Kingdom of Shadows. Barbara Erskine

      ‘Radiant?’ Henry echoed. ‘She’s not – that is, you’re not – I mean, I know she hoped –’ He floundered to a standstill, embarrassed.

      Paul frowned. He closed his eyes for a moment as a wave of anger and despair swept over him. ‘If the word you’re looking for is pregnant, the answer is no. She’s not.’

      Clare had arrived in London late that morning. She drove straight to their house on Campden Hill. Easing the Jaguar into a parking space in the narrow street, she climbed out and stood for a moment looking up at the house front. It was a pretty, white-painted Regency cottage, hung with clematis. In front of it there was a small paved area, starkly bare save for an Italian stone urn which contained an ornamental bay tree and two large terracotta pots overflowing with geraniums and lobelia. Letting herself into the hall she paused and listened. She had left Casta at Bucksters with Sarah Collins, otherwise the small elegant rooms would have been filled immediately with bouncing, grinning retriever. Without Casta the house felt very quiet and empty, but London was no place really for such an energetic animal, not when she could stay at home with Sarah whom she adored almost as much as she loved her mistress.

      Shutting the door behind her Clare carried her case straight upstairs to the main bedroom and hung up her dress for the Guildhall, then she made her way back downstairs. She was exhausted by the long drive and there were dark rings under her eyes.

      She had had the nightmare again last night, waking at three in the morning to the sound of her own screams.

      It was the third time in as many weeks. Again and again the dream had come back since she had gone to Duncairn in June, as if somehow that lonely ruin had stirred some sleeping demon in her brain. If only Aunt Margaret were there. She had understood. Once, when Clare was a child, they had talked about the dream. Clare, tearful, and shaking after it had come again, had run, not to her mother’s bed – Archie had long ago forbidden that – but to Margaret Gordon’s, snuggling into her great aunt’s arms in the four-poster in her room in the cold north wing at Airdlie. ‘One day I’ll explain, Clare,’ Margaret had whispered. ‘Dear God, the nightmare is mine, not yours! You shouldn’t have to suffer it as well. Be brave, my child. Remember, morning always comes, the sun returns, and it will stop. I promise, one day it will stop.’

      And for several years it had not returned. Not until that midsummer night at the Duncairn Hotel; since then she had had it four times, and then again, last night.

      As she sat up in bed trembling Clare had heard the creak of floorboards on the landing. She held her breath, desperately trying to calm herself, praying it wasn’t Sarah coming down from her top-floor flat, but the urgent scratching at the door, followed by a pleading little yelp, reassured her.

      She shot out of bed and ran to let Casta in, flinging her arms around the dog’s neck as she wept into the thick golden fur. She had spent the rest of the night with the light on, the dog lying next to her on the bed.

      Paul rang her at the house in Campden Hill just after lunch. ‘I thought I’d see if you’d arrived safely,’ he said. His voice was strained. ‘What sort of journey did you have?’

      ‘Tiring.’ She was sitting at the Queen Anne bureau in the front room. ‘I left later than I meant to, so the traffic was bad. Where shall we meet this evening?’

      They talked almost as strangers these days. Polite – there had been no more quarrels – but slightly distant, as though those unpremeditated words hurled at each other in the bedroom of the Edinburgh hotel had unlocked some secret hostility which neither had recognised before, and which they were both terrified they might let loose again. Even the intimacy of the visits to the doctor, and the terrible embarrassing tests and all that went with them, had been conducted on a strangely impersonal level.

      ‘Why don’t you come to the bank at about six, and we’ll go on from here, then I’ll take you out to dinner afterwards, if you like.’ Suddenly Paul was sounding more relaxed.

      Clare brightened. ‘I would like that, darling.’

      ‘Good. By the way, John Stanford rang yesterday with the results of our tests. They all proved normal. And I agree with him, now, that we should leave things there. Give it a rest. Leave it up to chance. Stop worrying. Forget about doctors. Forget about having a baby. Let the whole thing go, now. Get on with our lives.’

      ‘But, Paul –’

      ‘No, I mean it, Clare. This has all been too much strain on you. I don’t want you cracking up. I don’t even want to discuss it any more, do you understand? We have both been in danger of becoming obsessed by the subject, so let us drop it for good. No babies. No children. I’ve come to think we’d be happier without them in the long run anyway.’ His voice tightened. ‘Right? Now, I’ll see you later, and we’ll have a pleasant evening without that subject hanging over us. Agreed?’

      It was only after she had hung up that it dawned on her to wonder if he had sounded slightly drunk.

      Carefully she unpacked the candle and set it on the floor of the bedroom. A bath, then half an hour’s meditation would restore her energy before she changed for the reception. She walked into the bathroom and threw open the window. It looked out on to the tiny garden with its trellised roses and mossy paving stones. One or two rather dog-eared blooms still clung to the wall below the window-sill.

      Turning on the bath water she tipped in some essence, then she stepped in, lay back and, closing her eyes, she thought about Paul.

      He very seldom drank. Unlike his two brothers who were men who indulged their appetites, if not to excess then at least without too much soul-searching, Paul had an almost ascetic approach to food and drink. In spite of this, however, he was a large man – all three Royland brothers were tall and broad-shouldered – but unlike the other two his late thirties had not produced a paunch or a thickening of the flesh. She couldn’t believe he had been drinking. Of course it was hard to tell, sometimes, over the telephone. Perhaps it was euphoria because the tests had proved normal after all their worries. If so, she desperately hoped it would last.

      Drying herself slowly, Clare wandered back into the bedroom. The room was hot and stuffy after the country in spite of all the open windows, but at least she was alone. She had to admit that the presence of Sarah Collins, constantly tip-toeing around the old Suffolk farmhouse, got on her nerves. She longed to be alone – really alone. To be able to do what she wanted, to strip off her clothes and run down to the pool or anywhere else in the house naked if she chose. Just to be relaxed.

      She dropped the towel now and stood in front of the long mirror scrutinising her figure critically. At twenty-eight, ten years younger than her husband, she was as slim and taut as she had been when she was eighteen.

      She lit the candle solemnly and raised her arms as Zak had told her, to signal the start of her meditation. Then slowly she sank down into the half-lotus position.

      She had written back to the solicitor the afternoon before, a considered, firm letter in the end, politely informing him that Duncairn was not, and never would be, for sale, and she had driven into Dedham with it and caught the evening post. As far as she was concerned the matter was closed. Duncairn was safe. Her haven, her refuge. As Zak had promised, the problem, once faced, had gone away.

      For a moment, on the brink of closing her eyes, she hesitated. Her last visualisation of Duncairn hadn’t been as she intended. It had brought back unbidden memories of Midsummer’s Day. She shivered. That experience she did not want to relive. This time she would be more careful. She would picture the moors beyond the castle and perhaps, if she concentrated, she could summon Isobel back, the Isobel of Aunt Margaret’s stories … The Isobel who had been the heroine of all her daydreams as a child; her imaginary playmate in her loneliness. Carefully she began to construct a picture in her mind of the moor near the castle as she had seen it so often when she was a child. She saw the blaze of heather beneath the torrid sky and the hills, misty in the distance. Overhead, slowly rising on the invisible spirals of the wind a buzzard was mewing, the lonely call echoing across the moorland. She could feel the sun on her back, smell the soft honey of the wild thyme and moss, even hear the gentle