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

kitchen had more or less matched the living room. Used. Scruffy. Barely, to be honest, even remotely hygienic. She remembered the ever-watchful cat strolling along the worktop to lick the butter when someone left the top off the dish, and Sue laughing at Andy’s consternation when the same dish turned up on the table at lunch. But now it had all changed. Sue’s kitchen had transformed, to Andy’s astonishment and disbelief, into the epitome of every woman’s dream. There was a butler’s sink with brass taps, a large scrubbed refectory table and, joy of joys, an Aga like the one she and Graham had had in his kitchen in Kew, with next to it, a rocking chair, the only concession to comfort in the room and on the chair a large tabby cat.

      ‘Hello, Pepper,’ she said. Pepper, short for Culpepper, the herbalist.

      He narrowed his eyes briefly then closed them, his expression bored but proprietorial. She got the message at once. His chair, his kitchen, his Aga.

      She smiled as she walked slowly round the table, admiring every detail. On the dresser were two bottles of Merlot with a note.

       To be taken x 2 daily with food. Enjoy. Sue xxxxx

      It took several trips to drag her belongings up the steep steps from the car. Rhona’s family had not been interested in her clothes, or the books she had time to rescue or, in the end, most of her painting gear. She had little jewellery, but what there was – seeing which way the wind was blowing – she had hidden in a flower pot, to be tipped later straight into the boot of her car, and after that into a drawer in her mother’s house. Only two or three of those pretty things had been gifts from Graham; he didn’t see the point of jewellery when a live flower tucked into Andy’s hair was so much more perfect. The rest of the rings and bangles had come from her family, but she doubted the Wilson clique would listen and believe her.

      ‘Go to the police!’ her friends had said, or ‘For God’s sake find a solicitor,’ but she had shrugged and shaken her head and now, please God, hidden away here in the Welsh borders she would at last be free of Rhona and her family. Only three people knew where she was and they had sworn to keep her secret: her mother, obviously, and two of the friends who had come to her rescue, James Allardyce, a former university pal of Graham’s, and his wife, her former school friend, Hilary, to whom Andy had introduced him. Oh, and her father, but he lived far away in Northumberland.

      The thought of her mother and father sent her reaching into her pocket for her mobile but then she pushed it back. She was on her own. This was her new life. She had promised the others she would stay in touch, but she was not going to ring the second she got here. She had to establish herself, make herself at home and somehow retrieve her confidence and her sense of identity. The unaccustomed and overwhelming wave of happiness and relief that had swept over her on her arrival had been a first step in the right direction.

      Andy’s full name was Miranda Annabel Dysart. Don’t Go out of Sight, Miranda had apparently been the title of one of her grandmother, Petra’s, favourite books and when her mother, Nina, was a child, Petra had read it to her repeatedly. Nina had in turn read it to her daughter after saddling her with the name of the heroine. Andy couldn’t remember the story at all – maybe she had blocked it, but the name Miranda had left her with a sense of overwhelming melancholy. Not a good reason to endear it to her. Someone at school had named her Andy (after experimenting with Mandy and, even more unfortunately, Randy) and it stuck. She liked it. And so did her father. It was a neutral name, slightly ambiguous, rugged. Strong. It distracted people from the fact that her initials spelt MAD, something which her scatty parents had not considered at her christening but which mercifully she had learned to enjoy.

      She couldn’t remember either the time her parents had split up. It had been while she was very small and they seemed to have managed it without rancour or complications. They had remained friends as far as she, their only child, could tell. Her mother lived in Sussex, her father, long ago remarried and father to three more children, had settled in Northumberland. Perhaps the distance between the two counties made it easier for them.

      The knock at the back door took her by surprise. She had just poured herself a glass of wine as prescribed and was wandering round the kitchen, finding her way around, touching things lightly, proprietorially, opening and shutting drawers, shuffling through the books on the dresser – all cookery or herbs – when the sound broke the intense silence of the house.

      Nervously she glanced at the cat. He hadn’t moved. If this was an unexpected or threatening sound surely, like her mother’s cat, he would have bolted off upstairs to hide. She set down the glass and went to the door.

      The woman on the step was of middle height, slim, middle-aged, she guessed, with a rugged wind-burned complexion and greying hair. She was wearing a heavy pullover against the autumn chill and muddy rubber boots with shabby cords. She stared at Andy in surprise. ‘Sue around?’

      ‘She left for the airport a couple of hours ago. I’m sorry.’

      The woman sighed.‘Ah, I saw her car wasn’t there. Australia, right? Hell and damnation! I hoped she wasn’t going for a while yet.’ She half turned away, staring up at the racing clouds as though seeking inspiration, then turned back. ‘I don’t suppose she left anything for me, did she?’

      ‘You being …?’ Andy let the question hang.

      For the first time her visitor smiled. She held out her hand. ‘I’m Sian. Sian Griffiths.’ In spite of the Welsh name her accent was English. She paused as though expecting the name to mean something. ‘I live over in Cusop Dingle.’

      ‘Ah?’

      Cusop Dingle, Andy remembered vaguely from their holiday, was a narrow, thickly wooded valley to the east of the range of hills where Sleeper’s Castle nestled, separated from it by a high ridge and then a vertiginous plunge down to a fast-running brook. It was on the outskirts of the nearest town, Hay-on-Wye, and seemed to consist of a long winding country road, heading up towards the open hillside and lined with houses, a few of them large, secluded behind high hedges and ancient trees. They had visited someone there with Sue on that wonderful summer holiday, but not, as far as she could remember, this woman.

      ‘Come in.’ Introducing herself, Andy held the door open.

      Kicking off her boots and leaving them outside, Sian accepted a glass of wine and pulled up a chair at the table.

      ‘I’d better explain,’ Andy said, reassured that Pepper seemed to know her visitor and had still not moved from his chair. ‘This was a last-minute piece of serendipity. As you probably know, Sue hadn’t found a tenant and was beginning to think she would have to cancel her trip, and I was in need of a roof. I’m self-employed with no immediate ties …’ Her voice wavered but she managed to go on. Just give enough information to explain her presence here, no more. ‘We made a lightning decision. I didn’t give myself time to think.’

      ‘Brave.’

      Now she was inside and sitting opposite her, Andy could see that the woman was probably in her mid to late fifties, older than she had first thought. Her face was weathered with deep laughter lines at the corners of her eyes, eyes that were bright Siamese-cat blue. ‘I’ll leave you my phone number,’ she said. ‘If you need anything, you have only to ring. This house is pretty isolated if you’re on your own. Your nearest shops and signs of civilisation are in Hay, did she tell you? You’ll get most things you need there.’

      ‘I’m looking forward to exploring.’ Andy took a sip of wine. ‘I have been here before, for a holiday. But it was in the summer.’

      Andy had a momentary flashback to those warm, seemingly endless days strolling on the hills and mountains, happy evenings in local pubs, excursions down into the local market town of Hay, attractive, compact, famous for its bookshops and its castle and of course for the majestic, beautiful River Wye which cradled it in a constantly changing backdrop. It had been a glorious summer.

      Now it was late September, with winter already a hint in the air, and she was on her own. She didn’t say it out loud. It made her sound pathetic and needy, which she was not. She glanced towards the window