The Secret Wife: A captivating story of romance, passion and mystery. Gill Paul

as if the forest had created a cocoon to protect it from the elements. Weeds wrapped themselves around the foundations, pushed in through broken windows and formed a carpet over the roof. The entrance was barely visible through a mass of twisted greenery. But the cabin’s location, nestled on a gentle slope just yards from the pebbly shore, was stunning.

      She walked over to look more closely. A jetty sticking out into the lake had long since collapsed, leaving a few forlorn struts. A sapling had grown up through the four or five steps to the cabin’s porch, causing them to buckle and snap, and its roots tangled through the fractured wood like a nest of snakes. But the corrugated steel roof appeared to have stayed watertight, protecting the walls beneath. ‘Concrete foundations,’ she noted.

      Treading with care, Kitty climbed onto the porch, where rusty chains hanging from the ceiling and some fractured planks on the floor indicated there had once been a swing seat. She imagined her great-grandfather sitting there, looking out at the view, perhaps with a beer in his hand. Pushing aside the foliage, she reached the cabin door and found it wasn’t locked. Inside it was dim and musty, with a smell of damp mushrooms and old wood. Dust motes danced in shafts of light pouring through gaps in the creepers. When her eyes adjusted, Kitty saw there was one large room with a rusty stove, an old iron bed topped by a mouldy mattress, a wooden desk, and heaps of rubbish everywhere: yellowed newspapers, ancient cans of food and a pair of perished rubber galoshes.

      She stepped carefully across the room. Through a doorway there was a bathroom with a stained tub, basin and toilet; a cobweb-covered shaving brush nestled on a shelf. To her astonishment, the toilet flushed when she pulled the handle, and after a low creaking sound dark water came out of the tap. She guessed they must be hooked up to a water source on the hill behind and that there was a below-ground septic tank, but it must be at least thirty years since that tank was last emptied.

      She turned back into the bed-cum-sitting room and walked around, checking the condition of the walls and ceiling. Thankfully the floor held firm underfoot. She reckoned she could even stay the night once she’d cleared the rubble and torn back the jungle to let in some air.

      Out on the porch she took in the view. A couple of silver birch trees stood between her and the beach, which was lapped by tiny waves. No signs of human habitation were visible, and no traffic sound intruded; the opposite shore about a mile away was thick with forest. It was just her and the trees and the lake, and it was glorious.

      Kitty walked back to the car to retrieve her bags and drag them down the track, flattening the grass in her wake. She ate a salt beef and gherkin sandwich from the selection she had bought at the airport, drank a can of Seven-Up, then donned some sturdy gloves to start tearing at the creepers that smothered her cabin. Already it felt like hers, she noted. Already she was falling in love with it.

      One of the plants was what she and her school friends called ‘sticky willy’. They used to try and stick it on each other’s backs without being noticed. Another type of creeper filled the air with spores that tickled the back of her throat. She was careful not to let any leaves touch her skin because she knew they had poison ivy in America but she wasn’t sure what it looked like. A swarm of tiny black flies rose into the air and floated away in the breeze. She worked with grim determination, hoping that by totally exhausting her muscles she could quell the panicky thoughts that clamoured in her brain. Don’t think about Tom. Stop thinking. She had brought her mobile phone and laptop through force of twenty-first-century habit, but both were switched off. She couldn’t bear to listen to his excuses and self-justifications, simply didn’t want to deal with any of it.

      When she had yanked back most of the overgrowth, she saw that the weathered wooden slats made the cabin look like an organic part of the wooded landscape. Despite having just one room it was big, perhaps twenty feet long, with windows all around, and the sloping roof had a little chimney sticking out. She went inside again and loaded debris into some heavy-duty bin bags she’d brought along, stopping to read a few yellowed news headlines: the accident at the Chernobyl power plant in Russia; the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle. The springs on the bed had long gone, so she hauled it outside to dispose of later then unrolled the sleeping bag she had brought and spread it in one corner.

      By the time she finished, the sun was lowering over the lake and birds were squawking loudly, expending their final burst of energy for the day. She went to sit on the porch to listen. A whip-poor-will called, and it sounded for all the world like a wolf whistle. Shadowy bats zipped by, and frogs croaked in the distance.

      Suddenly she saw something glint under the fractured wood of the steps, nestled amongst the tree roots. She lay down full length stretching her arm to grasp it and was immediately surprised by the weight of the object. She pulled it out and saw it was a golden oval, less than an inch long, studded with tiny coloured jewels – blue, pink and amber – set within swirls of gold tendrils, like flowers on a vine. It looked expensive. On the back she could make out some scratched engraving but it had been rubbed away over the years. There was a hole in the top and she assumed it had been threaded on a chain. Someone must have been upset to lose such a stunning pendant. She’d never seen anything quite like it.

      Kitty slipped it deep into the pocket of her jeans and opened another airport sandwich, turkey and salad this time. She ate it for supper, washed down with a miniature bottle of Chenin Blanc she’d brought from the plane, as she sat with her legs dangling off the edge of the porch. In front of her, the trees swayed in a slight breeze and the smooth surface of the lake reflected the dramatic colours of the sky, changing from pale pink to mauve to gold and then bronze, as vivid and surreal as the painted opening title shots of a Hollywood movie.

       Chapter One

       Tsarskoe Selo, Russia, September 1914

      Dmitri Malama drifted to consciousness from a deep slumber, vaguely aware of murmuring voices and the whisper of a cool breeze on his face. He had a filthy headache, a nagging, gnawing pain behind the temples, which was aggravated by the brightness of the light. Suddenly he remembered he was in a hospital ward. He’d been brought there the previous evening and the last thing he recalled was a nurse giving him laudanum swirled in water.

      And then he remembered his leg: had they amputated it in the night? Ever since he’d been injured at the front he’d lived in fear that infection would set in and he would lose it. He opened his eyes and raised himself onto his elbows to look: there were two shapes. He flicked back the sheet and was hugely relieved to see his left leg encased in bandages but still very much present. He wiggled his toes to check then sank onto the pillow again, trying to ignore the different kinds of pain from his leg, his head and his gut.

      At least he had two legs. Without them he could no longer have served his country. He’d have been sent home to live with his mother and father, fit for nothing, a pitiful creature hobbling along on a wooden stump.

      ‘You’re awake. Would you like something to eat?’ A dumpy nurse with the shadow of a moustache sat by his bed and, without waiting for an answer, offered a spoonful of gruel. His stomach heaved and he turned his head away. ‘Very well, I’ll come back later,’ she said, touching his forehead briefly with cool fingers.

      He closed his eyes and drifted into a half dream state. He could hear sounds in the ward around him but his head was heavy as lead, his thoughts a jumble of images: of the war, of his friend Malevich shot and bleeding on the grass, of his sisters, of home.

      In the background he heard the tinkle of girlish laughter. It didn’t sound like the plain nurse who had tended him earlier. He opened his eyes slightly and saw the tall, slender shapes of two young nurses in glowing white headdresses and long shapeless gowns. If he’d just awoken for the first time in that place, he might have feared he had died and was seeing angels.

      ‘I know you,’ one of the angels said, gliding over to his bedside. ‘You were in the imperial guard at the Peterhof Palace. Weren’t you the one who dived into the sea to rescue a dog?’

      Her voice was low and