Czytaj książkę: «The Ghost Tree»

Prologue

Thomas

‘It is ordained that when we die and travel forward on our journey, we forget our previous lives. But sometimes they linger at the fringe of consciousness and sometimes we are forced to remember by the curiosity of others. No man is an island, the poet said, and it is axiomatic that what some prefer to keep hidden, others wish to expose.

‘And so one life in particular I recall now, a life like all lives filled with joy and sadness in equal measure, a life of ambition and fame but also of concern and care for the rights and miseries of my fellow men and women, and a life blighted in part by my own foolishness, a life whose danger I bequeathed unknowing to those who came after me.

‘We were a large family and an affectionate one, a family imbued with the Christian principles of generations, but there is still much to explore for the diligent burrower after secrets and there is danger there, not of my making, but instilled by the intentions of others for good – also for evil.

‘My forefathers came to me with warnings; I heard them but I did not always heed. I now realise how great must have been their anguish as they battered upon my consciousness and I raced on without pausing to listen. I learned but it was hard and it was dangerous.

‘It is not within my power to do more than warn those who meddle with what is past; I can only speak to those who listen.

‘I am watching over you, child of my children, but if you fail to hear my warnings, or choose not to heed them, I can do nothing to save you …’

1

1760

Scampering down the steep, echoing spiral stair, the small boy dragged open the heavy door and peered out into the close. In his family’s airy flat on the top floor of the tenement it was still daylight, the south-facing windows lit by the last rays of the setting sun. Down here, where the tall grey buildings closed in to shut out the light, it was almost dark. He closed the door behind him, careful to lower the latch silently so the clunk of metal on metal did not echo up the stone stairway, then he skipped across the yard to the archway that led out into the High Street.

He knew he was forbidden to come out by himself. He knew the crowded streets were full of potential danger for a ten-year-old boy on his own. He didn’t care. He was bored. His mother thought he was studying his books, his father was closeted in his study and his brothers and sisters, all older by far than himself, were busy about their own business. Out here on the streets of Edinburgh it was noisy, busy and exciting. He looked this way and that, hesitating for only a moment, then he ran out into the crowds where the din was overwhelming. Music spilled out from a tavern nearby; people were shouting, the sound of hooves echoed back and forth from the walls as did the rattle of wheels on the rough cobbles that paved the narrow street.

He headed up the hill towards St Giles’ kirk and the tempting range of shops and booths nestling against its northern walls, and was gazing longingly into the bowed window of a pie shop when a fight broke out only feet from him, the two men shouting at each other quickly surrounded by crowds, yelling at them, cheering them on. The quarrel grew more heated, blows were exchanged, then one of the men drew a dirk. Thomas barely saw what happened next but he heard the gasp of the crowd as the blade found its mark, saw both men hesitate, seemingly equally appalled, as the ribald comments from the onlookers died away and fell silent and the shorter of the men slumped slowly to his knees and then forward onto his face. Thomas saw the scarlet stain spreading down the man’s jacket and onto the cobbles as he fell, his face contorted with pain as he gave a final spasm and then lay still.

The crowd scattered, leaving Thomas staring at the slumped figure. Seeing the little boy standing there alone, a woman turned and grabbed his arm, dragging him away. After a moment’s hesitation he followed her, too shocked to protest, turning to look over his shoulder at the body lying motionless on the ground as the rain began to fall. Someone had summoned the Town Guard. He heard a whistle and angry shouts. It was too late. The killer had vanished into the network of alleyways beyond the kirk.

As he watched, the boy saw the shadow of the dead man rise up and stand looking down at his own body. He held out his hands in a pathetic, futile gesture of protest, then he looked up. Thomas thought he saw the man’s eyes seeking his own, pleading, before he faded slowly away.

He stood watching for one horrified second, then he turned and ran, ducking out of reach of the woman’s motherly grasp, dodging through the crowds back down the street towards the safety of Gray’s Close. He reached the familiar shadows of the entry, hurtling in, away from the horrors of the scene behind him, crossing the rain-slippery cobbles, desperate to get home. Fumbling with the latch he pushed the heavy door open, pausing in the impenetrable darkness at the foot of the stairwell, trying to get his breath, tears pouring down his face, before heading up the long steep spiral stairs. On, he went, his small feet pounding up the worn stone steps, on and on, up and up …

Ruth Dunbar woke with a start, staring into the blackness of the bedroom in her father’s Edinburgh house, grasping for the dream, still feeling the little boy’s terror as he ran, still seeing the drama unfold, raising her eyes in her dream from the body lying in the dark street to the shadowed grey walls, the crowds, illuminated so dramatically by the flaming torch held in the raised hand of a bystander, her gaze travelling on up to the great crown steeple of St Giles’, starkly unmistakable halfway down Edinburgh’s spine, silhouetted against the last crimson streaks of the stormy sunset.

She hugged her pillow to her, her breath steadying slowly as her eyes closed again.

In the morning she would remember nothing of the dream. Only much later would it surface to haunt her.

2

The Present Day

‘Presumably you’re going to sell the house?’ Harriet Jervase sat back on the sofa and studied her friend Ruth’s face.

There was an almost tangible silence in the room and then, clearly audible, footsteps moving softly through the hallway outside and up the stairs.

Ruth put her finger to her lips and stood up. Tiptoeing to the door, she pulled it open. The hall was empty, crepuscular beneath the high ceiling of the staircase well. She reached for the light switch. The austere hanging lamp with its faded shade threw an awkward cold light which left shadows over the turns in the staircase. Upstairs she heard the sound of a door closing.

She went back into the living room. ‘That man gives me the creeps,’ she said, throwing herself down in her chair again. ‘He was listening at the door, I’m sure he was.’

‘Why don’t you tell him to go?’ Harriet was Ruth’s oldest friend. The two women had been at school together and had remained in touch over the years since. To Ruth, the only child of comparatively elderly parents, Harriet had been the nearest thing to a sibling. It was a given that she would have come up to Edinburgh for Ruth’s father’s funeral.

‘I can’t just throw him out. He was so kind to Dad.’

The presence of Timothy Bradford in the house had been an unwelcome surprise when she arrived. He appeared to have been staying there for some time, very much at home.

‘Have you asked him what his plans are?’

Ruth shook her head. ‘It’s too soon.’

‘No, it’s not.’ Harriet’s voice was crisp. ‘He’s obviously not going to go until you say something.’ She gave Ruth a quizzical glance. ‘I know you feel you should have come up here sooner when your dad fell ill, but be honest, Ruth, he didn’t tell you there was a problem; you came as soon as you knew. And if Timothy was comfortable looking after him, that was his choice. On his own admission, your dad has given him free bed and board in Edinburgh for months, but it’s over now. Whatever you decide to do with the house, he has to go.’

‘You’re right,’ Ruth agreed gloomily.

‘Do you want me to tell him?’

‘No!’ Ruth was shocked. ‘No, of course not.’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’ll do it tomorrow after you’ve gone.’ She frequently found herself resenting Harriet’s calm assumption that she was the more efficient of the two of them, but it wasn’t as if they saw each other often enough these days to make an issue of something so trivial.

‘So, what will you do after you’ve got rid of him?’ For all their closeness there had been long gaps when they hadn’t seen each other, especially since Harriet had moved away from London and down to the West Country. She surveyed her friend fondly. Ruth had large grey eyes, her most striking feature; as a child they had always been the first thing people mentioned about her. Her hair on the other hand was a light golden brown, something she had never bothered about and which had become streaked with silver at the temples at a remarkably early age. It had suited her then and suited her now. Harriet had always felt strangely protective of Ruth. She was one of those people who seemed too vulnerable to exist in the normal world; which was rubbish. At some level Ruth was tough as old boots.

‘I haven’t any plans yet. I’m not sorry I gave up teaching; I’d been there too long and I was growing stale. I was just learning to appreciate my freedom as mistress of my own destiny when I found out Dad was so ill and I thought I’d have to move up here permanently to look after him.’ Ruth sighed sadly. ‘No more freedom after all. That was why I rented out my London flat. I didn’t realise how short a time he had left.’

‘And what of the husband?’ Harriet never stooped to giving Richard his name.

Ruth laughed quietly. ‘The ex-husband is fine. You saw him at the funeral. We agreed to go our own ways. We still talk occasionally. We’re friends.’

There was a painful pause, a silence that covered so much that had happened: her longing for a child and the bleak discovery that Rick was unlikely ever to father a baby, the failed IVF, the decision to give up trying, the sense of empty pointlessness that followed.

Harriet cleared her throat uncomfortably. ‘So, you really are fancy-free?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘With no London flat, at least for now, but instead an Edinburgh house.’

‘Yup.’

‘Any gorgeous men on the horizon?’

‘No.’

‘Not Timothy?’

‘Definitely not Timothy.’

‘So, what did you do with yourself those last few months before you came up here? If you weren’t working, you must have been doing something.’

‘Living off my share of the sale of Rick’s and my house. I bought the flat with my half and that left me some change to give me the chance to stop and think about what I really want to do with the rest of my life. Meanwhile, I was free to read the books I want to read instead of set texts; explore the world, relax; take up hobbies for the first time since I grew up!’

‘Stamp collecting?’ Harriet’s voice was dry, though there was a twinkle in her eye.

Ruth laughed. ‘If you must know, I’ve started researching my family tree. My mother’s family tree, to be exact.’

‘Bloody hell, Ruth! I thought your father’s attitude to your ancestors would have put you off that for life.’

Ruth grimaced. ‘On the contrary. I always planned to do it one day, if only to show him I didn’t care how much he hated them. Besides, I want to find a family, any family. Dad was my last living relative.’ There was a long pause. ‘So,’ she changed the subject abruptly, ‘enough of that. Let’s talk about you. You haven’t told me what you’ve been up to.’

‘I’m still writing.’ Harriet leaned forward, as always intense, her short red hair framing a face focused with sudden excitement. She hesitated momentarily then went on. ‘I’m just starting a book about the vital role of women in the Second World War. Code-breakers, SOE – the specially-trained people who went overseas as spies and saboteurs – pilots, that sort of thing, telling the story of one particular woman from each category. I’ve arranged to go and stay with some friends in North Berwick while I’m up here. Liz and Pete Fleming. Liz discovered that her grandmother worked for SOE. She was dropped behind enemy lines and worked undercover near Paris. Can you imagine how brave you had to be to do that? So I’m writing a chapter about her.’ Her eyes were sparkling. ‘Another of my subjects is a woman called Dion Fortune who lived in Glastonbury.’ Harriet lived in a cottage in the famously eccentric Somerset town. It was there she had already written several well-received popular biographies. ‘Dion was a famous occultist. She lived at the foot of the Tor and conducted séances and meditations there. During the war, and this is the fascinating bit, she organised her followers to fight Hitler with magical energies and imagined armies of Arthurian knights with swords. You did know Hitler was into the occult?’

‘I think I’d heard, yes.’ Ruth was looking bemused.

‘Comparatively few people have heard of Dion these days, but that’s the point. These are unsung heroines and she’s probably the oddest of them all.’

‘Magic was my mother’s thing,’ Ruth put in wistfully. ‘She’d have loved Glastonbury. She used to go to crystal shops and buy incense and pretty stones. She kept them in a bag to calm her nerves; she used to meditate. Dad hated her interest in all that stuff. I can still remember the row they had when he caught her looking at them. She tried to stand up for herself, but he sulked like a spoilt child if she tried to defy him and as far as I know she gave it all up.’ Her face clouded as she remembered. ‘To him, meditation and prayer were pointless at best and childish superstition at worst.’

Intellectually she understood why her father had hated religion, or, his second relentless dislike, anything or anyone whom he regarded as posh, but what she had never been able to forgive was the way he had taken his resentments on both counts out on his own wife.

Presumably it was an instinctive sense of self-defence as she was growing up that preserved Ruth from any interest in history or religion; she left home as soon as she finished school, first to study English literature at Cambridge University, then to learn to teach, then to take up a series of posts teaching English. She had even married an English teacher.

She and Rick supported each other through the heartbreaks and trials that beset the marriage, but something in their relationship died with their hopes of a family. They began to drift apart and it was just after their tenth wedding anniversary that Ruth had rebelled and ended both marriage and career.

‘There was a lot about your mother that your dad didn’t like, wasn’t there,’ Harriet said cautiously. ‘Even when we were at school. I remember you telling me about her aristocratic ancestors.’

‘And those he hated above all. Poor Mummy. I’m not sure why he ever married her, but they were happy as long as she toed the official line.’ Ruth paused. ‘I suspect he didn’t realise when he first met her how well connected the family was, but as soon as he did all his left-wing prejudices kicked in with a vengeance. He found her stories intensely embarrassing. It would have destroyed his street cred if his Marxist pals had found out.’

Harriet smiled. ‘But she didn’t have a title or anything?’

‘Good lord, no. We’re talking generations back; hundreds of years even. The blue blood had worn extremely thin by the time it reached Mummy and, in me, well, it’s virtually non-existent! No more than the occasional effete gene.’ Ruth laughed. ‘But back in the eighteenth century one of my great-great-great-great-great-grandfathers,’ she was counting on her fingers, ‘a chap called Thomas Erskine, was Lord Chancellor of England. It sounded incredibly grand and impressive and sort of out of a fairy tale – what?’

Harriet had let out a strangled squeak. ‘Lord Erskine was one of Dion’s spirit guides!’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘You wouldn’t credit it, would you! What a coincidence!’ Harriet gave a gurgle of delight. ‘I knew I’d come across the name somewhere, but I’d forgotten it was you who had told me about him. A neighbour of mine lent me a book about Dion to read on the train and start filling in some background for my next chapter, and it mentions him! Those séances I told you about? Various exotic people like Confucius came to instruct her in the esoteric arts when she was at the start of her career as an occultist, and Lord E, as she called him, was one of them!’

Ruth gazed at her, bemused. ‘Why? How?’

‘I’ve no idea. In fact, you can tell me when you’ve done your family research! I’ll leave the book with you when I go and you can read it yourself. It’s a bit intense, to be honest, downright incomprehensible at times, but I love all this mystical stuff! I suppose I couldn’t live in Glasto and not know a bit about it. I’ve friends who are deeply involved in it all. Did your mother ever mention that he had a spooky side?’

‘No.’ Ruth was still staring at her in disbelief. ‘When I was old enough to learn what discretion was and realised what a difficult man my father could be and that I could be trusted to keep quiet, Mummy did tell me stories about them all and I loved listening to them. They were everything our lives at home weren’t. Romantic and exotic and part of history, but not spooky, no. Far from it.’ She gave Harriet a tolerant smile. ‘What I liked was that they all had huge families and, unlike Dad, seem to have been so proud of where they came from. Hence my new hobby. I want to find out about them. And being in Edinburgh is perfect because that was where the story started.’

‘And you’re not afraid your father’s ghost will haunt you if you do this?’ Harriet looked at her quizzically.

‘If he does,’ Ruth retorted firmly, ‘I shall have a stern word! I’m doing this for Mummy as much as me. She would have loved it.’

3

Sitting opposite Timothy Bradford at the kitchen table, Ruth found herself studying his face for the first time. He had pale pimply skin and mouse-coloured hair. When standing up he was the same height as she was but he had slumped into the chair and was leaning back, looking up at her, his expression guarded. He obviously resented her knock on his bedroom door and the invitation down to the kitchen.

She had seen Harriet off on the train at Waverley a couple of hours before and walked slowly back towards her father’s house in quiet, refined Morningside, in the south-west of the city. A lively autumn wind had risen and caught her hair as she crossed the Meadows, the area of parkland lying between the city and her destination, the leaves flying in clouds from the trees. As she neared Number 26 her pace had slowed. She was not anxious to see Timothy again but, if he was at home, this was the time to face him.

‘I wanted to thank you for looking after my dad,’ she began. ‘It was really good of you. I’m sorry it took me so long to find out he was ill.’ She paused, hoping he would acknowledge the fact that he could have made the effort to contact her, but he ignored the remark. He was watching her through narrowed eyes.

‘So, when are you going back to London?’

His question threw her completely. This was her line.

‘I’m staying here,’ she replied after the smallest of hesitations. ‘There’s a lot to sort out. So, I was going to ask you if you could let me know when you’re planning on leaving.’

She saw a flash of something in his eyes. Anger? Shock? Indignation? She wasn’t sure what it was, but it was immediately hidden, to be replaced by his previous bland stare. ‘I hadn’t planned on leaving, Ruth. Your father made it clear that this was my home as long as I wanted to stay here. He told me I was the son he had always wanted.’

In the end, with very bad grace, he agreed to move by the Thursday. The implication in his grudging acceptance of her request after she had threatened to go to her father’s solicitor, was that it would only be a matter of time before he returned.

As a house guest, he was for those last few days exemplary. He was neat, tidy and quiet. She barely saw him. She never met him in the kitchen or on the stairs. She wouldn’t have known he was still there at all had he not from time to time played his radio very softly in the evenings upstairs. Her father had given him the use of the two small rooms on the top floor and the guest bathroom which sat below it on the half landing. Once or twice she had tiptoed up when she knew he was out and tried the doors. Both were locked.

On the day stipulated in her ultimatum he moved out. She had been to the shops. Pushing open the front door she stopped in the hall. The house felt different; empty. She knew at once he had gone. Dropping her bag on the floor she stood at the bottom of the stairs looking up, then she caught sight of an envelope on the hall stand. It contained a postcard – a picture of the Scott Monument in the rain – and a set of keys.

Thank you for your brief hospitality. I am sorry I outstayed my welcome. I will return when you have gone back to London, Tim

That was all. No forwarding address, nothing.

‘I don’t think so!’ She found she had spoken the words out loud.

She ran upstairs two at a time. Both doors on the top floor stood open. She hesitated in the doorway of the first and looked round. He had left the window open and the room was cold, immaculately tidy, the bed stripped, the furniture neatly ordered. The wardrobe doors were slightly open. She peered in to find a mixed collection of empty coat hangers, nothing else. The second room, which overlooked the narrow parallel gardens at the rear of the long terraced street, was of identical size and layout except that the bed had been pushed against the wall to serve as a sofa. On the table there was a tray with neatly washed cups and saucers, an electric kettle, a couple of plates and an assortment of knives and forks and spoons.

In this room there was a range of fitted cupboards across the full width of one wall. Their doors were closed but she could see from where she stood that at some point they had been forced open; the wood was freshly chipped and splintered around the keyholes. Her heart sank. Pulling open the first door she saw the cupboard was full of boxes and suitcases, hat boxes and cardboard files, carelessly stacked on top of each other. With a sense of rising despair she opened the next door. That too was stuffed with boxes and papers. Only one cupboard appeared to have been left untouched. It contained a hanging rail and on it there were some half dozen of her mother’s dresses, some of the tailored trousers she had loved and a slightly moth-eaten fur coat.

It was the first time Ruth had cried since her father died.

She found herself sitting on the makeshift sofa sobbing uncontrollably. These were all her mother’s things. She recognised them; she could see letters and papers scrawled with her mother’s large cursive handwriting; she remembered the old handbag that lay on top of one of the boxes, the little make-up case, her hair brushes, her faded silk bathrobe, scarves, hats.

Had her father pushed them all in so carelessly, or had someone else forced open the cupboards and ransacked them? It had to be Timothy who had so terribly violated her mother’s privacy. Who else would have done it? Her father was a meticulous man. If he had kept her mother’s things, he would have kept them neatly. Standing up, Ruth fingered them miserably. Now, when it was too late to talk to him about it, was this a sign of her father’s love and his loss when her mother died? He had bullied his wife, and harangued her, questioned everything that made her who she was and made her life unbearably unhappy, and yet he had kept all these memories of her. It doubled the insult that Timothy had gone through the cupboards and then shoved the contents back out of sight, not even bothering to hide his depredations.

Why hadn’t she come up to Scotland sooner? Unable to reconcile herself to her father’s treatment of her mother, she had never visited him again after her mother died, not until these last weeks, when he was too ill to speak to her. It had been his next-door neighbour, Sally Laidlaw, who had found her phone number and called her. Timothy had done nothing to contact her and seemed to have been surprised that she existed at all. He had been living in this house for several months and her father had not mentioned to him even once, or so Timothy claimed, that he had a daughter living in London.

Suddenly she couldn’t bear to stay there a moment longer. Running downstairs, her cheeks wet with tears, she went into the front room. She didn’t turn on the light. She just sat there as the colour faded from the sky outside while indoors, behind the heavy net curtains, everything grew dark.

It was only as she was falling asleep that night that it occurred to her to wonder if Timothy had stolen anything.

She had made the room next to her father’s into her base when she had moved into the house; the small box room next to it had been occupied by Harriet for the few days she had stayed. A carer had slept there during her father’s last weeks, but Harriet’s vivacious personality still filled the room now, as did the scent of her various lotions and creams. ‘Glasto’s best,’ she had joked as she was packing to leave. ‘All herbal; all guaranteed to give me a luscious skin or spiritual insight or both. Here, have them.’ She had pushed several bottles into Ruth’s hands. ‘Your need is greater than mine. They will soothe your aura. I can always get more. And here’s the book I told you about. I’ve marked the first place Lord E is mentioned, though he seems to have guided her through her whole life.’ She clasped her fingers round Ruth’s wrists. ‘Remember, for a couple of weeks or so I won’t be too far away. Call me, any time, if it all gets too lonely.’

It was a complete surprise when next morning Ruth received an email from her father’s solicitor inviting her to the office to discuss an ‘unexpected problem’.

James Reid had been a friend of her father’s for many years. The tall, grey-haired man who rose to greet her with great courtesy, pulled out a chair for her then returned to his own side of the desk and produced a folder which he aligned on his blotter without opening it. This was an office, she noticed, where all signs of modernity – computer, scanner, printer – had been relegated to a shelf along the back wall beneath a solid phalanx of old law books. It was somehow comforting.

‘I’m sorry to ask you to come in so soon after our telephone conversation,’ he said once she was settled, ‘but there is something that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency.’ They had spoken briefly on the phone after her father’s death, and again at the funeral. Her father’s affairs, he had assured her then, were relatively straightforward. Donald Dunbar had left her, his only child, everything, the house and all his money of which there was quite a substantial sum. Now James Reid glanced up at her with what appeared to be some anxiety. He was a handsome man, perhaps in his mid-sixties, she guessed, and was blessed by a natural expression of wise benevolence. She felt her stomach tighten with anxiety.

‘A possibly contentious issue has arisen.’ He paused.

Ruth felt her mouth go dry. ‘What’s happened?’ It came out as a whisper.

‘Do you know a Timothy Bradford?’

Her heart sank. ‘Yes. He was staying with my father in the last months of his illness.’

‘In what capacity?’

‘Capacity?’ She echoed the word helplessly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Was he there as a friend? A guest? A carer?’

‘A bit of each, I suppose. I don’t really know.’

‘Not a relative?’

‘No. Absolutely not.’

‘And you hadn’t met him before?’

‘No. I had no idea he was even there until I came to Edinburgh. I assumed he was some kind of lodger. He claims Dad never mentioned me. It was a neighbour who got in touch to tell me about his illness.’

‘So your father didn’t tell him he had a daughter?’

‘He said not.’

‘I see.’ He sighed. ‘Mr Bradford has written to us informing us that he has a copy of your father’s will. A far more recent will than the one which I have, leaving everything to you, which was originally written fifteen years ago.’ He paused for a moment. ‘The new will leaves the house and all your father’s possessions to Mr Bradford.’ Before Ruth had a chance to interrupt he went on, ‘He further claims that he is your father’s son by a liaison formed in the late 1970s before your father and mother were married. I am sorry. This must be an awful shock to you.’

Ruth sat speechless for several seconds. ‘I can’t believe it. Daddy would never have done such a thing.’ She looked across at him helplessly. It wasn’t clear whether she was thinking about her father’s affair or the fact that he had changed his will.

‘I find it incomprehensible,’ James Reid said gently. ‘I have known your father for over forty years and I remember no mention of such a circumstance, but we are forced to take this claim seriously. The will is, as far as we can see, properly drawn up and signed and witnessed by someone from a reputable firm. I am so sorry.’

‘Who was his mother?’ At last Ruth managed to speak.

‘He doesn’t give her name.’ He opened the folder on his desk. It contained a single sheet of paper. ‘He gives no details of how long he has actually known your father, or of how he came to be living in Number 26.’ He looked up at her. ‘As soon as the will is processed, he wants vacant possession of the property. In other words, he wants you to leave.’

4

Ruth took a cab back from the lawyers, terrified that she would come home to find Timothy had returned. Her hands were shaking as she inserted the key in the lock, but to her relief the front door opened normally. She closed it behind her and drew the bolt across, then she paused to listen. The house was silent.

Tiptoeing into the sitting room she sat down on the edge of the sofa just as she had the night before. Velvet-covered, under a tartan rug, it was placed in the window so the light fell over her shoulder. She remembered from her childhood how it had been a favourite place for her mother to sit and read. Now it was dusty and faded; the room smelt stale and cold and unloved. The whole house felt abandoned and empty. Even the ticking of the clock had stopped. She had hated that clock as a child. It had underlined the echoing quiet of the place, the passing of time, her loneliness as the only child of two older parents, and she had felt it was mocking her with every jerky movement of its hands.

James Reid had assured her that nothing would happen while he appealed on her behalf against the new will. The absolute worst that could happen was that, if it was proved genuine, she would have to share the inheritance. As her father’s undisputed daughter, she was entitled to at least half of everything. He also told her that she was quite justified, at least for now, in changing the locks if she was nervous; after all, whether or not Timothy was related to her, he was still a stranger.

Her phone made her jump. It was Harriet. ‘How are things going? I’m loving it here in North Berwick. Liz and Pete are being so kind. I can stay as long as I like, so I’ll be here for a while, working on my book.’

The sound of her voice broke the spell. Ruth stood up and, walking round the sofa, drew back the curtains that had blocked half the light from the room. She stood staring out as she relayed the morning’s events.

‘Shit!’ Harriet summed up in one word.

‘I’d never given the inheritance a thought; of course I hadn’t. I’d spoken to James on the phone after Daddy died; he had told me that my father’s will, which he made after Mummy died, left everything to me.’

Harriet snorted. ‘I told you Timothy gave me the creeps. What a bastard! So, what happens next?’

‘I wait to hear from James. He is formally going to contest the will. Apparently, if Timothy is genuinely Daddy’s son, he can claim half the inheritance, whatever the will says, but then so can I.’

‘Ouch. I’m sure he’ll sort it out. Keep calm, Ruthie. It’ll be OK. There’s no way that vile toad could be a relation of yours.’

Switching off her phone, Ruth sat for a moment, staring into space.

The house and all your father’s possessions, his money …

‘Don’t panic,’ James had said as he shook hands with her at his office door. ‘Your father’s bank accounts are frozen and nothing will happen for a while. These things take time.’

And, she reminded herself, he had told her she was entitled to change the locks.

The locksmith said he could make her his last call that evening. Pulling the curtains across once more after a quick look out into the street, she checked the bolt on the front door and then headed back upstairs to the cupboards on the top floor.

Looking at the rail of dresses and coats she was pretty certain they hadn’t been touched; presumably Timothy wasn’t interested in clothes. But what about the other stuff, the boxes and cartons? Now she was looking more carefully she could see paler patches in the dust. Parcel tape had been pulled off and not replaced, latches on old suitcases were standing open when she knew her father, even in the act of banishment, would have made sure they were all neatly closed. He had been too ill to have made it up to the top floor for a long time, never mind stir up the contents of the cupboards like this. This had to have been Timothy. He had rifled through all her mother’s precious possessions, the things she had treasured and loved, her books, papers, jewellery, pictures. Even the little writing box with its inlaid brass initials that Ruth remembered from her childhood was there, lying crookedly on top of another box in the corner.

Methodically she began to take items one by one out of the cupboards and line them neatly on the floor. Tossed in a corner of one of the cupboards was a teddy bear. He had been hers, her beloved Pooh. She picked him up and held him close, burying her face in his threadbare fur. He had lost the warm comforting scent she remembered and smelt of sawdust. She had loved him above all her other toys and, knowing this, her mother had kept him for her; so too, she realised with a sob, had her father.

The locksmith did not miss the fact that her hands were shaking as she fetched him a cup of tea while he attended to the front door. ‘Were you burgled, hen?’ he asked sympathetically as he wielded his screwdriver.

‘No. Expecting to be.’

‘That’s tough. On your own here, are you?’ He was thorough and efficient, testing the new lock, handing her the keys, doing the same in the kitchen where the back door led out into the narrow garden. ‘I’m glad to see you have bolts here. Don’t forget to use them. Maybe get an alarm fitted in the house. Motion sensors. If you’re scared of being attacked, you can think about a link to the police; or at least a rape alarm.’

It hadn’t occurred to her that Timothy might attack her. It was the house and its contents he wanted; her mother’s treasures. Surely she ought to hide them somewhere they couldn’t be found.

Was there no one in Edinburgh she could go to for help? It was then her thoughts turned to Finlay Macdermott. He had been at school with her ex, and one of their greatest friends. It was worth a try.

‘So, what you’re saying is, you need to hide stolen goods, eh!’ The familiar voice rang out of the phone after she called him and explained the situation. To her relief he had sounded pleased to hear from her.

‘Not stolen!’ she protested. ‘They’re mine. Legally. The solicitor said my mother’s things would almost certainly be deemed to be mine as my father disowned them and locked them away. The law would presume he was planning to pass them on to me.’ She wasn’t sure if that bit was true. ‘They’re probably not worth much either, so I am not cheating the government of tax.’

‘Blow the government!’

She realised suddenly how much she had missed Finlay’s irreverent humour, which used to echo so often down the line from Scotland and around their living room in London.

‘I will be over to see you tomorrow, sweetheart. First thing.’

She smiled as he ended the call.

Whatever had precipitated that final quarrel between her parents had echoed in her head forever afterwards. She must have been very young but her mother’s angry denials and pleas and eventual capitulation had haunted her. It was then that her mother’s precious things had first disappeared. Ruth looked round, trying to remember what Lucy had brought to her husband’s Scottish home from her parents’ house in Sussex. One or two of the more robust items were still there, downstairs, the others, the delicate chairs that Ruth as a small child had loved so much, the spindly-legged tables, had vanished overnight. Where were they? There had been portraits of ladies in exotic clothes and bewigged gentlemen and landscapes and drawings and paintings of houses and castles, horses and dogs. Where were those?

There were two boxes of books still in the cupboard, at the very back; presumably Timothy had felt they were valueless. She hauled them out to join the rest of the items on the floor and began to look through them. These were stories of ancient Scotland, the poetry, the works of Sir Walter Scott, a tattered volume entitled The Lives of the Lord Chancellors which had, she assumed, included her mother’s great-great-great-great-grandfather, the same Lord Erskine who had precipitated her father’s rage. She picked them out, handling them with something like reverence. The Lives of the Lord Chancellors was signed by the author, John, Lord Campbell. She stared at the title page in awe. It was a first edition, published in 1847. She flipped open a shabby leather-bound volume of Sir Walter Scott’s Quentin Durward. Another first edition, signed by the author in 1823, and another signed ‘Byron’. She sat back and took a deep breath. Her ancestors had known these people.

When, all those weeks ago in London, she had started the research it had been relatively easy. All she did was call up Lord Erskine on her laptop, after she had threaded her way through all the different men of that name until she had found the one she wanted.

She had clicked on the entry, feeling almost guilty looking him up, but thinking of him as a historical reality helped start to dispel the lingering miasma of superstitious dislike her father had created around his name. This man was someone her mother had been inordinately proud of.

Thomas Erskine, 1st Baron Erskine KT PC KC (10 January 1750–17 November 1823) was a British lawyer and politician. He served as Lord Chancellor of the United Kingdom between 1806 and 1807 in the Ministry of all the Talents …

He was, it appeared, the son of an earl. That was what her father would have hated most. He would not have resented the fact that the man was a brilliant lawyer, surely, or the fact that to all intents and purposes he was a self-made man. It was the fact that he was the son of the 10th Earl of Buchan, a Scottish aristocrat of ancient lineage, that had got up her father’s nose.

She smiled sadly. Over the last weeks of her father’s life she had put her lurking interest in genealogy to the back of her mind, but suddenly here, tucked into an untidy heap in a long forgotten cupboard box, was all that remained of her mother’s background. She sat cradling Lord Campbell’s book on her knee for several minutes, fighting back her tears, before gently putting it down on the carpet beside her and scrambling to her feet to reach for the writing box.

It was about fifty centimetres long and made of some dark wood, perhaps rosewood or mahogany, inlaid with brass decorations and entwined initials and would when unlocked open to make a writing slope. She lifted it onto the divan. The box was broken. There was a deep splintered gouge around the lock and the delicate mechanism itself had been levered out completely; she found it lying on the floor of the cupboard. The body of the box under the leather and gilt writing surface was empty, as were the surrounding small compartments and drawers. Was it her father who had done this all those years ago, or Timothy on his quiet nights upstairs alone after his host had gone to sleep? Whoever it was had used considerable force to lever it open.

She sat back wondering what, if anything, had been hidden there. There had been a secret drawer in it somewhere. She remembered her mother showing her and chuckling at the little girl’s wonder as it slid out of the side of the box. Picking it up, Ruth shook it experimentally. If there was something inside it would surely rattle. There was no sound. She put it down again and studied it carefully. Where had the secret drawer been? She ran her fingers over every surface. There were no grooves or ridges that she could discern, save for the vicious damage inflicted by chisel or screwdriver; nothing that betrayed any hidden compartment.

Her mother had pressed something. As she cudgelled her memory, an image of the slim questing fingers with their narrow gold wedding ring the only decoration, popped into Ruth’s head. There had been some sort of button inside one of the compartments. There had been a silver-filigree-topped inkbottle there and her mother had lifted it out before pressing the secret place. The inkpot had gone, its former position clearly marked by the faded black stains on the wood. With a sudden surge of hope, Ruth felt the side of the compartment. There was indeed an almost undetectable bump beneath the thin veneer. She pressed it firmly. There was a click but nothing happened.

She pressed again, harder this time. There was no sound. The mechanism, such as it was, had shifted but she couldn’t see any sign of a response. Once more she ran her fingers over the outside of the box and then she felt it: a faint ridge at the bottom of the back panel that hadn’t been there before. She bent closer and tried to insert her fingernail. Slowly and reluctantly a small drawer began to emerge with her coaxing from the body of the box. It was stuffed with some sort of soft material. Intrigued and excited, Ruth unwrapped the delicate silk handkerchief to expose a portrait miniature. She sat staring at the tiny painting in the palm of her hand. It was of a young man; he wore a short white wig, a pale blue coat and a lace ruffle at his throat. She turned it over to see if there was anything written on the back. There wasn’t.

She stared at it for a long time. Whoever had forced open the writing box had missed the secret drawer. She ran her fingers around the back of the drawer once more. It was no more than an inch deep and the handkerchief had stuffed it very tightly, but there was something else wedged in the corner. She pulled out a leather ring box. Inside was a gold signet ring with a blue stone, engraved with some kind of insignia. She slid it onto her forefinger where it hung loosely. The crest, if that was what it was, was difficult to decipher. She would need a better light than this to see clearly what it represented. The last thing in the drawer, also wrapped in a scrap of silk, was a small gold locket on a narrow piece of black ribbon. In it there was a lock of hair.

She felt safest in the kitchen at the back of the house. Pulling down the blind, she put her finds on the kitchen table where the strip-light threw no shadows. Her laptop was already there with the briefcase into which she had thrown all her papers when she had set off north to her father’s bedside. Since then she had been back to London only once, leaving her father in Timothy’s care, more fool her, to arrange the letting of her flat and to collect everything she would need for what she had expected might be a protracted stay in the north. Struggling onto the train with the two large suitcases and her heavy shoulder bag she had wondered if she was mad to bring so much; now she was glad she had.

She set the writing box down on the far side of the table, together with her much-loved teddy bear, and realised that suddenly another emotion was vying with her sadness as she looked from the box to the portrait miniature to the ring. It was excitement. These must have belonged to her ancestors. Her family. The people she wanted to summon from the past to help assuage her loneliness. They were direct links with the story she was now more determined than ever to uncover. Clues. She pulled her laptop forward. Lord Erskine was the most contentious and famous person in the family who she had heard of and she had begun her research into him back in London. Now it was time to reveal the next chapter in his life. She opened her notebook at a new page and reached for her pen.

Thomas

My career has been followed closely by those who study the history of the legal profession and I am flattered by their attention to detail; my own family over generations have made me something of a hero too, to be enshrined in legend and anecdote. Much, I am glad to say, has been forgotten and much buried, but now I sense the moment has come that I had been dreading. Someone is about to uncover the past in more detail than I care to own and it is this great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter of mine. I find myself being drawn ever more closely towards her; she has inherited more of me than I would have thought possible. She is someone who loves to read and search for detail and she has now at her fingertips, if she chooses to read it, a family archive that will reveal everything I had thought forgotten. Now as I watch her pore over the smallest detail of my youth I smile, yes, sometimes I smile, I wince, I begin to recall it all and I recoil as she draws near to events I had thought buried in perpetuity. Is it thus with us all? I think it is. Though perhaps I had more to bury than most and I sense she is not going to be deflected from her quest. But will her determination to uncover my story awaken more memories than my own? There is one particular ghost in my past I would not want roused under any circumstances, ever.

5

1760

‘Mama has said we can go to Cardross!’ David Erskine strode into the room, his hair awry. At seventeen he was the eldest son in the family. His brother Harry was thirteen and Tom was ten. ‘She said it would be wonderful to have us out from under her feet for a few weeks.’

His two brothers glanced at each other, unable to believe their luck. ‘No sisters?’ Harry said cautiously.

David smiled triumphantly. ‘No sisters!’ Their elder sister Anne was twenty-one; Isabella was twenty. ‘They will stay with Mama. She can spend the summer finding husbands for them.’ All three boys sniggered. They knew their sisters’ lack of prospects worried their parents. Anne particularly was studious and religious and she, like them all, had no fortune. Poor Anne was doomed to spinsterhood, but her mother had not given up yet.

David had been working on their plan to escape the confines of the top-floor tenement flat in Gray’s Close for a couple of weeks now, since Tom’s escapade in the High Street. His little brother irritated him enormously, but at base he was only small and his terror at his experience had moved even David. The boy had come home, white with shock and crying, shakily confessing to their parents where he had been and what he had seen.

Satisfied that his son wasn’t able to identify the culprit, and needn’t be called as a witness, his father had on this occasion contented himself with a strong reprimand, hastily brushing aside Tom’s stammered description of the man’s ghostly apparition and wearily agreeing with his eldest son that it would benefit Tom as much if not more than all of them to be free of the claustrophobic confines of the flat for a while. Some good fresh air was what the boy needed to rid him of his dangerously active imagination.

The family castle at Cardross had been sold fifteen years before by their father, and only his elder children, David, Anne and Isabella, could remember it. In David’s case, barely. Neither Henry (Harry to the family), nor Tom, the youngest, had been born. David could still picture the ruinous tower, crumbling walls, miles of wonderful countryside, forest, moorland, wild desolate bog, boating on the loch, freedom. Life in Edinburgh was one long round of constraint for all of them. Their father was charming and vague and kind to his children, preoccupied with his own interests. It was their mother who was strict. It was she who taught them all to read, progressing to Latin and then to her great passion, mathematics. It was she who held the purse strings, she who carefully and methodically eked out their meagre finances, she who, though she knew he would deny it, had persuaded her husband to sell the Cardross estates to his cousin John of Carnock, who, as a popular and brilliant professor of law at the university, earned a large enough salary to run the place. John Carnock, amongst his many other duties, quietly kept a fatherly eye on David, who was one of his students, and on the rest of the Buchan brood. His own children were grown and he pitied his cousin’s young family, cooped up in the rambling flat on the crowded spine of Edinburgh’s heart. He was only too happy to agree to David’s plea and allow the children to escape to their ancestral home for the summer.

The Earl and Countess of Buchan still had some of their estates, the Linlithgowshire acres and Kirkhill House at Broxburn, thirteen miles from Edinburgh, but that too was ruinous and leaked, just as Cardross had done. Agnes, the children’s mother, had hated living in these ancient castles. She loved the sophisticated delights of Edinburgh’s intellectual life, with writers, lawyers, politicians, ministers of the kirk always there, taking tea, dining, discussing excitedly the matters of the moment, the concerts and the theatre. It was a huge relief to her when all that was left of Cardross to the Buchan family was the title. David, as the eldest son, was Lord Cardross; his sisters were Ladies; Harry and Thomas, much to their glee, were styled ‘honourable’.

John Carnock sent the trio off in his coach. He knew Agnes, Presbyterian to the roots of her hair, would not have approved such luxury but he persuaded her that as he was sending a load of books and furniture to Cardross anyway it would be a favour to have David there to see them safely in place and to keep an eye on things. He was refurbishing the castle, he explained to her, and there was no one there from the family to oversee matters as he was spending the summer in town working on his latest book. David, it was made clear, would be expected to watch the builders and report back.

No one, least of all Agnes, expected anything of the sort to happen. The moment the boys set foot outside the coach they were off into the park, laughing and shouting, David, far from keeping an eye on his brothers, a child again in his head, leading the way.

Their first big excursion had to be to his favourite place, the loch and the island on it where Mary Queen of Scots had spent some of her childhood holidays.

The two bigger boys rowed; Tom sat in the bow staring round him in awe. The Loch of Menteith, two miles from Cardross House, was peaceful, surrounded by low hills but with the great peak of Ben Lomond off to the west. There was a gentle breeze wafting the sweet smell of grass and heather towards them across the water as they neared the island of Inchmahome.

From the boat they could just see the grey ruins of the ancient priory through the trees, the clouds dappling shadows over the soaring sunlit arches and broken pillars. In the distance they could see someone from the village fishing from the stern of his boat, but he was far away and paid no attention to the boys. As they drew nearer an osprey plunged into the loch alongside the boat and dragged a fish out of the water, flying away towards the west. The island itself was deserted.

Running the boat ashore, the two elder boys scrambled out eagerly. Cousin John’s housekeeper had placed some bottles of ale into the boat for them, and pausing only to put them into the water at the edge of the loch to keep cool, the two elder boys raced ahead. David turned. ‘Come on, Tom!’ he cried impatiently. Tom was still staring through his little telescope, back the way they had come. He stowed it in his bag and climbed out onto the grassy bank. His brothers didn’t wait for him; they were used to him dawdling behind, his attention taken by every new bird and plant and dragonfly. He had a small notebook which went everywhere with him; in it he would make laborious drawings and sketches of everything he saw, drawings which even David had to admit were not bad.

Slinging his bag over his shoulder, he made his way after David and Harry along the track towards the ruins of the old priory. The stone arches stood out above the trees, beckoning him on as he followed sturdily in his bothers’ wake, pausing to watch the red squirrels chattering angrily in the sweet chestnut trees and a heron standing motionless near the water’s edge. He dropped further and further behind the others as they raced ahead to explore the ruins, climbing over fallen trees, watching the dragon-flies that hovered over the crystal-clear water of the loch.

He was slowly catching up with them at last when he realised they were not alone. A man in a long black woollen robe was walking under the arch where the west door of the great church had been. Tom stopped, half shy, half scared. They had every right to be there, he knew that, but there was something about the man and his intense self-absorption which excluded the outer world absolutely. He was praying, Tom realised, and completely unaware of their presence.

He watched as the figure walked slowly away from them into the shadows and disappeared. Only when he could no longer see him did he call quietly, ‘Was that a monk?’

David had scrambled up onto the wall of the ancient building, sitting in a window embrasure, his back against the warm stone, his eyes closed against the sunlight. It was Harry who stopped in his tracks. ‘Where?’ He swung round.

‘There. He walked up that way.’ Tom was suddenly flustered. ‘We shouldn’t go after him. I think he was praying.’

David sat up and stared round. ‘Where? I can’t see anyone.’

‘Are you sure you saw someone, Tom?’ Harry studied his little brother’s face. All three boys had caught the sun as they rowed across the loch, their hair tousled in the wind, and Harry’s eyes were bright with laughter. ‘It wasn’t one of your ghosts, was it?’ he probed gently.

Tom flushed a deep red. ‘No. He was there.’ He dropped his bag on the ground and ran to the arch where he had seen the man walking away from them along the nave that was no longer there. The place was deserted; long grasses grew amongst the stones. A bird flew up as he approached, calling in alarm.

‘Oh, Tom, for goodness’ sake!’ David, ever scornful, allowed a cruel edge into his voice. ‘You and your ghosts! They’re all in your head, you know. You’ll be sent to an asylum if you go on like this.’ Nevertheless, he looked round with a shiver and it wasn’t very long before he suggested they go and find their food. As he and Harry made their way back towards the beach where they had left the boat, Tom hesitated, hanging behind, and as his brothers’ voices grew fainter, he realised he could hear the monks chanting, the sound rising and falling in the distance above the rustle of the trees and the lapping of the water on the shore. He felt the hair standing up on the nape of his neck and, terrified, he turned and ran after them.

They retrieved the bags of bread and ham and cheese and pulled the bottles of ale out of the water. Tom, still chastened and embarrassed by David’s scorn and unsettled by what he had heard, sat a little apart. He was determined not to cry. He knew his elder brother could be nasty; it was Harry who was kind and patted him almost paternally on the shoulder as he came over and, cutting off a chunk of cheese with his dirk, gave it to him with an apple.

Tom took a deep breath. ‘Why did Papa sell Cardross?’ he asked Harry. He had found himself a nook in the stones of an old wall from where he could watch the jackdaws squabbling on top of the broken arches behind them.

‘He needed the money.’ Harry had already started to share out the rest of the food.

‘Mama is always talking about money,’ Tom followed his train of thought doggedly. ‘Are we very poor?’

‘Have you only just noticed?’ David snapped.

‘Why?’

Harry took pity on his small brother. ‘The earls of Buchan were rich and powerful once, long ago. But they kept making mistakes. They chose the wrong side in politics.’

‘Politics?’ Tom was screwing up his eyes against the sun. He had spotted the osprey again, flying low over the water.

‘Like Uncle James, Mama’s brother. He fought for Prince Charlie. That’s why he has to live abroad. All his estates were confiscated.’

‘He doesn’t know what confiscated means!’ David’s voice was muffled by the hunk of bread he was chewing as he lay back on the grass.

‘I do!’ Tom retorted. ‘It means taken away by the government.’

‘Well, then. You know why we’re poor. They gave some of the land back, but Papa has to live off a measly allowance from trustees who have no idea how an earl should live. That’s why we have to live in a flat in Edinburgh instead of a castle.’

‘Papa and Mama still like Prince Charlie?’ Tom framed it as a question.

‘Yes, but you must never, ever, say so. King George is our king now. Remember that.’ David sat up. ‘If you forget every word I’ve ever said to you, Tom, remember that one. King George is our king and we are loyal to him. Whatever we may think in private, we keep it private. Understand?’

Tom nodded. He was already watching another bird, but somewhere deep inside his head he tucked his brother’s advice away. He would remember it all his life.

It was the most wonderful holiday. They visited the loch and its islands again and again. Tom learnt to row; Harry taught him to swim. They went fishing. David took them outside at night and they lay on their backs in the long grass, staring up at the sky while he told them the names of the stars. They explored the castle and its policies; they made friends with the builders who were constructing a new extension to the castle and with the men working to drain areas of the great moss behind the castle so that it could be turned into rich farmland. Many of the labourers were Highlanders, dispossessed after the Jacobite rebellion fifteen years before; they were full of stories of battles and of grief, legends of ghosts and fairies, and Tom in particular listened wide-eyed to every tale, spending hours sitting listening as they wielded their long-handled spades or sat around their campfires at night. The moss fascinated him. In daylight the colours made him itch to reach for his pens and brushes, trying to capture the emerald of the moss itself, the russets and yellows and the glories of the purple heather. On hot days they saw adders and lizards basking and they heard the calls of distant snipe and the chink of stonechats and the yelp of buzzards. But at night it was lonely and eerie, swathed in mist and moon-shot shadows and the only sound was the haunting call of an owl.

All three boys were devastated when David received a letter from their mother informing them that the time had come for them to return home and that their cousin of Carnock would be sending his coach at the end of the week. The days were not as warm now as when they had first arrived; mist hung in the trees in the mornings and there was a scent of autumn in the air, but even so, they could have stayed there for ever.

Tom wrote everything down in his notebook, careful with the details, including sketches and even little tinted paintings. One of his mother’s friends had shown the boy how to use a brush to shade his inks and to grind up pigments to make the watercolour washes that would make his sketches realistic and he practised in the evenings by the light of a lamp as his brothers read or left him alone to walk through the moonlight to take a dram with their neighbours. He didn’t realise he was keeping a diary, but the keeping of meticulous records was another skill he would practise all his life.

6

Finlay greeted Ruth with a crushing bear hug when he arrived next morning just after nine. He brought croissants and coffee in a Thermos. ‘I wasn’t sure whether your father would have proper coffee-making equipment,’ he said as he sat down at the kitchen table, the paper bags in front of him. He was a huge man, a larger-than-life character in every way, the same age as Rick, but as they had often joked, he appeared older and was far more worldly wise.

He surveyed her sternly. ‘My God, you look knackered, sweetheart.’

She reached in the cupboard for cups and plates. ‘I was up late doing family research. It’s a good distraction from what’s been going on here.’

He studied her for a moment. ‘I was so sorry to hear about your father. What a bum summer you’ve had. And now this ne’er-do-well turns up!’ He began to unpack their breakfast. ‘It broke my heart when I heard you and Rick had split up.’

When he finally allowed her to speak she told him the whole story as he sat devouring his croissant, his eyes fixed unwaveringly on her face.

‘Forgive me asking, but why did your mother stay with your father?’ he asked when she finished her story.

Ruth smiled sadly. ‘I keep asking myself that. I used to come up to Edinburgh and meet her sometimes secretly; he never knew. After she died I had no contact. He never tried to persuade me to come home.’

‘Till he needed you.’

‘Even then, it wasn’t him who called, it was Sally, next door. To be honest, he barely recognised me.’

They sat in silence for a few moments, then he leaned forward, seemingly re-energised. ‘Right, so, you want me to store some of your precious family stuff for you.’

She nodded slowly. ‘I don’t think it’s all that valuable in money terms; I suspect Timothy has already been through it and if there was anything worth having he’s probably taken it, but I feel a bit threatened, as if he would take things out of spite if he thought I valued them.’

He leaned forward, elbow on the table, chin in hand, and studied her again with disconcerting concentration. ‘I can take as much as you like. You have me to take care of you now.’ He grinned boyishly. ‘The problem will be to make sure he isn’t spying on you. If he thinks you are moving anything out, he might go to the courts. I don’t know the law on this. We should check with your Mr Reid. Is there any large furniture you want removed?’

‘No, most of the stuff I want to keep is really small. This writing box is the largest.’ It was lying on the kitchen table. ‘The rest is in suitcases and boxes. I’m still looking for the family portraits. I don’t know if they even exist still. Dad really hated them. Mum only brought them here because there was no one else for my grandparents to leave them to. I don’t care about the rest of the furniture, to be honest.’

‘Right.’ He stood up. ‘Why don’t we go out to my place now with a load. That writing box for a start. I could mend that for you. My car is just up the road. We’ll check he isn’t lurking. What sort of car does he have?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t even know if he has one.’

Finlay was back at once. ‘He’s parked right outside, or someone is, watching this house. Take a shifty out of the front window.’

It was Timothy. Cautiously she peered from behind the heavy curtain. He had made no attempt at being subtle; his hands were clamped on the steering wheel with every appearance of impatience. From time to time he glanced at his watch. ‘He looks as though he’s waiting for someone. No, he’s getting out of the car.’ She stepped back from the window. ‘He’s coming in.’

They heard the sound of a key in the lock. Timothy wrestled with it for a moment, before uttering an exclamation of impatience. Ruth opened her mouth to protest, but Finlay put his finger to his lips and gestured to her to remain out of sight.

He crept towards the door surprisingly quietly for such a large man and opened it. Timothy was standing there, a key in his hand. ‘Can I help you?’ Finlay stood four-square in the doorway.

‘She’s changed the lock!’ Timothy’s anger was barely contained. He didn’t ask who Finlay was and Finlay didn’t volunteer the information.

‘If by “she” you mean Ruth, you’re right. She has. On the advice of her solicitor. She suspected, rightly, obviously, that you had kept a key to her house when she asked you to leave.’

‘My house.’ Timothy was tight-lipped.

‘I doubt if any court in the land would substantiate that claim.’ Finlay folded his arms. ‘I understand you’ve removed articles belonging to Ruth’s mother which are her property and no part of her father’s inheritance; that is theft.’

Timothy stared at him, seemingly inarticulate with fury, then he turned and walked back to the car. Finlay closed the door. He put his hand in his pocket and brought out his phone. ‘Let me make a note of the licence number for future reference.’

Ruth was seething with anger. ‘The nasty sneaky man! What was he planning to do when he got in?’

‘I should have asked him.’ Finlay slipped his phone back into his pocket. ‘I think you should ring your Mr Reid. Tell him what happened. We have to keep the law tight on your side and at the same time warn him that your so-called brother is not playing cricket.’

Ruth stared at him, her mouth open. ‘My brother!’ she echoed in horror. ‘No!’

‘Well, half-brother. And almost certainly, no. He will have to take a DNA test to prove it.’

‘Of course.’ She frowned. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. That will prove he isn’t Dad’s son.’

There was a moment’s silence. ‘Or that he is.’

‘Right.’ Finlay glanced towards the window. ‘Let’s see if he’s gone. If he has, I’ll load up my car with anything you want to save right now before he has a chance to come back. You should also tell Reid that he went through your mother’s belongings, and damaged them, and you suspect he may have taken valuables away. For instance,’ he paused thoughtfully, ‘what about jewellery? Or family silver? Those pictures you mentioned. You showed me the ring and the little miniature, but what else did she have?’

‘There was a jewellery box. I can’t really remember what was in it, but it lived on her dressing table. I don’t think Dad made her lock that away, but she never wore anything out of it as far as I remember. That’s not up there.’ She gave a miserable little wail. ‘Oh, Finlay! If he has taken anything I’ll never know.’

‘We’ll sort it, Ruthie, don’t you fret.’

They packed up all the most sentimentally precious things and locked them in the boot of his car, then he helped her search her father’s desk for his chequebook and bank cards, things that it had not even occurred to her to look for, and which were conspicuous by their absence. He stood by while she rang the bank and reported their theft, then he took her out to lunch.

When he finally drove away that evening he tried to persuade her to go with him, but she refused.

He didn’t argue. ‘OK. Good for you. Stick to your guns and stay safe and call me at any time of day or night if you need me.’

She watched him drive away then closed the door and bolted it before wandering back towards the kitchen.

The house was dark and very quiet now that he had gone. As she reached for the light switches by the kitchen door she stopped suddenly in her tracks. She had heard a noise from the kitchen, she was sure of it. She held her breath, listening. Had Timothy managed to find a way in round the back? The silence stretched out and then she heard it again. It was another second before she realised with a flood of relief that it was the sound of the tap dripping slowly into the sink. She took a deep breath and brought her hand down heavily on the switches, lighting every corner of the kitchen. There was no one there.

Of course there was no one there.

For several seconds she stood still as slowly her heartbeat returned to normal then she walked over to the back door and checked the locks. No one could have come in that way. Picking up her laptop, she tucked it under her arm. The wave of loneliness and despair that swept over her was overwhelming.

In the end she turned off the lights and climbed wearily to her bedroom, wishing she had taken up Fin’s invitation and gone home with him. Below, in the darkness, the house was very empty. Clutching her teddy bear in her arms she climbed into bed and lay there in the dark, staring up at the ceiling.

7

Timothy’s sister, April, was waiting for him in the White Hart, a glass of shandy before her on the table, a bottle of lager for him. She looked up as he walked in. ‘Did you get in?’

‘Nope! She’s changed the locks.’

‘I told you she would. You should have taken everything while you had the chance.’

He sat down opposite her and reached for the bottle, twisting off the cap. Taking a large gulp, he wiped the foam from his lip with his sleeve. ‘We’ve got most of the valuable stuff anyway. Do you want to get me another one?’

‘Not particularly.’ She was very like him to look at; the same skin, the same colour of hair, but while his eyes were brown hers were hazel. She studied his face closely. ‘You look rattled.’

‘There was someone else there. A big bloke. Some kind of minder.’

She scowled. ‘Never mind. You don’t need to go there again. We got what we came for: the old man’s cash, jewellery, silver. Now you can sit back and wait for the house to fall into your lap.’ She took a sip from her glass.

He noticed the packet of crisps at her elbow and reached across for it. ‘But she’s obviously gone to the solicitor.’

‘Of course she has. He will have contacted her the moment he received the new will.’

‘Doesn’t it worry you?’

‘No. It’s your word against hers. She hasn’t seen her father for years.’

‘What about the DNA?’

She gave a grim smile. ‘You got it, didn’t you? The swab from the old man’s mouth.’

Timothy grimaced. ‘Disgusting.’

‘Proof!’ She smiled at him. ‘Just don’t lose it.’

She reached into her pocket. ‘I’ve been going through some of the stuff you brought back.’ She brought out a small cotton bag and tipped half a dozen rings into the palm of her hand.

‘Don’t!’ Timothy let out a cry of alarm. ‘For God’s sake, April. Someone will see.’

‘Shut up, you numpty. You’re just drawing attention to us.’ She rattled her two hands together then opened them with a smile of triumph as if she had produced the rings out of thin air. ‘These are nice. Gold, rubies, diamonds. Victorian, I should say. Not worth a lot these days, but better than a slap in the face. Eighteen carat. They’ll melt down well if nothing else.’

They both looked down at her hands. She reached for one of the rings and slid it onto her little finger. It wouldn’t go over her knuckle. ‘They must have had tiny hands in those days,’ she said critically. She shivered suddenly and plucked the ring off. ‘It doesn’t feel right. Been on a dead person, I reckon. That’s why I hate second-hand stuff.’ She tipped the rings back in the bag and pulled the cord round its neck to tighten it. ‘Best move these on as soon as.’

Timothy frowned. ‘We can’t risk it. Not yet. Ruth might be able to identify it. Just sit on it for a bit. All of it.’ He helped himself to a handful of crisps. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’ She was staring down at her hand, lying on the bag.

She shuddered visibly. ‘I told you. Someone walked on my grave.’

He laughed. ‘Stupid mare. I tell you, if you want something spooky, it’s that house. It gave me the creeps, there on my own with that old boy. He talked to people I couldn’t see. He thought his wife was there with him. He told me she didn’t like me. He told me to go away. Then he thought there was someone else there. Her grandfather or someone. He was scared of him. Terrified. He kept saying he was sorry. What?’ He realised April was staring at him, her eyes wide with horror.

‘I’m not handling these.’ She pushed the bag of rings away from her. ‘There’s something bad going on with these. I reckon we should bail. Go somewhere else. I do not want to be landed with a haunted house.’

‘Stupid!’ Timothy glared at her witheringly. ‘Not after all the trouble I’ve been to. We’ve done the hard bit now. As you say, we’ve just got to wait.’ He reached out for the bag and stuffed it into his pocket. ‘I need a proper drink.’ He climbed to his feet and went over to the bar. ‘Two large gins,’ he said to the girl behind the till, ‘and two hot pies when you’re ready.’

Ruth stood looking up at the great crown steeple of St Giles’ cathedral. It had been so vivid in her dream, the silhouette against the stormy evening sky, the small boy alone in the crowded street. She shivered. It had been uncannily real.

Number 26 was claustrophobic now, and lonely without her father there. Or Fin or Hattie. She hadn’t been able to stand it this morning when she woke. A walk had seemed a good idea, especially now the locks had been changed and she wasn’t afraid Timothy would sneak in behind her. She hadn’t planned to come here to the Royal Mile, but that was where she ended up, standing staring at the place where Thomas had seen a murder. And a ghost. And it was her Thomas, her five-times great-grandfather, she was sure of that now. The names fitted, the names she had heard shouted out in her other dream, the dream of three excited, happy boys on holiday.

She looked round. This iconic street, stretching along Edinburgh’s spine, from the castle to Holyrood Palace, was similar to her fleeting memory, but the booths had gone now of course; the images in her dream were like old photographic negatives, the buildings taller, more crowded, the people wearing darker clothes, the women in long skirts and shawls, carts, horses. The parliament building, and the Old Tolbooth near it, shadowy backdrops to the drama in the street.

Slowly she walked on. Thomas had lived at the top of a lofty tenement in somewhere called South Gray’s Close. She glanced at the address on the piece of paper in her hand. She had looked it up on the Internet that morning. It was next to the Museum of Childhood. The actual building in which he had lived had long ago disappeared, it seemed, but there had been a plaque there once, marking the place where Tom and his brother Henry had been born. She came to a halt outside the entrance to the close. There was the rounded archway. Did she remember that from her dream? She thought so, but more than that, she wasn’t sure. Everything had been dark then, save for the warm rooms briefly lit by the setting sun before the black rain clouds had swept in. There was graffiti now where, presumably, the plaque had once been. The memory of Thomas and his family in Gray’s Close had vanished with her dream.

On her return to Number 26 Ruth went back to her slim file of notes and the Internet. She moved the cursor across to the portrait of Thomas and studied it carefully. He had short wavy dark hair and deep-set piercing eyes. The reproduction was poor; it was dark and hard to make out the detail. She clicked on it. The picture had been painted by Thomas Lawrence in 1802, when Thomas was fifty-two years old.

Sitting back in her chair she thought for a moment, then she rummaged in the zipped pocket of her bag for the portrait miniature. Was it him? The face staring out at her was very different to the arrogant, powerful, quite modern face on the screen. For a start the man in the miniature was wearing an old-fashioned white powdered wig; he was half smiling and he appeared to be very young. She narrowed her eyes, holding it under the light. The glass reflected badly and the picture was, she realised now, very crude in its execution. She dipped back into her bag to bring out the locket. The lock of hair could have belonged to anyone. A woman? Someone from another family altogether? She ran her finger across the glass. She badly wanted to touch the hair. The small oval of glass which held it in place felt loose. She squinted at it, angling it this way and that under the light. Could she prise it off? And if she did, would the hair reveal in some mysterious way the identity of its owner?

She picked up the miniature again, wondering why she assumed everything she had found was to do with that one man, as if he was the only ancestor her mother had. But that was her father’s fault, she realised. He was the one with the obsession. It was as if the name, the title, had got under his skin as a personal insult.

Whoever the lock of hair and the miniature had belonged to they had been very precious. With a shiver she dropped them on the table. The thought that the touch of that hair might directly link her to the person from whose head it had been taken felt suddenly like witchcraft.

Thomas

It was the sennachie who first told me I was special. He had come to teach my eldest brother, David. The sennachie is the holder of the family story, the keeper of the genealogy, the remembrancer of all that makes a clan or a family great. We, the Erskines, he said, are both a Highland family and a Lowland clan. That is strange and special and he told us that our name comes from the skein, the little knife that appears on the family crest.

I was there, listening, only about five years old at the time, as the old man talked to my brother of traditions and legends of the earls of Buchan and of their forefathers the earls of Mar, going back to time before time.

There was another boy watching and listening there with us. Not Harry; he had gone out with Mama, and I asked the boy who he was. He said his name was David and he was my brother, the eldest, and he was six.

The sennachie frowned when I mentioned the boy and my big brother told me to be quiet as he could see no one there. The old man reprimanded him and said this other boy, who had joined us so silently and so suddenly, was the eldest brother to both of us, another David, who had died as a wee boy of six and who had come to hear the story of his ancestors.

The sennachie said I had the gift of second sight.

Later Mama told me we had indeed had a brother who had died; as the oldest son he had been named for Papa, but after he had died Papa had given David, our David, who had been their second son, his name and his title as the eldest son of Lord Cardross; before that David had been called Steuart after Mama’s family. I was confused. I didn’t understand any of this and my brothers were angry with me. They had both known the first David when they were all little together and missed him after he died and David was cross because he felt his name was not his own.

Mama said I must not tell anyone that I could talk to those who had died.

8

James Reid showed Ruth into his office and pulled out the chair for her. ‘I have news for you,’ he said as he sat down opposite her. ‘I am pretty sure your Mr Bradford is a fake.’ He smiled triumphantly. ‘I called the firm who appeared to have drawn up your father’s new will. Cautiously, you understand. There’s a certain procedure to be followed here. The name at the bottom of the will is that of a genuine solicitor and I asked to speak to her. It turns out she’s away on maternity leave. She wasn’t working when the will was drawn up and when contacted she had never heard of Timothy Bradford or your father, and neither, incidentally, had the young man who is filling in for her.’

‘Oh, thank goodness!’ Ruth couldn’t hold back her exclamation of relief. James Reid’s phone call that morning had filled her with foreboding.

He took off his spectacles and rubbed them thoughtfully with a handkerchief. ‘That would seem to be the end of your problem, but it leaves one or two unanswered questions. Firstly, is it possible that Bradford actually is your father’s son? And secondly, whether he is or not, if he has stolen property from your father’s house you would want it back.’ He put his glasses back on. ‘In the case of the first problem, you would probably be quite happy if he disappeared and was never seen again, thereby proving he is a liar. In the second, I’m sure you would prefer to retrieve your mother’s possessions if it’s at all possible before he disappears forever. Either way, he is almost certainly a thief and you are entitled to call in the police.’

Ruth slumped back in her chair. ‘How would we find him?’

‘There’s an address on the will. I doubt if it’s real, but it must provide some way of contacting him about his supposed inheritance.’ He looked down at the papers in front of him. ‘It’s my belief that we’re dealing here with a man of fairly limited intelligence. He must have realised that we would find out the will was a fake almost at once.’

‘But he didn’t know there was anyone to query it,’ Ruth pointed out.

‘That’s true,’ James said slowly. ‘So, what would you like me to do?’

‘How long have we got before he gets suspicious?’ Ruth leaned forward, her brow furrowed. ‘I want him to go away; I want him to leave me alone; but I don’t want to spook him into destroying anything he might have taken. To be honest, I really don’t know if he’s taken anything at all; that’s the problem. I remember my mother mentioning pictures and portraits and silver, and there’s nothing like that in the house. But it could have been my father who got rid of them.’ She looked at him helplessly.

‘But from what you told me, you suspect your father didn’t get rid of anything.’ His voice was gentle; thoughtful. ‘Not permanently. He merely locked it all away.’

She bit her lip sadly. ‘Mummy had a jewel box she kept on her dressing table. She never wore anything out of it, or opened it at all, as far as I know, except when I was very little. When Daddy was out, she sometimes let me try on her rings and bangles. There’s no sign of the box in the house.’

He made a note.

‘Where is it he says he lives? He did mention once that he had a sister. It could be her house.’

‘If I tell you, you won’t go there, will you? I don’t want you getting hurt.’ James reached for the file.

She smiled. ‘No, I won’t go there. I don’t want to spook him, as I said.’

He studied the letter in front of him. ‘He gives a mobile telephone number as his contact and an address in Muirhouse.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘North Edinburgh. Parts of it are pretty rough.’

‘As I said, I don’t plan on going there. So, what do I do now?’

‘That’s up to you. If our suspicions are correct, he’s committed – at the very least – fraud, forgery and theft. I think we should inform the police as soon as possible. They can then search his house.’

‘Can I think about it?’

He nodded. ‘Don’t take too long.’

The sound of the doorbell pealing through the empty house nearly gave Ruth heart failure. Sally Laidlaw was standing on the step, an umbrella open above her head. Rain was bouncing off it and splashing down onto the doorstep. ‘I wondered if you would like to come over and have a cup of tea. This house must be sorely cold and drear.’ Sally hesitated. ‘It’s warmer next door, and I’ve been baking.’ She peered past Ruth. ‘Has Timothy gone?’

The difference in the two houses was unimaginable. Sally’s was bright and warm and full of colour and in the background Ruth could hear a radio playing. Shedding her raincoat in the hall, she followed her hostess into the kitchen. It had the same high ceiling as Number 26, the same windows looking out onto a narrow garden, but there the similarity ended. The room was lined with pale blue fitments with granite tops; it was immaculate, the small central table adorned with an oilcloth covered with cornflowers and in the middle a jug full of Michaelmas daisies. ‘Sit you down.’ Sally indicated one of the two chairs by the table. She turned off the radio and switched on the kettle. ‘You’ll have a piece?’ She produced a sticky gingerbread loaf with a pat of butter, closely followed by a pot of tea. ‘I’m thinking your house must be very sad,’ she said at last as she sat down opposite Ruth. She glanced up. ‘Were you planning to keep it when the will is sorted?’

‘I don’t think so. You’re right: it is too sad. It needs someone new to do it up and bring some happiness back there,’ Ruth sighed.

‘Is Timothy coming back?’

‘I hope not.’ Ruth gave a tentative smile.

‘I didn’t take to him,’ Sally said succinctly.

‘No, neither did I. Can I ask you,’ Ruth leaned forward anxiously, ‘how long was he here, do you remember?’

‘Ages. He visited your father regularly, once a week or so to start with, then twice, then one day he moved in. I asked your father if he was happy with the arrangement and he said yes.’ She tightened her lips in obvious disapproval. ‘I don’t know if you remember, but I was good friends with your darling mother. I had no truck with the way your father treated her, I don’t mind telling you, but after she died I kept an eye on him, you know? For her sake.’

Ruth took a deep breath. ‘He barely recognised me when I arrived.’ She gave a sad little smile. ‘I don’t know if he told you anything about Timothy,’ she went on, ‘but a will has turned up claiming my father left him the house and everything in it.’ She scanned the other woman’s face, waiting for a reaction, and was reassured to see first disbelief then anger there.

‘He would have wanted no such thing.’ Sally scowled. ‘If he signed that will, he didn’t know what he was doing. It is my opinion the man forged his signature. He had enough time to practise!’

‘My solicitor thinks it’s a forgery, but of course he has to take it seriously until we can prove otherwise. Timothy is claiming,’ Ruth rushed on, ‘to be my father’s son.’

Sally stared at her in blank astonishment. ‘No.’ She repeated firmly, ‘No, absolutely not.’

‘Dad never mentioned that he had a by-blow somewhere?’

‘No. Your father worshipped your mother in his own way, Ruth. She was his first and only love. He was a bully and controlling and even cruel without realising it himself, but he would never have had another woman. If he had, he would have confessed to your mother on his knees and she would have told me, I am certain of it.’ She paused for several seconds, as if questioning her own statement. ‘Yes, she would. She talked to me often, Ruth. She had no one else to confide in.’ She leaned forward anxiously. ‘I’m not criticising you, dear, by saying that. I understand perfectly why you didn’t want to come here.’

Ruth said nothing.

‘Your mother and I were quite close,’ Sally went on at last. ‘I used to tell her to leave him but of course she wouldn’t. She loved him.’

‘You knew about his problems with her family background?’ Ruth said cautiously.

‘Oh yes.’ Sally laughed. ‘Most people are afraid of reds under the bed; in your father’s case it was the lords he found in her pedigree. It was ludicrous! They were so far back, she told me, and I met her parents, your grandparents, and they were lovely, I don’t have to tell you that. They were simple, kind folk. I liked them so much when they came to see Lucy. Anyone more unassuming you couldn’t find. But then he didn’t like their faith either; he had no time for God and your grandfather being a vicar and English was too much for him.’ She laughed. ‘It was all so illogical. The Erskines are a Scots family, obviously, but here was his wife, sounding as English as they come, from down south. But she was descended from this man who was Lord Chancellor. He pictured the man in the great wig, draped in golden robes, and he had him down in his head as a rampant Tory, though Lucy told me he was a Whig.’ She looked worried suddenly. ‘She had the second sight. You knew that about your mother, didn’t you?’

Ruth looked doubtful. ‘I knew she liked crystals and things. We didn’t talk about it much. Childish and naive and self-deluding were the words Daddy used when I was a child.’

‘He was afraid.’ Sally clamped her lips shut and there was a moment’s silence.

‘Do you believe in it all?’ Ruth asked cautiously.

‘I have never seen anything myself, but I believe she did. And his being scornful of her did nothing to stop it happening to her. She told me she used to summon the spirits when she was a child; she used to encourage all the things that happened to her. Then when she met your father she realised it wasn’t normal and she became terribly upset. She was torn in two.’

Ruth glanced across at her miserably. ‘I didn’t help. I didn’t understand what was happening, then when I was older I just began to hate him because he made her life a misery. I left home as soon as I could.’

‘Don’t feel guilty. It was a complex relationship. As a child, you couldn’t have hoped to understand what was happening.’

‘Can I ask you something?’ Ruth found she liked this woman and she trusted her. ‘In spite of all his threats, Daddy kept all my mother’s things. He locked them upstairs in the spare room cupboards. Her clothes and family items, which I thought he’d made her get rid of. I thought he’d burnt them all. That’s what he told me, but he hadn’t.’ She hesitated. ‘Timothy appears to have gone through it all pretty thoroughly. I think he has taken some of it away.’

‘Oh no!’

‘The family pictures are missing and the silver. I remember Mummy showing me spoons and forks, wrapped in soft black cloths; they had what I now realise were family crests on them. There were candlesticks. And there was her jewellery. I know the only thing Daddy ever gave her was her wedding ring, but she had pretty jewellery which she used to let me try on when I was a little girl. As far as I remember she never wore any of it, but it was still there when I left home.’

‘And now it’s gone?’

‘Yes.’

‘You should tell the police.’

‘I would, but I have no way of proving it was still there. I don’t suppose you saw it?’

Sally shook her head. ‘I never went upstairs. I very seldom went in at all, to be honest. She came here. I did drop in to see your father every now and then after she died, but we always went into the kitchen. He would give me a cup of Nescafé and we would chat for a wee bit and that was it. He was a very lonely man after she went. I’m not surprised to hear he kept her stuff, the old hypocrite.’ There was another pause. ‘She gave me some of her books to take care of, Ruth, and I have them still. She was afraid he would burn them after one particular quarrel they had, and I said she could put them in my spare room. She came round sometimes to read them. I kept them after she died. I wasn’t sure what to do with them, to be honest. They’re yours now. Books about the family and books about all sorts of New Age stuff.’

Ruth felt a surge of excitement. ‘I’d love to have them. Thank you.’

There was a pause.

‘Your father talked to her, you know. After she died. I heard him once or twice when I came over. I could hear his voice when I was going to ring the doorbell. I confess I listened at the letter box. He was talking, arguing, crying.’ For a moment Ruth thought Sally was going to cry herself. ‘And he didn’t just talk to Lucy.’

Ruth froze.

Sally wasn’t looking at her. She was studying her hands in her lap. ‘It seemed that he was talking to Lord Erskine. Lucy told me that he would sometimes appear to her. He was kind and understanding and gave her the courage to stay with Donald. Naturally,’ she looked up at last with a wan smile, ‘I assumed she was going off her head.’

‘You’re saying his ghost appeared to her?’ Ruth found her mouth had gone dry.

‘I’m not sure that he was what you or I would call a ghost. After all, why would he haunt a terraced house in Morningside? No. Lucy used to call him up, summon him, in some way; like summoning the spirits of the dead. You know?’

‘And you are telling me Daddy called him too?’ Ruth felt her whole body stiffen with disbelief. ‘That’s just not possible. He wouldn’t.’

‘No, I don’t suppose he did.’ Sally’s shoulders slumped. ‘Perhaps he did it without meaning to. Perhaps he called out to him in his anger or anguish or whatever at losing Lucy and never expected, or even imagined for a second, that the man would respond.’

Ruth smiled grimly. ‘That must have given him a shock.’

‘Your father never stopped loving your mother, my dear.’ Sally glanced at her, uncomfortable with the sudden show of emotion. ‘He was the kind of man who finds it difficult to express himself. He came from a generation and a background which was …’ she hesitated, ‘very buttoned up.’ She smiled. ‘I know he was cruel to your mother, and I know when he hated something he found it easier to say so than when he loved something. But he did love her.’

Later Ruth relayed the conversation to Harriet on the phone.

‘Your father talked to him!’ Harriet was incredulous. ‘Dear God! You have to try to speak to him yourself!’ Her excitement was instant and infectious. ‘You absolutely have to. What are you waiting for?’

‘That’s all very well for you to say!’ Ruth was once more seated at the kitchen table at Number 26. ‘The idea appals me. Oh no, Harriet. I don’t believe a word of it. Absolutely not.’

‘But we know he was a spirit guide! He knows how to talk to people. Have you read that book yet?’

‘No, I haven’t. And I don’t believe all this stuff. You know I don’t!’

‘Why not? He’s not going to hurt you, is he. You are his however-many-greats-granddaughter for goodness’ sake! Did that woman, your neighbour, actually hear his voice through the door?’

‘Yes. No.’ Ruth was becoming flustered. ‘Of course she didn’t! She heard Daddy talking to himself.’

‘Go on. Try. You have to.’

‘No!’

‘I dare you.’

‘What, and discuss philosophy? Politics?’

‘No. Or at least not straight away. Ask him if he minds talking to you. Tell him you’re interested in him. Do it now. Then call me back.’

The phone went dead.