Glittering Fortunes. Victoria Fox

spoke volumes. Susanna remembered a drunken litany he had delivered last year.

      The golden boy isn’t so golden now, is he? If Daddy could see what a failure he’s become, then he’d come running. He’d come begging me for the money: he’d pay me some attention, then, wouldn’t he?

      It was a shame there had been such a spectacular falling-out over supper. Cato had been in a black mood when they’d returned, tossing her to the floor, unbuckling his trousers and demanding sex. Any other time she would have been desperately turned on by it, but tonight she had felt too queasy.

      She hoped he wasn’t sulking. She vowed to compensate for it with an early morning blowjob, provided her gag reflex had settled by then.

      With any luck the party would get things back on track, Susanna decided, and as she envisaged the revelry, the paupers’ gasps as they were led into the ballroom (which despite its raggedness was clearly where they had to have it) and the creativity she could unleash on the decorating process, she instantly felt better. Parties brought people together, didn’t they? Perhaps Cato and Charlie could use it as a bridge over their troubles, rendering Susanna not just a consummate hostess but also a saintly peacemaker, like Jesus, or the Pope, or a far younger and hotter Mother Teresa.

      She was considering how this unification might also prompt Cato into the long-awaited proposal when she heard a short, high-pitched yelp coming from the far reaches of the house. Or had it come from outside? She couldn’t tell.

      Her heart thundered in her chest. It came again, this time a prolonged whinny.

       What was that?

      Susanna gripped the bed-sheets. She listened for it, and where first there was silence she began to detect a thin moaning sound, high and reedy, almost a wail.

      Her eyes were big as saucers. Her psychic in LA had promised her that this month would be spiritually fertile. Was she tuning into the desperate, drowning cries of a poor servant girl as she sobbed through the house of the dead?

      Susanna gasped. Her eyes darted to the clock at her bedside, half expecting it to leap up and fling itself in her face because who was to say this wasn’t a poltergeist? Her ears searched for the sound, honing it to a pinpoint then just when she’d captured it away it would fly, offering up a moment’s respite before resuming its grisly song.

      Perhaps it was the wind, a pesky current whistling through the deserted wings.

      Perhaps it was a television, or a radio—? No, it was closer than that.

      Perhaps it was a creaky floorboard …

      That some heinous phantom was stepping on!

      Her chest was about to blow open with all the blood that was hammering through it. She watched the door, convinced the handle was about to turn. Tentatively she extracted herself from the bed, the pains in her stomach all but eclipsed in the shadow of her fear. Her hand was like snow in the darkness, reaching for the door, disembodied as if it didn’t belong to her at all.

      On the landing she backed up, forced to choke on her scream when a dour life-sized painting of one of Cato’s grandfathers assailed her vision from the top of the stairs. She crept down the passage, the yowling getting closer. The hall flickered uncertainly, a rich wood smell where the old panels seeped their age; and the framed ancestry of Lomaxes-past lined the walls, expressions shifting and melting in the gloom. Barefoot she padded among their watchful stares, the spectre at the feast.

      A ticking clock matched her steps. By the time she reached the winding steps she dared not look behind her.

      Here she could tune in to it more cleanly. It was a definite, protracted sigh, punctuated by an occasional whimper, and as Susanna tiptoed closer she swore the pattern was getting faster, the wailing higher, breaking momentarily into a screech, before a series of great sobs erupted, one after the other, an agony of ecstasy …

      Abruptly, it stopped.

      So did she. A chill prickled up the back of her neck and she knew then, absolutely knew, that she wasn’t alone. Her lips went dry and she gulped, swallowing the lump in her throat like a ball of cotton wool.

      Too afraid to turn for fear of meeting the presence at her shoulder, Susanna reversed down the corridor, hands flailing behind her, fingertips exploring the unseen, and when she met the rough wood of her bedroom door she whipped it open and dived inside, slamming it shut and flinging herself into the safety of the bed.

      It was ages before she got any sleep. Some time later she was distantly aware of Cato climbing in beside her, and bewilderedly she reached for him, content to encounter his solid, reassuring bulk. Only then did she drift into dreams.

CHAPTER TEN

      THE MORNING AFTER Saffron on the Sea, Olivia arrived at Usherwood early. The calm, quiet hours she spent in the gardens were a far cry from the hectic pace of city life, squashed in on the rush-hour tube or queuing for sandwiches in a café on Holborn, and while she was still hoping to get enough cash together by the end of the month to put down a deposit on a flat, she had to admit that being back at the cove was making her happy. With every day that passed she felt herself growing calmer, more centred and more like her old self—and she’d started drawing again.

      ‘Something’s got you inspired,’ Florence had commented at the weekend as Olivia had torn yet another page from her sketchbook. ‘Or should I say someone?’

      ‘Whatever, Mum.’

      ‘I’m just saying …’

      ‘Well, don’t.’

      The last thing she needed was another lecture about Addy. It was so annoying!

      Why did everyone feel the need to get involved in her love life? No wonder she hadn’t brought home either of the guys she’d dated in London, if this was the kind of interrogation they’d face. She ignored the voice that suggested it was because one had been a stoner who spent his entire time ‘gaming’ with nine-year-olds in Japan, while the other’s name had been Nimrod—he was Jewish, though, to be fair.

      There was a mountain of weeding to be done and Olivia wanted to plant the geranium seeds before lunch. Her mother had given her a box of vegetable roots from the allotment and made her swear to ask Mr Lomax about them. All that space and he hasn’t got room for potatoes? Florence had wedged the crate into her pannier.

      Olivia wasn’t sure what Charlie had room for in his life. He was perpetually indifferent. He never spoke to her. He never looked at her. He never touched her. Not that she wanted him to touch her, but just little things, like when he came to check on her progress and she held out a bulb, plump as a miniature gourd and gritty with soil, and he would never take it from her. Or if Barbara gave her a cup of tea to bring to him and he would never accept it directly, just keep on with whatever he was doing and wait for Olivia to leave it there, offering only a curt and dismissive, ‘Thank you.’ Or when she’d tripped one day in the Sundial Garden, putting out her hands to break her fall, and he could easily have caught her, but he hadn’t.

      He seemed to go out of his way to escape having any kind of contact with her. If she had been the sensitive type, it might have upset her, but it wasn’t her business to dwell on the reasons for his withdrawal and so she didn’t bother taking it to heart. She didn’t like him, so there was only so far she could bring herself to care.

      ‘Breakfast!’ Barbara’s call travelled across from the house.

      Olivia dusted off her knees, waving over the top of the wall to indicate that she’d heard. The orange bricks were mapped with vines that were brittle with age and perishing in the heat—climbing rose and wisteria and clematis, once upon a time—and the soil beds were crusted with earth, their borders collapsing. Beaten gravel paths ran towards a central kidney-shaped plot that years ago would have bragged an abundance of colour, azaleas, rhododendrons, fragrant lavender, but now was obscured in a burst