet and that was when she had grown so angry this afternoon. It was full of her stuff. Miranda’s. After all that, there was nothing of Graham’s in the desk to speak of. Her letters, her sketchbooks, her pencils. There were old lists, Christmas cards addressed to them both: Graham and Andy; Andy and Graham; Andy and G. Who the hell called him G? There was no trace of anything addressed to Graham and Rhona. Nothing of Rhona’s anywhere in the house. In her own mind she had blanked details of the day long ago when she had walked out on her husband. In her mind she had elided the years of absence into a monochrome period of loss and mourning for a marriage which had in reality gone sour soon after it had begun – and who was going to contradict her now, when she claimed to be the grieving widow, wronged and cheated by the bitch of a mistress?

Since she had left, Graham had converted the top floor of the house into his office. It was a large room, with windows facing both directions, always full of light. In there, strangely, he did have modern furniture. A serviceable desk, bookshelves, a large table covered in neatly arranged piles of papers and proofs, large old books, too large for the shelves, full of hand-coloured plates of flowers and plants, which the auctioneer said might be worth a bit. He would need to bring in an expert to look at those, he had said. Books were not his speciality. She – Miranda – had a studio on the first floor. Again, a large room, with double aspect. She had taken most of her paints and stuff when she had left. Rhona and Michelle could see they were not worth anything on their own. The drawings and paintings for his book she had left behind and Rhona had told his publisher to come and take them away. A girl had come and collected them, tight-lipped and barely polite as she went methodically through the portfolios and shelves, separating each illustration with sheets of tissue as though they were something infinitely valuable and special. Rhona shuddered at the memory and glanced down at the heap of stuff on the floor. She planned to burn it all.

With a groan she hauled herself up out of the chair and walked over to the window, raising her hands to draw the curtains against the dark. It was then that she froze. There was a bright half-moon in the sky and the garden was flooded with light. A figure was standing on the grass again, staring at the house. It was a woman; at first she couldn’t see her clearly. A tall, slim figure, a tangle of unkempt hair. How the hell had she got in? Rhona was sure she had bolted the side gate. Overwhelmed with anger, she turned and ran through to the dining room. Fumbling with the key she pulled open the French doors and ran out onto the veranda. ‘What are you doing here? Who are you? Get out!’ she screamed. Her whole body was suffused with rage. The doors swinging behind her, she leaned over the wrought-iron railings, her knuckles white as she gripped the icy metal and scanned the garden below her. There was no sign of anyone. The garden was empty, the grass, wet with dew, showed no footmarks in the moonlight.

Andy pulled herself out of her reverie, startled. The telephone was ringing. She groped in her pocket for her mobile and then realised it was the landline.

Sian had come up with a plan for a dinner party. ‘On Friday, if that suits you. I’m asking a few people who I think you would like.’

Replacing the receiver, Andy smiled. The cat flap rattled and Pepper appeared. She was no longer alone.

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